ITEMS FROM AUSTRALIA

Grey River Argus, 7 February 1941, Page 10

ITEMS FROM AUSTRALIA

ARMY ON WHEELS MECHANISATION PLAN An Australian Overseas Force of four Divisions and Corps troops would require 16,196 motor vehicles costing £4,500,000. This excludes wastage and by no means gives the whole picture of the vast expansion which mechanisation imposes on the army. This was stated by the Australian Minister for the Army (Mr Spender), who said that the maintenance and replacement processes inevitable when such numbers of motor vehicles were used in war conditions, entailed instructional schools, ordnance workshops and field repairing units on a commensurate scale. The use of tanks demanded new defence armaments against tanks, and the anti-tank guns now in the process of manufacture in Australia were a development of this new warfare. Construction costs of a' tank, Mr Spender said, were approximately £lO9O a ton, and tanks ranged from six tons weight to 40 tons or more.

VISUAL EDUCATION FOR AUSTRALIAN AIRMEN Th c Royal Australian Air Force has embarked upon an intensive scheme of visual education to instruct recruits in the operation of service equipment and to maintain their interest. Twenty-six British films of a total length of 150.000 feet have been copied in Australia and delivered to the Directorate of Training. Two new films have been made by a Sydney firm in co-operation with the Air Force. These deal with the Vickers machine gun and the Browning gun. Other films to be made in Australia include demonstrations of correct bombing and air-gunnery methods, and the operation of a machine-gun turret. All large Air Force schools hav e been equipped with projectors for thc showing of these films. RADIO EQUIPMENT N.Z. ORDERS IN AUSTRALIA Orders for aircraft radio equipment worth nearly £50,000 have been placed with Australian manufacturers. All the equipment, except about £5,000 worth of transmitters and receivers ordered for the New Zealand Government, will be used in Australian training and service aircraft. _ These orders are the largest ever placed in Australia for aircraft radio transmitters and receivers.

AUSTRALIAN ORDNANCE NEW MASTER-GENERAL Brigadier E. J. Mitford, D. 5.0., who has returned to Australia' by air from the A.I.F. in the Middle East, has taken over his hew post as MasterGeneral of the Commonwealth Ordnance. He succeeds Major-General T, R. Williams. C.M.G., D.S'.O., who has been appointed Chief Military Advisor to the Director-General of Munitions (Mr H. Essington Lewis). Australia’s vastly increased munitions producton necessitated the creation of General Williams’ new post, in order that the Army could take advantage of th e rapidly increasing supplies of munitions and stores coming forward. Since the outbreak of war, Genera! Williams and the ordnance staff clothed and equipped the equivalent of 12 Divisions. This involved the placing of orders in Australia alon G to the value of £100.000,000. In the new scheme, the MasterGeneral of Ihe Ordnance will be responsible for the preparation of all demands on the Department of Munitions and Supply for equipment required by the Army, and for caring for all material once it is handed over to the Army organisation. The Chief Military Advisor will be concerned with the specification, design and inspection of future requirements of equipment.