Historical weaponry of the Australian Army.html



Australian Army

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Since the formation of the Australian Army on 1 March 1901, it has used a variety of weaponry and equipment, sourced mainly from British, American and less frequently, other European manufacturers, but also weapons and equipment produced by local Australian manufacturers.

The Australian Army came into being when the six British colonies of Australia all held referendums to join together, and voted in favour of forming a federation, creating the modern nation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Prior to doing so, each of the Australian colonies were responsible for their own defence, and all had separate colonial armies. As each colonial army was responsible for the defence of their own colony, each colony separately contracted the purchase of their own equipment, so at the time that each colonial army merged into the newly formed Australian Army, there was a variety of incompatible equipment used by the various interstate units.

One of the first tasks of the newly formed Army following restructure and the creation of unified hierarchy and command chains, was to uniformly equip the new national army. This was no easy task, as at the time of the foundation of the Australian Army, all six colonial armies were in the field involved in the Second Boer War. Whilst badge changing ceremonies were performed, and hats and uniforms supplied, it proved impractical to fully re-equip in the field. Consequently, the Martini-Henry which was favoured by the majority of colonial units, was persisted with for much of the first decade of the twentieth century.

Second Boer War to World War I

The Australian Army was founded by a merger of the six separate armies of the six independent Australian British colonies. At the time of the official merger of those forces on 1 March, 1901, all six colonies had troops already engaged in combat in the field during the Second Boer War in South Africa. It was obviously impossible and unnecessary to completely re-equip and re-uniform the forces whilst they were deployed, and most of the colonial armies wore similar looking Khaki uniforms anyway. A symbolic ceremony to replace colonial badges was held in the field, with Australian soldiers being adorned with the new symbol of the Australian Army - the Rising Sun Badge, for the first time.

Infantry Weapons

Side-arms

• Beaumont-Adams Revolver (.450 calibre)
• Enfield Revolver (.476 calibre)

Long-arms

• Martini-Henry Rifle (.577/.450 calibre)
• Snider-Enfield Rifle (.577 calibre)

Horses

• Waler horse

World War I

By the outbreak of World War I, the equipment of the Australian Army had become standardised, and was essentially the same as most of the armies of the British Empire. The one major difference was the preference of kangaroo leather over canvas for webbing and other equipment, straps and belts.

Aircraft

(The Australian Flying Corps which served in WWI was an Army unit, not a separate airforce.)

World War II

At the beginning of World War II, the Australian Army was continuing with the practice of sourcing military equipment from the United Kingdom as it has done in the colonial era, and the first three decades of the twentieth century. However, as the war progressed, Britain's difficulties in keeping up production demand, Australia's geographic isolation, and a differing focus on war policies and theatres meant that Australia increasingly looked to the United States for both arms and equipment, and military assistance.

Korean War

The Korean War began with many Australian units still equipped with weapons that they had used during World War II. Whilst there was minor changes such as the replacement of the British 4.5 inch Howitzer in favour of the American built 105 mm Howitzer M3 as the primary artillery piece the most dramatic changes to Australian equipment during the Korean War period actually came in the form of the aircraft used by the Royal Australian Airforce. Despite this, important lessons learned duirng the Korean War would influence the way the Australian Army re-equiped to adapt to the needs of modern warfare in time for the Australian Army's insertion into the Vietnam War.

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War proved to be a highly mobile operation for Australian forces who often engaged their enemies during arduous jangle patrols through thick and difficult terrain. As such, much of the equipment used on the battlefields of the Korean War proved to be too cumbersome, including long-arms such as the Lee-Enfield SLME's. However the Australian Army had become expert at jungle warfare during their campaigns in South-East Asia against the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II, and the lessons in jungle warfare they had learned proved invaluable in the choosing of equipment for the Vietnam War. Whilst long-arms were persisted with for sniper rifles, infantry patrols favoured the use of assault rifles such as the L1A1 and M16. The heavy machine-guns which were useful for the static defences of the Korean War were replaced with a lighter general-purpose machine-gun in the form of the M60 which was man-portable by a patrol machine-gunner.

1980s & 90s

The post-Vietnam war era saw the Australian Army suffer severe budget cut-backs and expenditure on equipment suffered as a result. The army was scaled back in size, and experienced a period of very little overseas deployment for the first time in the post-World War II period. Despite this, the Army did manage to continue to modernise its weaponry and equipment. The 1980s oversaw the final phasing out of traditional long-arms as the L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle (SLR) was withdrawn from front line service by 1990, and replaced by the locally produced F88 Austeyr, a derivative of the Austrian Steyr AUG which is still in service as of 2008. The 1980s also saw the widespread adoption of Disruptive Pattern Combat Uniform which replaced the Khaki field uniforms that had been used by the Australian Army since its foundation in 1901.