Royal Army Ordnance Corps
The Royal Army Ordnance Corps was a corps of the British Army. At its renaming as a Royal Corps in 1918 it was both a supply and repair corps. In the supply area it had responsibility for weapons, armoured vehicles and other military equipment, ammunition and clothing and certain minor functions such as laundry, mobile baths and photography. The RAOC was also responsible for a major element of the repair of Army equipment. In 1942 the latter function was transferred to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and the vehicle storage and spares responsibilities of the Royal Army Service Corps were in turn passed over to the RAOC. The RAOC retained repair responsibilities for ammunition, clothing and certain ranges of general stores. In 1964 the McLeod Reorganisation of Army Logistics resulted in the RAOC absorbing petroleum, rations and accommodation stores functions from the Royal Army Service Corps as well as the Army Fire Service, barrack services, sponsorship of NAAFI and the management of staff clerks from the same Corps. On 5 April 1993, the RAOC was one of the corps that amalgamated to form The Royal Logistic Corps.
The permanent establishment of an Ordnance Office long predated that of a standing army in Britain; it has therefore been claimed that 'in a wide sense, as heirs to the master-bowyers, master-fletchers, master-carpenters and master-smiths who, in mediaeval days, were responsible as Officers of Ordnance for the care and provision of warlike matériel, and to their successors the storekeepers, clerks, artificers, armourers and storemen of the Board of Ordnance, the R.A.O.C. can claim a far longer continuous history and more ancient lineage than any other unit of the British Army'.
Predecessors of the RAOC
Supply and repair of technical equipment, principally artillery and small arms, was the responsibility of the Master General of the Ordnance and the Board of Ordnance from the Middle Ages until they lost their independence in 1855. Thereafter followed thirty years of fluctuating allocation of responsibilities and a great variety of titles of both corps and individuals. This complex, convoluted and largely unsatisfactory period insofar as Army logistics was concerned was summarised in 1889 as follows:Before Crimea
The Board of Ordnance had its own military establishment consisting of the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers. The Storekeeper's department, on the other hand, was part of the civil establishment, though troops were involved in various aspects of its operation when not deployed elsewhere. In any case, modern distinctions between civilian and military personnel were not so clear cut for those serving under the Board: its officers, engineers and artillerymen received their commissions or patents from the Master-General of the Ordnance, as did the Storekeepers, artificers and storemen. Though civilians, the Storekeepers were provided with uniform, akin to that of the Royal Artillery, described in 1833 as a blue coat with red stand-collar and cuffs, gold epaulettes indicating rank and blue trousers with a gold stripe, worn with a gold-hilted sword and a cocked hat; Clerks on the establishment wore the same uniform but without epaulettes. After Waterloo they were given relative rank : Storekeepers to rank as lieutenant colonel, Deputy Storekeepers as major or else captain, Assistant Storekeepers as lieutenant and Clerks as a non-commissioned officer. The Storekeepers and their Deputies had oversight of the Ordnance Yards, both at home and abroad, however they were never deployed in the theatre of war.Field Train Department of the Board of Ordnance
By the mid-eighteenth century, Woolwich Warren had outgrown the Tower of London as the main ordnance storage depot in the realm. In times of war, the Board of Ordnance Storekeepers found themselves responsible for conveying guns, ammunition and certain other items to the troops in the field. Until 1792, the transport and issue of weapons and ammunition to troops in the theatre of war was achieved by the formation of artillery trains, as and where required. In that year, with Britain about to engage in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Board sought to place this ad hoc arrangement on a permanent footing by establishing a Field Train Department. A Lieutenant-General of the Royal Artillery served as its Commandant and a Major-General as his Deputy, but otherwise its personnel were uniformed civilians: under a Senior Commissary based at Woolwich were Commissaries, Assistant Commissaries, Clerks of Stores and Conductors of Stores. In peace time nothing more than a small cadre of officers was maintained, but in time of war they were supplemented by recruits from the Ordnance Storekeeper's department to serve in the field; thus the strength of the Department varied dramatically, from 4 or 5 to 346 at its peak in 1813. Each recruit received special training in the handling of munitions. During the Crimean War a number of Sergeants were seconded from the Royal Artillery to serve as Military Conductors in addition to the civilian staff.With regard to the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers, the Field Train Department had additional responsibilities: it provided them with pay, clothing, medical supplies and camp equipment when deployed. The Field Train Department provided the Royal Engineers with their pontoon bridges and other specialist equipment, and provided for the movement of artillery pieces in the field. For the duration of conflict the Department's personnel accompanied the Artillery and Engineer units in the field providing them with logistic support.
