Chapter 18
Equipment Evolution
Transport
The relative merits of different modes and types of transport for support of operations were recognised from the recorded beginnings of warfare. The high capacity of water transport has always been appreciated and used when possible; the advent of rail transport brought a similarly high capacity haulage medium over land which came to form the backbone of continental operations; wagons gave a low and slow capacity lift but allowed operations away from permanent ways; and pack animals provided a slow and very low capacity but by far the greatest flexibility. These characteristics virtually dictated how and where the various types were employed until technological competition from powered road and cross country vehicles, amphibians, aircraft and pipeline gave alternatives combining flexibility with capacity, which progressively supplanted the more traditional means where this became feasible, economical and effective.
From a military viewpoint, the closer the transport was used in relation to the fighting, the greater the incentive there was to establish military transport systems. In consequence pack animals, wagons and then the motor vehicles and aircraft which displaced them became the early and subsequently the standard forms of military operational transport. Continuing civil ownership of shipping, railways and airfields continued to predominate where this was already in place, however military construction or operation was accepted without reservation where circumstances required. This variable menu resulted in the responsibility for different types of transport falling under the responsibility of different corps, some logical, others less so. As corps developed from being executive organisations to include wider empires and ambitions, they tended to compete for and struggle to retain a wide range of functions and equipments. The battles fought in the Australian corridors of power produced some results different to British Army practice resulting in Engineers operating watercraft and the fire service, and the Medical Corps operating ambulances, at least for a limited period. Further variations existed in other armies such as the US Army Quartermaster Corps and Transportation Corps which concentrated supply and transport functionally, rescuing the sinews of war-transport duality in the combat area by incorporation of both in the same train or battalion.
Throughout this book considerable space, narrative and photographic, has been devoted to horse transport, perhaps an apparent overindulgence in antiquarianism to the current reader. In fact just over half of the history of the Australian Army Service Corps is largely of the horse as motive power, and if the colonial predecessors are counted, 53 years of horse transport as the only or principal means out of 87. In these terms, perhaps the place of the horse has been understated. But even in the heyday of the horse, other modes of transport – rail, water, motor and pipeline – were used in war to their maximum in recognition of the severe limitations of the capacity of the former. In fact in Australia the location of training camps and areas and base complexes was largely dictated by proximity to rail access. Horse transport survived just as long as its margin of flexibility forward of the other modes was either absolute or tolerable. Technological development of ground and air competitors meant its inevitable final supersession.
Ground Transport
Until the formation of the first colonial supply and transport corps, transport for military purposes was hired, other than for some government carts for routine deliveries. Even after military transport units were formed, the bulk of their equipment was hired, often with civilian driver for the duration of a camp. Hutton’s plan for a field force AASC did not include the ‘purchase of costly equipment’, rather to ‘be provided by local contract or by impressment upon a national emergency’. He argued that capital and maintenance costs, and the possibility of their proving to be unsuitable for particular areas of employment when an occasion arose, outweighed the potential benefits of Army ownership of stocks of standard wagons 1. This policy was accepted and continued, with considerable difficulties in hiring adequate carts, wagons and horses. NSW ASC had carried some 30 ‘military pattern’ wagons across to the AASC, but the war establishment total of 2,000 for just the AMF brigade groups and garrison troops posed a daunting target for impressment of suitable types. A survey was conducted in each state in 1908 to assess the resources available, and the coach building industry encouraged to standardise types and parts. The British general service wagon was offered as a model, with some debate on the merits of the local ‘German wagon’. Financial incentives for commercial standardisation were proposed, but as was to happen so often with later proposals for civilian equipment subsidies, nothing came of this 2. The Inspector General of the Military Forces continued through 1911 and 1912 to press for encouraging farmers to adopt the German wagon.
