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In turn, Owen himself had committed to the war, now as a private in the Australian Army that rejected his weapon.

As the Australian politicians committed to the war effort against the Axis, so too did regular Australians fighting for various reasons. In July of 1939, he showcased the weapon to representatives of the Australian Army but little interest in his creation was garnered. Throughout the 1930s, Owen worked on a compact automatic weapon chambered for the. As the Australian military lacked much in the way of producing their own weapons at the outset, they took on deliveries of foreign-developed aircraft, tanks and guns to stock their war-making inventory. What this did was force the nation of Australia to modernize much of its infrastructure including that of heavy industry.

When Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939, and following British policy, Australia formally declared war on the European power. It would rely largely on the Commonwealth and America for her protection from a Japanese invasion - which was a very real threat.Īustralian Evelyn Owen (1915-1949) was born an inventor and took a shine to firearms of all sorts, designing and building them from an early age. Naturally, there was a certain uneasy feeling about the Japanese military setting up bases of operation so close to the mainland and Australia was therefore forced to create a military war industry that was - essentially - not in existence at the time. Prior to World War 2, the Empire of Japan had become a military-minded regional power and their invasion of the Asian mainland preceded their eventual expansion across the South Pacific towards Australia proper. A few submachine guns were available in the years following World War 1, chief among these being the famous American M1 Thompson gun while the first "true" submachine gun - the German Bergmann MP18 - was fielded at the end of World War 1 and saw service until 1945. Despite its obvious battlefield value today, world militaries took some time to warm up to the idea of procuring and fielding submachine guns in quantity alongside their trusted and true bolt-action service rifles and support machine guns.