millitary vehicle reg nos

[scammell 7377]

almost sure this has been covered before but i cant find it i was wondering if there is rhyme or reason to the numbering ie my 1951 explorer was 02 bd 10 from the reg can you say its a 51 from that and does the 02 or 10 mean anything when did the system start and might that have been with AA ?

 

thanks andy

[Richard Farrant]

almost sure this has been covered before but i cant find it i was wondering if there is rhyme or reason to the numbering ie my 1951 explorer was 02 bd 10 from the reg can you say its a 51 from that and does the 02 or 10 mean anything when did the system start and might that have been with AA ?

 

thanks andy

 

Andy,

 

The BD series would start 00BD01 to 99BD99. Not all letter series went to the full number limit. So to answer you question about significance of 02 or 01, look at it as 0210, that is how the system worked. AA, and all letter series begining with A were allocated to the Air Ministry / RAF.

[John Pearson]

The basic system was quite simple: look at the numbers and the letters separately. In other words the first one was 00AA00, then 00AA01 etc up to 00AA99 then 01AA00 etc. When you got to 99AA99, the next number was 00AB00, then 00AB01 etc etc. The numbers were allocated in blocks at the point of ordering, some blocks were set aside for armoured vehicles, some for softskins and some for engineering plant. Now if a big order for something was followed by an order for a few of something else, the large order would still be being built after the following order was complete so for example, 00AA90 might be built before 00AA50 if the two orders were for 00AA00 to 00AA80 for one type of vehicle but 00AA81 to 00AA95 was for something else.

Unfortunately, this means that you cannot tell much from the numbers except that 02BD10 was built after 02BD09 and before 02BD11 but it may (in fact was) built before 30BA10 for example which was built 1952 but is some 2,800 vehicle numbers 'earlier'

[Richard Farrant]

Andy,

 

If you have not seen it, this list of BD numbers might be of interest;

 

http://fleetdata.co.uk/files/BritishMilitarySerialsBDseries.pdf

[scammell 7377]

i didnt know that information existed let alone seen it thankyou for your help (both of you ) interesting that i was talking to a mate of a mate who was telling me his father drove 91 bd 56 in singapore and i was thinking they may have been of the same contract however i can see now it may be some 2 or 3 years younger does it then follow that 00 BD 88 to 02 BD 14 is the sum total of contract no 6 -- 5067 ? and that they were all explorers

[Richard Farrant]

i didnt know that information existed let alone seen it thankyou for your help (both of you ) interesting that i was talking to a mate of a mate who was telling me his father drove 91 bd 56 in singapore and i was thinking they may have been of the same contract however i can see now it may be some 2 or 3 years younger does it then follow that 00 BD 88 to 02 BD 14 is the sum total of contract no 6 -- 5067 ? and that they were all explorers

 

 

That would be 227 Explorers in that particular contract according to the numbers. There were also Explorers in the BC registration range, no details of those, sorry.

[antarmike]

almost sure this has been covered before but i cant find it i was wondering if there is rhyme or reason to the numbering ie my 1951 explorer was 02 bd 10 from the reg can you say its a 51 from that and does the 02 or 10 mean anything when did the system start and might that have been with AA ?

 

thanks andy

RAF Allocation:-

http://www.mafva.net/other%20pages/VRNRAF%5B1%5D.doc

Army Aloocation to vehicle types

http://www.mafva.net/other%20pages/VRNARMY.doc

 

other here...

 

http://www.mafva.net/resources.htm

 

Model forum, don't know how accurate.......

Edited January 14, 2011 by antarmike

[scammell 7377]

thanks mike :thumbsup: