Compilation of Email research
The following is taken from a series of emails with a former officer with Australian military experience and expertise. I was researching the pistols history from WW2 to present.
His responses are in red and mine are in black.
My background is 14 years Australian Regular Army service followed by transfer to the Royal Australian Air Force (Medical Branch). My total military service ran from 1964 to 1997 and I retired with the rank of Group Captain (US Equivalent, Full Colonel). In that time I managed to attend Fort Brooks, San Antonio Tx and qualify as a Flight Surgeon USAF as an exchange officer.
I expected that the side arm you have would have been a "Saturday night special" with a calibre of 0.32 or 0.38 but was amazed when I found it was a 0.455 Smith and Wesson. This would have been a most unusual weapon for a medical practitioner to lug around in the period 1915-1918.
As to a medic lugging around a big sidearm like the Smith, I don't think any Aussie I've known would have been happy with a wimpy pea-shooter like a .32.
His son mentioned that his father probably turned it over to the government during WW2 when they were looking for arms. This is entirely probable and would solve a mystery I have wondered about ever since it came into my possession. The "C F Drew RAMC" had been neatly milled off of the side of the gun. It would make sense that the government would remove any individual names before reissuing it.
I think that you are quite correct. In 1939 the Defence budget had been run down due to the Great Depression and the political views of the incumbent Federal Government. Even before Japan entered the War the Australian Government was desperately seeking pistols and light machine guns. There were a lot of "hand ins" and your specimen may well have been one of those. I agree that the armament depots would have milled off personal data. Australia bought a lot of hand guns (ex-WW One) from the USA which was our only potential source.
How are you at Aussie "Army Speak"?
In my ongoing research I ran across the following string of code that is supposed to be the "Posting at Discharge" of an Australian Army Staff Sgt. in 1944.
"A A O C(M) 3 MD M T T SCHOOL"
My attempts at translation are:
AAOC - Australian Army Ordnance Corps?
(M) ? (Mechanized??)
3 MD - 3rd Military District?
M T T SCHOOL - I have no idea.
(He was a later owner of Dr. Drew's .455 registered in SA 1948- 1979)
I should be pretty well expert as I attended Staff College in 1975 where we lived out of book called "Staff Duties in the Field". This was a book designed to teach us all to write and speak in a standard Army way.
You have done extraordinarily well to decipher what you have.
AAOC was Australian Army Ordnance Corps and is now the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corps (RAAOC). (We are a constitutional monarchy) They are the organization within the Australian Army that receives and issues all types of ordnance and ammunition.
Spot on for "M" being mechanized. Australia developed a very large armoured Corps during the Second World War thinking that it would be used in North Africa against the Germans and Italians but when the Japanese entered the War our Armoured Corps stayed well and truly at home as they were of virtually no use in the Pacific Theatre of operations. Many of the tracked vehicles were not really tanks but oddities like Bren Gun Carriers. Everything that ran on tracks were lumped together as "Mechanized" and designated with the Letter M.
3 MD is certainly the Third Military District which roughly corresponds to the State of Victoria. At other times it was called Southern Command. Until the 1990s the bulk of the Australian Armoured Corps and all their support were located at Puckapunyal in Victoria. More recently the Royal Australian Armoured Units, both heavy (General Abrams tanks) and Cavalry (Bushmasters and the modern version of M113 are based at Robertson Barracks on the outskirts of Darwin in the Northern Territory. (Incidentally this is a base for rotating US Marines through roughly 1800 per time where they oppose the Australian Infantry and Armour)
MTT is Motor Transport Training School to the best of my knowledge. Around about 1948 the Australian Army was restructured and Armoured Corps training was taken over by the School of Armour.at Puckapunyal and wheeled training was taken up by the Royal Australian Army Service Corps. This latter Corps has now been disbanded and replaced by the Royal Australian Corps of Transport (RACT)
You mentioned in one of your emails that your father brought a .455 home from the war and it remained "unlicensed" for a number of years.
Was this something normal at that time, or was it unusual? I'm asking because I'm curious about K.E. White and his registering the Drew gun in 1948. Had he just acquired it or had it been sitting around since the war and he finally decided to "make it legal"?
