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Australian or NZ No 36 filler screw
- Thread starter TK1944
- Start date
I have one in pretty good condition but due to my physical condition I am unable to post anything so its stored on a nickel plated Drill grenade as I dont have a New Zealand gren to put it on and as far as I know, they never made it to Australia but were only used on NZ gren bodies and I doubt it they were used entirely. Its a shame they were not used worldwide as ime sure they would have reduced production costs on WW2 Filler screws. Why they were not taken up we will never know but I suspect another type of removal tool would have been needed, again costing money.
Andy
Andy
Even in NZ the use of the plugs were challenged as an unauthorised variation by the WD and could not be used here for a year or so during WW2. A few years back there were two No36’s sold on eBay that were recovered from an Italian lake, where a lot of Kiwi troops found themselves at the end of WW2. They were BM’s with WHE plugs. I really wanted to bring them home, but it was at a time when they would not have made it. Cheers
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Did Enstone claim some functional advantage of the square key hole in their plug? There was negligible material saving and the cost was on a par with the Mazak filler plugs used on British made No.36 from early 1940 and throughout WWII - the cost of die cast Mazak fillers in the UK was less than a ha'penny each. The attached excerpt of a 1941 order with Qualcast for supplying components to John Pilling gives a price of 3s 6d per 100, so .42 pence each. 1944 orders with Alloy Pressure Die Products and with Peterborough Die Casting were for 100,000 at £200, or .48 pence each.
Brass filler plugs had pretty much ceased to be deployed in the UK after some 1939 REVO No.36, and there are no obvious costings to be had for those. However, No.36 brass fillers produced by J Gibbons, Wolverhampton, from September 1917 to August 1918 were at 9s 6d per gross, or .79 pence each, so even 20+ years later Enstone's claim of 3d for a brass filler plug seems a bit high. Do any NZ No.36 turn up with genuine brass filler plugs?
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Well that’s unacceptable, but easily fixed.
any chance of seeing the det tin lids please.....Dave
About 10 years ago I bought a package of mainly Levers with other Mills bits from a chap in Malta. There were a number of NZ filler plugs in with the package so either Malta bought in NZ grenades or in WW2 NZ troops were present and trained on the Maltese range.
Nice Belfast grenade on the right. :love:
Well that’s unacceptable, but easily fixed
A great line up of NZ grenades. I can't make out the makers' markings on all of them but there must be most of the NZ manufacturers represented.
Hi Dave. I hope things are going well for you! If you need better photo’s, just let me know.
Hi Millsman; Kiwi’s ended up in Italy at the close of WW2. I guess we left behinds quite large stocks of grenades. I was very lucky to get the Belfast Mills from the daughter of the chap that brought it home from India at the close of WW1.
Regards
Hi Millsman; Kiwi’s ended up in Italy at the close of WW2. I guess we left behinds quite large stocks of grenades. I was very lucky to get the Belfast Mills from the daughter of the chap that brought it home from India at the close of WW1.
Regards
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Hi Snufkin. I think I have all of the NZ makers, but not all of the variations (mould numbers and maker ID directions). The Ford Motor Company often get attributed to having made bodies (you’ll note FMC on the boxes). It’s generally accepted that all No36’s were filled at their Wellington site, and that they made the boxes, but they did not cast the bodies. If they did, I still need an FMC marked one (I’ve never seen one). Cheers
Supply Chain
Not wishing to take the thread off into irrelevant territory, a point about supply of the Armies in the field is worth making to explain the presence of NZ, Australian, and South African No.36 and other munitions in the Mediterranean and ultimately mainland Europe. Essentially islands like Malta, Crete, etc. did not buy grenades from far flung corners of the globe as they saw fit, and neither were Commonwealth Divisions and Corps of the British Army equipped (other than by coincidence of what was held in ammunition depots) with grenades from their homelands.
