HAC No 2 Mk 1** Revolver

HAC No 2 Mk 1** six shot, double action revolver. Frame marked No2 MkI** 38 within the letters HAC over 1943. It has black plastic grips with right side having a brass three quarter inch disc set into the centre. There is a lanyard ring on the butt cap.

The development of the Howard Auto Cultivator Mk 1 Revolver is detailed in a letter written by John W O’Brien, the Managing Director of Howard Industries, dated 26 February 1959, to FJ Kendall, then Managing Director of the Museum of Applied Science of Victoria:

“As far as I can determine, the order was actually placed in 1941 and production of components commenced during 1942. There were grave deficiencies in the supply of machine tools and toolage to this Company and, after many tribulations, a total of 22 were accepted by the Army Inspection. Apparently the principal problem was the securing of interchange-ability of components because of the non-availability from Government sources of the necessary toolage and machine tools. Many more pistols were produced which functioned completely satisfactorily but where the components could not be interchanged into other weapons.

The project was not handled satisfactorily by Howards but there were a number of external reasons which I will enlarge upon later. Actually, Howards went on to manufacture successfully a wide range of quite complex war material. As an example, Howards was the major supplier of Owen gun Barrels and Compensators, producing 500 sets of components per week.

Furthermore, Howards had to design and manufacture specialised machine tolling for making these Owen Gun parts. Interest in the Pistol withered away and finally, most of the plant at Northmead was diverted back to agricultural machinery consequent upon urgent requirements for increasing food production.

The story about the hammer spring is new to me and I doubt if it had any great influence.

You will probably have already seen reference to the Pistol Project in Mellor’s volume of the war history, “Science and Industry” … The references there result from lengthy discussions between Mellor and myself and I feel they sum up generally the position from the Army and Munitions Department viewpoint.

Actually, on operational and manufacturing grounds, the pistol never had a chance. Early in the War, the Home Authorities apparently decided that it was an essential weapon in line with the thought of the War Office.

The War Office for some time refused to see that the pistol had largely been superseded by the sub-machine gun. When I took over as Director of Artillery (which included small arms), I found two sub-machine guns (Owen and Austen) projects stumbling along and neither had advanced to the stage of being really suitable for active service or available in quantity. Japanese initial operations a few months before had made it obvious that sub-machine guns were essential weapons for Australia and the Prime Minister himself had personally taken an interest in accelerating output. As a matter of fact, it was the delays and other matters on the Owen Gun that brought the removal of the Master-General of the Ordnance (Maj Gen Milford) and my own predecessor (Brig LES Barker).

At this stage, pistol production seemed only dependent on the solution of technical problems and it would have given us additional weapons at a time when we were desperate for any sort of weapons while we did have .38 ammunition in reasonable quantity which was not the case with 9 mm and .45 SMG ammunition.

It was therefore decided, with some misgivings, to let the pistol project continue, particularly as a lot of time and effort had been put into it.

As the Sub-Machine Gun projects developed, the pistol became of less and less importance until finally the project was only a nuisance. I was chairman of the Services Priorities Committee and its successor, the Services Equipment Committee. We fixed all Munitions priorities for the three services. At first we tried to classify items according to their urgency but we soon found that, unless an item was in Priority One, it never got started because of the general shortage of capacity. We solved matters by putting everything into Priority One except half-a-dozen in Priority Two which meant they could be worked upon if the material or the capacity were available without affecting Priority One items. You can guess what chance Priority Three had and, to the best of my recollection, only the Pistol Project and one other were in Priority Three.

Priority Three meant that it was almost impossible to get any material (other than what had been secured initially) or manpower or machine tools and toolage. Even more important, it meant Ordnance Production Directorate bypassed it with the technical assistance that was found to be essential in most plants changing over to war production.

As if all this was not enough handicap, the pistol was not really a mass manufacturing project. Designed many years ago, it was quite unsuitable for manufacture on an assembly line basis. Although I am not certain, I would guess that the drawings were practically useless for modern manufacturing methods, particularly the dimensioning and tolerances. As a matter of fact, the S.M.L.E. was in a somewhat similar state and, if a contract had been let to private industry, I am pretty sure any firm concerned would have fallen flat on its face the same as Howards did with the pistol. The S.M.L.E. rifle No 3 had been manufactured in government factories for so long that they had probably almost forgotten drawings ever existed – if they did.

Some time about 1943, the pistol project was transferred to Hastings Deering but I do not recall any success as a result. Finally, in the Services Equipment Committee, we recommended that the project be abandoned as being “no longer a war requirement” and the Cabinet agreed because it was very anxious the to divert people back to peace-time activities.

There were one or two half-hearted efforts to cry “scandal” but these were ill-conceived and ill-founded. War is a wasteful activity and there are fantastic amounts of money devoted to projects most essential at the time of initiation but which later become superfluous. I would quote a number of cases where, through no fault of anyone, this occurred during the war and the costs were many times greater than those of the pistol project. However, personal weapons such as the rifle, sub-machine gun and pistol in particular have a special position and effect on the public mind. I imagine this condition is even more prominent with you than it is with me so I will not enlarge upon it further.

I have dictated these notes “Off the cuff”. I do not have some notes made at the time but they are stored away at present and are not accessible. …

John W O’Brien.