Owen Gun Project, Did it Sink with the Centaur? Part 6
Will we ever know if the Owen Gun Project sank with the Centaur?
In 1943 the oceans and seas off Australia were a war zone the Battle for Australia and the South Pacific was in full fight. As the Centaur sailed up the coast of New South Wales towards Queensland the Centaur passed close to the last resting places of the Kalingo, the Lydia M Childs, the Wollongbar, the Fingal and the Limerick. These merchant ships had been sunk, a with great loss of life, by Japanese submarines between 18 January and 29 April 1943. There could be no doubt of the intensity of enemy activity in the sea lanes by which the Centaur was making her way north. The men who sent her knew that Japanese Submarines were operating, basically unopposed in this strategically important area. The Australian High Command were sending men and supplies to New Guinea, Port Moresby and they never had enough Armed Navy ships to escort them. So the Australian Hospital Ship was sent defenceless into a sea of trouble. Its immunity was supposed to be under the Hague Conventions of 1907, a treaty that the Japanese never signed and only verbally agreed that it would abide by. Under the Hague Convention the articles specially prohibited the carrying of soldiers or arms. In World War One the Germans sunk many Allied Hospital ships on the basis that they were carrying arms. The British denied, (it but not too strongly) that was also the reason given by the Germans that they sunk the Lusitania, as it was carrying arms the British have always had a problem trying to prove that they didn’t.
At 4 am on 14 May 1943 the brightly lit Army Hospital Ship Centaur was torpedoed and sunk off Stradbroke Island. In this despicable act, 268 lives were lost, with the Centaur, more than from any other Japanese torpedo attack in Australian waters during the war. (or more, as there is still controversy as to the numbers on board and the number of survivors and who they were)
William Blake said, “A Truth told with false intent, beats all the lies man can invent”.
General Macarthur: said in his press statement.
“I cannot express the revulsion I feel at this unnecessary act of cruelty. Its limitless savagery represents the continuation of a calculated attempt to create a sense of trepidation through the practice of horrors designed to shock normal sensibilities.
The brutal excesses of the Philippines campaign, the execution of our captured airmen, the barbarity of Papua, are all of a pattern. The enemy does not understand – he apparently cannot understand – that our invincible strength is not so much of the body, as it is of the soul, and rises with adversity.
The Red Cross will not falter under this foul blow. Its light of mercy will but shine the brighter on our way to inevitable victory.”
Stirring words, but what was it about the Centaur that he could not say, His telegrams say that there is a big secret to be kept that concerned the sinking, what was it? If some thing is not the whole truth, is it a lie and if the Centaur was carrying guns, ammunition and soldiers then the ones that ordered this to occur had committed the War Crimes, not the Japanese Submarine Captain.
If this is so the Australian The High Command would have ordered non- combatants to go un protected, and unknowing that they were legitimate targets. The Germans, Italians and Japanese were tried for War Crimes after the war. Crimes against the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention, even though the Japanese never signed either documents but Australia did. Why did the Australians High Command miss out on being charged for War Crimes as they in more than one instance sent there own innocents unprotected to their deaths. Is that not worse than sending the enemy to their deaths.
Those that knew the guns and ammunition was on board and there is little doubt that the Army Service Corps were classified as soldiers and not as ‘medical personal’, murdered those nurses and medical staff just as certainly, and as criminally as the Japanese soldiers that hacked the heads off Australian servicemen.
In Australia there was no proper investigation just a flurry of teleprinted (telegrams) messages ordering everyone to keep it a secret. The Centaur case file was closed on 14th December 1948 without any serious investigation or charges laid even against the Japanese Submarine Captain.
Was the Centaur in breach of the Hague Conventions?
Article 8 The Protection due to Hospital Ships and Infirmaries of vessels ceases if they are used to commit acts detrimental to the enemy.
That is a very broad statement.
This theory stems from the various rumours spreading after Centaur’s sinking. If Centaur had been in breach of the Hague Convention of 1907, and someone had informed the Japanese of this, I-177 may have been under valid orders to attack. When Centaur left Sydney, her decks were packed with green-uniformed men, and as Field Ambulance uniforms were only distinguishable from other Army uniforms by badge insignia and the colouration of the cloth band ringing the hat, a distant observer could have concluded that the hospital ship was transporting soldiers. The Australian Army Service Corps were soldiers. Those witnessing the loading in Sydney would have seen the ambulance drivers bring their weapons aboard, and could have come to a similar conclusion. Those same witnesses could have seen ammunition being loaded. As soon as a crane is used to take goods from the dock to the holds the information as to what it was, would be very public. If a spy or informant had passed this information to the Japanese, I-177 could have been lying in wait. The main flaw in this theory is the question of how Nakagawa and his crew were able to predict that Centaur was taking an alternate route and how they were able to determine the new route selected. Except for the information that the Japanese as well as capable of launching midget submarines also used a Sea Plane for observation, which was capable of flying over and covering large areas. The Sea Plane then docked in with the submarine was re-fuelled and then sent out again until it would rendezvous again with the submarine for re-fuelling. The information on the course of an un armed, un escorted without any convoy protection would have been easy pickings and music to a Japanese Submarine Captains ears. As soon as spy, who had radio communication, gave the story that one hospital ship was seen loading arms and soldiers. Any Australian hospital ship would have been a fair target.
Similar but later rumours included that during her first voyage, Centaur had transported soldiers to New Guinea, or Japanese prisoners of war back to Australia for interrogation, and consequently had been marked as a legitimate target by the Japanese. Centaur had carried 10 prisoners of war on her return voyage from New Guinea, but they were all wounded personnel; transporting them on a hospital ship was lawful by the Conventions.
The captain of the Centaur, G. H. Murray, of Aberdeen, was among the missing and used his words carefully when asked if Munitions were on boerd.
You will notice he did not say Hague Conventions as the Geneva Conventions was nothing to do with Hospital Ships it mainly concerned Prisoners of War.
Again discussion is supporting the Geneva Conventions again nothing about the Hague Convention which was the law of the matter.
As you can see the Commission kept most people talking about the markings on the ship and if they can remember if the lights had been left on before the ship sank.
Most of the statements note that there was two explosions prior to the ship sinking, which would indicate that something on board had exploded after the torpedo had exploded when it hit the side of the ship. The Commission tries to lead the witnesses into saying that the medical ether in the First Aid kits could have caused this secondary explosion but Davidsons evidence states that the ships hull plates were blown outwards from inside to outside. Something substantial must have caused this and it was not explained in anyway by the Commission in fact it was not commented on by the Commission nor was any other witnesses called to give evidence to refute or support it. They just ignored it.
In the paragraph cut out above you can see that someone had marked the margin just where the transcript evidence had recoded that statement. Maybe they were contemplating editing it out of the record or maybe they were interested in asking more questions on the matter. All we know was the silence was deafening. When the shipwreck is found it would be possible to identify the cause of this internal explosion. The questions on why two explosions instead of one, could also be answered but funnily enough there does seem to be a reluctance to find it. They can find the Bismark and the Titanic in the middle of the Atlantic miles deep but the greatest shipping disaster in Australian waters has been to difficult for the Australian and State Governments.
The ship is yet to be discovered: claims of discovery were made in 1995, but the wreck was later claimed to be another ship but does the Government want to find it?
In 1995, it was announced that the shipwreck of Centaur had been located in waters 9 nautical miles (17 km) from the lighthouse on Moreton Island, a significant distance from her believed last position. The finding was reported on A Current Affair, during which footage of the shipwreck, 170 metres (560 ft) underwater, was shown. Discoverer Donald Dennis claimed the identity of the shipwreck had been confirmed by the Navy, the Queensland Maritime Museum, and the Australian War Memorial. A cursory search by the Navy confirmed that there was a shipwreck at the given location, which was gazetted as a war grave and added to navigation charts by the Australian Hydrographic Office.
The government accepted the false discovery of a wreck near Moreton as the Centaur in 1995. During this time, two wreck divers, Captain Trevor Jackson and Simon Mitchell, used the location for a four hour world record dive on 14 May 2002, during which they examined the wreck and took measurements, claiming that the ship was too small to be Centaur. Jackson had been studying Centaur for some time, and believed that the wreck was actually another, much smaller ship, the 55-metre (180 ft) long MV Kyogle, a lime freighter purchased by the Royal Australian Air Force and sunk during bombing practice on 12 May 1951. The facts gathered on the dive were inconclusive, but the divers remained adamant it was not Centaur, and passed this information onto Nick Greenaway, producer of the news magazine show 60 Minutes. The wreck reported by Don Dennis as the Centaur is now claimed by the Australian Government, to be the SS Kyogle, a ship which was used by the RAAF for target practice in the 1950’s.
Does the Government not want to find the Centaur? Would they still be embarrassed if we found out what was in it? As there seems further controversy and differing stories.
After World War II, several searches of the waters around North Stradbroke and Moreton Islands failed to reveal Centaur’s location. The story released to the media was, ‘that she had sunk off the edge of the continental shelf, to a depth the Royal Australian Navy did not, and still does not, have the capability to search for a vessel of Centaur’s size.”
However they had a certain fix on its location due to the distance from the Second Officer Rippon’s calculation of the point of sinking, last reported position: 27′ 17′ S, 153′58′ E, about 50 miles east northeast of Brisbane. Maritime historian, Mr Foley believes the Centaur lies within 1800m of the location reported by navigator Gordon Rippon, who took the Centaur’s bearings shortly before the hospital ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine at 4.10am on May 14. Mr Rippon, who survived the sinking, was interviewed as part of Foley’s book on the subject. (Co- Author of ‘ Centaur, the Myth of Immunity’ )
“The man was very clear in his thoughts and went on to become head of the Blue Funnel Line navigation school. This guy was obviously no slouch when it came to navigation,” he said.
But that location – about 23 nautical miles east-north-east of Point Lookout – would contradict many eyewitness accounts of Sunshine Coast residents who claim an explosion was visible much closer to Cape Moreton. There are memorials at Point Danger and Caloundra. They were both erected in the belief that the Centaur had sunk off the coastline near the memorials.
On the 60th anniversary of the sinking, 60 Minutes ran a story demonstrating that the wreck was not Centaur. It was revealed that nobody at the Queensland Maritime Museum had yet seen Dennis’ footage, and when it was shown to Museum president Rod McLeod and maritime historian John Foley, they stated that the shipwreck could not be Centaur, as the rudder was incorrectly shaped. Following this story, and others published around the same time in newspapers, the Navy sent three ships to inspect the site over a two month period; HMA Ships Hawkesbury, Melville, and Yarra, before concluding that the shipwreck was incorrectly identified as Centaur.
On 29 June 2003, the Royal Australian Navy announced that investigations by five RAN ships over the previous three months had proven conclusively that the wreckage in 174 metres of water off Moreton Island was not the Centaur. The use of video and sonar images of the wreck by RAN mine-hunters HMAS Yarra, HMAS Hawkesbury and hydrographic ship HMAS Melville showed that the wreck’s hull was only 55 metres long, much shorter than Centaur which was 96 metres long.
An amendment was made to the gazettal, and the Hydrographic Office began to remove the mark from charts. A further report stated, that local divers said, “That the RAN had located the wreck of the Centaur in 1,500 metres of water off Point Lookout on North Stradbroke Island using side scan sonar. They did this search after their other search off Moreton Island but they did not bother to send a submersible down to the wreck to confirm it.
In April 2008, following the successful discovery of HMAS Sydney, several parties began calling for a dedicated search for Centaur. By the end of 2008, the Australian Federal and Queensland State governments had formed a joint committee and contributed $2 million each towards a search, and by February 2009, the tender for the project had received eleven expressions of interest.
In a news report Captain Bruce Kafer, chief hydrographer for the Royal Australian Navy said that the Navy and the media had been carried away by the 1995 claims by Don Dennis of Melbourne, that he had located the Centaur. Captain Kafer claimed that the Navy still did not know where the real location of the Centaur was located.
Yet when the government wanted to find shipping containers which had Ammonium Nitrate they were found and confirmed in a few weeks. So why wait for 65 years to find the Centaur.
The media release went like this.
On March 26, 2009 ,The navy has confirmed the location of 24 of the 31 containers lost from the Pacific Adventurer during Cyclone Hamish.
HMAS Yarra is equipped with sonar technology and will start its search today near the scene of the accident off the northern tip of Moreton Island.
The ship lost 31 containers of ammonium nitrate fertiliser overboard, which ruptured its oil tanks and caused the leakage of 250 tonnes of fuel oil off Moreton Island, near Brisbane.
The containers were identified by the navy’s mine disposal vehicle on the seabed not far from where the containers were reported lost on March 11.
Commander Dean Schopen, commander of the Australian Mine Warfare and Clearance Diving Task Group, said video footage showed 24 containers were lying on the seabed in groups of twos and threes and in varying condition.
