GREAT ADVANCE
IN MANUFACTURE OF GUNS IN AUSTRALIA FOURTEEN DIFFERENT KiNDS OF FIREARMS. REMARKABLE WAR TIME ACHIEVEMENT. Australia’s ordnance production programme, the “Sydnoy Morning Herald” reoorted recently, has now reached the stage when Government and private factories are making 14 ditterent kinds of firearms and guns, from pistols and tommy-guns to field artillery, naval, and anti-aircraft guns. In the last war the only fire-arm made in Australia was the rifle. It may now be disclosed that for some bme Australia has been making Botovs anti-aircraft guns, six-pounder anti-tank guns, and 3m 20cwt antiaircraft guns—some of the largest and most intricate weapons ever manufactured in this country. Manufacture of the Swedish Bofors gun by a Government ordnance factory associated with a large number of sub-contractors scattered over the length and breadth of the Commonwealth, is a remarkable war time achievement. ™ ■ It is the world’s most effective rapidfire weapon for dealing with low-flying aircraft, firing a heavy barrage of 40 millimetre shells to a height of about 6 000 ft. In this role it serves as an intermediate defence between mghaltitude guns of the 3.7 in type and the short-range machine-gun. No gun has been more successful in defeating the German dive-bomber than the Bofors. Anti-aircraft gunners like it because of its rapid rate of fire (it throws 120 shells a minute) and because the ammunition is of the tracer type, and the missiles can be clearly followed as they speed toward their target. The Bofors has a dual purpose. It has been employed successfully as an anti-tank gun. Heavy engineering workshops m New South Wales have contributed substantially to the manufacture of the gun The barrel, eight' feet long and weighing 2501 b, is forged in New South Wales, and many of the 500 component parts of the gun are made by manufacturing plants m this State. x- . , The six-pounder anti-tank gun, to whose manufacture New South Wales is also contributing, is the successor to the smaller two-pounder. It is used both as a field gun and as the mam weapon in the British Churchill tank. Until the appearance of the sixpounder, British tanks in the Western Desert were badly outgunned by the German 50 m.m. (firing a 411 b projectile) and 75 m.m. (141 b tank guns, and 50 m.m. and 88 m.m. (201 b anti-
tank guns. The arrival of six-pounders _ m Egypt helped, to stop Rommel’s drive on the Suez Canal, and contributed in no small part to the recent smashing of his armoured divisions. The gun weighs 28cwt, and fires at a rate uo to 25 rounds a minute. It is shod with pneumatic tyres and has a split trail, the two legs of which can be spread’ to any width and clamped in position. The 3in 20cwt anti-aircraft gun which Australia is now making is a modification of the 3in gun she was producing before the war.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 4
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481GREAT ADVANCE Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 4
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