Owen Guns Go To Sea?
This is another draft chapter from the Owen Gun Book, the finished chapters will be printed in the book. These electronic chapters are from a different part of the book and will keep changing (growing I hope) with the contributions and discovery of further information. If you have any information to contribute or criticisms please email owenguns@spiderweb.com.au as none of these articles are finalised. Ron Owen
The Owen Gun and the Centaur.
Or man’s in-humanity to man.
At 11 am on the 3rd of September 2009 it was 70 years to the hour from when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Neville Chamberlain in 1939 solemnly informed the nation and (by almost remote control) the Commonwealth, that they were at war with Germany. He said “My long struggle for peace has failed”. Many have suggested that this book concerning the Australian Icon, (more of a legend) the ‘Owen Gun’ be to commemorate the 70 years since the commencement of World War Two as the book is in fact a book totally concerned with the involvement and survival of Australia during that epic event. However, those sort of sales cliches reek of the ‘150 years of Queensland’ campaign, the ‘Australia Remembers’ campaign, which I feel are politicians grants, throwing pennies to the poor, buying votes, and that is definitely not what this book is about. Government publicity campaigns do very little for educating our new generations as to the reality of national survival or any comfort for those who have felt the loss of a missing close family member. This book is not to ease the powerbrokers conscience.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain apprehensively unleashes the Dogs of War. He and other appeasers unknowingly assisted in encouraging the antagonists.
Hopefully, through its many chronicles concerning people who sacrificed their lives, their time on this planet, to rise above the power brokers squabbles, to forge a future for the Australian people, it might inspire the younger generations and generations yet to be born to struggle for right against what seems unbeatable power as did these heros at a time when Politicians and Generals ego’s were more significant than thousands of Australian lives.
Naturally he wants a real one just like his Dads. Its a human thing.
The World War did not begin in 1939 and end in 1945, the world was at war when the world began and will be at war when the world ends. Some say incorrectly ‘that the seeds of the Second World War began in the First World War’. That is wrong because it is all the one war, just broken up with periods of a truce in some places, while the continuation of war is happening in another place on this sorry planet. Ask a Chinese historian he will tell you that the Second World War began in 1931 and ended in 1948. Ask a Vietnamese historian, he will tell you that the war began in 1940 and ended when America pulled out of Vietnam. Ask a Polish historian and he will tell you the war began in 1939 and ended in 1990 when the USSR disintegrated. War is a term relative in degrees of misery to the individual perception of those who suffered in it. In reality we have recesses of truce between campaigns. We might have a perceived peace in Australia but we are involved in many wars in other countries Stratagem, dictates that it is far better to fight in other peoples backyards than your own. Stratagem, dictates that it is far better to get other countries young men fighting your war, than using your own. It is all war and it has never stopped. Every country, in one way or another partake in it, on one side or another, openly or in secret, even by ignoring it, in the same way as the Chamberlain Peace Appeasers it actually encouraged wars by giving confidence to the antagonists. Peace is a perception that your war is not in your area, but it never really stops. Resources, money, material and land are only obtained by the people who control the best science, and all science is really military science. As all science can be used in a military capacity, even the science of retaining and teaching it, the best at it, will prevail in their time, until someone else becomes superior in its use. So this book is concerned with Military Science, the people who used it and the people that they used it against. If this book commemorates anything, I hope it memorializes the little people resistance to the petty bureaucracy of world power players. It has been a world struggle since the earth began. The struggles of those people who used their inventive genius to create, and produce an advanced article of Military science in spite of the countries enemies and worse still in spite of their own military leaders is truly an epic legend. The catalyst that precipitates the explosion of human invention is sadly mans inhumanity to man, of which the human race both benefits and suffers under.
This small part of the whole story concerns the reasons of why the Australian High Command were in so much of a hurry to pack up the Owen Gun Project and have it out of the way before any Official Investigation, or Post War Commissions could cause any further embarrassment to their careers and pensions.
The following is a short summary of the trials, and success of the Owen Gun as listed by Gerald Wardell from his paper THE OWEN GUN – AN ANALYSIS OF EVENTS .
The Lysaught Chief Design Engineeer Gerald S Wardell with one of the .45 Owen Guns before it was blued.
(G.S. Wardell, Chief Engineer, Lysaght’s Works Pty Ltd., Port Kembla, January 1939 to 1965.)
