Tag Archives: owen submachine gun

Aitape Triple Canopy

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80 years ago this week: 26-year-old Australian Army Private Rosslyn Frederick Gaudry (Service Number: NX94822) of 2/3rd Infantry Battalion, 16th Brigade, 6th Division “watches his sector with his Owen submachine gun in a forward observation pit at Kalimboa Village” in Aitape, Wewak, New Guinea, 26 April 1945.

Australian War Memorial AWM 091259

Raised for WWII at Victoria Barracks, Sydney on 24 October 1939, 2/3 Aust. Inf. Battalion A.I.F. sailed from Sydney just 11 weeks later for North Africa and disembarked in Egypt on 14 February 1940. Fighting first against the Italians in Libya in early 1941, they were sent to the fiasco in Greece then evacuated to Palestine where they fought the French in July 1941 then remained here until March 1942 as a garrison force. Returned to Australia, they were soon fighting along the Kokoda Trail and would remain in and around the green hell of New Guinea until the end of the war. The battalion left 207 of its men on the Roll of Honour, earned boxes of decorations (4 DSO; 16 MC; 12 DCM; 30 MM; 2 BEM; 73 MID), and 16 battle honours stretching from Tobruk to Mount Olympus to Damascus and Kokoda.

As for the very haggard Pte. Gaudry shown above, he was born in Gulgong, New South Wales in 1918 the son of George Henry Gaudry and Maude Gaudry (nee: Lyons). He enlisted in the Australian Army on 10 April 1942 in Paddington, Kandos, NSW and served in 2/3 Bn across New Guinea from the Owen Stanley Mountain Range along the Kokoda Track to the Aitape-Wewak Campaign.

Discharged from service on 4 October 1946, he returned to NSW and became a salesman. Married to Joan May Gloede in 1953, Gaudry passed at age 61 on New Year’s Eve 1979 in Homebush, Australia.

He is buried in the New South Wales Garden of Remembrance in Rookwood.

Getting some range time with the Owen

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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.

 

Battlefield Vegas
Choices, choices…(Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Battlefield Vegas
You know us, we like the rare ones. 
Then we saw this baby, sandwiched between a Rattler and a UZI-SD. 
This beautiful Mk. 1 Owen may look a little funky because it is a little funky, but we just had to check it out. 
Keep in mind these were built for an all-up per-unit cost of about $30, so the furniture isn’t nice on this simple “toob” gun. In many respects, it was a forerunner of such simple modern SMGs as the Sterling and Beretta PMX. Note the charging handle is to the rear of the gun and comes super close to the face while reciprocating. 
Top fed with a 33-round 9mm magazine, it has a very peculiar feel to it.
The ejection port is on the bottom. 
One of the more curious aspects of the Owen is that the front sight post is off-center, canted to the right, as the top sight line is ruined by the magazine. 

More on how the range went, along with some background on the gun, in my column at Guns.com.

Owen in the RVN

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Some 56 years ago this month:

“December 1967. Nui Dat, South Vietnam. 15233 Sergeant Reg Matheson of Hammondville, NSW, a member of 103 Field Battery, 1st Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery (RAA), with his gun near a sandbagged area at the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) base.”

Photo by Michael Coleridge via the Australian War Memorial COL/66/0959/VN

Note Sgt. Matheson’s distinctive top-fed WWII-era Owen Mk 2/3 Machine Carbine (submachine gun).

Designed by 24-year-old Pvt. Evelyn Ernest Owen, with 2/17 Battalion of the Australian Army, the gun can generally be regarded as Australia’s STEN and was placed into wartime production in 1943 with some 40,000 produced. 

Production Owen Mk 1 painted in green and yellow camouflage for use in jungle fighting. The pistol grips are black plastic and the butt is wood. The 33 round 9mm magazine didn’t last long at the guns ripping 700 rounds per minute rate of fire — but “Diggers” would carry lots of spare mags to keep it stoked.

 

Late model Owen Mk 1/43 SMG complete with canvas sling mounted on the left-hand side. The butt is the skeleton frame type with a clip for an oil bottle — similar to the one found on the U.S. M1A1 Carbine.

