The Owen Machine Carbine, also known as the Owen Gun was a submachine gun designed and used by Australia during World War II.
Description[]
The Owen gun adopted for service with the Australian military was chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum Cartridge and carried a magazine with capacity for 32 rounds. Notably, the design was a blow-back operated, top-fed weapon that had to account for its top magazine by off-setting the gun's fixed sights to the left.[1] The weapon fired from an open bolt and possessed a rate of fire of about 700 rounds per minute. Also distinctive of the Owen gun is its foregrip which easily allows the weapon to be fired from the hip or more accurately from the shoulder. A soldier using the weapon could expect it to have an effective range of 120 meters at a muzzle velocity of 421 m/s.[2]
To prevent dirt from clogging up the bolt, the Owen had a receiver divided into two isolated chambers, meaning that any dirt entering through the charging handle opening is unable to prevent the weapon from operating, making it very reliable in the field. Further, the barrel of the weapon can be removed simply by pulling the barrel pin located at the front of the receiver.[3]
The Owen had an overall weight of 4.21 kilograms unloaded and total length of 80.6 cm.
Variants
- Owen Machine Carbine Mk. I/42: The Mk. I* version of the Owen gun lowered the weight and production requirements for the weapon by lightening the weight of the barrel and removing extra metal from the trigger housing.
- Owen Machine Carbine Mk. I/43: Version with wooden stock instead of metal wireframe stock.
- Owen Machine Carbine Mk. II: Proposed simplified version. Never produced.
History[]
The Owen SMG began its development in the home of Australian inventor, Evelyn Owen, in the form of various prototypes of an automatic .22 caliber weapon he worked on throughout the 1930s. Finally satisfied with a prototype, Owen presented his design to representatives of the Australian armed forces in July 1939, though it was rejected due to a general lack of interest in submachine guns among the military. Still seeking to contribute to the war effort, Owen joined the armed forces as a private in 1940. Just prior to his deployment, Owen had left his prototype in a burlap sack next to his home, where it was discovered by his neighbor, Vincent Wardell. Wardell also happened to be a manager at a metal fabrication firm named Lysaght Works. Interested in the design, Wardell had Owen reassigned to the Army Inventions Board where he could continue his work on the design alongside Wardell and his team despite the Australian military's anticipated adoption of the British Sten Submachine Gun.
An Australian soldier with an Owen Gun overlooking Labuan airstrip on June 10, 1945
The decision for which ammunition the weapon was to use was a long time in the making, due largely to difficulties with the Lysaght factory's acquisition of enough rounds for the required 10,000 bullet endurance test. Working against Australian military resistance to support the weapon, Wardell, Owen, and gunsmith Freddie Kunzler who was working for Wardell, presented weapons made for the .38 S&W Cartridge and the .45 ACP Cartridge to the Australian military. In testing, the Owen gun performed excellently, greatly surpassing army expectations. In fact, in a test in September 1941, when put against a Thompson and Sten submachine gun in various mud and sand tests, the Owen gun continued to operate effectively where both of its competitors simply could not even function. An order of 2,000 examples in the 9 mm Parabellum caliber was put through along with a suggestion to Great Britain for the Owen gun to become the standard submachine gun instead of the Sten.
From 1942 to 1944, 45,000 Owen submachine guns were produced by the John Lysaght & Co. factories, supplying numerous Australian troops. In the field, the gun was extremely well liked for its reliability, often replacing the Thompson when possible in the arsenals of New Zealander and American troops fighting in Solomons. After the war, the weapon continued service with the Australian military well into the Vietnam war.
References[]
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