The navy believes it may have located most of the containers of fertiliser lost from a cargo ship off southeast Queensland.
“Progress is slow, but (the commanding officer of HMAS Yarra) has identified 21 contacts that … meet the dimensional features we are looking for with regards to these containers,” Navy Commander Dean Schopen said, “Southeasterly winds and strong currents have delayed the launch of remote-controlled search vehicles that operate on the ocean floor at a depth of up to 200 metres. They use low-light television cameras and sonar to identify objects and transmit images back to the search vessel.”
So in the same area of the world within a matter of weeks, in the same bay they can find a 20 foot container that has fallen off the deck of a Container ship but in 65 years, cannot locate and identify a 320 foot long ship. The Premier of Queensland Anna Bligh has stated that as soon as it is found she will declare it a war grave to prevent any further investigation by divers or remote control submersibles. When the Navy is told to find the Centaur, when it finds the Centaur as we know they should, will it tell the truth? Will it say what was in it, will it say that the plates were blown outwards from an internal explosion?
Will this tell us why the Owen Gun Project was cancelled packed up and sent to Lithgow, will this explain why 60,000 Owen guns were never made for the U.S Forces and why Evelyn Owen never received the five shillings each per Owen Gun for guns that should have been made? Before the project sunk with the Centaur.
All to cover up the ‘shiney backsides’ of the High Command that sent a defenceless ship to a watery grave because they wanted to stack Owen Guns and Ammunition below its decks.
Owen Gun Goes to Sea? Part 5
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
Why Did the Submarine Captain want to Sink an Empty Ship?
The later official Japanese War history published in 1979 admits ‘The Centaur had been hit by a torpedo fired from Submarine 1-177 commanded by Lieutenant Commander Nakagawa. The sinking seems to have been Nakagawa’s decision as commander and not the result of any official policy. Later in the Indian Ocean Nakagawa fired on the survivors from a British merchantman. For this, and other incidents, he was tried as a B Class war criminal and spent four years in prison. At the War Crime trials the sinking of the Centaur was not raised in evidence against him.
Submarine Captain Nakagwa,he does not look like a happy chappy. Did he know that the Centaur was not an empty Hospital Ship?
Why? Was the Centaur Sinking not raised at his trial?
“At his trial the sinking of the Centaur was not raised.” This is unbelievable, even if the Australian Government did not have enough evidence to get a conviction one would think that as he had been captured and on trial under oath and the prosecution fully aware of the complete movements of Lieutenant Nakagawa and the Submarine 1-177 that they would try to get collaborative evidence of his Criminality and use the sinking of the Centaur against him. Why have an official ‘War Crimes’ inquiry in Melbourne in 1944 with a finding that the sinking was in breach of the Hague Conventions then not mention this sinking of a Hospital Ship when he is brought to trial. Fellow officers praised Nakagawa as a professional sailor who would never knowingly have attacked a protected hospital ship. Nakagawa himself has never commented on the event. It is worth mentioning that eight months previously Japanese surface ships had trained their searchlights on the hospital ship Manunda at Milne Bay. The Manunda was similarly marked and illuminated to the Centaur and she was not fired on.
What was the difference between the Manunda and the Centaur both were marked in the same way as the Centaur. Was the Centaur a recognised target?
Some Parts of the Ship was Found Only to Be Lost Again! Twice?
Sergeant Chris Bond (later WOII with BCOF and in Korea) was a hygeine inspector with the Australian Army Hygeine Service and was based on Moreton Island. His major role was in malaria prevention by finding breeding grounds of the Anopheles mosquito.
Jim Bond, son of Sergeant Chris Bond. Relates the story and supplies a photograph.
A capable horseman with experience pre-war in the 5th Light Horse, he was issued with a horse and from his base at Cowan. He covered all the area of Moreton Island on a week long patrol.
He related to his family that some days after the “Centaur” was sunk part of the name-board of the “Centaur” was washed up on the shore of Moreton Island. He recovered it and handed it in to the unit office at Cowan.
Sgt Chris Bond with the Ships name Board. Found on the Beach.
Some weeks later he went to the carpenters shop to get timber to repair a sullage pit and the name-board was on the woodheap. He was told that he could use it.
My father wrapped the name-board in hessian and on his next leave pass to the mainland, brought the name-board to our home in Brisbane. Here it was hidden away.
After the war the Australian Red Cross held a “Centaur” Fair at the Kelvin Grove Army barracks and here my father handed over the name-board for proper recognition.
His son Jim Bond asks. ‘Where it is now I do not know but with May 14 on our doorstep it would be fitting that the name-board could feature in remembrance services on that day.’
The Army of course has lost it again, one would wonder why they want to lose absolutely everything to do with the Centaur? Accept the publicity campaign of its sinking.
However it proves conclusively that wreckage from the Centaur was washed up on Queenslands beaches which supports further information yet to be given.
What’s the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur got to do with the Owen Gun, or the Owen Gun project? I can hear the readers asking.
During the research for this book which is somewhat a team effort, we have been very busy taking photographs of Owen Guns of all models, shapes and sizes in collections and museums Australia wide. I happened to take a several hundred photographs of an Owen Gun Mk1. It had an all over corrosive patina where heavy corrosion had removed the original external surface. Inside all surfaces were perfect.
Almost unfired, deep, unworn rifling, though a little dirt on the oil.
The barrel was perfect, the trigger pack still showed the remains of the packing grease. The bolt was almost brand new showing some of the original flame browned finish. The magazine externally was corroded and in two small places it was nearly all the way through the metal. Inside the magazine was as clean as a whistle and the magazine spring had not been touched by the rust.
The Owen gun with the Salt Water Finnish.
As I began to photograph it, my mind remembered that there were rumours of Owen Guns being dumped at sea by the Australian Stores in the early 1970s and there were stories that Owen Guns had been found in Trawler nets off the coast from Bribie Island, Queensland. Some years ago I was shown some sub sections of Owen Guns, very corroded, totally inert that the fishermen said they had found in there trawler nets off the coast of Redcliffe.
I had also read stories of Owen Guns being dumped in the Hume Weir as the Army was disposing them from the strategic reserve in the early 1970s. This raised a few questions as they would have been dumping used or old guns, not new guns, this bothered me as the one corroded one I photographed was not a firearm that had been in service from the early 1940s until the late 1960s, that’s twenty years of military hard work. Why would they throw this one overboard? It must have been brand new when it hit the water?
What stories could it tell if it could speak, Where did it go between Port Kembla and Bribie Island?
I mentioned this particular Owen Gun to a friend of mine, during a telephone conversation to Mr Ian Skennerton, the author of ‘100 years of Australian Service Machine Guns’, ‘The Lee Enfield’ and many more books on Military firearms. Ian asked if this one had the additional safety catch fitted to the rear of the receiver? This modification was carried out during the FTR (Factory Thorough Repair) programme in the late 1940s to all Owen Guns in service at that time. So we both concluded that this one had gone into the ‘briny’ prior to the modification and many years before they were being taken out of service and disposed in the 1970s and 80s. He then asked if it had the Butt with it and I answered in the negative. He then said, “Well it must be one of the Owen Guns that came off the ‘Centaur’. I said, “well that would explain the regular stories of trawlers pulling Owen Guns and parts of Owen Guns out their fishing nets off the shores at Redcliffe as the Centaur was sunk in that area in 1943.”
Treasure on the Beach
He then told me about his father in law Ron Dawson who lived in Caloundra, who had found cases of Owen Guns that had been washed up on Bribie Island beaches a few days after the ‘Centaur’ was sunk. Ron Dawson knowing that Ian was a Military Firearm enthusiast/writer had related this to him in the late 1980s when Ian was researching his book that was printed in 1989 the ‘100 years of Australian Service Machine Guns. I then queried (I’m known for always being a doubting Thomas) but if they were in cases they would have been in the hold and would still be there. “No” said Ian, “The Centaur was blown open as it was a huge torpedo and the Hospital Ship was only just over 300 ft long, it broke in half and sunk straight away.” I replied with, “Well the wooden cases would be sealed and hold air. They would float like a boat even if they did not float above the surface they would float below the surface and could quite possibly be washed up on the coast.” If the wooden cases had some salt water in them that would explain why this exhibit is only corroded on the outer surface when they are new and packed at the factory. They are solidly packed with thick grease which needs an armoury de-greasing process before they are issued. I have Owen Gun magazines which are solidly packed in stiff brown grease. Maybe as grease floats on water, the grease in the cases would provide more displacement and this would assist the flotation of the cases. (That might be clutching at straws)
Another view of the nautical Owen Gun
So this inspired me to investigate the sinking of the AHS Centaur and ask the question, why would a Captain of a Japanese Submarine who only had 8 Torpedoes when he left Japan five thousand miles away, waste one of them on what he would consider an empty hospital ship that was lit up like a Christmas Tree. Why would he not wait for a large ship heavily ladened with supplies or soldiers on route to fight his countrymen in New Guinea? The simple answer to that is that any experienced Submariner never mind a ‘Commodore’ would be able to look through the periscope at 1500 metres and immediately know by its displacement and how high it is from the water mark (Plimsoll line) if it was loaded or not. As soon as he established that it was supposed to be an empty Hospital Ship travelling to New Guinea to pick up a cargo of sick and wounded Australian soldiers. Yet in reality he was looking at a ship that was fully loaded and low in the water with cargo. He knew then he could morally and legally sink it. He would consider it was his duty to sink it. The Ship was lit up like a Christmas tree and with a full moon that night he could not have been mistaken about the Centaurs Hospital ship condition, either way he would have known, was it a fully loaded hospital ship with guns and men or was it unloaded empty hospital ship. If it was an empty ship he would not have wasted a torpedo, he would have waited for the next one coming and there was no shortage.
The optics in the periscope would have been the best that the world could produce at that time, on a moon-lit night with the ship itself flood lit, it cold not have been a mistake.
Japanese ships did not have any radar, so they compensated the best way they could by paying more attention to the optical ability. The Japanese optical industry improved and was superior to all others due to this lack of radar, and the Japanese optical industry in binoculars, telescopic rifle scopes, and cameras succeeded against all competitors after World War Two aiding in its post war recovery due to the necessity of producing advanced optics.
After some preliminary research I found my way back to Ian Skennerton’s, 100 years of Australian Service Machine Guns. I say found my way back to it as I have had a copy for ten years or more and would have read it the first time in the early 1990s. On my second read as there was now much more purpose to it, I found something I had at first overlooked. At the bottom paragraph of page 67, Ian states,
“Owen’s generally replaced the Thompson’s in New Guinea from December 1942 and quantities of Austen’s were also shipped. Reports of disfavour with the Austen were forthcoming from combat areas soon after and a certain amount of manipulation by the Army management. As high as the top command and General Blamey, in favour of the Austen becomes apparent on researching Secret Army telexes and communications. Another interesting note in these secret orders is that the (on page 69) “Centaur” was carrying Owen Guns and 9mm ammunition from the east coast ports to New Guinea in late 1942. It was commissioned as a hospital ship early in 1943 and then sunk by a Japanese submarine off Cape Moreton on the 14th of May the same year. The controversy on whether she was running guns under the cover of Red Cross status is still a topic of discussion.”
Was there two Ships called the “Centaur“
Both operating from the eastern ports of Australia in 1943.
After reading this I realised that Ian must have forgotten more of this story during the last twenty years since he researched and wrote this so I phoned him again and reminded him of the paragraph and asked him what was in these secret orders that let him know that the “Centaur” was carrying Owen Guns. That must have done the memory trick as immediately he said, “Oh the telex”. “What telex .” “You didn’t mention a telex the other day.” “I must have forgot.” Ian said. “I found it when I was doing that research, I have a copy of it still, I will find it.” “No problem”, I said “but what did it say?” Oh, it said, ‘SS Centaur to proceed to Port Kembla to load Owen Guns 7th May 1943, sail same day to Sydney to load 9mm Ammunition. Depart Sydney 12th May 1943 dated April 1943″. I said, “well that’s it” “that clinches it”. Then Ian pointed out that the Teleprinter had ‘SS Centaur’ and not “AHS Centaur”, ‘but there is hardly likely that there are two with the same name and the prefix to the name would have only changed a month before the Telex was sent’. ‘Yes’ It would have been embarrassing for the writer to put AHS standing for Australian Hospital Ship and then order it to be loaded with Owen Guns and ammo. Maybe he wanted to leave himself a way out, or it would draw a lot less attention with SS, (Steam Ship) ‘Centaur’, instead of Hospital Ship. Ian promised to find the telex when he gets back from his next overseas trip. (That will then be added to this article. )
Many other besides me have wondered if the Port Kembla ” Iron Stone” is a code name for Owen Guns”.
Why Were They So Quick to Close The Owen Gun Project?
