Army Form W4003 - "Instructions for the Delivery of Impressed M.T. Vehicles"

[billh35]

These forms were completed by Impressing Officers when vehicles were being collected and link a vehicle's civilian identity to its' W.D. number.

Does anyone know what became of these forms, where these records were held and do they still exist in Archives?

 

[fv1609]

It's hard to know the life span of these forms.

I have a list of Army Forms up to date as in AO at Oct 1916. The highest is W 3492, new forms must have been prolifically produced as there are blank spaces to record their details up to W 3575.

Turning to a similar list up to date to AO Dec 1943, this particular form is not listed although it extends to W 5284.

It is a shame that the scanned example of the AF omits to include the printer's imprint which would indicate the date of delivery & the quantity printed

[billh35]

The vehicles which were impressed using this form were impressed in 1940. As you can see they link the civilian identity of a vehicle to it's War Department number.

Edited October 13, 2020 by billh35

[Great War truck]

Very interesting. Never seen one of these before. Box 12 is WD number allocated. As far as i was aware the WD number was not allocated until the vehicle arrived in theatre.

I am doubtful if any completed ones will have survived. 

[billh35]

On 9th October 1942 "Commercial Motor" magazine reported:

"

Parliamentary question by Major Lyons, who sought details of the number's of motor coaches from all services lying redundant or derelict at depots throughout the country, or the proportion that had had the tyres removed or had been jacked up, Sir Andrew Duncan, Minister of Supply, stated last week that, in addition to 206 coaches returned to operators and 157 others offered to their former owners, 658 coaches notified by Service Departments for disposal had been transferred to other Departments or broken down for spares.

Of the 616 remaining, many had only recently become available for disposal. In some cages it had not yet been possible to identify the former owners from the impressment records, and the Ministry of War Transport was considering whether, after expiration of a limited period, the vehicles should be offeted to approved operators. Under this arrangement the vehicles would soon be disposed of."

This would suggest that records had been centralised somewhere in order to produce these statistics. From this it would appear that 1,637 coaches and buses had been impressed across all services. From what I have seen of the W.D. number listings, it is virtually impossible to distinguish bus/coaches from lorries as the W.D. numbers seem to total 3,000+ vehicles.

I can't help thinking there is a list somewhere which lists W.D. numbers against civilian numbers.

[billh35]

The impressed coaches which this form related to were replaced by Bedford QLT (Troop carrying) trucks from 1941 onwards. They were capable of off-road use which the impressed coaches weren't. So by the time the 1943 list of forms was prepared, no more vehicles were being impressed and the form was no longer used.

I am now looking to see if I can find where the centralised records for impressed coaches would have been held ie. Army, Ministry of War Transport, War Office? 

I am also not aware if the impressment took place centrally or whether each service impressed its' own vehicles.