50 Haflingers were delivered to the Australian Army

[hafi62]

Hi all,
I am currently restoring 101-821 after sitting on it for about 10 years, and have been looking up information on our Army Hafs. I have a copy of an extract from the factory records detailing every Haflinger delivered to Australia, including the 50 Army ones.
Haflingers are identified by 3 numbers - a Vehicle build number (Fahrzeug Nr.), a chassis number (Fahrgestell Nr.) and an engine number (Motor Nr.).
The records show that vehicle numbers 5357847 to 5357869 inclusive (23) ; 5357875 to 5357877 inclusive (3) and 5357882 to 5357905 inclusive (24) were sent to the Australian "Armee". That's a total of 50, all with build dates from 03.05.66 to 31.05.66
The records also list engine and chassis numbers for every vehicle, so I will in future check against the Army registration list to provide the numbers of the other 4.
So the question remains, what happened to the 4 missing ones that were delivered to Australia? Were they used as maintenance training vehicles? Were they dismantled to provide a parts supply for the other 46?  Is it possible that they were flown to SVN for clandestine ops? (Such ops did happen in Korea in the 1950's) Were they "acquired" by another agency before making it on to the Army registration ledger?

Any information will be much appreciated!




 

[AGAS 5]

Hi hafi62.  I think the next step is to cross ref those chassis numbers against the BBB (ARN register) and see what annotations were made against them. It might also help to understand what happened to the four ….. were they allocated ARNs to start with or just converted to training aids or spares etc.

Cheers.

[Mike C]

Great to have confirmation that 50 were supplied to the Aust 'Armee'.

The mystery is: where are the four we have not accounted for in AWM126/the BBB? Normally, complete vehicles would be entered into the registers upon receipt. Training Aids, if required, would be purchased as such, with cut-aways, etc. (expensive new vehicles would not be made into recovery training aids). Same goes for conversion to spare parts: normally, purchases of new tactical vehicles include a suite of 12 months worth of spares, not stripping new vehicles to provide spares.

If not still buried away within AWM126 (which is a distinct possibility), then I'm at a loss to understand where the four 'Haffies' would have gone. They will be accounted for somewhere - it's the Army way.

Mike   

[hafi62]

Hi again,

I have cross-referenced the factory records with the ARN list. Every listed ARN entry matches 100% with the factory printout, except for the missing 4.
Here are the numbers for the missing 4 vehicles:-

         Vehicle No.                    Chassis No.                   Engine No.

         5357875                       5307458                       5358503
         5357886                       5307465                       5358526
         5357901                       5307499                       5358536
         5357904                       5307497                       5358530

Note that all factory records for the 50 are sequential, i.e. no other vehicles between entries.
Also note that the Army ARN list only records Vehicle No. and Engine No. The chassis numbers were not recorded.

So there's my case for evidence that there were, in fact, 50 Haflingers delivered as a batch to the army in 1966  Now to find what happened to the 4 escapees!

       

[AGAS 5]

Great to have confirmation that 50 were supplied to the Aust 'Armee'.

The mystery is: where are the four we have not accounted for in AWM126/the BBB? Normally, complete vehicles would be entered into the registers upon receipt. Training Aids, if required, would be purchased as such, with cut-aways, etc. (expensive new vehicles would not be made into recovery training aids). Same goes for conversion to spare parts: normally, purchases of new tactical vehicles include a suite of 12 months worth of spares, not stripping new vehicles to provide spares.

Mike

That is not the case. Army has a long track record of vehicles being allocated to places such the apprentice school for use as training aids..... and I'm not referring to specialist items such as cutaways.  Army also has also been parting out vehicles at various age of service in addition to buying spares at time of fleet acquisition. The quantity of spares acquired is aligned to the vehicle fleet life of type and anticipated parts consumption, not 12 months.

[AGAS 5]

Hi again,

I have cross-referenced the factory records with the ARN list. Every listed ARN entry matches 100% with the factory printout, except for the missing 4.
     

Its great to see that you've cross checked against the BBB already.  Did you just look amongst the known ARNs or dd you check out the other volumes as well ?  I'm wondering if they've been allocated ARNs out of sequence with the main batch ?  It wouldn't be the first time thats happened.

Cheers.

[fc101]

Haflingers did not go to Vietnam - there were rumours and supposed sightings but these were most likely US M274 Truck, Platform, Utility, 1⁄2 Ton Mules.

Garry

[Mike C]

Well, we could discuss the semantics of that.

Complete vehicles allocated as training aids to schools were registered along with those on issue to units, so should turn up in the registers. I've recorded plenty of instances of that happening for Centurion, Leopard, M113A1, Ferret, etc.

Spares, particularly those classed as 'fast wearing'  were normally calculated on a 12 month usage basis, extrapolated to life of type, so deliveries were on a rolling basis, not all up-front at the time of acquisition unless the overall quantities for the life of type were small. In any event, my point was that new vehicles come with spares, and that a proportion of the new vehicles would not be unregistered and broken down for spares, as seems to have been suggested.

Mike 

[hafi62]

Thanks for your thoughts, AGAS 5

No, I haven't looked for stray ARN's in the blue books. This would take far more time than I have available, unless you can point me to a digitised database of these books? I had assumed (perhaps falsely) that the blue book entries were strictly in ascending ARN order and I only looked for the 46 Haflinger entries within that block of numbers.

Is anyone able to provide information as to where 101-821 was used during its time in service? A search of the info in the ARN entry doesn't come up with anything meaningful to me. I'm not Army literate - the closest connection I have is the 1967 National Service deferral card when my marble wasn't drawn.

John B

[glbest]

the 4 vehicles cpuld have gone to anare

[glbest]

i know some of the Larcs went to sevice the light house possible haflingers went there