MAKING MUNITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 108, 10 May 1939, Page 13

MAKING MUNITIONS.

AUSTRALIAN PROGRESS NEARLY SELF-SUPPORTING. ELEVEN SHADOW FACTORIES. i ■ (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. The Australian armament and defence organisation is proceeding rapidly, according to Sir Colin, Fra*er, of Melbourne, who arrived at Wellington today by the Wanganella. Sir Colin, who is chairman of directors of the New Zealand Petroleum Company, Limited, was appointed to advise the Federal Government on mineralogical resource aspects during the recent defence discussions in Australia. Eleven shadow factories had been established recently in Australia to manufacture munitions of war, said Sir Colin. Australia was rapidly approaching the stage of being entirely selfsupporting in this respect. In tho event of war rihe was undertaking to defend the whole of Australia and the East, as far as Hongkong, and including New Zealand. The manufacture of war aircraft was being carried on by a private company, in which he himself was interested, with a factory at Fisherman's Bend, on the Varra River. Production started last March, within a year of the undertaking being launched, and in a few months the factory would be producing machines at the rate of two or three a week. The aeroplanes were of American type adapted to British standards and to Australian conditions and requirements. They were of the lighter-bomber type, with a speed of 230 miles an hour, or well over 300 miles when diving to deposit their bombs. They were named "Wirraway," that being an apt aboriginal word meaning challenge,. Sir Colin eald that if oil was found in Taranakl or Poverty Bay it would solve one of the most serious problems of Australian and New Zealand defence, the likelihood of this essential war munition being cut off in an emergency. New Zealand was handier to Sydney and Melbourne as. a eource of oil than any of the world's existing oilfields.