G’day folks,
The dicussion about the Sanders Boomerang replica being sold to Classic Wings in the Netherlands led to a curious statement.
On the Classic Wings page, I read a statement that I’ve seen before;
http://classicwings.nl/boomerang/
Like the latest fighters at the time, planning for the Boomerang included automatic cannons. As no such weapons were manufactured locally, a British-made Hispano-Suiza 20 mm which an Australian airman had collected as a souvenir in the Middle East was reverse engineered.
That statement puzzles me. The Beaufighter used a Hispano 20mm cannon, and I understand it to have been the same type of weapon. With the supply chains in place, and British-built Beaufighters coming to Australia, why would Australia need to reverse-engineer such a weapon, when British-produced weapons could be supplied (if numbers allowed)?
I’ve seen this statement on a number of online sources, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The Small Arms Factory at Lithgow refurbished these weapons, but I can’t find any evidence that they built them. Mind you, as a Lee-Enfield collector, I’m more au fait with Lithgow’s rifle production!
So, is there any truth to this? I can’t see why the Australian military would need to reverse-engineer a weapon that was built in Britain, especially given that there’s no indication that Australia built them.
Standard disclaimer applies; I’m happy to stand corrected.
Cheers,
Matt
By: aquadraco - 17th June 2014 at 11:27
According to this document – http://static.awm.gov.au/images/collection/pdf/RCDIG1070658–1-.PDF – the Hispano was made by CAC, but at a very low rate of production. The “souvenired” example may well have been reverse-engineered as a private venture, but it didn’t lead to a massive production run – appropriate raw materials were in short supply, and the need was then filled by guns imported from Britain.
By: JollyGreenSlugg - 17th June 2014 at 01:01
Indeed, while I can’t find records to indicate that we produced the Hispano cannon in Australia, we did produce the Vickers and Bren guns, so surely the same procedure would’ve been followed, had we needed to produce the Hispano cannon.
Cheers,
Matt
By: Arabella-Cox - 16th June 2014 at 23:09
The RAAF also used Hurricanes, Spitfires, Mosquitos and the P-38 Lightning during WW2, all of which used the 20mm Hispano cannon in the later war time Mk’s. The gun was well known to the Aussies.
Also, I would have thought that a Commonwealth country reverse engineering a current piece of equipment – war time or not – would have brought about copyright issues. They could have just applied for permission to manufacture it and imported the necessary drawings, should it have been deemed necessary to do so, I would have thought.
Anon.
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June 16, 2014 at 10:56 pm