Going back to April 1943, the Australian High Command could have found themselves in the middle of another political minefield. In April the Prime Minister, Mr. John Curtin, ” expressed great concern and said that the matter would be decided by the War Cabinet at a meeting in the next few days. Then on the facts, Cabinet reversed the decision and acknowledged the Owen Gun as the standard submachine gun for the Australian Forces. Then Two further orders, each for five thousand (5,000) guns, were later placed with Lysaght’s but that was in April, but by May they had to spend money in a huge war propaganda campaign to paint the Japanese as demons for sinking the ‘Centaur’. That would all have been for nothing as their bodies and their careers would have been hung out to dry if it had come out that the Centaur was loaded with Owen Guns and 9 mm ammunition. Was that the reason that Lysaght’s received no more orders after May 1943. Was the Centaur the reason the Owen Gun project was cancelled? Was that the reason why thousands of Australian troops had to make do with inferior products or none at all.
All that was in front of the Australian High Command. They did not know anything about an atomic bomb, no one did. The Australian’s were still fighting the Japs in New Guinea in 1943. In 1943 there was fear about yesterday, fear about today and fear about tomorrow. Nothing was certain and everyone knew the war had a long way to run, before our lads got to Tokyo. The Americans had ordered 60,000 Owen Guns just for its Pacific forces. The Canadians had tested the Owen Gun and found it the best in all tested. The British that were still making 20,000 Sten Guns per week in one factory at Fazakerley in Lancashire and carried on making them until September 1945 making over two million in total. The British had tested all types and the Owen Gun had come out the best in all classes of tests.
Why did they continue to make an inferior product in vast quantities when by 1943 they had established that the Owen Gun was the best? Who put them off from accepting the Owen Gun?
Was it that the John Lysaght factory, which was only a hundred yards from the dock, that had the ability of loading its Owen Guns directly onto the ships that took them to the battlefield had to be packed up, and closed to prevent any uncontrolled investigation into the Centaur sinking?
To stop ordering the most sort after sub machine gun of World War Two in May 1943 when even in January 1945 the three Allied Powers Russia, USA and Great Britain were convinced that the war would not end until 1946 or 1947 and that they would have to accept a million Allied Casualties in the invasion of the Japan main islands and that invasion would take at least a year.
Yet the Australian High Command stopped ordering in May 1943 and had the factory closed up by September 1944?
Owen Gun goes to Sea Part 4 ?
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
Stain Glass Window to commemorate those who lost their lives in the sinking of the Centaur.
Following Japan’s entry into World War II, it became clear that the three hospital ships currently serving Australia—Manunda, Wanganella, and Oranje—would not be able to operate in the shallow waters typical of Maritime South East Asia, so a new hospital ship would be required. Of the Australian Merchant Navy vessels able to operate in this region, none were suitable for conversion to a hospital ship, and a request to the British Ministry of Shipping placed Centaur at the disposal of the Australian military on 4 January 1943. The conversion work began on 9 January and Centaur was commissioned as an Australian Hospital Ship on 1st March. Data on the ship’s identifying markings and the layout of features such as funnel and masts was provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross during the first week of February 1943, who passed this on to the Japanese on 5th of February. This information was also circulated and promoted by the press and media.
The Centaur pre her Hospital ship refit.
At the beginning of 1943, Centaur was placed at the disposal of the Australian Department of Defence for conversion to a hospital ship. The conversion was performed by United Ship Services in Melbourne. During her conversion, Centaur was painted with the markings of a hospital ship as detailed in Article 5 of the 10th section of the Hague Convention of 1907; white hull with a green band interspersed by three red crosses on each flank of the hull, white superstructure, multiple large red crosses positioned so that the ship’s status would be visible from both sea and air, and the identification number 47 on her bows. At night, the markings were illuminated by a combination of internal and external lights.
The early stages of Centaur’s first voyage as a hospital ship were test and transport runs; the initial run from Melbourne to Sydney resulted in the Master, Chief Engineer, and Chief Medical Officer composing a long list of defects requiring attention. It is reported that, to maintain the ship’s mean draught of 6.1 metres (20 ft), 900 kilograms (2,000 lb) of ironstone were distributed through the cargo holds as ballast. The ship was diverted to Port Kembla to load the ballast. What difference less than a ton of ballast would make to a ship of this size is a very important question and why call in at Port Kembla to only load 2000 pound (900kg) it might change the height in the back of a 4 wheel drive but would not make any difference to a ship of a Gross 2469 tons and over 300 ft long.
The Centaur after her transformation to a Hospital Ship.
Following repairs, she conducted a test run, transporting wounded servicemen from Townsville to Brisbane to ensure that she was capable of fulfilling the role of a medical vessel. Arriving in Sydney on 8 May 1943, Centaur was re-provisioned at Darling Harbour, before departing for Cairns, Queensland on 12 May 1943. From there, her destination was again New Guinea. On board at the time were 74 crew, 8 Army officers, 12 female Army nurses, 45 other Army personnel, 192 soldiers from the 2/12th Field Ambulance, and 1 Torres Strait ship pilot. Most of the female nurses had transferred from the hospital ship Oranje, while the male Army personnel assigned to the ship aboard were all medical staff. During the loading process there was an incident when the ambulance drivers attached to the 2/12th attempted to bring their rifles and personal supplies of ammunition aboard. The story is, that this met with disapproval from Centaur’s Master and Chief Medical Officer, and raised concerns amongst the crew and wharf labourers that Centaur would be transporting military supplies or commandos to New Guinea: the rifles were not allowed onboard until Centaur’s Master received official reassurance that the ambulance drivers were allowed to carry weapons under the Hague Convention (specifically Article 8), as they were used “for the maintenance of order and the defence of the wounded.”
Note para 6 Col English is a survivor. Yet he is missing from the Ships Embarkation list and the ships final list of of survivors. The list gets changed by the Government and every time another 20 men go namelessly missing. What happened to Col English?
Was the attack by the Captain of the Japanese Submarine on the Centaur justified, or was it an inexcusable war crime? The Japanese Army and to a lesser extent the Air Force were known for their disregard of the Conventions and prisoners of war, but the Navy had a much better reputation. If the Centaur had broken the Hague or Geneva Conventions by carrying prohibited personnel or armaments and the Japanese knew about this, then the Centaur was a legitimate war target. If it did not carry those prohibited people or armaments, or if it did but the Japanese did not know about it, then it must be considered a protected vessel. German Submarines sank and attacked many British Hospital Ships in World War One, such as the Britannic and the Olympic (both sister ships of the Titanic). In every instance they blamed the British for using them for carrying soldiers and munitions. To send them unprotected was always a calculated risk for the Government but they did not have to sail in them.
Again Col English is first on the USS Mugford survivor list. Why was he missing on the final list. Why was he missing from the Ships Embarkation list? What happened to the Colonels men?
Was the Centaur carrying forbidden personnel or weapons?
The Centaur was loaded in Sydney on 10 May to sail to Cairns, and then on to Port Moresby in Papua to then bring back wounded from the battles of Buna, Gona and Sanananda. During the War the Japanese would not acknowledge responsibility for the sinking. However, at the time, and since, there have been articles and stories that it was loaded in a way that was in breach of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and which would have made it a legitimate war target.
There was no problem with the new crew of merchant seamen (civilians who had signed up for six months at a time to run the ship), or the medical staff (doctors and orderlies from the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, and nurses from the Australian Army Nursing Service). There was, however, some doubt about the loading of the members of the 2/12th Field Ambulance unit bound for New Guinea. A field ambulance unit’s role was to provide front-line medical support to the fighting troops. They were non-combatants, but ambulance drivers could carry personal weapons to protect their vehicle and the wounded they were carrying in an emergency situation.
These are the two pages which list the 64 survivors. Where is Col English in this list. Where did they lose him??
When this unit arrived at the dock to board, the ambulance drivers were carrying 52 rifles and 2000 rounds of ammunition personal weapons allowed for the protection of their ambulance vehicles. The captain of the ship supposedly questioned the legality of those weapons under the Conventions, but was satisfied that they were acceptable, provided that they were stored in the cargo hold for the trip.
What else was in the cargo hold?
There were many rumours at the time that there were automatic weapons hidden on the ship, that spies could have learned of these ‘breaches’ and contacted Japan. A 1944 War Crimes inquiry did not investigate any breaches by the Centaur of the Hague Conventions with its personnel and cargo, it only took evidence on the sinking by a Japanese Submarine and stated that this was a contravention of the Hague conventions. Over the years survivors have claimed that these breaches were real and factual and that the Australian High Command were fully aware of the chance they were taking with other peoples lives..
An Army file in the Australian Archives contains a report of comments allegedly made by a pro-Japanese Red Cross representative that he knew positively that the Centaur was carrying personnel and equipment in contravention of the Red Cross conventions, and that this was known to the Japanese.
Radiographer Sgt Dick Metcalf helped store weapons aboard the Centaur. Yet now says, these weapons were the .303 rifles of ambulance drivers, permitted under the Convention. He reported that there were 4,000 rounds of ammunition not 2000 for the rifles. Either way 4000 or 2000 its not very much only a couple of cases. Sgt Metcalf would not have known what was stored in the four cargo holds and would only have given evidence on what he personally saw and what firearms his Field Ambulance unit had on board.
Sgt Dick Metcalf said, “There were no Commandos, bombs or Bren guns. ‘Captain Hindmarsh told me to put the rifles in the bottom of number one hold, between the mattresses, to avoid any chance of trouble and that’s where they are to this day. But in wartime rumours are rife.’ When your in the Army, you know the men in your company or unit, you may even know some men in your regiment, but when you embark on board a ship or train, with other troops, you have no way of knowing whose who, or where they are from within a day and a half. Commandos could be crew members or other members of another unit. Even if you asked them, they more than likely would not tell you. It takes time, and Sgt Dick Metcalf would not have had time to investigate in the day and a half between Sydney and when the Ship sank. He made no comment and was not asked what was in the other 3 cargo holds, his unit of 192 men only had 8 tons of equipment on board.
Why between mattresses, one might ask?
In August 1988 a member of the 2/15th Australian Field Company (Engineers) told a magazine reporter that he had helped load ammunition on the Centaur. He said soldiers worked through the night loading the ship ‘almost to the gunnels’ with cases of ammunition, rifles and machine guns.
One of the above claims could be shown to be probably mistaken, but the existence of a secret file concerning the Centaur held in the Australian Archives, not to be opened until 100 years after the sinking, has provided much more fuel for this continued doubt and suspicion. The Archives that are available raise far more questions than they answer, in fact they do not answer any questions. Here are just a few.
Australian Archives
MP 1185/8 Department CA 2456, Navy Office (III) to 1939: CA 38, Navy (II), Navy Office (III): Secret and Confidential Correspondence Files Multiple Number Series, 1923-1950
file: 2026/13/1858 “Sinking of Hospital Ship ‘Centaur’.”
04)Memorandum (ref. 031814) 16 May ‘43 from F. G. Cummins, Secretary, Dept. Navy, Melbourne to Secretary, Defence Dept. – Ref. 031812 report of sinking and rescue by Mugford including list of survivors – a Col. English AAMC is mentioned.
(This supports the story of the extra 20 ‘Commando’s’ or personnel on board as it noticed that the revised figures issued which are short of 20 personnel specifically states that the NON COMBATANTS are 322 and the previous number of ships complement was 352. Why was Col English not on the embarkation list and missing from the list of Survivors. Did they put him back in the water with nineteen other men or was there more unlisted survivors?)
08)Minute Paper 16 May ‘43 Hospital Ship “Centaur”: Additional Report from S.O.(I) (Staff Officer – Intelligence) Brisbane Report. Master chose route of own making rather than the assigned Green Route. (Dept. of Navy 2026/13/1653)
13)Navy message (17 May ‘43 T.O.O. 171811Z) To Admiralty A.C.N.B. from B.A.D. Washington – From First Sea Lord…Chiefs of Staff…are of opinion that every means should be taken to suppress publication of this as a temporary measure. (2) Request you do all you can to prevent publication. (Passed to Com 7th. Fleet). (Dept. of Navy 2026/13/1653)
Every Means To Suppress the Publication of the Circumstances. Why?
Why or what had to be suppressed and prevented from publication? The Chiefs of Staff were hot to keep something very quite.
Owen Gun Goes To Sea ? Part 3
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.
The Sinking.
At approximately 4:10 a.m. on 14 May 1943, while on her second real voyage after completing testing the AHS (Australian Hospital Ship) Centaur was bound from Sydney to Port Moresby, Centaur was torpedoed by an unknown and unsighted submarine. The torpedo struck the portside oil fuel tank approximately two metres below the waterline, creating a hole 8 to 10 metres (26 to 33 ft) across, igniting the fuel, and setting the ship on fire from the bridge aft. Many of those onboard were immediately killed by concussion or burned to death. Centaur quickly took on water through the impact site, rolled to port, then began to sink bow-first in several hundred metres of water, submerging completely in less than three minutes. The rapid sinking prevented the deployment of lifeboats, although two broke off from Centaur as she sank, along with several damaged life rafts.
