In September 1940, Vincent Wardell (d.1990), the Manager of Lysaghts Works Pty Ltd, returned to his flat in suburban Wollongong NSW to find a bulky calico bag leaning against the wall beside his garage door. To his surprise, Wardell discovered a .22 calibre submachine gun inside and after inquiries with the neighbours, he found that the firearm belonged to one of the Owen brothers next door, the 25-year old Evelyn (“Evo”) (1915-1949).
The self-taught gunsmith Owen had fabricated this unique weapon with assistance from a woodworking coal miner and a machinist in a small Wollongong engineering shop. According to Wayne Wardman, the author of 1991 book, The Owen Gun, “Evo” never confided his full intentions to his machinist. As the artisan told Wardman in a later interview, “He never told me exactly what he had in mind.”
The firearm designed by the untutored Evelyn Owen is casually described in the official Commonwealth history Australia in the 1939-45 War as “a very light machine gun firing a pistol-type cartridge [that was] particularly useful in providing at short notice a relatively large volume of fire effective at a short range.”
Owen and his father had previously taken his prototype machine gun to the Victoria Barracks, Sydney where they were told the weapon was of no interest to the Australian Army. Owen then abandoned his invention and enlisted in the A.I.F. It was at this crucial moment that Vincent Wardell found Owen’s invention in the calico sack. Owen never left Australia for duty with the A.I.F.
Greatly simplified, his machinegun operated on a simple principle utilizing some of the energy of the gas-fed recoil to expel the spent shell and cock the bolt for the next cartridge to be spring-fed into the chamber. While there are many singular refinements in the Owen Gun’s operation, its most significant qualities were its small size, light weight and due to the simplicity of its moving parts, the successful protection of much of the firing mechanism.
In 1939, an Army Inventions Board had encouraged civilian and military proposals for new products and processes but the volume of submissions were soon overwhelming. Owen’s gun was rejected at this juncture. A Central Inventions Board was established in 1940 and when they too were over-run with ideas, an Army Inventions Directorate was created in 1942.
Branch offices in each state were also formed. The chair was now L. J. Harnett, the head of General Motors-Holden who had the Inventions Board advertised in the daily newspapers and proclaimed “Anyone with an Idea, Please Bring it Forward”.
A remarkable range of innovative product designs appeared before the Inventions Board and proposals with potential were given R & D development funds and technical assistance. A very brief list of adopted projects includes body armour, bullet-proof radiators, metal detectors, mechanical robots, unsinkable life rafts, a Photostat copier, tent fasteners, firearms and a shock-absorbing “Aeropak” for parachute drops of supplies.
Amongst the products appearing before the reconstituted Army Inventions Board was a much-refined Owen gun. This time, Evelyn Owen took his rapid-firing weapon to the Board in 1940 in company with the Lysaghts Manager Vincent Wardell and behind the scenes support from the forceful Essington Lewis, the recently appointed Director-General of Munitions (and BHP General Manager). Now, the Board proved to be more interested but there was immediate competition with the Australian Army’s preferred automatic weapons: the Sten gun (British) and the Thompson (USA) “Tommy gun”.
The official history Australia in the 1939-45 War is very candid about the Australian Army’s resistance to Owen’s new weapon. There were “Extraordinary Obstacles” and “Endless Confusions.” Dominated by British or British-trained officers, the Army preferred to wait for the development of the British Sten gun.
Lysaghts and Owen’s struggle for the Owen Gun soon reached the newspapers and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph rushed into battle in November 1941. “Here was a most promising Australian-designed weapon of a kind urgently needed and not being developed as rapidly as it should because of Army opposition.”
The Daily Telegraph’s editorial suggests that news of the Australian Army’s recent “shoot off” at the ANZAC rifle range had been leaked. In late September the Army had been commanded by the Minister of the Army to agree to a test firing in the presence of the Minister. The American Thompson, the British Sten and the Evelyn Owen/Lysaghts weapons were fired for accuracy, handling and finally, under “adverse conditions” before a large audience of military and civilian leaders.
“Adverse conditions” included firing while sand was poured over the weapon, the weapon fully immersed in water and finally, coated with mud. During these last adversity tests, the Sten gun exploded, injuring an observer and sending him to hospital. The Thompson “Tommy Gun” refused to fire while the Owen Gun with its shielded firing mechanism was unaffected. But, as Wayne Wardman records in his study The Owen Gun, the attending Major-General Milford told Lysaghts’ Manager Vincent Wardell that the “shoot off” “… hadn’t amounted to much”.
The Minister for the Army, annoyed by the continued resistance from the Australian military, personally placed an order for 2000 Owen Guns following these tests. Despite the prototyping and three changes to the calibre of the Owen Gun, this order was made only one year after it was presented before the Inventions Board.
Wardman’s study notes that 45,479 Owen Guns were assembled at Lysaghts, Port Kembla during the 1939-45 War at an estimated cost (not including R & D and prototyping) of £10 per unit. Lysaghts subcontracted the production of the barrels, steel pressings, housing, Bakelite handles and stocks. The Owen Gun remained in use in the Australian Army until 1966.
NB: The history of the Owen gun is exhaustively treated in Wayne Wardman. The Owen Gun. (Privately published), 1991 and Kevin Smith. The Owen Gun Files. An Australian Wartime Controversy. Turton and Armstrong, 1994. I am greatly indebted to both these works for this summary of the history of the Owen Gun.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2012
