A few Crawler Pics

whatever happened to that tank shown in earlier photos near Wang

G'day there NrMack. The tank is still at Wang. Its running a 671 gm but originally would have had two running side by side. Cheers David

Some very nice crawlers there, thanks for the photos.

Cheers Steve.

Hi ian is this a like the unstyled john deere crawler we talked about on sunday

Thanks John .Will see if there is a spark of recognition with the guy concerned .

G'day guys, some photos from the weekend, almost the two ends of the spectrum D9 versus early D4. It would be a tough choice?










Still more to come when I can find the photos and get time to scan stuff.

Ps A bit peeved at present, went to touch base regarding a D8 13a I've been trying to convince a chap to sell to me for the last eight years and he up and sold it to someone else, didn't even get a look in. Whoever got it congrats to you and I hope you get her up and running. It would just kill me if just went for scrap. Boo Hoo Hoo :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

G'day ute 253 love the photos of the D4,is it yours or do you know the history of it. I've got a D4 5T with a cable blade,no hydraulics. I've been led to believe it was originally US army. Just curious..

Hi HC , We have a D47J that was ex army .It has US7 stamped on the serial number plate . I think our R4 has US7 on it as well .

5T6264 makes the D4 a 1946 year of build. Somewhere around 95-98% of Caterpillar production between March 1942 and August 1945 was built for the military, and everything that Cat produced in the above time frame was painted Olive Drab.
If you were one of the few lucky ones during the above period, and you managed to acquire a new Cat .. it came in Olive Drab, whether you liked it or not ..

The US7 stamp identifies the item as belonging to the U.S. Seventh Fleet .. the force put together under Gen Douglas Macarthurs control, to specifically fight the Japs in the S.W. Pacific.
MacArthur was based in Brisbane, when he was running the U.S. Seventh Fleet, and most of the major QLD cities had major U.S./Australian military bases in them.
The Seventh Fleet name is a little deceiving, because the "Fleet" comprised everything that a military force needed to operate with.
It was largely ship-based, but it also owned a massive amount of other land-based equipment that was shunted around Australia and the S.W. Pacific islands.

As an island-liberation operation was launched, to wrest it from the Japs, landing ships carried vast amounts of mechanised equipment, that was landed on the island .. both with the landing assault parties, and then, later, as support equipment, to rebuild airfields, repair roads, and haul supplies.

When the Yanks left in August and September 1945, they left behind a vast amount of equipment. A lot was Lend-Lease, but a large amount was also owned outright by the Yanks themselves.
The Lend-Lease equipment was originally planned to be returned to the U.S. at the end of the War.
Then the Manufacturing Industry CEO's got together (the likes of the heads of Ford, Caterpillar, IHC, Allis-Chalmers, and all the truck manufacturers) .. and, alarmed about the massive inflow of wartime equipment destroying their sales for years to come .. they managed to get a decision made by the senior U.S. military leaders and U.S. War Production bosses, to ensure that the Lend-Lease equipment would be destroyed, not returned to the U.S.

The destruction of Lend-Lease equipment was pretty haphazard. Some was destroyed effectively by dumping in deep water .. some was destroyed by sabotage (driving vehicles into the bush and draining the oil and leaving them running), and some of it, was never destroyed at all.
This last event often happened when Americans were sent home faster than they could arrange to destroy equipment.

A lot of sabotaged Lend-Lease stuff was quickly recovered by enterprising Aussies .. but there still remained a huge amount of new, and used military items that were owned by the U.S. .. as well as new and used items, that were also Lend-Lease.

1946 and 1947 saw a huge flurry of top level negotiations between high-level Australian Govt Dept leaders, and U.S. Military and Govt officials. The Yanks had realised, and then decided, that they could capitalise on the equipment .. and the Australian Govt Dept heads and political leaders recognised that we had a massive amount of mechanised and other equipment, that was already here .. and which could be very useful in developing the nation .. all that was needed was to get the Yanks to give it to us!

The Yanks immediately demanded a high sum for the equipment .. an amount that was near new cost. The Aussies were dismayed. Negotiations became very delicate, and the price was gradually reduced.
After much haggling .. and with the Yanks eventually realising that they had only one buyer, or they would be forced to abandon the equipment .. the sale price was dropped to about 5% of the original asking price.
The Aussies were well pleased with this great deal, and all the American equipment was signed over to the Australian Govt, which organised for the sale of any of the equipment that was of use to, and in high demand, by civilians.

These sales were conducted by a specially-organised Govt Dept, known as the Disposals Commission .. set up to dispose in an orderly fashion, all of the war surplus equipment, that formerly belonged to either American or Australian military forces.
The total value of this surplus equipment ran into the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars in todays values.

Price controls were in place for a number of years after the end of WW2, and these price controls also applied to military surplus.
The Govt set the price for thousands of items, both new and used, and no-one was allowed to sell an item outside the recommended Govt price range, no matter how many people were clamouring for it.
Even the items sold at disposals auctions were price-controlled, and nothing was sold for a "bargain" price.
The list of equipment sold at the Disposals sales was mind-boggling. Everything from mess tins, to boots, clothing, tyres, spare parts, engines, trucks, cars, tractors .. you name it, it was available.

The Disposals sales continued up to the start of the Korean War. However, the Korean War made the authorities slow the sales substantially, as they suddenly realised they would be needing more equipment, much earlier than they thought.
Meantimes, a lot of people in the late 1940's got a good "leg-up", by being able to buy good equipment that enabled them to go farming, contracting, and trucking, with fairly new equipment, that hadn't been available for years.

Hi HC, the D4 isnt mine but I'd dearly like it to be.

Another local contact I have used to have a early D4 himself which was ex military. It had been repaired at some stage, the previous owner said it saw war service and had been abandoned and rendered inoperable courtesy of a hand grenade in the starter flywheel which was a favored method so they weren't any use to the enemy.