Owen Gun

The gun was developed by Evo Owen, an inventor from Wollongong, who submitted his .22 prototype to the army at Victoria Barracks, Sydney in July 1939. In a rebuttal common to many inventors, Owen was told that the Australian Army had no interest in a submachine gun. Following the outbreak of war, Owen joined the army as a private.

About two years later, Vincent Wardell, who worked for the steel company John Lysaght, at Port Kembla, found the prototype in the front garden of his house. Wardell became intrigued by the weapon's simplicity and arranged to have Owen transferred to the Army Inventions Board, where he re-commenced work on the gun. The army continued to view the weapon in a negative light, but the government took an increasingly favourable view. The original drum magazine was changed to a straight magazine.

The choice of ammunition wavered initially, but due to the quantities of .45 ACP calibre cartridges available at the time, it was decided to adopt it for the Owen Gun. Official trials were organised, and Lysaght made 9 mm, .38 calibre and .45 calibre versions available. Sten guns and Thompson submachine guns were used as benchmarks. All weapons had been immersed in mud and covered with sand prior to the test. The Owen was the only gun to continue firing. In spite of this impressive result, the army still could not decide on a calibre and it was only intervention from the higher levels of government that persuaded the army to order the 9mm variant.

From March 1942 through to February 1943, Lysaght produced 28,000 Owen Guns — however, when the initial batch of ammunition was finished, it was the wrong type, leaving 10,000 guns without bullets. Once again government intervention overrode military bureaucracy, and took the Owen Gun through the final production stages and into the hands of Australian troops fighting Japanese forces in New Guinea.

The Owen gun remained standard issue for the Australian Army until 1966, when it was replaced by the F1 submachine gun

Technical specifications