"There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible." -Auberon Waugh
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Cool sub-machine gun
An Australian weapon, with a very interesting back story: the Owen SMG.
3 comments:
JeffS
said...
That's a very interesting weapon! The design is amazining simple, and likely had few (if any) misfeeds or jams.
The part where the Australian Army had to be ordered to test fire it is a shining example of how bureacrats can never be soldiers.
See this happened bfeore the 1942 fall of Singapore which was when the British let us down disastrously and we turned to the US, so before that pro-Brits dominated the army (despite misgivings after WW1).
This included a local sense of inferiority vs 'the mother country' and the army's officer corps was more British than the general population, so not just bureaucrats.
The final nail in the coffin was when the Brits joined the EU in the 70s and cut us out of their system. I don't blame them, they were still on some war rationing and we used to send them food parcels even in the 1960s. Joining the EU then was a huge boost for them.
The British Empire 20th Century was like Scarlett O'Hara, 'I'll think about that tomorrow'. Well tomorrow has arrived.
Interesting to hear the Owen gun described as "forgotten" It never did get much of a mention in the war comics - that was probably a fair bit of the reason for it fading from public consciousness.
One of my cousins carried one in a certain south-east Asian country on his government sponsored backpacking trip through the woods there. It was a Professional & Accurate Communist Obliterator.
My father used one when he was selected for a similar backpacking trip to north-east Asia some 15 years before that.
Take with a grain of salt our friend Bruce's Keatingesque view of Australia's history.
3 comments:
That's a very interesting weapon! The design is amazining simple, and likely had few (if any) misfeeds or jams.
The part where the Australian Army had to be ordered to test fire it is a shining example of how bureacrats can never be soldiers.
See this happened bfeore the 1942 fall of Singapore which was when the British let us down disastrously and we turned to the US, so before that pro-Brits dominated the army (despite misgivings after WW1).
This included a local sense of inferiority vs 'the mother country' and the army's officer corps was more British than the general population, so not just bureaucrats.
The final nail in the coffin was when the Brits joined the EU in the 70s and cut us out of their system. I don't blame them, they were still on some war rationing and we used to send them food parcels even in the 1960s. Joining the EU then was a huge boost for them.
The British Empire 20th Century was like Scarlett O'Hara, 'I'll think about that tomorrow'. Well tomorrow has arrived.
Interesting to hear the Owen gun described as "forgotten"
It never did get much of a mention in the war comics - that was probably a fair bit of the reason for it fading from public consciousness.
One of my cousins carried one in a certain south-east Asian country on his government sponsored backpacking trip through the woods there.
It was a Professional & Accurate Communist Obliterator.
My father used one when he was selected for a similar backpacking trip to north-east Asia some 15 years before that.
Take with a grain of salt our friend Bruce's Keatingesque view of Australia's history.
Post a Comment