Map of the approximate sinking, showing where items were washed up on the beaches.
Centaur is recorded to have sunk at a point approximately 24 nautical miles (44 km) east-northeast of Point Lookout, North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. This position was extrapolated from the dead reckoning position calculated at 4:00 a.m. by Second Officer Richard G. Rippon at the end of his watch, and taking into consideration Centaur’s course and estimated speed at the time of the attack.
Seaman Matthew Morris remembers:
I finished the twelve to four watch and I called the four to eight watch to go down, including me mate. And I was just havin’ a cup of tea – and this big explosion, and the ship gave a shudder, and the skylight fell in on us. And I don’t really know how I got out of the mess room … and I’d say there was a dozen steps up to the deck. And I really can’t remember going up them. But then I was washed off the back of the ship and then I realised I was in the water.
At 4.10am, a crewman was watching a school of porpoises that had joined the ship, when he noticed a long thin line of foam heading towards the side of the ship. Seconds later, the torpedo struck the Centaur near the engine room and the main oil bunker tanks.
The bunkers exploded. Men not killed instantly by the first blast were incinerated moments later. Many who survived the blast and the flame were killed by flying wreckage or drowned. Panicked people had to wake, grab their life jackets, and find their way up on to the deck, through bodies, water, wreckage and fire. In three minutes the ship sank.
Japanese Model 95 Torpedo nearly as long as the Centaur was wide. Why would the Captain of the submarine use one of his 8 to sink the Centaur when he could have surfaced and sunk the Hospital Ship with his deck gun.
Once on deck they found that the lifeboats and rafts were damaged or unable to be cut free quickly. Many who made it to the decks could not swim, and drowned. Others were sucked under as the ship sank.
All were now covered in thick oil. Survivors, many with broken limbs, burns or internal injuries, now tried to find wreckage to support them. Some clinging to wreckage were taken by sharks. And, to the horror of the survivors, the submarine now surfaced in the dark.
The Survivors
Sister Ellen Savage was asleep in her bunk when the Centaur collapsed around her, she stated
Merle Morton and myself were awakened by two terrific explosions and practically thrown out of bed …I registered mentally that it was a torpedo explosion … In that instant the ship was in flames … we ran into Colonel Manson, our commanding officer, in full dress even to his cap and ‘Mae West’ life-jacket, who kindly said ‘That’s right girlies, jump for it now.’ The first words I spoke was to say ‘Will I have time to go back for my great-coat?’ as we were only in our pyjamas. He said ‘No’ and with that climbed the deck and jumped and I followed … the ship was commencing to go down. It all happened in three minutes.
The suction of the sinking Centaur dragged Sister Savage down into a whirlpool of moving metal and wood. Here her ribs, nose and palate were broken, her ear drums perforated and she sustained multiple bruising. Then she was propelled to the surface in the middle of an oil slick.
Years later Seaman Morris recalled that the Centaur sank quickly. Morris found himself alone in the water, eyes full of salt and oil. He found a small raft and then spotted his mate, Bobbie Teenie, whom he hauled aboard. In their loneliness and fear he remembers they made a great fuss of each other. As day dawned they spotted a bigger raft on the horizon and pulled over to it as their own was slowly sinking. Sister Savage had also found her way to this bigger raft.
This larger raft was part of the Centaur’s wheel house. The senior surviving officer, Second Officer Rippon, encouraged all those clinging to smaller rafts and debris to make for this so called ’survival island’. Little food and water was available; many, including Sister Savage, were lightly dressed; and medical supplies for the injured were non existent.
So, huddled together, the survivors spent the daylight hours of Friday 14 May. In this crisis individual examples engendered optimism and hope. Seaman Morris led them in vigorous singing of ‘Roll Out The Barrel’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
Captain Salt, a Torres Strait pilot, despite his severe burns, kept assuring everyone that rescue must be on the way. Lieutenant Colonel Outridge and Sister Savage did what they could for the wounded. Sharks circled them and occasionally nosed the rafts.
Sister Ellen Savage GM after her ordeal.
On the raft Seaman Morris was crammed up next to the badly burned Private Walder. Morris recalls Walder’s death:
He’d died next to me and his burns just stuck on my arm … And I said to Sister Savage who was practically opposite me, I said: ‘I think this young chap’s dead’. And she said: ‘Are you sure’. And I said: ‘Well, I’m pretty sure’. As she felt over she said: ‘He’s passed on’. So I took his identification disc off him and his name was John Walder, New South Wales army man. I gave his identification disc to Sister Savage and she said: ‘Will you answer the Rosary?’. And I said: ‘Yes, I’ll do my best’.
She said the Rosary and I answered it and we buried him at sea.
Seaman Martin Pash remembered that the Centaur “just went straight down. There was no noise or anything – a lot of people calling out, the nurses and all … The deck boy brought Sister Savage on. She had a fractured jaw. You wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with her but she suffered very badly. She had broken ribs and [was] bruised and one of the fellas gave her his overcoat to put over her.”
Despite her own injuries, 30-year-old Sister Ellen Savage nursed the wounded and boosted the morale of the others. The other eleven nurses all died. After a day and a half adrift on life rafts, the 64 survivors were spotted by an RAAF Anson and recovered by the destroyer USS Mugford.
Corporal Maurice Peter Thomas (VX64840) a member of the medical staff of AHS Centaur escaped from the sinking ship and managed to locate a piece of planking at Daybreak.
Corporal Thomas and Privates Jones and Private Mc Cosker, and Privates Taylor and three of the ships crew all clambered on this piece of planking. They spent all day on the planking. Between midnight and daybreak the next day (Saturday) they heard the sound of engines about 3/4 mile away. Two emergency flares were lit by some survivors on two rafts. They could not see anything. A crew member of Centaur indicated that it was a submarine engine that they could hear. He instructed the survivors on the rafts to extinguish the flares. The engines stopped soon after this.
Second officer, Mr R. G. Rippon, indicated that he had heard the engines of a surfaced submarine between mid-night and 4 a.m. on 15 May 1943.
This is the sister ship KD7 Kaida Class Number 176 in the same class as the submarine Number 177 that more than likely sunk the Centaur.
Several survivors later claimed to have heard the attacking submarine moving on the surface while they were adrift, and the submarine was seen by Able Seaman J. Cecich and Seamen’s Cook F. Martin indicated that they had also sighted the submarine. Francis Martin, the ships cook who was floating alone on a hatch cover, out of sight from the main cluster of survivors, described the submarine to Naval Intelligence following the survivors’ return to land; his description matched the profile of a KD7 type Kaidai class submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Francis Martin related, “They fell silent, and waited for the expected machine-gunning to start – but the submarine soon submerged.
Then began the second stage of the horrific experience – trying to survive in the ocean until rescue came.” I am sitting, hunched on a Carley float, huddled against a shivering companion.” he said. “What was it?” says a voice. “Bloody Japs, a torpedo,” says someone. Not a bloody hope. God knows how I got out! When dawn breaks there are heavy clouds and we look about. Another Carley float is about 50 yards (50m) away with more figures, so we paddle with broken boards to get together. Someone throws a rope and we tie about 20 feet (6m) apart.
In the daylight, I recognise Nell Savage, the only nurse to survive from the 12 on the ship. Nell is looking after the 15-year-old ship’s cabin boy.
My mate next to me is naked and shivering so I give him my jacket. We’re not cold, just all very shocked. Many are injured and burned, one has large pieces of wood through his arms and Nell says: “Don’t try to take them out, or he might bleed badly.”
So we sit through the day – still thick overcast. We hear planes but all are above the clouds, and finally night falls.
Morning, still overcast, and we realise we have visitors. Sharks – as far down as we can see more and more! One circles each raft and rubs his back on the rope between; no wonder we’ve lost nearly 300 mates.”
The survivors spent 36 hours in the water, using barrels, wreckage, and the two damaged lifeboats for flotation. During this time, they drifted approximately 19.6 nautical miles (36.3 km) north east of Centaur’s calculated point of sinking and spread out over an area of 2 nautical miles (3.7 km). At least four ships and several aircraft were seen by the survivors, but their attention was not attracted.
So quickly had the Centaur sunk that no SOS message was sent. Of the finally claimed 332 who had sailed from Sydney only 64 were found clinging to rafts and debris. The 2/12th Field Ambulance had virtually been wiped out. Sister Savage was the only nurse to survive. For her inspiring example on the raft she was awarded the George Medal.
The initial public reaction to the attack on Centaur was one of outrage, significantly different to that displayed following the loss of Australian warships or merchant vessels. As a hospital ship, the attack was a breach of the tenth section of the Hague Convention of 1907, and as such was a war crime. The Australian Government delivered an official protest to Japan over the incident, but never brought charges against the captain of the submarine, when he was being tried for other war crimes.. The sinking of Centaur drew strong reactions from both Prime Minister Curtin and General Douglas MacArthur.
The Politics and Propaganda.
In the Prime Minister John Curtin address to Parliament he said,
The Prime Minister of Australia at that time John Curtin.
“It is with the deepest regret that the Commonwealth Government has learned of the loss of the Australian hospital ship “Centaur” and I know that the news will come also as a profound shock to the Australian people. The attack which took place within a few miles of the Queensland coast bears all the marks of wantonness and deliberation. Not only will it stir our people into a more acute realisation of the type of enemy against whom we are fighting, but I am confident also that this deed will shock the conscience of the whole civilised world and demonstrate to all who may have had any lingering doubts the unscrupulous and barbarous methods by which the Japanese conduct warfare.
To the next-of-kin of those who are lost the Government and nation extend heartfelt sympathy, which is the deeper since those persons were non-combatants engaged on an errand of mercy, and were by all the laws of warfare immune from attack.
Curtin also stated that the sinking was “an entirely inexcusable act, undertaken in violation of the convention to which Japan is a party and of all the principles of common humanity.”, while MacArthur reflected the common Australian view when he stated that the sinking was an example of Japanese “limitless savagery”.
Politicians urged the public to use their rage to fuel the war effort, and Centaur became a symbol of Australia’s determination to defeat what appeared to be a brutal and uncompromising enemy. The Australian Government produced posters depicting the sinking, which called for Australians to “Avenge the Nurses” by working to produce material, purchasing war bonds, or enlisting in the armed forces.
One of the Posters distributed after the sinking.
With some people unable to believe that the Japanese would be so ruthless, rumours began to spread almost immediately after news of the attack was made public. The most common rumour which was aired in the Smiths Weekly was that Centaur had been carrying munitions and soldiers at the time of her sinking, with the Japanese made aware of this prior to her departure. This may have stemmed from the incident involving the ambulance drivers’ weapons during loading in Sydney or it could have been what was placed in the lower deck holds prior to the ship docking at Sydney.
Owen Gun Goes to Sea ? Part 2
The Commander-in-Chief’s Decision, Blame Blamey.
It would have been ordinary Military procedure for a decision to have been made by the Master General of Ordnance Branch on the type of guns to be produced. Probably as a result of the background of controversy and politics, it was decided that the decision should be made by the Commander-in-Chief, General Blamey, and all relevant information enabling him to arrive at his decision was to be furnished to him.
It would appear that about the end of February 1943, General Blamey advised the Cabinet that he did require additional supplies of submachine guns, that he could equally well use the Austen or the Owen, and as the Austen was much cheaper than the Owen he saw no reason for the Army to purchase the more expensive gun.
General Blamey, telling the troops that he lives on the same rations as they do, attempting to improve his P.R. and not look like a crooked Victorian Commissioner of Police, which was his last job, before they got sick of him.
Of course the men on the ground at the sharp end of it all disagreed completely but the only voice they had was when a letter sent to family members praising the Owen Gun and crying out desperately for more of them, were sent on and printed mainly anonymously in the local newspapers. Luckily there were enough of those letters printed to supply a large political counter weight to the politicians and generals, it is rare that the people are so well informed.
Once the politicians antenna feel public back lash like all insects they retreat into their hiding holes. So much so that eventually soldiers letters on the Owen Gun subject were censored and any further mentions were removed. That still left ‘Letter to the Editor’ from front line service men who had been injured or on leave so the truth continued to get out right to the end of the war. This is also additional evidence to show that the front line infantry were never supplied enough section firepower and not giving the man with his life on the line the best confidence builders that they needed.
