While in town for SHOT Show earlier this year, we had a chance to swing by and visit our old friends at Battlefield Vegas. They gratefully allowed us a chance to tour their vault and pick a few guns to profile and shoot.
More on how the range went, along with some background on the gun, in my column at Guns.com.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies was “Attack Force Z” an early Sam Neil/Mel Gibson flick based loosely on the Z Special Unit joint commandos that ripped up Japanese held islands throughout WWII. Fascinating history behind these units.
Speaking of, above is some really remarkable color footage shot in the remote bush of Fraser Island in Queensland, well away from the public gaze, showing the art of bushwhacking as taught more than 70 years ago to the unit. Besides lots of really great images of the Australian Owen submachine gun in use, there are counter knife attacks, Folboats, Jungle Hammocks, How to use weapons, setting limpet mines to blow up shipping, bush survival skills, and fighting in unarmed combat.
The film was produced by one Dr. Tate.
By the 1940s, Dr. Tate was an accredited army photographer, filming in New Guinea and as far as history records, the only person invited to document the activities of the so-called Z Special Unit.
His son Peter Tate, who inherited much of his father’s slides and film, remembers seeing off cuts of the Fraser Island footage as a child.
“There were a lot of naked guys running around a wrecked ship and fellows pretending to knife each other,” Mr. Tate said.
He recalls his father “going off to the camp and coming back with a lot of sample weapons”.