By Mike Cecil
Head of Military Heraldry and Technology
Australian War Memorial

At the beginning of the Second World War, the Australian Army was equipped with two main portable stoves, the Sawyer and Fowler ovens. Both relied on timber for fuel, and had to be transported to a location, assembled and fired before a meal could be produced. While this may have been satisfactory for semi-static warfare such as that of the First World War, the Second World War was already promising to be one of mobility.

While the Australian Imperial Force despatched to the Middle East were equipped with British stoves fired with petrol, these were also only semi-mobile and wasteful of a precious fuel resource. The solution, although known and indeed used during the First World War, was a mobile field cooker that combined a conventional wood fired oven and hot plate with a boiler and steam injection system. The fire box provided heat for the oven and hot plate, as well as the water boiler that produced both hot water and a constant supply of steam. The steam was channelled through hoses to steam pots in which all types of food could be cooked, from vegetables to stews, porridges and soups. Roasting, bread and biscuit making was handled in the oven, and the hot plate used for frying. The constant supply of hot water was available for hot drinks and dish washing water. All this was mounted on a four-wheel trailer that included preparation benches and food storage. The significant advantage was that cooking could be undertaken while on the move at normal convoy speed, which resulted in minimal delay in providing hot food in quantity once a convoy stopped, no matter where.

But for some reason the lessons had been lost, and it took a considerable amount of effort on the part of the original inventor’s sons, together with the backing of the Director of Army Catering, to relearn the lessons. Mr James Fletcher Wiles had invented the steam cooker just prior to the First World War and the system had been used with some success. But when his sons approached the army with their improved version soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, they could arouse little interest. After practical demonstrations with various units in South Australia, it took a considerable time, and the combined efforts of the Wiles brothers and Sir Stanton Hicks, a world renowned nutritionist who was later to become the first Director of Army Catering, to overcome the Army’s lethargy. Static units were the first to be ordered, with just nine mobile cookers ordered during 1940-41. It was not until late 1941 that the War Cabinet considered a submission to progressively replace all static cookers with the Wiles steam kitchen, and to purchase the mobile version in quantity.

Despite production difficulties and delays, the mobile steam kitchen became the Services standard for the remainder of the Second World War. By wars end, more than 1200 mobile units and several hundred static camp steam kitchens had been built by the Wiles Company and others. A smaller, two wheeled version had also been produced, though this was not taken up by Army until after the war. Despite several attempts to modernise and improve the mobile steam kitchen, including the use of alternate fuels such as oil and bottled gas, it remained in service and essentially the same until superseded by the ‘Kitchen, Field, Mobile’ in the late 1970s.

Perhaps the submission to the War Cabinet in September 1941 best sums up the contribution made by the Wiles family: ‘ Under Army guidance, Wiles developed the original idea to the present kitchen to suit Army requirements, putting time, thought, work and money into the development. Without the enterprise and cooperation of Wiles, the present perfected Mobile Kitchen would never have been produced’.