Between 1795 and 1815, the Field Train served in thirty expeditions and campaigns. In peacetime, the civilians and sergeants returned to their former duties, but the cadre of officers was retained; they were based initially in the Royal Arsenal, and then in the Grand Depot where the guns were stored ready for deployment. At the start of the Crimean War, the Ordnance Field Train was mobilized once again. A parallel supply corps within the Army had been disbanded as a cost-cutting measure in 1833, however, and its responsibilities devolved again to the Commissariat ; after a well-publicised series of logistical failings the Commissariat and the Board of Ordnance, as well as the command-structure of the army itself, were all strongly criticised, leading to the abolition of the Board and its Field Train Department.
After Crimea
In the years following the Crimean War three corps can be identified as the direct predecessors of the RAOC. The Military Store Department created in 1861 granted military commissions and provided officers to manage stores inventories. In parallel a subordinate corps of warrant officers and sergeants, the Military Store Clerks Corps, was also created to carry out clerical duties. These small corps were based largely at the Tower of London, Woolwich Arsenal and Weedon Bec, but were also deployable on active service. They were supplemented in 1865 by the establishment at Woolwich of a Military Store Staff Corps to provide soldiers: initially 200-strong, it had more than doubled in size by 1869, with units in Portsmouth, Devonport, Aldershot, Dublin and Chatham as well as at Woolwich and the Tower.In 1870 a further reorganisation, ostensibly to simplify management, resulted in the MSD, MSC and MSSC being grouped with the Army Service Corps under the Control Department. The officers remained a separate branch in the Control Department but the soldiers were absorbed into the ASC. This arrangement lasted until 1876.
The Control Department was disbanded in 1876. The Ordnance/Military Store officers joined a newly created Ordnance Stores Department. Five years later, in 1881, the soldiers also left the ASC and became the Ordnance Store Corps. In 1894 there were further changes. The OSD was retitled the Army Ordnance Department and absorbed the Inspectors of Machinery from the Royal Artillery. In parallel the OSC was retitled the Army Ordnance Corps and at the same time absorbed the Corps of Armourers and the RA's Armament Artificers.
In 1918 the AOD was amalgamated into the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and for the first time officers and soldiers served in the same organisation; the Corps received the "Royal" prefix in 1922 in recognition of its service during the First World War.
Ordnance Services Organisation before 1914
Depots and other installations
The earliest depot for military stores was the Tower of London, headquarters of the Ordnance Office, which for many centuries sufficed to hold the country's central stocks of artillery, gunpowder, small arms and ammunition albeit in unsatisfactory circumstances. The Tower continued to be used for storage into the 19th century, but in 1671 the Board of Ordnance acquired a parcel of land at Woolwich which soon supplanted the Tower to become the Board's main ordnance storage depot; manufacture as well as storage of guns and ammunition took place on the site, which was later named the Royal Arsenal. In 1760 the Royal Gunpowder Magazine was established at Purfleet, replacing the Tower as Britain's central repository of gunpowder. In 1808 a modern purpose-built depot was constructed at Weedon, alongside the Grand Union Canal, to serve as a safe repository for guns and ammunition; and in 1813 a new Grand Storehouse was opened in the Royal Arsenal, containing multiple warehouses for all kinds of military stores. When Woolwich Dockyard closed in 1869, the entire dockyard site was taken over by the War Office to become a vast ordnance stores complex, annexed to the ordnance stores in the Royal Arsenal; large stocks of barrack stores, harnesses, accoutrements and other general stores were transferred to Woolwich Dockyard from the Tower at this time. At the same time the Military Store Department moved its headquarters from the Tower to the Red Barracks at Woolwich. The barracks went on to serve as the regimental depot, headquarters and home of the ordnance corps for the next fifty years. Finally, by about 1887, large stocks of small arms were moved from the Tower of London to Weedon, leaving the Tower to serve as a repository of ancient arms and armour and as a small Ordnance centre for troops in London.In addition to these central depots, ordnance yards in the naval and garrison towns of Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth held reserve stocks of camp equipment, entrenching tools, small-arms and ammunition, accoutrements, harness and saddlery. During the Crimean War, however, these arrangements proved unequal to the task of equipping an army with speed at a time of mobilization. After the war an Ordnance station was established as part of the new training camp at Aldershot: a hutted encampment was provided for troops to practise combined training, alongside a depot to furnish them with field stores. In the 1880s an effort was made to decentralise the reserves of equipment; as many as sixty-two small regional centres were set up, in an effort to bring stores closer to the units that would use them. Later, with the establishment of larger camps and garrisons in the early 20th century, these were consolidated into eighteen larger Ordnance stations. At the same time, during the period from the 1860s to 1914, various depots were established to support the Army throughout the world, the Indian Army Ordnance Corps. In 1881 there were detachments in Dublin, Jersey, Gibraltar, Malta, Bermuda, Canada, St Helena, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius and Straits Settlements. There was also a substantial detachment supporting the Anglo-Zulu War in Natal.
In 1895 the Royal Army Clothing Department, with its factory and depot at Pimlico, was taken over by the AOD which then became responsible for the provision of uniforms and other items of clothing for much of the army.