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.

Begun under the Tudors the Board of Ordnance lived through the changes of the Great Rebellion, the Commonwealth, the Restoration and the Revolution until it fell, at last, in the panic that followed in the disasters of the Crimean War.

The Storekeeper's department, on the other hand, was part of the civil establishment, though (as with much of the Board's activity) troops were involved in various aspects of its operation when not deployed elsewhere.

[3] 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.

[4] By the mid-eighteenth century, Woolwich Warren (the future Royal Arsenal) had outgrown the Tower of London as the main ordnance storage depot in the realm.

[3] 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 (whereas provision of food, supplies and other equipment was largely dependent on the Commissariat, a department of HM Treasury).

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.

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.

For the duration of conflict the Department's personnel accompanied the Artillery and Engineer units in the field providing them with logistic support (including repair facilities).

[6] 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 (just off Woolwich Common) where the guns were stored ready for deployment.

A parallel supply corps within the Army (the Royal Waggon Train, first established in 1794) had been disbanded as a cost-cutting measure in 1833, however, and its responsibilities devolved again to the Commissariat (which was by now more attuned to peacetime operations than warfare);[6] 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 (among other things) to the abolition of the Board (in 1855) and its Field Train Department (in 1859, its officers having transferred to the new Military Store Department).

These small corps (235 officers in the MSD and 44 MSC) were based largely at the Tower of London, Woolwich Arsenal and Weedon Bec, but were also deployable on active service.

[1] In 1870 a further reorganisation, ostensibly to simplify management, resulted in the MSD, MSC and MSSC being grouped with the Army Service Corps (ASC) under the Control Department.

[10] 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.

[1] 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 (similar stores were also provided at Dublin, Gibraltar and Malta).

In 1881 there were detachments in Dublin, Jersey, Gibraltar, Malta, Bermuda, Canada, St Helena, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius and Straits Settlements.

[1] The following year, a memorandum was issued making it clear that, in future, a staff of Military Store officers, clerks, artificers and labourers should accompany troops at time of war to ensure abundant provision of equipment for immediate use together with effective maintenance of reserve stocks in the field.

[15] There was substantial support by the RAOC's predecessors for every late Victorian expedition with the major efforts being the campaigns in Egypt and the Sudan (1882-5 and 1898) and the Boer War (1899-1902).

Ammunition storage was also expanded dramatically and the former peacetime magazines at places such as Purfleet, Portsmouth and Plymouth were supplemented by purpose built depots at Bramley, Altrincham, Credenhill and Didcot.

Other expeditions such as Gallipoli, Salonika, Palestine and Mesopotamia brought supply challenges and a large logistic bases were established on the Egyptian Canal Zone and Basra.

A Central Ordnance Depot (COD) and workshop to support vehicles, built on the site of the First World War National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell, opened in 1937.

[6] Woolwich was prone to aerial bombardment, so from September 1939 the War Department leased part of an industrial estate in Greenford, which provided 632,000 square feet of covered accommodation.

That same year a very large COD, widely spread out across the Oxfordshire countryside to mitigate the risk of bomb damage, opened at Bicester to hold stores principally to support the invasion of France.

[22] Forward of the UK base, a huge array of temporary depots were built to meet the rapidly changing pace of war.

The RAOC's skills in bomb disposal were later put to increasing use in dealing with terrorist devices at home as well as in conflict zones overseas.

In May 1970 a section of 321 EOD Unit was sent to Northern Ireland to support the local ammunition inspectorate in dealing with improvised explosive devices; what was initially a 6-month deployment marked the start of a much longer involvement through the Troubles.

At the same time, there was considerable development of warehousing techniques and information technology (the first move towards computerisation came with the opening of an Automated Data Processing Installation at Chilwell in 1963 and one at Bicester the following year.

A reconfiguration in the late 1960s provided four Regional Depots (Thatcham, Hereford, Catterick and Stirling) and nine OSUs: Aldershot, Ashford, Burscough, Colchester, Feltham, Old Dalby, Thetford, Tidworth and Woolwich (which had been downgraded following the closure of the Royal Ordnance Factory and the sale of the old Dockyard).

After the Somerville Logistic Reorganisation Committee Report of 1977 the head of the corps was re-titled Director General Ordnance Services (DGOS).

[6] The RAOC Band had first been formed in 1922; the regimental march (chosen by its first Bandmaster, WOI R. T. Stevens, as appropriate to the Corps' role and to its artisans) was The Village Blacksmith.