ANTI-TANK GUNS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24483, 17 December 1940, Page 8

ANTI-TANK GUNS

AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURE MASS PRODUCTION ASTONISHING PROGRESS (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Dec. 14. The next important development in Australia’s 'rapidly-expanding munitions programme will be the mass production of anti-tank guns. Reports have been made of astonishing progress in the project for building these guns here. Manufacture of all-Australian antitank guns is part of a vast and ambitious programme of ordnance production for the Empire. Australia is already building 3.7 in and Sin anti-air-craft guns, rifles, and machine-guns; and other guns, such as 25-pounders and Bren guns, will follow. So competent is Australian workmanship that some of the guns now pouring out of the Australian workshops are preferred by the British Army and Royal Air Force to guns of the same type made in England. Latest Army Model The anti-tank gun, for which about 60 firms in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia are now busy making parts, is an extremely powerful and deadly weapon of the latest British Army model. It fires a two-pound semi-armour-piercing shell, which is about to be produced in quantity in Australian munitions factories. The gun is so new that it was possible to equip the British Army with only a small number of them before the Germans launched their offensive in Belgium last May. Australia’s decision to build antitank guns of the new pattern was first announced by the Ministry of Munitions last June. According to a statement subsequently released by the Department of Information, the plan envisaged the selection of a factory for assembling the gun and the manufacture of the component parts in a large number of, workshops spread over several States. In August the Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, announced that progress had been so satisfactory that there was every reason to believe that production time for these guns would constitute an Australian industrial record. Encouraging Results General Motors-Holdens, Ltd., was appointed major co-ordination contractor, with full responsibility for ensuring the manufacture of the gun parts by sub-contractors in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Complete drawings of the gun reached the firm in October, by which time an assembly , plant had already been installed in Adelaide. About 60 firms were quickly allotted tasks, and within a few weeks a great effort for the manufacture of parts was in full swing. The forging of the gun barrels got away to an even earlier start. Large numbers of them, turned out at an alloy steel works in New South Wales, made their appearance several months ago, and the rate of output is now considered to be highly encouraging. Thousands of Australian workmen will participate in the job when the gun is in full production. Some hundreds will be engaged in machining and assembly at the main assembly plant in Adelaide. Many have already been active on preparatory work for two months, during which period they have not had a single Sunday off duty. They take as much pride in beating the schedule as do the contractors and the planning experts of the Ministry of Munitions. Surplus for Export Not' .the least exacting task in the gigantic project is the preparation of tools, jigs, and fixtures’to f enable production to begin. All of them were -made in Australian workshops, a striking contrast to conditions prevailing before the war, when it was customary to import all such production adjuncts from Britain. The construction locally of anti-tank guns will add enormously to the efficiency of the A.I.F. The expected rale of output is necessarily confidential, but it will be sufficiently high tb ensure not only the adequate equipment of Australia’s forces at home and abroad, but also to permit export to other Empire countries.