Japanese oxygen regulator head: Warrant Officer Alan Thomas Ballingall, 2/41 Light Aid Detachment, AAOC

Place	Oceania: New Guinea
Accession Number	AWM2019.668.1.1
Collection type	Technology
Object type	Technology
Physical description	Brass, Glass, Nickel-plated brass, Rubber, Steel
Maker	Unknown
Place made	Japan
Date made	c 1941
Conflict	Second World War, 1939-1945

Description

Brass oxygen regulator head with two glass enamel faced dials (one of which has a Tokyo trade mark) and a flow regulator. The glass covering the smaller dial is broken but in situ. The text on the larger dial reads: " Tokyo / Rika / Numbers show the thickness of the cross section of the weld". The regulator has one output and one input valve and one adjustable circular flow valve. The rear of the regulator has the serial number 26010.10 stamped into the brass. The regulator has been painted black but much of this coating has been chipped off.

History / Summary

Japanese oxygen regulator head salvaged by Alan Thomas Ballingall, born 16 July 1916 at Melbourne but living at Brunswick when he enlisted on 15 June 1940, aged 23. He was assigned to the 2/2 Field Workshops under service number VX30265 and embarked for service in the Middle East, disembarking in Egypt in October 1940, but before he did, he and his fiancé Lorna married.

While serving in the Middle East and Syria he was promoted to corporal, then sergeant, and at the end of 1941, to staff sergeant. The workshops followed in the wake of Australian troops, salvaging damaged or disabled tanks, trucks, artillery and small arms, and with limited facilities, repaired both allied and captured equipment and returned it to service.

Ballingall returned to Australia in March 1942, being transferred to 6 Australian Division Ordnance Workshops and spent 4 months in New Guinea where he was attached to New Guinea Force, returning to Australia in March 1943. This sojourn in New Guinea would have been to support the 2/6 Armoured Regiment in their assault against the entrenched Japanese between December 1942 and January 1943 on the Cape Endaiadare-Buna -Gona battlefield.

As soon as he returned to Australia, he was promoted to warrant officer class II, and transferred to the 2/119 Brigade Workshops as a fitter; in July 1943, he attended an armament artificers course at Ingleburn Camp. In June 1944, he was transferred to the 2/41 Light Aid Detachment in preparation for the move to New Guinea, he embarked for Aitape in early November. A photo in the Memorial’s collection (095869) shows him in Wewak on 31 August 1945, "cutting a 44 gallon drum with an electric arc torch".

Ballingall suffered a number of injuries during his service, most of them accidental: fractured ribs (July 1943); blast injury to his face, (caused by oxy welding a casting) resulting in a compound fracture to his sinuses (January 1945) and a month’s recovery; and second degree burn to his back and upper arm (May 1945). The last injury was caused when he was testing a blow lamp with petrol rather than kerosene. Ballingall was discharged on 9 October 1945. He was mentioned in despatches (“exceptional service in the field in SWP area”) in early 1946.

Of this Japanese oxy-acetylene equipment, his family said that "He brought back the Japanese oxy/acet gear at the end of the war, probably thinking he could use them out, but I doubt if he ever did."

Alan Ballingall died on February 12, 2009.