As regards to the relative costs of the guns, it should be noted that the manufacturers of the Owen Gun had at no time been asked to reduce their gun to the minimum cost and of sacrificing such qualities as it possessed, and which were not possessed by the Austen. To provide a small example of this, it should be noted that the Owen magazine could carry 35 rounds as compared with 28 for the Austen; that the Owen is provided with a compensator and a 10″ barrel, whereas the Austen had no compensator and has an 8″ barrel. It would therefore appear that the cost comparison had never been carried out by the Army before this advice was tendered by General Blamey at a time when the Owen manufacturers had not even been consulted.
This cartoon seems to be pointed at General Blamey as General Muddle but the problem was more sinister than just muddle.
When General Blamey made the statement referred to above, there was no official information in the possession of the Department of the Army or the Department of Munitions as to the relative cost of the two guns. Investigation had been proceeding for some considerable time, and the cost for the Owen had been ascertained in December 1942 by the Cost Investigation Branch of the Ministry of Munitions. The figure arrived at was £9: 2: 0 for current production at the end of 1942, and the overall average figure was £10: 14: 6 since the beginning of production. Many cost establishing production had to be distributed to less guns in the individual orders. On the other hand, it was being freely stated in Army High Command circles that Austen costs were from a quarter to a half of the Owen cost, but there was in fact no basis or information for this comparison to be made by anyone at that time.
Although the Owen costs had been ascertained in December 1942, it had still been impossible up to the 18th March 1943 for the Ministry of Munitions to obtain a comparative figure from the manufacturers of the Austen. Mr. Jensen informed Mr. V.A. Wardell on the 18th March 1943 that the Cost Investigator was still working at Die Casters but up to date had not furnished his report.
Mr Jensen had the reputation of being the most intelligent Public Servant of the decade.
On the 18th March, Mr. V.A. Wardell telegraphed Senator Arnold asking for further information and stating that Mr. Jensen had no knowledge of the decision transmitted by Senator Arnold to continue the Owen project. Senator Arnold then saw the Minister for Munitions, who was surprised at this information, and as a result telephoned Mr. Jensen. As Mr. Jensen had no positive statement to make in the matter, it was then referred by Mr. Makin to Mr. Forde. Mr. Forde informed Mr. Makin and Senator Arnold that he had changed his mind. It had been decided to standardise on the Austen for all future production, and drop the Owen. ‘Some reference was made in the same conversation to the possibility of the U.S. Army using the Owen.’ However, as the Commander-in-Chief, General Blamey, appears to have held up the U.S. Army order pending a decision as to which gun was to be used by the Australian Army, there was very good reason to doubt the good faith of this remark.
Finding the right staff for firearm work is the number one priority once they are let go, you have to search the country for replacements and then you have to train them for the specific firearm task that they are to work on.
Just A Few Pennies More!
On the 19th March, Lysaght’s received word that there would be no further orders for the Owen Gun, and that the Australian Army would standardise on Austens. On what could this decision have been made? It was not on serviceability, nor on price; nor on production? At that time Twenty-two thousand (22,000) Owen Guns had been delivered as against a combined total for Die Casters and Carmichaels of about four thousand (4,000) Austens. Each week 600 Owen Guns were being delivered against 200 Austens. In any event later it was found that without counting the cost of setting up a much more expensive production process of die casting, which the government ultimately paid for, the Austens were only a few pennies cheaper than the Owen Gun for a much lessor product.
As Lysaght’s had to make a decision affecting the continuity of production at a number of important sub-contractors’ works as well as in their own Newcastle Works, repeated efforts were made to obtain information on the future of the project.
In the interest of the troops, Mr. V.A. Wardell (The general manager of Lysaghts, Port Kembla) took the only effective course open to him, and wrote to the Prime Minister, Mr. John Curtin, on the 5th April 1943, placing the whole position before him. V.A. Wardell was received by the Prime Minister in Canberra; he expressed great concern and said that the matter would be decided by the War Cabinet at a meeting in the next few days.
On these facts, Cabinet reversed the decision and acknowledged the Owen as the standard submachine gun for the Australian Forces. Two further orders, each for five thousand (5,000) guns, were later placed with Lysaght’s.
Owen Gun The Standard Australian Sub-Machine Gun
With the announcement that the Owen Gun was the standard submachine gun for the Australian Forces one would be forgiven for not presuming that production would continue until the end of the immediate hostilities, the end of war in the Pacific against Japan, but they were the last major orders and as all orders had been filled, production ceased in September 1944, by which time Lysaght’s had made 45,477 Owen Guns, over half a million magazines, and 600,000 component spares. All tools and jigs and full manufacturing details were packed up and forwarded to the Small Arms Factory, Lithgow, N.S.W., together with Gerald Wardells notes for future development. By September 1944 all that was left at Port Kembla was the archival history and an empty building.
- Owen Gun Trigger pack Cutaway.
The Owen Gun Annexe at Port Kembla was an arsenal capable of producing 2000 guns a week even though it had never been popular with the Army’s High Command. The continued egotistical rejection of the most successful firearm of the day was a well documented part of Australians war history. It was known then and it is known now. Why, in wartime, when the hazards of war are always in the balance and no one knows what the next move of the enemy could be, would the government close an arsenal that produces what your soldiers want most?
If the factory had exceeded production and filled all needs for the three Armies of the Australian Commonwealth, the factory could have been ‘moth balled’ production line left in tact, in case it was needed, with all the tools left in place. No, this was a very definite decision. Many would think maybe they had something better on hand. That is not true either. As well as it being tested and found to be the best in the world, it was also officially in service until 1966 and Australian soldiers were still using them at the end of 1967 in Vietnam.
What had happened?
On the 14th August 1944 a “Most Secret”,War Crimes Commission was held, “In Camera”, in Melbourne, before his Honour Sir William Webb and it continued until the 31 August 1944. Evidence was taken from witnesses, many questions were asked concerning the lighting on the ship, sightings of a submarine after the sinking and personal affects lost by the survivors, but no investigation or questions as to what cargo the ship was carrying or why there was a dispute on the number of people on board the vessel at the time of its sinking.
Continued on Next page Click Here
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)
_____
TOTAL 30462
_____
Continued Next page Click Here
Owen Gun Trial
Minister for the Army, 1941 Frank Forde
Delay Will Be Paid For In Australian Lives!
The Australian Army’s attempts to obstruct the introduction of the Owen Gun was identified and noted when Minister Frank Forde (Minister for the Army) called a conference of all parties on 24 November 1941.
Bluntly he told them that the Government would tolerate no more delays and no more obstructions. Production of an efficient gun had to begin:
… quickly and in sufficient numbers. Delay will be paid for in Australian lives.
Forde was satisfied that Australian set backs in Crete demonstrated the Army’s
urgent need for a Sub Machine Gun. He felt that the British Sten Gun was much inferior to the Owen Gun.
3D Drawing of the Owen Gun, proven to be the best produced during WW Two.
The Sten Gun, handy when it works and was designed for the cheapest bang for the buck when there was nothing else to shoot. NCOs used to tell us, our equipment was supplied by the cheapest tender. One Factory in the UK made 20,000 per week. They might not have been the worst but close to it.
The Loss of Crete.
The information that Minister Forde had received referred to the loss of Crete. That was due to the German tactics of deep infiltration and in the case of the Battle of Crete the Germans used the pinnacle of infiltration storm troops by the use of parachute regiments from the Air. The Allied force on Crete with no Anti Aircraft guns, no air cover, and not enough section firepower suffered badly as 274 Australians were killed, 507 were wounded and 3100 were captured, including most of the 2/1st, 2/7th and 2/11th Battalions. New Zealand losses for Greece and Crete were 962 killed, 2000 wounded and over 3000 captured.
The Loss of Singapore.
At that time he made the statement he did not know that within a few months of advocating the manufacture and supply to the troops of the Owen Gun
“… quickly and in sufficient numbers. Delay will be paid for in Australian lives”, that a further ill equipped force would suffer a similar fate against the infiltration tactics of the Japanese Forces. 18,067 Australians were lost, dead, wounded and captured at the fall of Singapore. Again supply of machine tools had been orchestrated and Owen Guns had been blocked from supply to the troops.
With losses of Australian lives such as these two examples, and the continued obstruction from the Australian High Command, why was no one admonished or put on trial for causing these losses?
Note;
A submachine gun (SMG) is a firearm that combines the automatic fire of a machine gun with the cartridge of a pistol, and is usually between the two in weight and size.
Early experiments were made by converting shoulder stocked pistols such as the Mauser Model 1896, Luger 1908 and the Colt 1911a1 from semi to fully automatic. These automatic weapons firing pistol rounds were developed during World War I, by Italy, Germany, and the United States. The first dedicated sub machine gun designs were developed in the later stages of World War I to offer an advantage in trench warfare.
- The German Police in Berlin 1919 had more individual firepower than the Australians at the beginning of World War Two.
The Australian High Command and Public Servants Were Responsible! Why Let Them Off the Hook? Why Blame Others?
Why was it so important for these people in high government positions to be defended by the writer Kevin Smith in the” Owen Gun Files”, and why did he feel it necessary to manufacture his spin in scapegoating Evelyn Owen and the Wardell brothers.?He derides Evelyn Owen for plagiarism and in his book the ‘Owen Gun File’ his opening paragraphs states.
“The Origin of the Species
“A strong argument can be advanced that almost all design is either consciously or subconsciously derivative and, in the field of conscious derivation perhaps no better example can be found than that of the design of automatic firearms. In this class of weapons close examination will usually show that most models possess various components or systems which are similar or identical to corresponding items in earlier designs.
The Owen Gun was not an exception to this rule, and it can be argued that its design and development were influenced by four other submachine guns — its design by the Italian Beretta M18 and the German MP 18,1 and its development by the American Thompson and the British Sten.
The Beretta M18 was itself a direct descendant of a light machine gun which had been designed by A.B. Revelli immediately before the outbreak of the First World War. This gun had been patented in the United States in 1915 and was manufactured for the Italian Army by three factories, one of which was located in the Italian town of Villar Perosa from which the gun eventually took its name.
The gun had been designed to provide a light portable automatic weapon suitable for use by alpine troops in the border region between Austria and Italy, and in fact is probably more accurately described as a heavy automatic pistol with an extended magazine.
- The Villa Perosa, 3000 rpm due to the bolts only weighing 280 grams and only travelling of 1 .75 inches. Australia and Evelyn Owen had never seen one to copy.
At the time of its design virtually all fully automatic weapons used standard military rifle cartridges and Revelli no doubt concluded that it was the lock mechanisms and barrel cooling systems made necessary by the use of these cartridges which produced the problems of excessive size and weight that made the guns virtually immobile.
As a consequence the Villar Perosa had been designed to use not the Italian Army’s standard rifle cartridge but its standard 9 mm Glisenti pistol cartridge, a decision which in addition to making the use of an air cooled barrel feasible, also allowed the elaborate positive breech locking mechanisms to be replaced with the much simpler and lighter “inertia lock” system.
This system, which is also known as the “blow back” system, is based on the study of how a mass overcomes its inertia ‘ when subjected to an external force. Applied to firearm mechanisms this study in its simplest form shows that when the force generated by the expansion of gasses within a cartridge case is applied equally to a light bullet at one end of the case and the much heavier bolt at the other, not only will the bullet begin to move earlier than the bolt but it will also move more rapidly — a set of circumstances which allows the bullet to leave the barrel, and for the pressure within the gun to drop to a safe level, before the bolt has travelled far enough to open the action.
Whilst in the case of the Villar Perosa the movement of the bolt was also retarded by a device to prevent the firing of a cartridge before it was fully chambered, the use of the “inertia lock” in combination with a carbine length barrel and pistol ammunition has usually led to it being regarded as the first submachine gun.
The gun itself consisted of two separate bodies each fitted with a magazine and joined together with a spade grip and trigger arrangement at the rear, and it is in the arrangement and style of the magazine that the origins of two features of the Owen can be seen.
The first of these is the vertical configuration which was dictated by the necessity to keep the gun as close to the ground as possible, thus eliminating an under body location, and to keep the width to a minimum, thus precluding horizontal fixing.
The other, and possibly more important feature, was the use of the double staggered column arrangement of cartridges within the magazine. At the time of its design all automatic pistols employed magazines where cartridges were held in a single vertical column, however, with the gun’s voracious appetite for ammunition (at a cyclic rate of 1200 rounds per minute) and with the aim of keeping the length of magazines to a reasonable minimum, it had been decided to employ the system devised by Mauser for use in their rifles where the cartridges were held in a staggered double column with an alternating feed; that is where the uppermost round in the magazine alternates from one side of the magazine to the other as the cartridges are removed from it.
For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was apparently that its limitations in respect of range and accuracy had not been fully understood, the Villar Perosa appears to have eventually lost favour with the Italian Army and, presumably in 1917, the original Villar Perosa factory and the firm of Pietro Beretta in Brescia were called upon to develop a more compact, light and practical weapon utilizing a single body.
