The British War Establishments System 1931

Mike,

thank you for your kind words.

Wow again!
It's going to take me all evening to get rid of the blush.
Now what about the typical British understatement?

I can say that without your initial friendly support 12 years ago, this would never have happened. Thanks again!

Wolfgang

 

Thank you for your kind words, Fatboy Coxy.

Feel free to ask your questions. I will find out.


I also know that I still owe you an answer regarding the abbreviations from post #33. I'm still researching.

 

That was understated old chap.

Mike

 

As a reminder, we are talking about the members of the three meetings at the beginning of June 1940 and their sending departments.

Abbreviations are a very specialised topic, and they are not part of my core competence either. Lock a few specialists in a meeting for a few hours, and they will speak "highly abbreviated" as a matter of course because they know what they are talking about. Just them. What I want to say is that some abbreviations are defined somewhere, others are at least the result of a mixture of haste and convenience. This inflation of abbreviations results in multiple meanings for the same abbreviations, which means that unambiguity falls by the wayside.

In order to get this halfway right, I have compared the abbreviations with the file numbers from a collection of over 3,000 A.C.Is. Some remain unsolved. The sub-departments (numbers and letters) would only be resolvable if one had a contemporary organisation chart of the War Office.

War Office departments or offices.
- A.A.2, A.A.2(a) – A.A. = Anti-Aircraft
- A.G.1(A), A.G.1(b), A.G.3, A.G.7, A.G.14 – A.G. = Adjutant-General
- H.D.1 – Home Defence
- M.O.2, M.O.5 – M.O. = Military Operations
- M.T.2 – M.T. = Military Training
- Q.2 – Q = Quartermaster
- S.D.1(a), S.D.1(b), S.D.1(c), S.D.7(a) – S.D. = Staff Duties
- S.T.4 – S.T. = Supply & Transport
- Tn. 2(a), Tn. 3 – Tn. = Transportation (Royal Engineers' competence, railways)

Other:
- D.A.M.P.S.: That was fun! Wished Major-General Amps's first name would have been Derek or something with a D to get a total match. D. Amps, D.A.M.P.S. (sorry, never saw something like this).
Major-General Leon Williamson Amps (1892 – 1989), Director of Works, War Office, and General Officer Commanding [or Director?] Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps [or Service] –

- D.D. = Deputy Director, so
- - D.D.M.T. = Deputy Director of Military Training
- - D.D.S.D. = Deputy Director of Staff Duties; (O) for Operations, (W) for Weapons

- M.I.(R) – Military Intelligence (Research); forerunner of S.O.E.

Unsure:
- D.D.R.O. (b): Not sure! - Brigadier John Anderson Barstow was at Assistant Adjutant-General, War Office, during this time
- D.D.R.C. (B): Not sure! Deputy Director of Reserve Command (Barracks)?
- F.W.4: Not sure! Fortification and Works? (unclear)

 

I fear the only thing I can add to this tour-de-force-structures is the link to the resource (no-one had looked at it yet...)

British War Establishments

 

Thank you, Idler.

This was my first resource, and I saw it came as a thread of its own after I posted it (today, 07:12 GMT).

Will learn more about resources in the next few days ...

I hope the members are not yet fed up.

 

Having previously struggled to search for things in Resources that I knew were there, thought I'd better signpost it before it ceases to be a 'new resource'.

And don't worry - most of us are too intellectually overwhelmed to be fed up!

 

Started with the volumes

New Resource - Key for War Establishment Volumes

New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume I

 

Hi Aixman, how many of these Volumes do you have to plough through?

 

Hi Fatboy Coxy,

see posts #20 to #23 for the details, and there will be something left over for the theatres. So we will end up with quite a few more resources.
If you want to see the number of entries per volume, see post #46 (Appendix 3: Statistics), column 4 (Totals) in the attached PDF file.

 

Thank you Aixman

 

In the meantime, the tables for Volumes II, III and IV have been added.
British War Establishments - Volume II
British War Establishments - Volume III
British War Establishments - Volume IV

Together with Volume I,
British War Establishments - Volume I

the Field Force as originally conceived is now complete. For the exact contents of the volumes on the timeline, see post #20.
The British War Establishments System 1931

The later added theatre volumes make the situation more complex, but the war establishment for the British Expeditionary Force 1940 can only be derived from these four volumes.

 

Great work here Wolfgang you should be really proud and happy with this excellent work that you have done great stuff pal.

Mike.

 

Thank you very much for your kind words, Mike.

I'm glad you like it.
It's not quite over yet either. The volumes will take a few more days.

Wolfgang

 

The following volumes have been added since Tuesday:
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume V
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume VI
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume VII

Volumes V and VII contain the Home War Establishments and are authoritative for the units in the United Kingdom.

Volume VI contains the war establishments for Middle East.

For details, see post #21
The British War Establishments System 1931

 

The following volumes have been added:

Volume VIII, containing the unprinted (typewritten) "secret" war establishments, which were thus removed from the printing process.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume VIII

For details, see post #21.
The British War Establishments System 1931

Volume IX, containing the war establishments for "the rest of the world".
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume IX

For details, see post #22.
The British War Establishments System 1931

 

The following volumes have been added:

Volume X, the only volume that served two purposes: First, it summarised the airborne units, which moved to Volume I in September 1942, then finally it contained the war establishments for the Persia and Iraq Command.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume X

Volume XI is the smallest and contains the war establishments of the Indian Command. Besides many war establishments for Ceylon, there are several marked "Special Force" or "(Special)" which refer to the units that are better known under the collective name Chindits.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume XI

For details, see post #22.
The British War Establishments System 1931

 

The following volumes have been added:

Volume XII, opened early in 1943 following the landings in operation Torch, contains the war establishments "peculiar to the North African Command", later renamed to Central Mediterranean Command.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume XII

For details, see post #22.
The British War Establishments System 1931

Volume XIII, opened early in 1944 for the South-East Asia Command.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume XIII

For details, see post #23.
The British War Establishments System 1931

 

The following volumes have been added:

Volume XIV for 21 Army Group in Northwest Europe.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume XIV

You find the content of the war establishments of 21 Army Group in the Trux section of this forum, together with other standard war establishments of the Field Force (Volumes I to IV) and several "secret" ones (Volume VIII).
Trux 21st Army Group | WW2Talk

Volume XV for "units of the Light Division", earmarked for operations in the Far East. This soon exceeded divisional units. Volume XV is the only complete one, except for amendments, of course; it has all issues retained.
New Resource - British War Establishments - Volume XV

For details, see post #23.
The British War Establishments System 1931

 

Volume XVI has been added. It is a belated attempt to put all war establishments of the Control Commission into a new volume. It is the least interesting volume for wargamers.
British War Establishments - Volume XVI

For details, see post #23.
The British War Establishments System 1931

User alieneyes posted last Monday a useful link concerning the Control Commission:
Control Commission Germany - CCG
Diana Goldsworthy's homepage.

These were the "pure" British Volumes I to XVI, and we will go on with the volumes for the African Colonial Forces.