While standardisation agreements arising from the 1909 Imperial Defence Conference gave strong organisational and doctrinal determinants, they were of little assistance in the transport field for exactly the above reasons, resulting in a vicious circle: impracticability of implementation prevented agreement, and lack of agreement precluded the use of standardisation goals as a lever for standardisation, acquisition or subsidy. The outcome was ‘... the Second line transport for home defence the most suitable for local conditions, but prior arrangements should be made to modify local pattern transport when necessary to meet special conditions of the area of operation’ 3. This was so vague as to be meaningless, but any tighter rules could not have been agreed to. Australia’s forces, having virtually no military-owned transport, had to take what the hiring and impressment market offered. A sample of the variety is shown in a group of tenders which variously offered 4:
1 horse dray 1 ton 1½ ton van
2 horse dray 1½ ton 1½ ton spring dray
1 horse lorry 2 ton 2½ ton double dray
2 horse lorry 3 ton Conveyance 1 horse
4 horse lorry 6 ton Conveyance 2 horse
Wagon 10 ton Conveyance 4 horse
and the universal complaint was that this array was suited to town use only. Farmers’ wagons were preferred, particularly the ubiquitous German wagon, which sparked again the circular argument ‘what is a German wagon’.
Although the Inspector General noted that the system of supply would require modification as mechanised transport came into general use, and reported favourably on the use of hired motor transport during camps in 1912, in an army which procured six GS horse wagons as a sealed pattern against a liability of 2,000 in the 1910-11 budget, there was little prospect of acquiring motor vehicles 5. Even the potential chink of senior officers seeking prestige transport, restricted by a 1907 embargo on hire of motor cars without ministerial approval, was further closed by formation of the Automobile Corps for field reconnaissance. In consequence, mobilisation in 1914 meant acquisition of whatever was available, by boards set up to procure the best selection available. For horse-drawn transport there was a fairly clear basis of experience and the models of the British-specification GS wagon and other in-service equipments which enabled a strong local coach building industry to produce 800 wagons within a few weeks. The specification, however, was for the four horse wagon which had been superseded in British ASC service by a two-draught horse version. These Australian-built ones were not taken to the Western Front but left in Egypt for use in the Middle East, where they were subject to substantial modification to bring them up to current standards. An additional 1,100 of the wagons were held as a home defence mobilisation stock, which came under criticism by a royal commission in 1919 as being below standard. Although defended as standard pattern by the Minister for Defence at the time, Inspector General Chauvel recommended disposal of most of the wagons in 1922 as unsuitable for military use, while they still had some resale value, but the majority was retained through to the end of the next war 6.
For motor vehicles there was no standard against which to procure, little local industry other than coachwork, and the diversity of makes and models in a thin market meant a motley collection which was unmaintainable on a foreign battlefield. The first two mechanised companies shipped to England left those vehicles there, being re-equipped with Peerless 3 ton lorries and Daimler 30 cwt trucks before they were transferred to France 7. This initiated a policy which carried over to the Middle East in World War 2, and beyond to the British Commonwealth Strategic Reserve, of Australian forces being equipped with transport on arrival, on repayment, rather than introduce difficult makes into the local maintenance system. In addition to the official purchases, many vehicles were donated to the AIF by patriotic citizens, some of which were taken overseas and converted into ambulances and utilities. Others, however, were retained at the military district headquarters in Australia and used as staff cars where they were used and abused until a Business Adviser’s report instigated proper control of use and maintenance 8.
The motor vehicles of the decade of World War 1 were a far cry from the capabilities of today’s cargo trucks. German development hit a new level in 1911 with successful testing of 2.5 tonne petrol engine trucks performing reliably at 11 kph. Even this comparatively low bonus over horse wagon speeds was multiplied by sustainability for extended periods, encouraging further development of vehicle performance in continental armies. The payoff of this development was demonstrated in a British Army trial in July 1914 when average speeds of 34 kph were sustained over six hours, completing a task estimated to take 14 hours by rail and four days by horse transport. Maintainability was promoted by components standardisation arranged with manufacturers, and a subsidy paid to civilian peacetime purchasers so that the limited procurement for the British Army could be augmented by acquisition of standardised types on mobilisation 9. So although the makes of vehicles supplied to Australian motorised units on the Western Front were apparently varied, their major assemblies were largely interchangeable.
