Canadian Military Cooker No. 2, MK 2, Modified 1974

I bought this stove from an antique shop here in Winnipeg. I'd never seen one before, so was intrigued to say the least. Unfortunately, the pump wouldn't develop pressure, as the check valve was stuck solid. I soaked it in liquid penetrant overnight (with the tank 1/2 full of Coleman fuel), I kept trying to pop it loose. With a good 1/2" of liquid penetrant in the bottom of the pump tube, I gave the pump rod a good whack with a hammer, and the check valve broke loose. I worked the pump until the check valve sealed properly and tank would build pressure. This stove is very much like an Optimus/Primus 111 in operation. I was pleased to find, that after a thorough pre-heat, the flame settled down to a nice blue flame, and the stove actually worked quite well! It's a nice addition to my stove collection. What a heavy stove! IMO an Optimus 111 was much better suited as a military stove (for the era).

 

Nice find, thank you for sharing.
Duane

 

Thnx Duane. I've fired this stove up a bunch more times, and find it's quite fun to play with. It's interesting, as it doesn't seem to need a lot of tank pressure to run well. I've read in other threads about poor running, but this one seems to be OK. It randomly spits a bit of yellow flame, but generally runs nice and blue once up to full temp. Small tank! And it seems to be thirsty too.

 

Looks very Canadian - straightforward in build, without a lot of nonsense. The burner certainly isn't off the usual shelf. Would be interested in knowing where that came from. Knowing Canada, you could probably find the maker's name and how much he left on the collection plate on Sunday.

 

I'm not crazy about that burner assembly, but it works. That burner is large and heavy, and very poorly supported. The slotted cap is difficult to remove - I read in another thread that it could be pried up and off when hot, and found that to be the case. Not a great design IMO. I don't think this stove saw much use in service. A friend of mine, that's a military vehicle collector, told me the arrows on the identiplates that's riveted onto the lid is what identifies this as Canadian - can anyone confirm? A few more pictures...

 

That's the "King's Broad Arrow." Identifies it as Commonwealth military, and was the cause of some fuss on mast pines in the late unpleasantness of 1776.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_arrow

 

Wow, Thnx for that! That's really interesting. I wish the last 7 digits of the NATO Stock Number (NSN) wasn't scratched out. Dunno why someone would do that. Maybe the NSN on the silver sticker superceded the Brit number, or something like that. Or, it could have been re-identified due to the "modified".

 

Now I'm a little confused... I just looked into the NSN, and see Canadian hardware should be identified with a 20 or 21 as the second group of numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Stock_Number

99 is United Kingdom - it appears that this stove is British, NOT Canadian!

 

Could have also been "de-milled." Maybe the last digits allowed it to be used as weapon. There was a pretty big shake-up in military stores when NATO was formed in '49. I think Coleman produced enough GI stoves to last quite a while -- although the stock didn't quite last 70 years, they were pretty common NOS not so long ago.

 

And remember, Newfoundland leant money to Blighty in that war! With lend-lease on the US end and the Commonwealth nations kicking in all they could, it wasn't unlikely to find conflicting specs.

 

The stove is British. Maybe from British unit training at Shilo?

 

Looks pretty much identical to a British military stove No 2.

 

I would say almost definately Military No 2.

NSN's are not necessarily an accurate indicator of country of origin, and the 99 bit has been regularly used on initial codification if supplied by a British company. It will eventually be altered once initial country of origin is established.

Fo the purposes of this exercise the silver embossed label will I believe to have been original, The second label would appear to have been added by the E A Co. who possibly modified the stove and added the new NSN for the modified version. E A may be a Canadian company who did the work locally to bring the stock of stoves up to the latest standard. Why subsequently erase the new NSN is possibly due to a decision to keep the original as no one could be arsed to update documentation just for the modified stove. A rather expensive and time consuming exercise at the best of times and best left for serious configuration issues.

Another view of the arrow would be to indicate the actual NSN, it points to the older label.

 

This stove is the last version of the British N°2 military cooker, designed to be carried on (the outside of) military vehicles (like scout cars) during WW2. They had a square set of cooking pots attached to them by a leather belt. Because they sat on the outside of a vehicle they needed to be of a rather sturdy design while weight was no issue. They were never meant to be carried by a soldier. The earlier versions had a roarer burner like the twin burner N°3. As far as I know these were all made in the UK (but I'm not sure about the very latest models). Basically, the design of the case is adapted from a prewar model.

Best regards,

Wim

 

Thnx guys. Great info. It's an interesting find, and a neat addition to the stove collection. It's a fun stove to play with.

 

wasn't that something to do with not paying your taxes? you revolted from the benificent rule of the British to avoid paying a bit extra to defend you from the french, then the first thing your banks do is scam your soldiers out of the paper dollars then your govt slaps a tax on the little people to pay for a military so you can get beaten by canada first time out and end up fighting with the injuns and spanish instead - not so hard if you attack during the siesta. meanwhile the rich paid no tax as per the norm and you ended up with a federalised collection of states ruled over by wealthy minority clique who decided that everyone had the right to kill a bear and hang its arms on your wall.

the stove is either a made under licence for the canuckistanian army or a UK surplus item from the training team up there in a position to protect the brave canucks incase the pentagon dusts off plan red.

 

Errrr, do we really need a flame war on CCS?

 

(Flame war... d'ya see what I did there?!)

 

Very funny. This CSS thread has become home to an international "cook off" - who goes to war with the best stove? I've got a Coleman M-1950, a better Mil stove for sure... but that strikes me as a personal back pack stove, whereas this Brit Cooker No. 2 needs a tracked vehicle to cart it around. Carried externally, it could do double duty as light armour :^) Darned thing is quite heavy!