British Army Staff Ammunition Scales - Sep 1944

[Gary Kennedy]

I am posting this in the hopes that someone might be able to help me track down a WW2 era British Army document.

Staff Ammunition Scales were introduced in September 1944, and detailed the official War Office scales of ammunition for all types of weapon in the Army, as well as scales of grenades and explosives. They covered ammunition for small arms, mortars, projectors, all types of AFV armament and artillery pieces, and were shown as rounds per gun or per unit as appropriate.

I have been trying to track down a copy of the document, without success, for a while now. I was wondering/hoping that someone here might have happened across a copy, or at the least be able to suggest some possible locations.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary Kennedy

 

[AMMOTECHXT]

Hello Gary and welcome to BOCN. I guess that at the time it was produced the document would have been classified as Secret. Such documents might eventually be held by the National Archives (TNA), at Kew, not to be released for decades. The good news is they might have been released by now for the WW2 period, although logistically the 3 Inch mortar, for example, is probably not too dissimilar in rates of usage to the 81 mm mortar. It might be worth checking with TNA, using their catalogue or contacting them directly. In the 1980s a type of document that probably replaced or updated the one you mention was known as "Daily Ammunition Expenditure Rates" (DAER), which I think was classified as Secret. For high intensity operations you could probably safely throw either type of document out of the window, it's just that the bean counters and purse string holders want figures to play with, and someone to blame if a budget is exceeded. It's one thing to have to shout "Bang" for lack of blanks in training, and another to be operational yet not have what you need. Matthew