Some of this rubbed off on Inspector General Chauvel in his 1921 and 1922 reports to Parliament. As a horse soldier he accepted too easily that, budgetary constraints precluding the procurement of motor vehicles, impressment in time of need would have to be the answer. While there were 2,000 registered motor lorries in Australia, their assorted condition and makes and consequent unsupportability in the field meant that they could be no more than a short term fill in. Chauvel recommended that future government vehicles be of a standard pattern to generate a pool for mobilisation use 10. This was a practical beginning, but of course such solutions are valueless unless supported with funds, and it was the very tightness of funds which led to non-procurement in the first place. The purchase of five Thornycroft 30 cwt trucks in 1925, hailed as ‘mechanisation’, was the beginning of a slow road to motor transport where for years the technical and mechanical staff officers nearly outnumbered both drivers and vehicles: with mechanisation all the rage in the late 1920s and the 1930s, it was easy to get technical staff, but not the money for vehicles and their operators. Only after the decision to treat mechanisation seriously from 1933 did base transport units began to receive a range of cars, light trucks and specialist delivery vehicles, although the reason was more economic than a thrust to mechanise the fighting units and their support.
The policy of 30 cwt trucks for divisional units and 3 tonners for lines of communication units bore little fruit until the actual outbreak of war when a modest acquisition programme produced nearly 2,000 cargo vehicles. Although a standing plan for acquisition of civil vehicles was implemented through AASC Vehicle Collection Centres and Vehicle Reception Depots, it was done by hiring rather than purchase. This hiring process took on 1,000 vehicles in sufficiently indifferent condition to encourage their owners to part with them, until September 1940 when the policy was changed to purchase 11. There had been no standardisation subsidies for civilian vehicles as had assisted the British Army before both world wars, so a varied array of vehicles emerged which consummated Chauvel’s fears of nearly twenty years before. When it had been determined that the AIF would actually go overseas, agreement was reached with the British Government that it would be equipped in theatre, although many of the early equipments so received were locally impressed and worse than those they had left behind. The first four wheel drive trucks had been received in 1939 – Marmon-Herringtons from local production in Melbourne; major shipments of Fords began to arrive in Australia from 1942, followed later by improved pattern Fords and Chevrolets. In the light vehicle field, from mid-1942 Willys and Ford jeeps began to appear in large numbers, solving the problem of an almost complete void in light vehicle off-road capability. A further advance was made in 1943 with the introduction of the six wheel drive GMC and its amphibian cousin, the DUKW. Heavy vehicle capacity was enhanced by introduction of 7 ton International and Ford semi trailers, Mack 10 ton diesels and Diamond T wreckers and transporters 12.
Large stocks of these vehicles were carried over to the postwar army. Although initially providing an adequate training base, their progressive deterioration required augmentation by commercial Ford, Chevrolet and International trucks, however an attempt in 1957 to maintain a regular brigade group on notice meant that mothballed war reserve stocks of the Studebaker hard top version of the GMC had to be brought into service. Development of an Australian general service truck by International Harvester saw the emergence of a 2½ ton 4x4 truck designed basically for use as an all arms first line vehicle, which also tided RAASC over from 1964 until a rushed 5 ton version with tipper variant was delivered three years later – fitted with the 2½ ton cargo tray! Meanwhile the badly deteriorating Jeeps were replaced from 1960 by first a ½ ton then in 1964 a ¾ ton Landrover.
Evolution of General Service Light Load Carriers
Evolution of General Service Ambulances
Evolution of General Service Medium Load Carriers
Evolution of Heavy Load Carriers
Specialist Heavy Load Carriers
Cargo Carrying Amphibians
Evolution of Staff Cars
Evolution of Buses
Odds and Orphans
The necessity for heavy vehicles, learnt at some cost in World War 2 in North Africa and the line haul to Darwin, received little attention or sympathy from DST which had ample opportunity to promote them. The reasons were probably a mix of inertia, priorities to solve the field truck problem, and an eye to the effects of high-load haulers on transport empires, also reflected in the total absence of procurement of trailers to multiply the capacity of the 5 ton truck fleet. But in the late 1960s Lt Col R. Vardanega, responsible for equipment in DST, turned this around by pressing for a 20 ton semi-trailer rig able to tow a second trailer as a road train. His persistence paid off with the introduction of the Diamond Reo in 1971, but the second trailer failed to appear. Replacing the virtually inoperable wartime Diamond T wreckers and transporters was the highly effective M513 boom recovery vehicle, and the Leyland Contractor transporter which permitted movement of the Centurion tank fleet once again other than by Department of Supply vehicles. The badly deteriorated DUKWs were replaced by the LARC 5 in 1966 13. So at the very end of its existence, the RAASC had for the first time an acceptable and effective, though not superior, range of standardised task vehicles; but it had still not faced up to the trailer multiplier recognised in World War 2.