Both firms produced workable models, however it was the design of Tuillio, Marengoni of the Beretta works which was to become the more favoured of the two. This model, known as the M 18 from the date of its first issue, utilized the basic Villar Perosa full automatic action, barrel, receiver and magazine which were fitted with a new trigger mechanism and then mounted on a conventional timber stock.
This model was used during the final stages of World War 1 and through the Second World War and details of its design would have been known to, and no doubt specimens of it held by, various Army schools and museums in Australia at the time of the design of the Owen in its final form.
The alpine border region of Italy was of course far from being the only scene of activity involving the Central Powers of Austria and Germany at that time and, for perhaps the greater part of the War, the most destructive conflicts took place in France and Belgium.
These conflicts took the form of a war of attrition fought out over a series of trench lines which were reputed to have extended from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border, and produced new tactics and weapons to cope with the new form of warfare. One of the many requirements was for a light and highly manoeuvrable rapid firing weapon with a substantial magazine capacity which would be suitable for use in the confined spaces encountered in the trenches.
The German Army had met this requirement to a certain extent by taking the 9 mm Luger pistol in its 8 inch barrel Artillery Model configuration and replacing its 8-cartridge capacity magazine with a coil or “snail” magazine holding 32 cartridges.
In view of the developments which were to take place over the next 25 years certain aspects of this coil magazine should be examined, and perhaps the foremost of these is that of capacity.
The standard German Army pistol was the Luger Model 1908 which was issued with two magazines, one in the pistol itself and the other in a special pocket attached to the standard holster. Each of these magazines held 8 cartridges and, no doubt in an effort to reduce wastage of stray rounds, pistol ammunition was packaged in lots of 16 cartridges. The capacity of the coil magazine was therefore calculated in multiples of these packages with two of them giving the capacity of 32 rounds.
The magazine itself was not entirely successful as not only did the loading of the cartridges in a single column arrangement against quite strong spring pressure necessitate the use of a loading tool, but experience in the field showed that it had a marked tendency to jam. This latter problem was however partially overcome when the original conical bullet was replaced with one of a parabolic shape.
Whilst this weapon went quite some distance in the satisfaction of a need, it did not satisfy the design specification which had been issued by the German Army in 1916, and it was not to be until the following year that a successful design to meet that specification was evolved.
This design was the work of Hugo Schmeisser who at that time was an employee of the Theodor Bergmann Waffenfabrik of Suhl and it is generally ‘believed that it was influenced at least to a certain extent by the study of a captured Villar Perosa gun which had been made available by the Army for that purpose.
- The only thing that the Bergmann had in common with the Owen Gun was that the barrel and breech block were in alignment. It had a separate firing pin as per the Sten Gun and the tipping action was disassembled from the rear opposite to the Owen Gun.
Due to the intense demands being made upon Germany’s war industries at the time, Schmeisser’s design was kept as simple as possible and consisted of a tubular body with an “inertia lock” mechanism mounted on a timber stock. To avoid the time loss and expenditure of valuable man hours in tooling UP for new components, the barrel was that of the standard Artillery Model Luger pistol and the magazine was the by then widely used 32-round capacity coil type with an adaptor unit to facilitate its use in the new gun.
In view of the effect that the use of this magazine was to have on the second of Owen’s designs, it should be noted that the butt of the Luger is set at an angle to the centre line of the barrel and the magazine platform is shaped so that although the magazine within the butt is itself at an angle to that centre line, the cartridges within the magazine are parallel to it. As a consequence, when attached to the gun in a horizontal form the magazine has to stand at an angle to the barrel in order that its contents will lie parallel to the barrel centre line and facilitate feeding.
The new gun was fitted with a perforated barrel jacket for ease of handling and was a well-made weapon in very much the traditional manner.
No attempt was made to allow for the selection of automatic or repetition firing, although with the much more practical cyclic rate of fire of some 400 rounds per minute it was possible for an experienced operator to fire single rounds.
By the early months of 1918 the gun, which was to be known as the Maschinen Pistole (MP) 18,1, was in limited production and although a certain amount of conjecture exists in regard to the manner in which the Army intended to use it, it seems most likely that its existence, like that of the new “storm troops” who had been specially trained for the forthcoming “Spring Offensive”, was kept as secret as possible.
The Spring Offensive, which nearly succeeded in driving the British Army back to the Channel coast, eventually waned and seven months later, after a major Allied offensive, hostilities ceased with the signing of the Armistice. However whilst at first sight it would appear that in the confusion of those last months the new weapon had been overlooked, it is obvious that its potential value had been recognised by those who used it or had been confronted by it.
Indeed this recognition was such that under the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty the manufacture of such weapons in Germany was prohibited, and the use of those existing weapons not acquired by the Allied powers was restricted to police forces.
Shortly after the war the Bergmann firm was absorbed by the Lignose consortium and as the Bergmann designs were at that time taken over by the C.G. Haenel company, also of Suhl, it is not surprising to find that in 1921 Hugo Schmeisser joined that firm as its designer and chief engineer.
Apparently during the early years of his association with Haenel requests were received from some police departments for the replacement of the unreliable coil magazine and Schmeisser responded by producing a straight box magazine and a new housing which secured it to the body at right angles.
Once again this magazine was designed to hold 32 cartridges and for compactness departed from the previous single column of the coil magazine and employed the staggered double column arrangement.
However the bolts of the guns which were altered had been made for use with a single column magazine, where cartridges are presented very much on the centre line of the chamber to the barrel, and as a consequence they were quite unsuitable for use with an alternating feed system as had been used in the Villar Perosa or the Beretta M18.
The bolt itself is of course a reasonably complex and costly item to manufacture and, no doubt principally in the interests of economy, it was decided to retain it in its present form and adapt the staggered double column arrangement to suit it.
This decision, which was to prove to be a most unhappy one that would affect numerous other designs in the subsequent years, involved bringing the uppermost round in the new style magazine into the same position in relation to the chamber of the barrel as would have occurred with the single column magazine, and was achieved by the use of shoulders to restrain the double column short of the magazine mouth and present one cartridge at a time on the centre of it.
This “double staggered column with central feed” arrangement had several disadvantages, most of which had their origin in the magazine spring.
The first of these was that the compression of two columns of cartridges into one necessitated the use of a magazine spring of such strength that once again the gun was burdened with the necessity to use a loading tool to fill it. Whilst this was to be regarded as a serious disadvantage in derivations of the design in future years it is quite possible that, at the time the decision was made, the use of such a tool was not viewed as unusual, as a similar device had been required for use with the coil magazine and even the standard Luger pistol had a combination tool which was used to compress the magazine spring and facilitate loading.
The second disadvantage lay in the fact that, despite efforts to strengthen them, in time the lips of the magazine reacted to the high pressures experienced with fully loaded magazines and became distorted, a situation which inevitably led to problems of stoppages due to incorrect feed.“
The Rebuttal
Kevin Smith’s researched material is quite educational and informative but in just a few places strategically and with forethought and planing applies incorrect information to spin to his purpose.
Where he states, “The Owen Gun was not an exception to this rule and it can be argued that its design and development were influenced by four other submachine guns — its design by the Italian Beretta M18 and the German MP 18,1 and its development by the American Thompson and the British Sten.“
- The Thompson mechanism is nothing like an Owen Gun, and even though they were manufactured in 1928 the first one to arrive in Australia arrived in 1940. Does Kevin Smith suggest that Evelyn Owen copied it from seeing in a James Cagney movie?
“This model was used during the final stages of World War 1 and through the Second World War and details of its design would have been known to, and no doubt specimens of it held by, various Army schools and museums in Australia at the time of the design of the Owen in its final form.” ” and it is in the arrangement and style of the magazine that the origins of two features of the Owen can be seen.”
Smith’s Accusation was Defamation, But Who is he Trying To Protect?
These statements are rubbish as at the outbreak of the war in 1939, the only known examples of submachine guns that existed in Australia was a First World War trophy in the Small Arms School at Randwick which was an original ‘Bergmann’ MP 18-I. Earlier in that year a ‘Schmeisser’ MP 38, had been seized by Customs in Sydney from the luggage of a German passenger and was held by the New South Wales Police in Sydney. Early in 1940 the Chief Instructor of the Small Arms School, Captain Latchford, bought an American Thompson gun from a planter in the Soloman Islands, and used it for instructional purposes. Although the Thompson Gun was described in the British Textbook of Small Arms of 1929, no gun of this type had been into Australia prior to that time. Evelyn Owen had began his quest to invent, design and manufacture a sub machine gun in 1931, as he was at that time only 15 years old, many obstacles were obviously in his path. No finance, no tools, no ammunition, no materials, no factory other than his fathers shed. A much greater obstacle was that 1931 was sixty years before the information age. He had never seen one of these sub machine gun he was supposed to have copied. They were not in the Museums of his day, the best he could expect would be a poor image that he had no way of copying in a library book. No Scanners or Photocopiers. Even if he had been able to study their designs with the very basic manufacturing equipment available to him reproducing those complicated accurately machined parts would have been an impossible feat. To compensate, he had to invent and simplify the basic mechanism to a level which would make his gun possible for him to make. The one piece bolt was one of those ideas.
- Not one of the four sub machines guns designed prior to the Owen Gun had a bolt like this and even if they had Owen could not have copied it as he had never seen one to copy.
Kevin Smith also inserts these words into his text above,
“In view of the effect that the use of this magazine was to have on the second of Owen’s designs, it should be noted that the butt of the Luger is set at an angle to the centre line of the barrel and the magazine platform is shaped so that although the magazine within the butt is itself at an angle to that centre line, the cartridges within the magazine are parallel to it. As a consequence, when attached to the gun in a horizontal form the magazine has to stand at an angle to the barrel in order that its contents will lie parallel to the barrel centre line and facilitate feeding.”
Action and Re Action, Theorised by Newton and Proved by Maxim.
He makes it seem that Evelyn Owen was an arch copyist of other people’s patents, when in fact in all designs as he has described cannot ever be patented. As patent officers in any patent office in the world will not allow a patents registration that just acknowledges a law of Natural Science. Just because all use a system of retarded recoil, ‘action equals re-action’, it does not mean that there is a lack of innovations and invention. When anyone wants to apply a sprung loaded magazine carrying the same product to a parallel bolt, the angle of approach has to be the one that works. If Kevin Smith had followed the Engineering sciences instead of his Architectural classes, Smith would have noticed that the angle of the Luger magazine is actually far more pronounced than on the Owen Gun. Every firearm such as these have to have an angle, but depending on the relationship of the magazine loading platform and feeding lips will depend on what precise angle that is.
- MP 18 Bergmann. It has a tubular receiver, a barrel, return spring, but a very different bolt and mechanism.
In fact we will show in following chapters that there are many differences between “the design by the Italian Beretta M18 and the German MP 18,1 and its development by the American Thompson and the British Sten.” Almost every one of those differences is a great improvement and it will be shown that most of the Owen Guns innovations predate the development of the Sten Gun, and that the Sten Gun was subsequently altered to copy the features of the Owen Gun with the design of the Austen. However, as all the firearms listed by Smith had an irrevocable flaw, no modifications to the design was possible, until they began with another design. This was the F1 which was more of a copy of the Owen Gun then anything else, but for many reasons which could fill another book, was just not as good.
- A 3 D cutaway drawing of the Owen Gun shows that there is a separate compartment for the cocking mechanism, at the rear, to prevent mud blocking the feeding firing and extraction. The compact trigger system was also sealed.
As the evidence of planned delays and obstructions on the introduction of the Owen Gun, which was detrimental to the Australia’s survival and cost thousands of young Australians their lives, is now at hand, I propose to bring these people to trial. You the readers will be the Judge, Jury and by your actions, execute change to Australia’s future to ensure that this sad history is not repeated. I will be the (for the first time) the prosecution and Mr Kevin Smiths book the Owen Gun File will be the defence.
Next Chapter the Accused.
Maxim of Thucydides that
“The strong do as they wish, while the weak suffer as they must?
Meaning the voice of the powerful sets all precedents as in the quote from Adam Smith
“Policy making in England,” the principle architects of policy, in his day the merchants and manufacturers made sure that their own interests were most peculiarly attended to, however grievous the effect on others, including the people of England. Unfortunately this maxim plays out in all time and in all places. The full meaning of these quotes will be plain when the following information is supplied on the missuse of government power.
Next chapter of the Owen Gun book Click Here
The Owen Gun War Crime Trial
The Owen Gun War Crime Trial
They Did Not Care About The Colour, This Is What Every Australian Soldier Wanted For Christmas in 1941. The Owen Gun.
Why is a Rifle a Rifle and not a Gun? Well a Rifle has rifling within their barrel that spins the bullet, Where a Smooth bore musket or a shot gun has a smooth cylinder called the bore inside the barrel of the gun.
