"Universal Carrier"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 149, 1 May 1942, Page 10

"Universal

Carrier"

be built in New Zealand, that it was too complicated a machine to turn out in any quantity in a country whose industry just hadn’t reached the stage of being able to mass-produce a war vehicle embodying several hundred major parts and an almost equal number of special construction problems. A few men, however, had confidence that the problems could be overcome. The vehicle had been made in Australia, and the engineers of a big industrial plant in New Zealand pledged their reputation that it could be built here. They set to work, and sure enough, it was not very long before the first New Zealandmade Universal Carrier (commonly but quite wrongly referred to as the Bren Gun Carrier) rolled off the assembly line. There had been difficulties, certainly, but the sceptics had been answered. Apart from the power unit, it had been proved possible to build here, from the raw materials, one of the most complicated engines of war. And, incidentally, a step forward had been taken, or at least a beginning made, toward self sufficiency in the country’s war effort. "It Didn't Do Badly" The first thing to do was test out that Universal Carrier; to discover its particular "bugs", if any; to see how it stood up to hard work under conditions it might be expected to face on the field; in brief, to find out what sort of a job it was. The plant’s chief inspector and test driver took it over, bounced it over the roughest and toughest terrain he could find, stood it on its blunt nose and on its ugly tail end, charged obstacles, jumped it off the ground at high speeds until every weld must have been screaming with the strain. It didn’t do badly. Then Army e., -rts gave it a few tests of their own, equally strenuous and with the same end in view. They reported favourably, made a few suggestions and then said to the management of the plant, in as many words, "O.K. Now let’s see how many of them you can give us." sceptics said it couldn’t Assembly Line That vas the beginning of as tough an organisational job as this firm, or, | for that matter, any other industry in

New Zealand, had ever faced! No time was lost. Down the length of a great, shadowy building, lit here and there by flood lights and welders’ dazzling arcs, the key plant gave birth to an assembly line, a line patterned roughly on those in the automobile manufacturing plants of America. One difference is speed. The automobile on its assembly line moves forward at a slow but constant rate, never stopping until it is driven off for delivery to the seller. In this respect, the Universal Carrier assembly line has closer affiliations with aircraft production technique, the Carrier being moved forward in jumps by overhead hoist. Theoretically, bullet proof plates and component parts go in at one end and the Universal Carrier leaves under its own power, at the other. But the complete picture must include factories and workshops all over New Zealand, working under pressure, each turning out a few-maybe only one-individual parts. From big city engineering shops to oneman workshops these factories all have their individual problems of supply and technique. A special grade of steel may be impossible to procure; the best grade available must be treated until it meets requirements. A necessary ingredient for the rubber used on the bogey wheels is in short supply; is there satisfactory local substitute? (Continued on next page)

THEY SAID IT COULDNIT KE DONE!

(Continued from previous page) Whatever happens, those factories and workshops must forward their products in a steady stream to the key plant, enabling the assembly line to move along at a predetermined speed, to deliver a predetermined number of Universal Carriers to the Army, whic:. is the hungry customer waiting for them. Raw Material to Finished Product At one end, then, of the line, is the raw material from which is built up the body of the Universal Carrier, big stacks of armoured steel waiting to be sliced up, exactly as a tailor sets to work on a roll of cloth when he prepares to make a suit; and at the other end is the finished Carrier-finished, that is, except for its armament, without which it is a "man of war without guns". As it moves along, floor, sides, and compartments slowly take shape, tacked together by quick joints at first, later painstakingly welded into a rigid whole. It is cleaned, painted, takes to itself part after part-engine, petrol-tanks, steering gear, all the complicated mechanism of transmission. and drive, and near the end, the weighty track, itself an aggregation of some hundreds of component parts. It is a sudden metamorphosis. At one point a bare cumbersome steel hull; fifty yards farther along, the shape of the finished carrier is beginning to appear. The assembly line is a super-Wellsian glimpse of a new, industrialised world; a picture which, could it ‘be compressed within the limits of a canvas, would epitomise the part played by industry in mechanised war. At times there is a clanging and banging as of a thousand men battering with hammers on a thousand iron plates; at times silence broken only by the hiss and splutter of the welders, working away intently behind their masks, each the centre of a circle of blinding light. Long Hours of Work If ever men close their eyes gratefully at the end of a working day, welders should. Hours on end they must concentrate fiercely, intently, on the source of that white light, where steel plate is being fused with steel plate. Somehow, under pressure of the country’s emergency, they have managed to work hours which would reduce most workmen to physical wrecks. Over one eight weeks’ stretch they were at their jobs 77 hours every week. When overtime, with its accompanying fatigue, mounts up like chat the extra money earned is small incentive, the management of the plant points out. And the high pressure at which the plant has been working month in and month out-has produced its results. Naturally output figures are not available, ‘but it is known that this plant has been equalling the output of any ore plant in Australia. Continuance of that rate depends on several factors, not least of them the supply of raw materials. Every Universal Carrier is tested before it is handed over to the Army. Not as severely tested as was Carrier No. 1, but severely enough to bring to light, say, a badly-cast bogey spring or a faulty caterpillar tread. Supervision of the Universal Carrier does not end when it is handed over to the army. There are many fine points about its maintenance, and at the request of the Army, the parent plant is setting up a school for training Army mechanics in the repair and upkeep of Carriers.

Whether or not New Zealand industry will benefit after the war from the lessons learned in the mass froduction of this war vehicle, remains to be seen. In the meantime it is a tribute to the resourcefulness of industry that it is being built here at all, and every Carrier which rolls off the assembly line, means one more valuable fighting machine added to New Zealand’s defence, one more link in a chain of steel slowly being forged around these islands.

I F you ever get the opportunity of examining a Universal Carrier at close quarters, you may be intrigued by a series of small pits and dents in its armour plating, usually one to each plate. That is evidence of the army’s essentially hard-headed practical way ot doing things. "These armoured steel plates are supposed to be bullet proof’, some one apparently reasoned. "Very well. The best way to test them, then, will be to fire bullets at them." And the soldier who goes into action in a Universal Carrier will have the satisfaction of knowing that every armoured plate protecting him has stopped at least one bullet already.