Air Delivery Equipment
The initial air drops attempted on the Kokoda Track were literally that – without equipment. Although some material was recovered, it was obvious that a more secure means of delivery was necessary if this means of supply was to be exploited as the campaign progressed. While makeshift attempts at cushioning free dropped stores and ammunition continued at the front, with mortar crews taking the brunt of malfunctions in the tubes, trials of dropping into nets from Hudson bombers were conducted at Maribyrnong. This quite unrealistic approach was simply a postponement of the inevitable acceptance that parachutes were necessary to stabilise and retard the descent of stores, and that a then high capacity cargo aircraft, the DC-3 Dakota, was required to transform a haphazard, hazardous and wasteful trickle into a steady flow of stores into inaccessible forward areas. When this was accepted in late 1942, the day of the biscuit bomber arrived and a steadily growing expertise and variety of specialised equipment began to emerge 14. Containers varied from wicker laundry baskets to specialised ‘storepedoes’; parachute cargoes were kicked or levered out the door, then discharged semi-automatically along roller conveyor; however this refinement of technique met an absolute limiting factor in the payload capacity of the long-lived Dakota.
The payload, cargo holds and design of aircraft dictate their capacity and capability. Like the Jeep, 2½ ton GMC truck and jerrican, the Dakota was such a good workhorse and so durable that its replacement was long delayed. The RAAF passed by the wide-bodied, end loading, purpose built cargo aircraft of the post war decade: the question of priorities in a combat oriented service which is also responsible for bread and butter lines for another service has been and will remain an almost insuperable problem, with Army the perennial loser. A breakthrough was made in 1958 when Army pared its costs to the bone to find £2.5 million to transfer to RAAF to fix the purchase of 12 magnificent cargo aircraft – the C-130A Hercules, later followed by another 12 advanced H models. With this high payload, wide cargo body, rear door came the availability of capacities and dropping techniques developed by the US Army and Air Force; and also added to the RAAF inventory was a similarly purpose-built successor to the Dakota, the Canadian Caribou. As well as half and one ton containers with roller conveyor discharge, heavy dropping and low level extraction techniques opened up. This permitted both air landing and air dropping of artillery and other weapons, vehicles up to 5 tonners, light engineer plant and a wide range of containers of stores, supplies, fuel and ammunition. In addition the acquisition of Iroquois and Chinook helicopters in 1965 and early 1970s respectively added a new dimension to short range resupply in difficult terrain by internal and underslung loading.
Aerial Delivery Equipment
Capability fed on capacity. To avoid land movement in difficult terrain and tactical situations which was tenuous and manpower-equipment-construction costly, some tactical and strategic logistics problems found a revolutionary alternative in less costly air-equipment solutions. Supply by air horizons expanded to major proportions: by the late 1960s RAASC air delivery capabilities were approaching the best world standards.
Supplies Equipment
Foodstuffs and expense supplies were handled from the beginning in standard manufacturer’s packs – carcasses, baskets, sacks, barrels, boxes, cases, bottles, carboys, and tins and drums of varying sizes. Their handling remained essentially manual, with mechanical advantage from barrows, trolleys, rollers and gantries, so these limits determined the sizes of ultimate containers until the advent of the fork lift truck and cargo pallet. While the Army adopted these latter from the American example as early as 1942 in the shipment of stores from the military wharf at Glebe in Sydney, their penetration into the supplies and transport service matched that of motorised transport before World War 2. Fork lift trucks first appeared in AASC supply depots in 1944 at 1 SRD. Their introduction into field units waited until 1966 when a 2,000 lb lift Massey Ferguson tractor with fork lift attachment was placed on the establishment of field supply platoons. Before that, the only field handling mechanical advantage implement was gravity roller conveyor, allowed in equipment tables from 1944 15. But once the benefits of field forklifts had proved themselves to even the most sceptical, they rapidly became an inevitable part of materials handling, both in base depots and in the field.