Also, would there have been questions from the authorities as to just how it came into his possession?
I still like the idea that he either got it while still on active duty or later from a buddy that had access to surplus stuff, but I'm just trying to cover all the bases.
The first thing you need to understand is that each of the Australian States were, in reality Independent Countries. until Federation in 1901. They then still maintained their own rules and regulations and the Federal Government took over Customs, Foreign Affairs etc. The rules and regulations relating to firearms were purely a State responsibility.
Tasmania had virtually no regulations and Queensland very few. I am not able to speak about South Australia but NSW and Victoria had the tightest regulations.
All this came to a grinding halt when an idiot gunman in Tasmania killed about 30 odd people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in the 1990s'. The federal Government stepped in an using some obscure provisions of the Constitution made all states have the same rules. There was at that time a massive "Gun buy back" where the Federal Government paid out Billions of Dollars for people to hand in guns. Some guns were totally banned such as semi automatic shotguns etc. Interestingly there are now more registered firearms in Australia than before the "Buy back".
That is all by way of introduction.
At the end of the Second World War most soldiers were equipped with the Owen Sub Machine Carbine (9mm) or the Lee Enfield 0.303 of which there were hundreds of thousands. The Government wanted the automatics back pretty pronto and were careful in their return. The Lee Enfield was difficult to disguise and were quickly gathered. These were rapidly sold off into the public area. I doubt that there was a farmer in WA who did not own a 0.303 and all the rifle clubs had massive numbers of these weapons. They were still the main weapon in use by Australian Infantry when they deployed to Korea but were finally replaced by the 7.62 mm SLR when we were in Malaya and Vietnam.
Pistols were a different matter. Usually the Unit put out an order for all officers and warrant officers to hand in pistols and their return was noted in their record of service. Many never bothered and as time passed from the end of hostilities there was less and less enthusiasm to chase up pistols.
A lot of pistols (mainly 0.38) came home in kitbags. I suspect that my father swapped his 0.38 (V Model) for a British 0.455 and it travelled home with him. The only paperwork he had was for the possession of a Japanese Sword which he had taken from a Japanese Officer. (My mother hated that sword and most things Japanese and when she saw someone offering money for such items she quickly dumped it)
After a few years the various Australian Governments started to offer "Amnesties" for all sorts of weapons. You could take the weapon to the local police station and either hand it in (no questions asked) or have it licensed providing it was not an automatic. This made the weapons "legal". Rules varied from state to state.
Given a choice I would say that K E White had the pistol all along but made it legal during an amnesty in 1948. I really don't know how SA functioned at the time.
My father was bit too indolent to take the Webley along and it remained unregistered and if it still exists is unregistered to this day.
Does that help?
Does it help??, I think so. It sounds like Australia was about as messed up as the U.S. when it came to local laws of the individual States. Then the Federal Gvmt stepped in. (Just like it is happening here.) I would have thought we could have learned something from you. (Then again, maybe "we" did.)
Anyway, enough of that....
The paperwork that came with the .455 shows the Certificate of Registration from 1948 as coming under the "Firearms Registration Act, 1919-1934". No mention if it was a State or Federal act. (From your description it was probably a S.A. law.)
No doubt about it as there was no Federal registration of firearms at that time.
The Pistol License came under the "Pistol License Act, 1929". Again no mention of Federal or State, so I assume S.A
Correct, there was no Federal regulation at that time.
I did notice that the forms were printed by a "Government Printer" in Adelaide. Sometime between 1973 and 1977 it changed to a "Government Printer",South Australia. I don't know about you guys, but all of our Federal forms are printed under the Federal guise, not local State jobbers.
Each State in Australia had a State Government Printer and they changed their description from time to time but they were essentially the same body. There is also a Commonwealth Government Printer and they concentrate on the Commonwealth Government Gazette and Parliament Proceedings.
This adds to the assumption that S.A. Gun Laws were still under local control at that time.
Absolutely, of that you can be reassured.
As for how I'm going to use this information.... I think I will go with the amnesty bit as it makes the most sense.
Thanks again for your help!
