February 21st, 2023
6minute read
Things are just different in Australia.
Many of their mammals are unique to the continent and sport weird pouches they use to raise their young.
Additionally, their snakes seem all to be just super deadly.
Pvt Leon Ravet of Parramatta, NSW (left), and Pvt Bernard Kentwell of Cronulla, NSW, on the alert with their Owen submachine guns on New Britain on April 4, 1945. Image: Australian War Memorial
And then theres the platypus.
Whats that all about?
Apparently, all that intrinsic Down Under strangeness extends to their small arms as well.
The Owen gun was modular and fit together with bayonet catches. A damaged section could quickly be replaced, returning the gun to immediate service. Image: Australian War Memorial
Origin Story
Evelyn Ernest Owen was born in 1915 in Wollongong, New South Wales.
He finished high school, but did not otherwise much take to formal education.
He did, however, have certain natural mechanical proclivities.
A woman employed by the Munitions Supply Laboratories fits a pistol grip to an Owen submachine gun, c. 1944. Image: Australian War Memorial
By 1938 he had developed a submachine gun design that fired .22 LR.
He approached the ordnance officers at Victoria Barracks in Sidney, but they showed little interest.
The Australian Army at the time was operating on the British model and had scant use for submachine guns.
The Owen Gun was designed to be fired from either the shoulder or the hip. This Australian soldier demonstrates the former. Image: Australian War Memorial
Their combat tactics orbited around massed rifle fire and heavy machineguns.
Disappointed, the young Mr. Owen enlisted in the Australian Army.
Owen adapted his rimfire design to fire .32 ACP and then .45 ACP before settling on the 9mm.
A Malayan receives instruction in the Owen submachine gun from WOR Daryl Howells, right, while Australian cadets watch. Image: Cliff Bottomley/National Archives of Australia
By 1941 with war clouds looming on the horizon, the Australians were warming to the idea of SMGs.
However, they were already in the pipeline to receive British Stens.
The weapon was field-tested alongside the American Thompson, the British Sten and the German Bergmann.
Pvt R. F. Gaudry is in a forward observation post on New Guinea during April 1945. He is armed with an Owen submachine gun. Image: Australian War Memorial
As a result, that first order was increased from 100 copies to 2,000.
Australian industry tooled up to mass produce the weapon soon thereafter.
Details
The Owen was a conventional submachine gun quite unconventionally executed.
Volunteer Defence Corps, a military organization similar to the British Home Guard, marches in Melbourne. They are armed with rifles and the Owen SMG. Image: National Archives of Australia
As Evelyn Owen had little formal schooling and no experience designing weapons, he approached the project without preconceptions.
This fresh unspoiled take resulted in a shockingly reliable design.
The most radical aspect of the Owens design was that it fed from the top.
Pvt Frank Cooper of the Australian Army prepares to move into “no man’s land” to do battle with the Chinese Communists in Korea on May 17, 1953. Image: Australian War Memorial
The guns detachable box magazine carried 33 rounds of 9mm ammunition.
This unusual orientation allowed for gravity to assist in feeding rounds into the weapon.
It also facilitated easier firing from the prone.
Cpl Frank Rowlings, 3rd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, is armed with an Owen gun at a forward listening post near Pakchon, North Korea on November 7, 1950. Image: Australian War Memorial
Left-handed people were just screwed, but we should be used to that by now.
The Owen fired from the open bolt by means of a fixed firing pin milled into the bolt face.
Oddly, the ejector was built into the magazine rather than the weapon itself.
Near Vung Tau, Vietnam, Australian troops move through an overgrown banana plantation on the first day of Operation Hardihood. The soldier on the right is carrying a 9mm Owen submachine gun. Image: Australian War Memorial
This facilitated easy removal of the barrel for disassembly or maintenance.
The simple wire buttstock was removable but did not fold or collapse.
The Owen gun required a unique manual of arms, and it was heavy at 9.33 lbs.
Weary soldiers of the Royal Australian Regiment drink pineapple juice after returning from a night-time combat patrol in Korea during August 1952. All are armed with Owen guns. Image: Australian War Memorial
With a fully-charged 33-round magazine, the gun tipped the scales at a whopping 10.7 pounds.
For the sorts of desperate close range engagements that defined the Pacific theater, the Owen gun was superb.
The Rest of the Story
By wars end, the Australians had produced some 45,000 Owen guns.
The price at the time ranged from $24 to $30 apiece.
That would be about $516 today.
Production of the Owen wrapped up in 1944.
The Owen remained in service withAustralian troops through both the Korea and Vietnam Wars.
He eventually sold the patent rights for the weapon to the Australian government.
All totaled he made about 10,000 off of the Owen gun design.
With the war over he continued experimenting with firearms, most commonly sporting rifles.
However, there was not a happy ending to be found here.
Evelyn Owen liked to drink and is said to have done so in excess.
He eventually developed a gastric ulcer that hemorrhaged in April of 1949.
Owen subsequently bled out and died at the young age of 33.
The gun he designed, however, would be his legacy, helping save his nation from tyranny.