Materials Handling Equipment
Storage of supplies attracted scant attention up to the beginning of World War 2, contractors filling the gap in Australia and the British ASC maintaining base depots overseas. Field units simply used local buildings, tents and tarpaulins. Operations in the South West Pacific and Australian base in World War 2 saw a necessary change as the obligation to warehouse for three quarters of a million men and the creation of Supply Reserve Depots and hundreds of local depots brought hiring and construction of storehouses to meet the need. These ranged from commercial warehouses, through others built in more isolated base depots, to use of native materials in New Guinea and the Islands. Base and local depots in the post war era were purpose built as part of the Army barracks construction programmes. Until this latter programme, when the use of fork lifts was firmly established for economy of both manpower and floor space, the buildings which were hired and built suffered from inadequate floor strength to bear fork lift wheel loadings, and a vicious circle of inhibition of their use existed. By the Vietnam War period field depots as well were designed to accommodate these equipments if for no other reason than that personnel establishments did not allow for manual handling, so mechanical handling was the only means of meeting supply demands 16.
This burgeoning of forklifts and vehicle cranes began with 5,000 lb Michigan off-pavement forklifts, then Pettibone Mulliken rough-terrain models and in 1969 to Caterpillar 996C 10,000 lb off-pavement equipments; at the same time a proportion of divisional vehicles was equipped with cranes capable of handling pallets. The forklift capability both enabled and was accelerated by palletisation, unitisation and containerisation of supplies. But parallel to the opposition to heavy vehicles and trailers, traditionalists opposed containerisation, managing to hold off their widespread use until well after the end of the RAASC era, regardless of the practical lesson of their effective use in resupply and evacuation of the force in Vietnam arranged by Director of Movements Col Tony Hallett.
Fuel Handling Equipment
The first fuels were mostly solids, with forage handled in bags and bales, firewood and coal loose and in bags, and lighting oil in barrels and cans. They were transported by rail, water and wagon with essentially manual handling. The advent of the internal combustion engine brought a competitor to forage which also matched it in quantity, combustibility, spoilability, and until bulk handling techniques came of age, its handling demands. The medium of handling liquid fuel was primarily the flimsy four gallon drum which failed easily and caused major losses, particularly in the Western Desert but elsewhere as well. These were replaced with the substantial German pattern 20 litre jerrican in Africa and Europe after a manufacturing plant had been captured in North Africa; as a tribute to its durability, captured German 1936 cans were still in the British system in 1963. However an unavailability of the required gauge plate in Australia meant that they were not adopted there, so the South West Pacific operations were supported with a four gallon terneplate drum. A step upwards was the 44 gallon drum, robust and reusable, though preventing their cannibalisation and organising shipment of empties to the rear was a difficult and time consuming but entirely necessary activity. ‘Bulk’ meant 44 gallon drums and upwards, the next step being bulk steel tanks of 500 barrels upwards, erected by the Engineers. But the workhorse was the 44 gallon drum, which persisted until the introduction of flexible tanks and the general adoption of tanker trucks in the civilian community.
Field Fuel Handling
Sea, rail and road tankers were an obvious answer to distribution problems, and the AASC had some use of captured Italian bulk fuel facilities and road tankers in the Western Desert in World War 2. However drums gave a flexibility for distribution in the field which, allied to the poor roads and port facilities in the South West Pacific, entrenched their use in not only the forward area but also in rear areas where service station type area distribution would have been appropriate. This culture was reinforced by introduction of the jerrican in the postwar era, the fact that the RASC remained on jerricans, and the lack of major operational deployments which would have forced an earlier interest in the improved bulk carriers, flexible tankage and pumping systems becoming available for field use. While some purchases of flexible vehicle and static tanks and ancillary equipments were made in the 1950s, user resistance combined with the troglodyte element of the RAASC inhibited their acceptance into general training use in Australia. It took the realities of supporting fuel-swilling helicopters and a concentration of 1,500 vehicles in Vietnam to force the use of petroleum tank farms with hoseline refuelling points; the other directing factor was that the US Forces supplying the fuel had no intention of delivering it in any other way than by the tanker load 17. The net result was an effective bulk system, although after withdrawal from that theatre it fell partly into disuse again through a reduced call for it in low levels of training, and the ongoing resistance of old hands in and outside the Corps to other than the old ways they grew up with. Fortunately there were sufficient who could appreciate the benefits of the new to keep the techniques alive for future needs.
