THURSDAY, 1 JA N UARY 2026 This resulted in profitable and long-lasting work on shearing handsets, combs and cutters, parts for cinema projectors, sewing machines, golf clubs, spanners and sophisticated handcuffs. This commercial work flourished and was the mainstay of the Factory until WW2 started. N ew weapons The late 1930s saw a rise in military aggression in Europe. The Factory was ‘humming along’. Building works on the site continued to accommodate the planned manufacture of the Vickers machine gun and the Bren light machine gun. But the dimensions and layout of the various Factory facilities, designed for a much earlier era, were not well suited to Bren gun production. A new building, specifically designed for Bren gun manufacture was built between 1941 and 1942 and new machinery brought in. The Bren gun building was large and square in layout as it accommodated a series of machines with individual small electric motors, unlike the earlier machines. Those were driven by flat belts and overhead line-shafts, which dictated a longitudinal layout and which derived their power from a few centralised large electric motors, or from steam engines in the earliest times. Both the Vickers and Bren machine guns were complex firearms (compared to the simple bolt-action SMLE rifles) as they had many more complex parts, with closer dimensional tolerances. The Bren gun alone required 4074 different types of tools. As a result, the degree of skill required from the workforce was higher, particularly in assembly where the machine guns were put together. However, semi-skilled labour continued to be used in doing fine tolerance machining work. Production philosophies in the mid-1930s were vastly different to those 20 years earlier. Production volume during 1914-1918 was 133,600 rifles. This increased to 439,000 for 1939 to 1945. As a result, higher capacity required more machinery, more buildings and more power. WW2 weapons required many orders of accuracy and complexity compared to that of weapons used in WW1. Making Bren Guns, SAF, May 1940. This early production line in the drilling section was driven by flat belts from overhead lineshafts. Production philosophy was not only about volume but more so about productivity. The issue was that as the weapons were more engineered, the calibre of staff was not always adequate to the task and so techniques were implemented to minimise long or expensive machining operations and simplifying or deleting complex parts, thus requiring modifications to tooling. The looming war The Factory was soon to discover what it meant to be overwhelmed. As WW2 broke out and gathered pace, demands on the Factory went ‘sky-high’. The WW1-style SMLE rifles were still in production, and were now peaking at 200,000 units a year (in WW1 it had reached 35,000 per year). The Vickers machine guns and Bren light machine guns were being churned out at peak, in 1942 and 1943, of 2,900 and 6,900 units per year, respectively. Bren gun production first started in 1939, with 1942 through to 1945 being the period where production was ramped up. In those years 1942 to 1945, there were 17,110 Bren guns produced at the Factory. Correspondingly, Vickers gun production for the 1942 to 1945 period was 10,130. The Factory could not cope with the extreme volume. It just didn’t have the capacity nor the people. New manufacturing facilities were needed. It fell on the Lithgow Factory management to establish a series of eleven feeder factories within 3 hours drive of Lithgow, recruit and train the workforce, and achieve the exacting quality required for armaments. The feeder factories were in the Central West of NSW, at Forbes, Orange, Wellington, Mudgee, Cowra, Young, Dubbo, Parkes and Portland. It was a horrendously arduous task given the demanding war effort requirements. In all, during peak production in 1942, there were 5,700 employees at the Lithgow Factory with a further 6,000 across the
Maggie Marriott's nom de guerre
Maggie Marriott
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