SUMAC = ????

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MiTasol

MiTasol

2nd Lieutenant
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Sep 19, 2012
Aw flaming stralia
I am sure that someone is going to make me feel really stupid for this question and that SUMAC will turn out to be an oh so obvious acronym like FUBAR or FUMTU but here goes anyway.

Often in ww2 USAAC/F records and in history books the acronym or code-name SUMAC arises.

Sometimes this is affixed to the 5th AF or Australia.

Today while looking at an aircraft history card I realised I did not know what it actually signified and did a web search only to find that all the Acronym sites and military slang sites that I searched do not list it.

X in the following is the early 1942 code for Australia

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It must be the acronym for a unit under 5th Air Force (South West Pacific Area) as aircraft were received by it in Australia and then seem to have been operated by the RAAF.
I don't know what the acronym is for, but I'd love to know too.
Cheers
Steve
 
CURTISS is the aircraft manufacturer of the P-40 or Kittyhawk as it was also known

PATRSON is most likely Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Workers at Wright Field helped to design and to construct numerous airplanes, such as the C-47 Skytrain, the C-54 Skymaster, the Curtiss C-46 Commando, the Sikorsky XR-4, the Curtiss-Wright P-40 Warhawk, the B-24 Liberator, and the B-29 Superfortress, among many others, during World War II.

SUMAC is/was the code name for Brisbane, Australia.

The USS Hammondsport arrived San Francisco 7 January 1942, and began loading cargo and aircraft to be carried to beleaguered allied forces in the western Pacific. Departing 15 January she ,steamed into Brisbane harbor with her precious cargo 5 February 1942. After unloading her cargo of 120 P-40 aircraft the ship sailed for San Francisco, arriving 17 March.
 
Nice one! It explains why aircraft were sent to 'SUMAC' and subsequently found themselves operated by the RAAF. I had wrongly assumed it was some body of the US 5th AF which dealt with this transfer, rather than simply a place (nice place too, Brisbane). Obviously, with hindsight, it makes perfect sense.

Who came up with these codes? I've always wanted to know who decided that CAPSTAN was a suitable code word for the Spitfire. He should have been shot :)

Cheers

Steve
 
mikewint said:
SUMAC is/was the code name for Brisbane, Australia.

The USS Hammondsport arrived San Francisco 7 January 1942, and began loading cargo and aircraft to be carried to beleaguered allied forces in the western Pacific. Departing 15 January she, steamed into Brisbane harbor with her precious cargo 5 February 1942. After unloading her cargo of 120 P-40 aircraft the ship sailed for San Francisco, arriving 17 March.
Click to expand...

As I said to start with I am sure that someone is going to make me feel really stupid for this question and that SUMAC will turn out to be an oh so obvious and in hindsight it is. I am so used to the USAAC using acronyms like USAFIA (US Army Forces in Australia) that I did not even think of SUMAC being a code name even though the X above and below was the code of the time for Australia.
Worse still I knew that the USS Hammondsport, USAT President Polk, SS Anhui and SS Mormac Sun all arrived in Brisbane in early 42, all carrying P-40s.

Interestingly the USS Hammondsport is listed in one site as carrying 111 P-40s rather than the 120 you indicate.
 
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Thank you MikeWint ad
stona said:
Who came up with these codes? I've always wanted to know who decided that CAPSTAN was a suitable code word for the Spitfire. He should have been shot :)

Cheers Steve
Click to expand...

And what about the BD-43? That code was still in use in the Instruments manual in 1946? Why keep up the farce when the war is over?

Clue = British Twin, built in Aus starting about 43
 
As to the code names themselves???? I suspect a large fishbowl filled with nouns written on slips of paper and a blindfolded psy-ops warrior. Those old prick-25 FM radios had maybe 10-12 mile range with the long antenna and no ability to encrypt so you had to talk in code. With all the captured and zapped teams, pilots, etc. the VC/NVA had as many of them as we did. In addition codes can't be too weird or in a high stress situation someone's going to get confused

As to your BD-43 I'm assuming the Beaufort Division of the Commonwealth Department of Aircraft Production (DAP) at Fisherman's Bend, Melbourne
 
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