Fuel Distribution Evolution
Ancillary Services Equipment
Field baking until World War 1 was left to contractors which supplied the brigade transport and supply units from the local towns, as much as the Inspector General demanded that they learn to do it themselves. Breadmaking in bulk is, after all, a specialised operation for tradesmen, so as bakery units were not raised until World War 1, only field baking in earth ovens at unit level was undertaken. However with the raising of an eventual five field bakeries for service overseas during the war, baking equipment was required. Where there were no civil facilities to take over, field expedients, of which the Aldershot oven is the classic example, were used: the field bakery on Imbros and Lemnos used those ovens to supply the two divisions at Anzac. On the Western Front, use was made of commercial equipment in semi-permanent facilities in Rouen well behind the front; in the Middle East British bakeries, staffed largely by local labour, supplied the Australian units. In World War 2 Aldershot ovens reappeared and were still taught as expedient means of baking even when transportable ovens were introduced, though in Australia this was well after the war. These transportable ovens were oil fired and trailer mounted, with associated automated dough mixing machinery, providing the potential for high output with minimum manpower which was so released from the labour intensive tasks of providing firewood and hand mixing. A later addition to the inventory was a small Caribou-transportable automatic conveyor-fed oven specialising in bread rolls but also capable of producing bread 18.
Field Bakery Equipment – Expediency to Efficiency
The purported economies of producing fresh food in the remoter tropical areas, which led to the formation of resources units, created a need for the necessary equipment to farm land and sea. There was little enough problem with farm machinery in a country which had long been at the forefront of farm mechanisation, and a range of tractors, tillers and ancillary equipment was progressively procured for use by the farm units in the Northern Territory, New South Wales, North Queensland, New Guinea and the Islands. The marine supply platoons should have been as easily accommodated but for the extreme shortage of marine engines in competition with Navy and the fledgling RAE water transport service, it taking six months after the November 1943 approval of 13 metre refrigerator boats and 8 metre work boats for marine supply platoons to be operating effectively at Port Moresby and Lae, with a third at Jacquinot Bay in Bougainville a year later 19.
Resource Winning Equipment
Storage of perishable foodstuffs was for long a problem largely avoided in the Australian forces. Proximity to contractors, British depots and animals for slaughter meant that, apart from some minor hitches in the Middle East, the problem was solved by daily issues from those sources to units; the notable failure was at Gallipoli where the defeatist solution of suspending issue of fresh meat was adopted. War in the South West Pacific allowed no such options: an adverse climate and lack of commercial facilities, together with commanders demanding solutions, required a positive response to the problem. Fairly successful attempts at local farm production in the Northern Territory and New Guinea helped, and the existence of herds, abattoirs and freezers in the former solved the meat requirement there. Some regular shipments of live sheep were made to Torres Strait, New Guinea and the Islands, but this was a small proportion of requirements. Minuscule cool and freezer capacity available in those areas required substantial expansion to support the large influx of military population, so tailor-made plants of 2,800 to 20,000 cuft were imported. At the Torokina base in Bougainville the supply depots inherited from the US Army a battery of 1,000 cuft refrigerators, and this became the standard for military knock-down plants at forward bases, used later in training exercises in Australia and operationally at the bases at Nui Dat and Vung Tau in Vietnam 20.
Resource Winning Equipment
Equipment Markings
The AASC adopted distinctive vehicle and package markings early in its existence. The NSW ASC identified its wagons with corps and serial number; from Federation AASC was allotted various equipment markings, and tactical numerology in Appendix 7. The earliest motor cars and trucks had serial numbers which were placed on the bonnet of field vehicles, but following the Business Adviser’s report in 1917 on use and abuse of motor transport at home, oversize numbers on door panels were adopted in Australia. In the transport rebirth of 1925 these latter were dispensed with in favour of moderate sized numbers and unit logos on door panels and a return to bonnet numbers, which persisted through to the post World War 2 period. However in 1939 civil-type number plates in the Commonwealth C series were adopted for vehicles in Australia, these finally becoming standard in the postwar period, but with an Army numerical series. Vehicles were generally not allowed individual names, the exception being amphibians used in the Antarctic relief operations, though illegal ones appeared from time to time as would be expected 21. In addition to the unit tactical signs used as a a low grade security designation, formation signs were similarly used to indicate the parent body of the unit, both allowing traffic control and unit authorities to identify vehicles on the move, and bridge classification signs also allowed traffic controllers to determine whether vehicles could cross bridges 22.
