BREN GUNS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 53, 30 August 1940, Page 9

BREN GUNS

MANUFACTURE IN AUSTRALIA

The Australian Ministry of Munitions states that there is no justification whatever for statements that delay in the production of Bren guns in Australia is due to British unwillingness to make plans and tools available. An article from "The Post's" Sydney correspondent, published on Tuesday, stated a revelation by the Prime Minister of Australia (Mr. R. G. Menzies) that much of the data supplied' from Britain for the manufacture of Beaufort bombers in Australia proved unreliable, necessitating a vast amount of checking, is believed by defence experts to give a clue to the reasons for much of the delay that has occurred j in making Bren guns. j The Ministry of Munitions in Australia states that the British authorities have done everything in their power to assist. Such delays as have occurred have been the inevitable consequence of the international situation. "Despite such handicaps—entirely beyond the power of either the British or the Commonwealth Government to avoid —there is every prospect that Bren guns will be produced in Australia, not merely at the time aimed at in the original schedule, but before it," the Ministry says.