Australian Motorisation and World War II
Collins Street in Melbourne circa 1930. So many cars on the streets!
This was an unexpected discovery that forced us to look at the balance of power in East Asia and the Pacific Ocean before and during World War II from a slightly different angle.
While looking through the French "Economic Bulletin of Indochina" for 1943, which, in addition to the Indochinese economy itself, also published various information about the surrounding region. And then the article "New Conditions for the Japanese Automobile Industry in East Asia", to which very interesting statistical data were attached.
The French were not lazy and collected information on the motorization of this part of the world as of the pre-war period, mainly for 1939–1940. So, the number of cars:
British Malaya - 49660
British Borneo - 317
China - 32118
French Indochina - 30916
Guam - 432
Hong Kong - 6655
Manchukuo - 12150
Dutch Indies - 76207
Philippines - 48543
Sarawak - 598
Thailand - 13518
Burma - 19038
Ceylon - 27777
India - 123400
Australia - 808500.
British Borneo - 317
China - 32118
French Indochina - 30916
Guam - 432
Hong Kong - 6655
Manchukuo - 12150
Dutch Indies - 76207
Philippines - 48543
Sarawak - 598
Thailand - 13518
Burma - 19038
Ceylon - 27777
India - 123400
Australia - 808500.
In total, there were 1250355 vehicles in the region, including 865528 cars, 332702 trucks and 52105 buses.
Of these, Australia accounted for 64,4% of the total number of vehicles, 67% of passenger cars and 68,6% of trucks.
Given that Australia's population was 1941 in 7109, that's one car for every 8,7 people. By comparison, China, which had a population of 1938 million in 537,3, had one car for every 16731 people.
These figures showed how big the gap in motorisation was between Australia and the rest of East Asia, which was mostly colonial or formally independent but far from self-governing. And this fact, well known at the time, had an impact on the course of events.
Cars and Roads
Although Australia is often thought of as some remote backwater where kangaroos hop, it was practically keeping pace with European countries and the United States. The first self-propelled carriage, powered by a steam engine, was constructed in Australia in 1898 by a local mechanic, David Shearer. In 1900, the first factory-made car appeared in the country - the French Di Dior, and then a stream began to flow, and by 1907 there were 3559 cars in Australia.
Along with motorization, a fairly large number of mechanics appeared, necessary for the maintenance and repair of cars, especially since the Australian roads of that time were more suitable for horse-drawn transport than for cars. In 1911, there were 3630 mechanics in Australia, including, which shocked Europeans, Australian Aborigines and women.
Australian Catholic University researcher Michael Parson, in his dissertation on stories auto business, noted that the Aborigines found a profitable niche for themselves in rural auto repair, and this happened because the Aborigines had previously entered the blacksmithing and repair of agricultural equipment. Subsequently, many auto repair shops arose precisely on the basis of forges. Well, as for women - in Australia, female emancipation was characteristic of the auto business from the very beginning. In 1921, out of 11,2 thousand mechanics, 271 were women.
In a vast country, the automobile was immediately recognized as an important means of transport. In 1922, the number of automobiles in Australia exceeded 100 units. Roads began to be built at the same time. In the early 1920s, the states created bodies responsible for the construction and maintenance of roads. In 1922, the Australian federal government passed the Public Works Act, and in 1923, the Main Roads Development Act, and began to allocate funds to support road construction. This policy was carried out until 1959.
A map of Australian roads as of about 1938. Many of the roads discussed below were not yet built.
The road network, due to geographical conditions and settlement, was formed in the southern and eastern parts of Australia, mainly between Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Already at that time a highway was built from Adelaide to the west, to Perth.
In the 1930s, when the Great Depression put many people out of work in Australia, the federal government, like many European countries, used road building to help the unemployed. There were some interesting road projects underway at the time, such as the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane, built in the early 1930s.