Does a handgun have rifling? The answer is invariable ‘yes’. However, even though both revolvers and pistols (semi-automatics) have rifling they are both handguns. Maybe the terminology ‘Rifle’ has stuck to long arms because with rifling they are more accurate than a shotgun or a hand gun.
A Sub Machine Gun is called a Gun, but it has rifling and all Machine Guns have rifling, but are always referred to as a gun. Artillery began as smoothbore cannons and have always been referred to as a ‘Gun’. Generally, all artillery has rifling except for some modern tank guns which are smoothbore and fire fin guided projectiles which only protrude after they leave the muzzle then guiding the missile to the target. Most Mortars are smoothbore but are generally referred to as Mortars and not Guns, even though they are really guns. If you get stuck on the meaning of a word or are interested use the link to Glossaries attached to this site.
To listen to a story or to read a book, the writer, either has to presuppose that the reader or listener has the required background knowledge to understand where the scene is set or supply that information himself. When the story or book is set, not just in other places ,but in other times of history the writer has to inform the reader on what were the norms and standards of those times . So that the reader can form an opinion on the characters, placing the players behaviour in the balance, judging for themselves on the guilt or innocence of the parties.
To advance the truth we have to ask several questions
“Why was a Sub Machine gun urgently needed by Australia in World War Two?”
And
“Why did Britain and Australia (The Allies) lose the first 2 ½ years of World War Two?”
And
“Why did the Allies win the last three years of World War Two?“
3D Cutaway of the Owen Gun, with a 33 shot Magazine they can supply the mobile firepower needed.
The quick answer to all questions is “Firepower”.
To explain the answers to all questions in a short synopsis, which will be expanded with more complete information in the following pages;
Is that, the enemy had superior equipment and tactics not just in air superiority but in infantry tactics. They had made much better use of the lessons taught so expensively in the last few months of World War One.
General Oskar von Hutier had conceived and trained the “Stormtrooper” tactics called “deep infiltration’;
which Germany and Japan had practised to perfection between the World Wars.
The Static Lines of Defence.
Britain and Australia planned to fight World War Two with the same infantry tactics of World War One, static lines of defence. France had spent nearly its whole defence spending on the static ‘fixed in concrete’ Maginot line. Australia had been planning the Brisbane Line since 1912 and intended to rely on it again in 1942.
All British and Australian (Allies) land forces were under equipped, (under gunned) to counter “Deep Infiltration” tactic, the only tactic which could combat or counter this tactic was superior section/ rifle squad fire power. The full development of ‘Deep Infiltration’ was called ‘Blitzkrieg’.
The Allies (Britain and Australia) armies smallest military unit was the section or Rifle squad of eight men. They were equipped with the Lee Enfield .303 Rifle. Their Generals considered that the riflemen were the main arm and supported them within by a two man team operating a Light machine gun, a Bren or a Lewis gun. The Bayonet was the only official close quarters defence. When the enemy were in your trench it was too late for grenades. The British and Allied Generals still had an ingrained idea, from the last Century of the ‘Thin Red Line’ and thought that a bullets only purpose was to keep the enemies heads down until the men could get in close with the bayonet. Then the enemy were supposed to run away and disperse. It was nonsense in World War One and it was nonsense in World War Two. In confined conditions such as trenches, dugouts, fox holes, jungle redoubts, there was no room to use a six foot long pike. This was the combined length of the Lee Enfield Rifle and its 1907 pattern bayonet.
Authors Note
My Grandfather spent four years on the Western Front, when he had to go, ‘Over the Top’, he left his rifle (of which he was very fond)& bayonet behind and took a short entrenching shovel sharpened on three sides. It was like a battle axe, he and many others found it much more suitable for the medieval hand to hand combat of the trenches. It could be used to stab or chop. It could not get stuck and need life costly time removing it.
In these almost primeval underground trench battles imagine the effect of one man with a sub machine gun at a range of ten feet, game over.
One of my favourites MG34, these are very fast powerful machineguns over 1000 rounds per minute of 7.92 x 57 Mauser.
The New Tactics
The Germans and Japanese instead organised their sections to support their main arm the machines guns and equipped each section with two belt fed light machine guns such as the MG 34 and the MG42 .They also equipped the section with at least two sub machine guns such as the MP 38 or the MP 40 (sometimes more) and invariable a man with a sniping rifle. They were highly mobile units which had more firepower than a company of allied riflemen of the World War One era. This section could carry out the “Deep Infiltration” attack by using the technique of “Fire and Movement”. One part of the section could move, to outflank or surround the enemy while receiving covering fire from the other part of the section that would be using at least one light machine gun and sub machine guns to lay fire on the enemy positions as soon as the moving part of the section stopped and commenced fire. Then they would move in on the other flank, once both sections were close enough, they would rush into the positions using as much firepower as they had. Firearms which could be swung around in confined conditions were ideal.
Australians With the Owen Gun. Mobile Firepower.
Success Once the Balance of Firepower Was Corrected.
Once the Australian and British equipped their sections/rifle squads with this additional firepower they could defend themselves on all sides against “Deep Infiltration”. They could set up the light machine guns where they could use the best fields of enfilade fire, and the sub machine guns being more mobile could defend the rear and flanks from close quarter attack.
Once this additional firepower was utilised and well practised in defence, the tables were turned. The Allied troops needed little incentive to ‘return the compliments’ and take their enemies tactics and firepower to the offensive. Once this was achieved, they never suffered another major reverse.
Why Were Owen Guns Held Up? Why Were They Not Issued In 1941?
Yes, They Could Have Been Supplied in Early 1941.
Before this could happen Australia young soldiers had to wait 2½ years suffer 20,000 deaths 40,000 wounded and have 12,000 men captured in Malaya and put to work in the Japanese death camps. Not all of these casualties were due to that lack of firepower, but as when a murderer is on trial do we hang him for one murder, or ten murders or a thousand murders, it has no bearing on the guilt itself, one is too many. Every man is important, his life is the only one he has.
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
No man is an Iland,
intire of it selfe,
everyman is a peece of the Continent,
a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the lesse,
as well as if a Promontorie were,
as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were;
any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee… By Jonne Donne
One man’s loss of life is enough to hang for.
Personnel Survival.
This is why the men on the ground were desperate for Owen Guns, as more importantly than the tactics, or winning the war, the single significant difference was the sub machine gun, the enemy had them and our men did not. They all knew that the Sub Machine gun was the significant factor for their own personal survival and the survival of their mates.
Britain and Australian fighting men knew that they were ill equipped and felt they were treated as cannon fodder by their leaders, during the early years of World War Two once this was rectified, nothing could stop them.
The Beginnings of Deep Infiltration.
Towards the end of World War One infantry tactics altered, this change was further developed during all the wars between the World Wars such as the Spanish Civil War and Japan’s invasion of China. Both Germany and Japan used these wars to test new equipment and infantry tactics.
In World War One from October 1914, to March 1917, on the Western Front, position warfare became more and more rigid, immovable, and futile. To “attack” meant to lose twice or three times as many men as your opponent, with no considerable gain in ground, and no decisive effect on anything except your own cannon-fodder. The armies were locked in a solid continuous line of trenches, in which they were pounded and obliterated by an even heavier hail of shells.
A bayonet charge at firepower like these Maxim Model 1908 would be suicide.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, when Russia defeated by Germany, allowed Germany to concentrate on the Western Front defended by the Allies of Britian’s Commonwealth, France, and a small contingent of Belg’s. Ludendorff, the co-dictator of Germany and supreme military commander, insisted on occupying Russia. This huge mistake tied up over one million troops in Russia and Romania. Another million troops and 3,000 artillery pieces were shipped to the Western Front, to the field of Flanders. From November 1917 to March 1918, German strength on the Western Front increased from 150 to 208 divisions and included 13, 832 artillery pieces.
Defence In Depth.
At this time in the war, military formations of the belligerents were similar. German divisions consisted of about 10,600 men, British 12,000, and French 13,000. The newly arriving American divisions were over twice as large at 28,105 men. Eventually, these American troops would be vital in saving the Allied cause and winning the war.
By this time in the war, a complex system of trenches and machine gun posts arranged in depth had evolved. All battle trenches were connected together with communications trenches which led to the rear areas. In front of the trenches were deep belts of barbed wire. The British defence system was based on a captured German manual. (Information on the “British” always included their allies, the Anzacs, Canadians, and Portuguese.) The British copied the letter and not the spirit of the German system. The British believed the machine gun supported the infantry while the Germans more realistically believed the infantry supported the machine gun. The new defence system had a Forward Zone manned by one third of the available troops. Two to three miles back, and manned by one third of the infantry and two thirds of the artillery, was the Battle Zone of a depth of 2,000 to 3,000 yards. The balance of all forces were in the Rear Zone four to eight miles behind the Battle Zone. This system was not as efficient as the German system which allocated two thirds of the troops for counter attacks. France was nearing the end of its manpower resources, so the artillery was their most important arm. The French wisely held their front lightly and kept most of their troops in the main position out of artillery range.
The attack during which the First Artist Rifles left their trenches and pushed towards Marcoing near Cambrai. Of the eighty men, sixty-eight were killed or wounded during the first few minutes. John Nash (1893-1977) was one of the twelve spared by the shellfire. The painting was from his memory.
The certainty of not coming back alive.
” As soon as our line, set on its jolting way, emerged, I felt that two men close by had been hit, two shadows fell to the ground and rolled under our feet, one with a high-pitched scream and the other in silence like an ox. Another disappeared with a movement like a madman, as if he had been carried away. Instinctively, we closed ranks and pushed each other forward, always forward, and the wound in our midst closed itself. The warrant officer stopped and raised his sword, dropped it, fell to his knees, his kneeling body falling backwards in jerks, his helmet fell on his heels and he remained there, his head uncovered, looking up to the sky. The line has promptly split to avoid breaking this immobility.
But we couldn’t see the lieutenant any more. No more superiors, then… A moment’s hesitation held back the human wave which had reached the beginning of the plateau. The hoarse sound of air passing through our lungs could be heard over the stamping of feet.
– Forward! cried a soldier.
So we all marched forward, moving faster and faster in our race towards the abyss. “ Henri Barbusse, Le feu (Fire), Paris, Flammarion, 1916.
The Shock Troops.
From March 1917, to March 1918, positional trench warfare was still in full flower, but some of the factors that caused its partial decay, or its change into a new shape, became apparent. One factor was the tank, another more important, was a new method of defence, which inevitably developed into its opposite, a new tactical method for infantry advance. The defensive method was known as “elastic defence” or “defence in depth”; the second developed from it, and was adopted because of this success, it was called the tactic of “infiltration in attack.”
What brought about victory was simply a rethinking of tactics in conjunction with the new technologies.
This was the outcome of the ‘Storm Troop’ infiltration tactics evolved on the Russian Front and later transplanted to the Western Front.
In our minds we have the picture of serried lines of advancing troops, marching with hunched shoulders as to ward off the rain or drizzle, which was in reality bullets, marching over No Man’s Land. Everybody’s mental picture of World War I, eventually was changed replaced by small parties of highly trained and motivated shock troops, amply armed, moving independently of each other, utilising ground and cover, and pouncing on weak spots, thus forcing the gate ajar to admit the more regimented units which followed.
The Stormtroopers attacking after the position has been shelled by Gas.
The breakthrough came when someone thought of a different method of pushing the assault forward.
Practice On The Russian Front.
General Oskar von Hutier
In September 1917 the German Army sought to capture Riga from the Russians; they had attempted this before and had been bloodily repulsed, but Riga was the Queen of the Baltic and would be a great morale booster for the Germans, if it could be taken. It would be a considerable setback to the Russians if they lost it. The Russians, of course, had no intention of parting with it and had prepared an immensely strong defensive position. The German attacking force was numerically inferior, and thus all the book solutions said that an attack must fail. The officer in charge of the attacking force, the German 8th Army, General Oskar von Hutier, had radically different ideas.
Von Hutier devised the technique of infiltration; instead of throwing solid lines of men against the defences, small independent groups would move stealthily across No Man’s Land, probing the defences, ease their way in where the line was weakest, and then fan out behind to take troublesome redoubts from the rear. This was to be done with the assistance of artillery fire, but not the blunderbuss approach of week long bombardments and rolling barrages. Von Hutier’s artillery commander was Colonel Bruchmuller, another man who had an independent mind and was prepared to abandon the textbook approach when it appeared to be wrong. Instead of formal programmes, Bruchmuller’s control of artillery stressed flexibility, and an approach tailored to suit the problem in front of him. He would use rolling barrages, concentrations, smoke, gas, shrapnel in combinations and permutations, placing concentrated fire on specific targets such as communications networks, headquarters, rallying points, quite arbitrarily and in a manner which rapidly disoriented his opponents.
