AUSTRALIAN GUNS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21896, 24 February 1941, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN GUNS

PROGRESS WITH BREN TYPE SYDNEY, February 12. The first batch of Bren light machine guns manufactured in Australia have passed final firing trials at the Commonwealth Smail Arms Factory. Lithgow (N.S.W.), and Bren guns of 100 per cent Australian manufacture are now in- rapid production. From now onwards, says a Commonwealth Department of Information bulletin, they will be turned out in a steady stream to a schedule recently revised to provide for a large increase in production. To establish manufacture, no less than 72,944 tools, gauges, etc., are necessary, each made from high grade steel to a precision ranging from one thousandth to one ten thousandth of an inch. To-day there are 37 firms engaged in this work, 22 in New South Wales, 10 in Victoria, 4 in South Australia and one in Queensland—not one of which had undertaken high precision work of this special character two years ago. The Australian steel industry undertook orders for special types of steel and has been able to maintain deliveries. Members of the British Supply Mission, investigating munitions production in Australia and New Zealand, will take back to England one souvenir of historic value for the archives of the British Ministry of Supply—the cartridge case of the first round of ammunition fired from an Australianmade Bren gun. The Mission regards the Lithgow factory in New South Wales as comparable in managerial direction, layout. equipment, and technical skill of staff and operatives with the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, at which the Bren gun was evolved after a considerable period of experiment from one of seven models produced at Brno. Czechoslovakia.