As an addition to container markings from 23 November 1942 AASC followed the RASC in marking containers with a distinctive symbol – a blue trefoil for foodstuffs, a red one for expense supplies, and yellow for POL, but with a letter A excised to indicate Australian as opposed to British origin. This symbol provided a quick identification of RAASC supplies and POL during shipment and unloading, filling the need without extensive and less eye-catching written messages. Supplementary markings were added as required to indicate content, consignment, and life dates of the products 23.
Development of Capability
Equipment deficiencies were a weak point in the AASC and RAASC for most of their existence. Starved of basic transport up to World War 1, then provided with outdated wagons and a miscellany of impressed trucks, it was reequipped overseas from ASC stocks to the current standard, only to revert to the original position after return home at the end of the war. This reversion to horse transport ushered in again two decades of stagnation with only token motor vehicles allotted to help the transition to full mechanisation. World War 2 resulted in procurements which in sheer numbers vastly oversatisfied shrinking needs for the South West Pacific theatre, leaving a legacy of stocks of equipment which both became outdated and overhung potential future procurement. Again an extended war in Vietnam provided the funds which could remedy this, and it was taken. This upsurge in equipment procurement arose largely out of the enthusiasm and opportunism of DST where ADST (Plans & Equipment), Lt Col R. Vardanega developed projects quickly and pressed them hard, without seeking ultimate finesses which usually manage to delay projects, often fatally. This pressure, at a time when funds were reasonably free, managed to re-equip the RAASC to very acceptable standards in most of its operating areas – transport, air delivery, materials handling, and fuel handling. It was necessary, as the following decade was to be one of reversion to scarcity, so the RAASC was able to pass to its successors not only a corps of men but also a range of equipment suitable for their varied tasks on a modern battlefield.
Footnotes
1. CPP 1903 vol II Hutton Report, p19.
2. Holdsworth A.A. 'AASC' ASC Quarterly April 1907, p160; CPP 1909 vol 2 Defence Progress, p20; 1911 vol II Kirkpatrick Report, p15; 1912 vol II Kirkpatrick Report, p16.
3. CPP 1909 vol II Imperial Defence Conference, p34.
4. CPP 1904-5 vol V, p431, 433.
5. CPP 1911 vol II Kirkpatrick Report, p15; 1912 vol II Kirkpatrick Report, p16; 1909 vol 2 Defence Progress, p19.
6. AWM 224 2 DRL 1160, p3; MSS 221, p1; CPP 1917-19 Navy and Defence Administration Royal Commission, p17; 1922 vol II Chauvel Report, p8.
8. CPP 1917-19 vol II Report on Business Branches, p10-12.
10. CPP 1922 vol II Chauvel Report, p18.
12. CPP 1922 vol II Chauvel Report, p18; interview Donald N. Chew American Truck Historical Society.
14. AWM 54 964/2/6 AASC Supplies by Air Transport Sub-Appendix VIII Schedule No 3; AA MP742/1 264/1/789 AASC Supplies Despatched by Air Transport May 43, February 44.
15. AWM 52 10/2/20 January-April 1945 Appendix 346, p25.
16. See Chapter 17 Table 16.
17. Ball M.J. 'Petroleum Operations in South Vietnam' RAASC Digest 1969, p59f.
18. Fairclough, p82-3; RAASC Digest 1966, p23.
19. AWM 52 10/29/1, 10/29/2, 10/29/3.
20. Fairclough 60-2; RAASC Digest 1968, p89.
21. GO 289/1903; CPP1917-19 vol IV Royal Commission Report, p10-11; Standing Orders for Operation and Maintenance of Mechanical Vehicles 1940; AWM 54 283/2/2, 283/2/5, 283/2/7, 283/2/10, 383/3/1; System of Vehicle Marking Part II 1955; see examples quoted p885.
22 Standing Orders for Vehicle Operation and Maintenance 1952; Standing Orders for Vehicle Operation and, Servicing 1960.
23 AA AP39/3 73A-1-6 War History - S&T Services of 4 MD, p15; RAASC Specifications for Supplies 1965.