Bruchmuller produced 750 guns and 550 mortars to accompany von Hutier’s approach to Riga, which had to begin by crossing the Dvina river. The guns were split into two groups, IKA (Infanterie Kampfzug Abteilung) and AKA (Artillerie Kampfzug Abteilung). IKA guns were for infantry support and were provided with ammunition in the proportion of four fifths high explosive and one-fifth gas. AKA guns were for countering Russian artillery and headquarters areas, and used a proportion of one-quarter explosive and three quarters gas.
The battle began at 0400 hours on 2nd September with all the guns hammering the Russian artillery positions, three batteries of 15cm howitzers being specially detailed to bombard command posts and communications points. At 0600, the AKA continued their pounding while the IKA group turned their attention on to the Russian infantry defending the river line. This bombardment continued until 0910 hours, shifting from target to target and from explosive to gas and back again in a bewildering sequence, all the time at hurricane intensity. At 0900, the AKA group joined in, each AKA battery leaving one gun to “stoke up” the gas clouds enveloping the Russian artillery targets.
At 0910, all the guns switched to a massive rolling barrage which dwelt on the Russian infantry positions until the German assault troops had crossed the river, and then rolled forward into the defensive zone. After it came von Hutier’s troops in small parties, probing, bypassing, enfilading and enveloping.
The operation was a complete success and vindicated the theories of von Hutier and Bruchmuller. German’ casualties were relatively light, mainly confined to engineers and pioneers operating the river crossing. The intense bombardment and the concentration of gas entirely unnerved the Russians, many of whom fled, and within 24 hours Riga was safely in German hands.
Operation Michael
As a result both von Hutier and Bruchmuller were removed from the east and sent to the Western Front, where their tactics were repeated to give the Germans their astonishing success in the offensive of April 1918.
German General Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael) for a 1918 general offensive along the Western Front. This Spring Offensive sought to divide the British Empire and the French armies in a series of feints and advances. The German leadership hoped to strike a decisive blow against the enemy before significant United States forces could be deployed. Before the offensive even began, Ludendorff made what may have been a fatal mistake by leaving the elite Eighth Army in Russia and sending over only a small portion (a million men) of the German forces from the east to aid the offensive in the west.
Operation Michael opened on 21 March 1918, with an attack against British Empire forces, towards the rail junction at Amiens. It was Ludendorff’s intention to split the British Empire and French armies at this point. German forces achieved an unprecedented advance of 60 km. For the first time since 1914, manoeuvre had returned to the battlefield.
Each offensive was preceded by the concentration of vast numbers of troops and artillery. In Operation Michael, 69 German divisions were massed against 32 British divisions, and in some places the British were outnumbered four to one.
In the Lys Offensive, 9 German divisions attacked 3 British divisions. Twenty two divisions were massed against five in the Second Battle of the Marne. Artillery was massed in levels never before seen. For comparison, in 1915 at Loos, artillery pieces averaged one per 60 yards. In the 1918 Operation Michael, one gun was placed on average every 12 yards. Continuing this trend, the Soviets in World War II massed artillery one gun per every 3 yards.
In contrast to earlier offensives, artillery bombardments were brief and shocking. The enemy artillery was first eliminated with shells and poison gas. Enemy headquarters, communication centres, and supply depots were targeted. Forward trenches were then devastated, machine gun posts being prime targets. Trenches of the Battle Zone were then bombarded. During Operation Michael, the British massed 30% of their troops on the front line. Instead of the desired effect of stopping the attack with overwhelming firepower, the troops were annihilated by artillery fire. In the sector of the XVIII Corps, only 50 of 10,000 front line troops survived the bombardment and subsequent attack.
1918 the first mass use of the Sub Machine Gun.
The German stormtroopers attacked immediately after the bombardment. In contrast with the standard infantry units used at the beginning of the war, the men were equipped with a wide variety of weapons, not just the standard bolt action rifle. Wire cutters and explosives engineers created gaps in the barbed wire belts. Grenade throwers, flame throwers, machine gunners, and mortar crews infiltrated enemy positions. Three or four waves of infantry followed. The attacking troops had no fixed objectives and left pockets of resistance for supporting troops to deal with. Success, not failure, was reinforced. The stormtroopers carried with them the first widely used sub-machine gun, the MP-18. The new sub-machine gun was light and easy to handle, and had much greater firepower than a rifle. It could be swung into action quickly in the confined conditions of the trenches and dugouts. Infiltrating troops often advanced beyond artillery range, leaving their flanks vulnerable. Since most artillery was too bulky to be brought forward in the attack, light trench mortars and machine gunners protected the flanks. The great German offensives were also supported by air power. Seven hundred and thirty German planes were massed against 579 Allied planes in Operation Michael.
The new word was “deep infiltration.” This means that their army does not attack strung and in a line. It maintained contact all the time between its advanced units and its main forces. It does not hit like a fist, but like long probing fingers with armoured finger nails. Each separate claw seeks a weak spot; if it can drive through this weak spot, it does not worry about its flanks, or about continuous communications with the forces following it. It relies for safety upon surprise, upon the disorganisation of its opponents due to the fact that it has broken through to the rear of their position and left them exposed to mopping up operations.
A Trench after it has been attacked. Not a pretty sight.
British and French trenches were defeated using these novel infiltration tactics. Up to this time, attacks had been characterized by week long artillery bombardments and continuous front mass assaults. However, in the Spring Offensive, the German Army used artillery briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points, attacking command and logistics areas and surrounding points of serious resistance. These isolated positions were then destroyed by more heavily armed infantry. German success relied greatly on this tactic.
The front line had now moved to within 120 kilometres of Paris. Three super heavy Krupp railway guns advanced and fired 183 shells on Paris, causing many Parisians to flee the city. The initial stages of the offensive were so successful that German Kaiser Wilhelm II declared March 24 a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory to be close; however, after heavy fighting, the German offensive was halted. The Germans had a brilliant new stormtrooper tactics that avoided the trenches and sent small units on preplanned raids deep behind the lines to control and communication centres. That worked very well but the Germans, lacking tanks or motorized artillery, were unable to consolidate their positions. The British and French learned that they had to fall back a few miles and the Germans would be disorganized and vulnerable to counterattack. By the standards of the First World War, Operation Michael was a great success. The Germans penetrated 40 miles, took 975 guns, and inflicted 300,000 casualties, but eventually the German attacked stalled from exhaustion.
Deep Infiltration
The Allies had spent the years 1915, 1916, 1917 bludgeoning themselves on the German defences with little to show for it. The Germans spent the winter of 1917/1918 retraining their Army in what was now widely accepted as the best new way to conduct positional warfare.
The basic battlefield unit was no longer to be the company or battalion, but the squad. Each squad was no longer just a group of riflemen, but a combined arms formation of machine gunners, grenadiers and flamethrower troops supported by a few riflemen.
The von Hutier tactics (infiltration tactics) called for special infantry assault units to be detached from the main lines and sent to infiltrate enemy lines. They were supported by shorter and sharper (than usual for WWI) artillery fire missions targeting both the enemy front and rear, bypassing and avoiding what enemy strongpoints they could, and engaging to their best advantage when and where they were forced to, leaving decisive engagement against bypassed units to following heavier infantry. The primary goal of these detached units was to infiltrate the enemy’s lines and break his cohesiveness as much as possible. These formations became known as Stosstruppen, or shock troops, and the tactics which they pioneered would lay the basis of post-WWI infantry tactics, such as the development of present day fire teams.
Not Needed By the Allies.
This new way of thinking was only vaguely recognized by the Allies, who during the three years of trench warfare had increased the battalion firepower from two Medium Vickers Machine Guns with additional Lewis Light Machine Guns, but who did not re-train their men in a way which extracted the greatest advantage from these new weapons. The Allied failure to see the real change behind the German actions was to curse them for the rest of the war and to ensure that they started the next war so far behind the eight ball, that it took two and half years of military disasters before they could learn and turn defeat into success.
Technological Advances Ensured German Success.
The Light Machine Gun
One of these, which had appeared well before von Hutier’s success, was the light machine gun. The original machine guns used in the early part of the war were almost all based on the Maxim design, heavy water cooled belt fed weapons requiring two or three men to move and operate them. These were ideal for defensive positions, where they could sit on their tripods behind a breastwork and spew out bullets for hours on end without stopping for anything, but to have a new belt inserted into the breech or cool water in the tank. This sort of weapon was a liability in the attack; the three or four men carrying the gun, tripod, water can and ammunition made an obvious group which became a prime target for snipers. Their speed of advance was slow, and they took time to set up their gun and commence firing once their objective was reached. What was needed, as General Haig himself pointed out in the summer of 1915 when he was Commander, First Army, was “A lighter machine gun, with tripod and gun in one part… “
The answer was already there, in the shape of the Lewis Gun; developed in America but totally ignored. It had been put into manufacture in Belgium and Britain and supplies began reaching the British Army in France in July 1915. This firearm could be carried by one man, was fed from a flat drum magazine containing 47 cartridges, or a larger 72 round magazine and could even be fired from the hip while advancing. The idea was taken up by other combatants and such designs as the Light Hotchkiss, the Bergmann, the Chauchat, the Dreyse and the Madsen appeared in large numbers throughout the remainder of the war.
The light machine gun, then, allowed the infantry to take its fire support along in the assault and it eventually came to overshadow the heavy machine gun.
The Sub Machine Gun
Von Hutier’s “Storm troops” needed something even more portable; his tactical theory demanded heavy firepower from every man, much more than could be easily delivered by a conventional rifle. Every man could not carry a light machine gun, from considerations of weight, bulk and ammunition supply. Something different was needed, and this led to the sub-machine gun. Due to the fact that in the attack neither side could ever get enough machine gun ammunition (.303 or 8 mm Mauser ammunition) to supply the light machine guns and the Germans realised that at close range less than 100 yards or mainly less that Sub Calibre Ammunition 9 mm Parabellum or 7.62 x 25 Mauser pistol ammunition would kill or disable any opponent. More relevantly more of the ammunition could be carried by the one man operator, and as it was smaller and lighter, more of it could be man carried to support him. Additionally the smaller sub-machine guns could be swung around and bring fire to bear in the confined circumstances of trenches and dug outs.
Bergmann MP 18 showing how to load the helical magazine and strip for cleaning.
The first sub-machine gun had been under development since some time in 1916, however there was no official military demand for it, since no military mind had visualized such a weapon. Hugo Schmeisser, chief designer for the Theodor Bergmann Company of Berlin, was a far seeing man who began work, he was sure that once he had an operating weapon the army would find a use for it. The resulting “Bergmann Maschinen Pistole 18″ was an extremely simple weapon which fired standard 9mm Parabellum pistol cartridges (1250 fps with 7 ½ inch barrel) from a 32-shot helical”snail” magazine inserted into the side of the gun. It could be quickly changed. It fired at a rate of about 400 rounds per minute and was sighted for a maximum range of 200 m (220yd) though in practice it was to be used at much shorter distances. Weighing less than 9 pound 4 ounces unloaded, it was only 81cm (32inchs) long, a handy and easily operated weapon which gave the individual soldier immense firepower. Armed with these weapons the Storm Troopers of von Hutier’s 18th Army on the Western Front made savage inroads into the Allied lines in the spring of 1918. The Allies did not adopt the sub machine gun, it was too late in the war for them to organise and tool up factories to manufacture them. Nonetheless, they were well aware of the possibilities of infiltration and once they had absorbed and contained the German advance, they, in their turn, moved on to the offensive, using the Lewis and other light machine guns in the same sort of tactics, only they had more of everything now the American had arrived. That a frontal attack could now succeed where for four years it had failed was simply due to the German advance having disrupted and melted their tight defensive line and allowing the Allies the opportunity to move forward. Once the wedge had been inserted, assisted by tanks and concentrated artillery fire, the German line began to crumble and suddenly mobile warfare returned to the Western Front.
A Stormtrooper of 1918 vintage, getting his photo taken so he can send it home to Mum.
The new assault tactics had broken the stalemate, it had won battles but lost the war.
In the next war, tanks and other armoured vehicles allowed decisive exploitation of the infiltration breakthrough, deep into the enemy’s rear areas. The sensational methods of blitzkrieg had their roots in the stormtrooper tactics of 1918.
In the post-WW1 years, as the armies of the world were run down from their wartime strength and lapsed into their normal peacetime obscurity, the lessons of the war were reviewed; some were learned, many were forgotten. The weapons which had appeared were also reviewed, and more notice was taken of the hardware than of the theories which had accompanied it. Although much of the wartime equipment had to stay in use for economy’s sake, the soldiers and the designers saw that virtually everything in use in 1918 was obsolete, and that new weapons would be needed for the future. Of course the Allies did not know what they were, so blundered on regardless.