 

The WWII era guns were refurbished at the Australian Lithgow Small Arms factory in the 1950s, which included stripping away the camo and giving them new MkIII style barrels and a safety catch. This is a good example of the latter type of “improved” Mk2/3 Owen.

As well documented in images online at the AWM, the 9mm Owen continued to see much front-line use in Korea, augmenting the bolt-action .303 Enfield with the Diggers against the Norks and Chinese “volunteers.”

20 September 1952, Korea. Informal portrait of 2400799 Private Bruce Grattan Horgan, 3rd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR), standing near a trench on Hill 187. Pte Horgan is armed to go on a summer night fighting patrol, which usually consists of 15 men. His armament consists of a 9mm Owen sub-machine gun, seven magazines each holding 33 bullets, and four M36 Mills bomb hand grenades. AWM P06251.002

Owens remained in service with the Australians well into the 1960s– with Vietnam being its last hurrah, serving alongside M16s and inch-pattern semi-auto FALs– then they were replaced by the very Owen-like F1 submachine gun, which was in turn replaced by the Steyr F88 in the 1990s.
 

AWM caption: “Nui Dat, South Vietnam. 1966. A Signal Corps linesman with a 9mm Owen Machine Carbine (Owen Gun) on his back, climbing a rubber tree at 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) Base.”

The evolution of the mighty, mighty Owen

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In the darkest days of WWII, 24-year-old Pvt. Evelyn Ernest Owen, with 2/17 Battalion of the Australian Army, from Wollongong, New South Wales, submitted a homemade gun he made to the Army for testing.

His handy burp gun used a gramophone spring, was chambered in .22 rimfire, and was rejected.

But he kept working on the design, and, in full production by 1943, proved one of the most popular of WWII submachine guns– at least in Commonwealth service in the Pacific.


More in my column at Guns.com.

What they carried: Malay Emergency

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Between 1948 and 1960, the UK and Commonwealth allies fought a very hot guerrilla war against the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). This effort is often called Britain’s Vietnam and, unlike the U.S., the Brits won this counterinsurgency campaign and left a template n how to do it the right way while they won hearts and minds.

Malay and New Zealand soldiers on a jungle patrol, c1957 Note the L1A1s and Owens

Malay and New Zealand soldiers on a jungle patrol, c1957 Note the L1A1s, Bren gun and Owens

Of course, the Malayan Home Guard outnumbered the Min Yuen by a factor of about 2:1 and the Brits brought in the Gurkha and SAS units to run rampant, but hey, it is what it is.

Here is some of the specialized jungle equipment as carried by British forces during the Malayan Emergency:

Lee Enfield Rifle No.5 Mk.I, Owen sub-machine gun and an M1 Carbine malaya 1950s
The weapons are a Lee Enfield Rifle No.5 Mk.I, Owen sub-machine gun and an M1 Carbine. Amongst the other equipment is a parang, first aid kit, pair of jungle boots, pair of hockey boots (for wearing at night), water bottle, mess tin and jungle ration pack (consists of cheese, jam, biscuits, ginger pudding, steak, liver and bacon, tea, sugar, milk, sweets, chewing gum, toilet paper, salt and one paludrine tablet).

Hattip Aposltes of Mercy

Things they carred, Malayan Emergency

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Specialised jungle equipment as carried by British forces during the Malayan Emergency The weapons are a Lee Enfield Rifle No5 MkI Owen sub-machine gun and an M1 Carbine

 

Specialized jungle equipment as carried by British forces during the Malayan Emergency: The weapons are a Lee Enfield Rifle No.5 Mk.I, Owen sub-machine gun and an M1 Carbine. Amongst the other equipment is a parang, first aid kit, pair of jungle boots, pair of hockey boots (for wearing at night), water bottle, mess tin and jungle ration pack (consists of cheese, jam, biscuits, ginger pudding, steak, liver and bacon, tea, sugar, milk, sweets, chewing gum, toilet paper, salt and one paludrine tablet).