Penn Yan's wartime Model AT

The boat was eighteen feet long and called the Model AT. Wartime government catalogs connect it to Penn Yan Boats, Inc., and list the instructions needed to maintain it. Those entries are some of the clearest accessible records of the company's wartime work.

A federal publications catalog lists Engineer Corps Technical Manual 5-8020 as a maintenance manual and parts catalog for an 18-foot Model AT utility power boat. The entry associates the boat with Penn Yan Boats, Inc., and dates the item March 28, 1942.

A War Department index dated January 20, 1945 lists the same manual number with a different date: December 3, 1943. Its description reads “Boat, Utility, Power, 18-ft. Penn-Yan, Model AT.” The underlying manuals and their change notices have not yet been recovered in the accessible digital search, so the two dates cannot be assigned a definite revision history.

Other entries show how the paperwork fit together. The 1945 index lists Lubrication Order WDLO 1057, dated November 24, 1943, for the gasoline-powered 18-foot Penn Yan Model AT. Its BOATS index directs readers to TM 5-8020, Technical Bulletin 5-8020-1, and Lubrication Order 1057.

A named boat had a maintenance-and-parts manual, a bulletin, and a lubrication order in the War Department's publication system. That tells us something specific about its technical administration. It does not tell us how many boats were ordered or built, which contracts covered them, where they were delivered, or which units used them.

Penn Yan Boats also appears in a separate wartime record. A joint Army-Navy release on December 5, 1945 announced the end of the Army-Navy E Award program and listed Penn Yan Boats, Inc., of Penn Yan among the New York recipients.

The release counted 4,283 recipient facilities, estimated at about five percent of eligible plants. It named quality, quantity, labor, safety, management, and conservation among the possible considerations. The New York list does not say which applied to Penn Yan. It supplies no local award date, product identification, or plant nomination file.

The manual references and award list therefore answer different questions. One places the Model AT in the military's technical publications. The other identifies Penn Yan Boats as an E Award recipient. Neither establishes that the company received the award for that particular boat.

The next useful records would be the manuals themselves, the ordering contracts, company-specific award papers, and records of the people who built and received the boats. Until those are found, the Model AT's paperwork gives us a documented starting point and a clear set of unanswered questions.

Source note

The March 28, 1942 TM 5-8020 entry appears on printed page 135 (PDF page 139) of the GovInfo Supplement to United States Government Publications Monthly Catalog, 1941-1942. The December 3, 1943 manual entry, November 24, 1943 lubrication order, and BOATS cross-index appear on printed pages 67, 96, and 108 (PDF pages 68, 97, and 109) of the January 20, 1945 FM 21-6, List and Index of War Department Publications, preserved by HyperWar at ibiblio. The award-program overview and Penn Yan entry appear on PDF pages 1 and 10 of the War Department's December 5, 1945 joint Army-Navy release, preserved on Wikimedia Commons. This story paraphrases and cites those records and reproduces no scan or source media.