THE OWEN AS A SUB-MACHINE GUN
Following the velocity trials at Maribyrnong on the 4th September, Lysaght’s decided to switch to 9 mm, and with the Minister’s consent, commenced design. Three guns were completed for the public trials already ordered by the Minister for the 29th September 1941, at which the Press and Movietone were to be present.
TRIALS ON 29th SEPTEMBER 1941 AT RANDWICK
The Thompson, the Sten Mk I and the Owen were subject to extensive tests, including being buried in mud and showered with sand. The Thompson and the Sten failed completely in the mud and sand tests; the Owen passed all tests without fault.
USERS TRIALS’ RANDWICK
These followed the 29th September trials and involved 2,700 rounds of constant firing. Rather than being a proven and reliable weapon as claimed by the Army, the Sten broke down three times with premature explosions, necessitating repairs, and the fourth explosion at only 803 rounds so damaged the gun that it was out of the trials. The Thompson and Owen both performed satisfactorily.
TRIALS ON 22nd DECEMBER 1941 AT RANDWICK
These trials – a repeat of the 29th September trials – were at the request of the Trade Commissioner for Canada, for a sound-track film. In these trials a Sten Mk II and a German paratroop gun were tested against the Thompson and the Owen. The results were the same as before; the Owen was the only gun to pass in the mud and sand tests as well as all the other tests.
One of the many trials that they put the Owen Gun through, trying to find something wrong to either slow it down or kill the project. Every time the Owen Gun came up tops.
TRIALS IN MELBOURNE DURING JUNE 1942 BY THE M.G.O’s (Master General of Ordnance) BRANCH
These were extensive trials, to 10,000 rounds, in which the Austen was included for the first time. As expected, the Austen failed the mud test; it also had a number of mechanical failures, requiring repairs before continuing, the most serious being the failure of the trigger/sear spring, which resulted (as reported from England earlier) in the gun running on until the magazine was empty. The Chief Inspector of Small Arms in charge of these tests reported that the Austen was satisfactory in both the endurance and mud tests, as the latter test was “extreme”. The Owen operated without fault throughout, the only failure at 8,500 rounds being the tip breaking off the cocking handle pin, so that the gun could not be stripped fully, but it continued firing for the rest of the day, and would have continued to operate even longer, without repair. The Chief Inspector, however, reported that the Owen “did not live up to the claims made for it”:
AMERICAN ARMY IN AUSTRALIA
As a result of a close examination of all types, the U.S. Army in Australia decided that the Owen was the best sub-machine gun they had found, and placed an order with the Australian Army for 60,000 Owens Guns; this order never got past the O.P.D. (Ordnance Production Directorate)The order would have earned Australia over one million U.S. dollars, a currency much needed in 1943.
BRITAIN, DECEMBER 1943
The Ordnance Board of Britain conducted tests on six types of sub-machine gun; the Owen was rated first in four tests out of five, and the first in overall merit. In short, the Owen was the best sub-machine gun to come out of World War II, and the only gun which could be relied on to fire under bad conditions. End Quote.
TESTED AND FOUND THE BEST IN THE WORLD.
So the Australian High Command finally has to realise that even in the face of four year campaign of organised obstructions and sabotage that it had conducted to insure that the Owen Gun was not accepted in the Australian Defence service and not produced at all. Against all of that obstruction and sabotage, the Owen Gun Project from Port Kembla had produced the most advanced sub machine gun of the age. They produced and equipped some of the Australian Forces. Why did the Government at this time decide to close the project down?
When at the same time the British Government were still producing 20,000 Sten Guns per week (two million in total) a firearm that was much inferior to the Owen Gun?
During February and March 1943, the Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Forces, General Blamey, appears to have decided that further guns were to be ordered, and the question arose as to the type of gun to be selected.
At this stage it is desirable to re-capitulate the orders that had been received by Lysaght’s the manufacturers of the Owen Guns. These, with order numbers and dates, are as follow:
16.6.41 MON233 100 Owen Guns
30.10.41 MON795 2 “ “
20.11.41 MON834 2000 ” “
3.3.42 MON1143 17900 ” “
6.10.42 MON2134 10000 “ “
26.10.42 MON2207 2 “ ” (Mark II)
13.11.42 MON2262 8 “ “ (Navy)
7.1.43 MON2466 250 “ “ (Navy)
16.2.43 MON2606 200 “ ” (Mark II)
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TOTAL 30462
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Continued Next page Click Here
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