MAKING OF TANKS

Grey River Argus, 16 December 1943, Page 3

MAKING OF TANKS

Australia’s Success CHANGE-OVER TO MORE URGENT EQUIPMENT.

fßec; 5.5.) SYDNEY, Dec. 15. The fluidity of modern warfare, which has resulted in altered strategic and tactical needs, has been responsible for Australia’s recent decision to stop the manufacture of tanks, after spending four million pounds on the project. This is reported by a Sydney “Herald’’ staff correspondent. Nine large annexes had been built for the manufacture and the assembly of the component parts of tanks, and two thousand men had been especial-, Iv trained for the work in tank arsen, The Australian-designed cruiserweight tanks produced were the fastest "tanks of their weight in the world. They were heavily-armoured, were streamlined, with low silhouttes, and were powerfully gunned. However, they began to come off the assembly lines in numbers only when the tank was losing its force in the

war, and becoming dominated by the firepower of increasingly-powerful anti-tank guns. . _ .. The tank production by the other United Nations has also been stepped down. The cessation of tank construction in Australia fits into the pattern of a major industrial switchover. involving the transfer of twenty thousand workerc from the production of war weapons, which are now in abundant supplv to new types of more urgently-needed military equipanent. Australia pioneered the use of tne multiple petrol engines in tanks, and she was the first country to build tanks with complete armoured steel hull, cast as one solid unit.. These were - technical advances which are now the standard practice in America,