Soon after the outbreak of WWII, the industrial capabilities of the Empire were organised by region, and in India the Eastern Group Supply Council swung into action. EGSUP, or more commonly called SUPEG, had overall responsibility for creating munitions industries in India, Union of SA, Australia and New Zealand. In a very simplified nutshell, munitions requirements desired from east and south of Suez were passed from the UK Ministry of Supply to SUPEG, which then dealt with the various industrial boards of the individual countries, who then sorted individual production contracts in their own countries. For No.36 there was one rolling contract letter from the MoS which periodically extended production runs.
For New Zealand, a first contract for 25,000 empty grenades, to be filled in Canada, was placed in May 1941. Thereafter, as New Zealand (a) proved it could make No.36 grenades and (b) got filling facilities established, the big contracts were put in place. The first, for 1 million "complete, filled" grenades, was dated 12 January 1942, and other orders in excess of 1 million followed in 1943 and 1944.
In 1942 completed orders were shipped to Durban, and then up the coast of East Africa, heading for either Egypt for the Western Desert theatre, or Bombay for Burma requirements - the Japanese being in the process of chasing the two British/Burmese divisions from Rangoon up to the NE Indian border. Indian production finally became sufficient for Burma campaign needs, but NZ grenades continued to Egypt for the fighting up to El Alamein, and after to the end of the Tunisian campaign. Thereafter supplies continued for the Sicilian and Italian campaigns. Briefly, wherever the supplies were disembarked from ships, they found their way to Army Base Depots, and ultimately passed on to Corps and Divisional ammunition dumps, where they were issued to Brigades and Battalions at the front.
2nd NZ Division fought in Italy, and from time to time some of their troops may have picked up NZ-made grenades from a Divisional dump, but if so it was more by luck than judgement. They were just as likely to pick up grenades made in Johannesburg or Manchester.
Not wishing to take the thread off into irrelevant territory, a point about supply of the Armies in the field is worth making to explain the presence of NZ, Australian, and South African No.36 and other munitions in the Mediterranean and ultimately mainland Europe. Essentially islands like Malta, Crete, etc. did not buy grenades from far flung corners of the globe as they saw fit, and neither were Commonwealth Divisions and Corps of the British Army equipped (other than by coincidence of what was held in ammunition depots) with grenades from their homelands.
Soon after the outbreak of WWII, the industrial capabilities of the Empire were organised by region, and in India the Eastern Group Supply Council swung into action. EGSUP, or more commonly called SUPEG, had overall responsibility for creating munitions industries in India, Union of SA, Australia and New Zealand. In a very simplified nutshell, munitions requirements desired from east and south of Suez were passed from the UK Ministry of Supply to SUPEG, which then dealt with the various industrial boards of the individual countries, who then sorted individual production contracts in their own countries. For No.36 there was one rolling contract letter from the MoS which periodically extended production runs.
For New Zealand, a first contract for 25,000 empty grenades, to be filled in Canada, was placed in May 1941. Thereafter, as New Zealand (a) proved it could make No.36 grenades and (b) got filling facilities established, the big contracts were put in place. The first, for 1 million "complete, filled" grenades, was dated 12 January 1942, and other orders in excess of 1 million followed in 1943 and 1944.
In 1942 completed orders were shipped to Durban, and then up the coast of East Africa, heading for either Egypt for the Western Desert theatre, or Bombay for Burma requirements - the Japanese being in the process of chasing the two British/Burmese divisions from Rangoon up to the NE Indian border. Indian production finally became sufficient for Burma campaign needs, but NZ grenades continued to Egypt for the fighting up to El Alamein, and after to the end of the Tunisian campaign. Thereafter supplies continued for the Sicilian and Italian campaigns. Briefly, wherever the supplies were disembarked from ships, they found their way to Army Base Depots, and ultimately passed on to Corps and Divisional ammunition dumps, where they were issued to Brigades and Battalions at the front.
2nd NZ Division fought in Italy, and from time to time some of their troops may have picked up NZ-made grenades from a Divisional dump, but if so it was more by luck than judgement. They were just as likely to pick up grenades made in Johannesburg or Manchester.