Or the Stuart Highway from Darwin in the north to Port Augusta in the south. The 2720 km long highway crosses the entire continent. A telegraph line was built along this route back in 1871–1872, so this road had been used for a long time. Then a railway was built from Darwin to the south, to Burdham and Alice Springs. Then they began to build a road. In December 1940, the road from Port Augusta to Alice Springs was completed, and then in April–December 1940, the road from Alice Springs to Burdham was built. The 492 km long road took 90 days; one 18 km section was built in just a week. But in March 1941, the military command demanded that the road be extended to Darwin, since the last section was almost impassable during the rainy season. This section was built by July 1942.
It must be said that roads in Australia were built seriously and with the use of equipment, in particular bulldozers
There were also monsters like the Irvine Heat Treatment Plant, which baked clay, making it possible to roll it and form a solid road base. Remnants of this monster survived until at least 2016.
Finally, the road is being concreted.
The Eyre Highway was also built between July 1941 and June 1942, running south of the existing Perth to Adelaide road. It also followed the route of a telegraph line dating back to the 1870s, but the road was built along a more convenient route.
By the start of World War II, Australia had a very well developed road network and a large number of cars.
American, British and even Japanese cars
In 1938/39, 820296 cars were registered in Australia. The vast majority, 81%, were American-made, as Henry Ford had opened an assembly plant in a disused woollen mill at Geelong in 1925, and later built a more modern and well-equipped assembly plant. General Motors had set up a number of assembly plants in Australia in 1926, in partnership with the Australian firm Holden, which initially made saddles before moving into car bodies.
Only British auto companies could compete with the Americans. There were also French and Italian manufacturers, but they had effectively lost the market since 1929. The British held about 15% of sales until the height of the Great Depression, and in 1932–1933 they even pushed the Americans aside, to 34% and 37% of sales respectively, although this was against the backdrop of a very sharp drop in sales, from 82 cars in 1927 to 10,6 in 1932. But then they managed to hold on to just over 20% of the Australian market.
The fact is that American cars, big and powerful, were most willingly bought by farmers and rural dwellers. British cars, such as the Austin 7, were more willingly bought by residents of large cities and suburbs. During the depression, British cars turned out to be more acceptable because of their low fuel consumption.
The British Austin 7: a miniature car weighing 360 kg, with a track width of 1,02 meters and an engine power of 10 hp.
Interestingly, the Japanese tried to break into the Australian market. Nissan, under a British license, produced several modifications of the Austin 7, known under the Datsun brand. The Japanese tried to export one of them to Australia, sending car kits, which in Australia were retrofitted with a number of components, such as wheels, radiators, batteries.
The Datsun Type 14 was slightly larger: 2,8 meters long, 1,2 meters wide, 600 kg in weight, and 15 hp in engine power.
Nothing came of the idea, although the first 404 Datsun Type 14s were shipped to Melbourne in late 1934. Firstly, Japanese cars were more expensive than their British counterparts. Secondly, it turned out that Japanese kits could not be assembled into a working car in Australia, since the parts were not interchangeable and the precision of their processing was not up to par. In other words, parts often had to be adjusted on site for assembly. In November 1936, sellers filed an £8 lawsuit against the Mitsubishi Trading Company, which sold Japanese cars in Australia, for simply not selling their products. Of this modification, of which 3800 units were produced, only 56 were sold in Australia and New Zealand.
The consequences of motorization for war
As we know, having many cars, a highly developed automobile industry and many technically trained people before a war is a good thing. Cars can serve the army and the military industry, automobile factories can easily switch to assembling military equipment and producing weapons and ammunition.
And the technicians. In 1940, when the Royal Australian Air Force was recruiting ground personnel, it received 56,7 applications, of which 7894 were selected to serve as technicians and ground crew. aviation personnel. This is despite the fact that there were 246 aircraft in the fleet.
Before the war, Australia trained few pilots, but under the general training program for British Commonwealth pilots, Australia trained 37500 pilots during the war.
The Australian Army, which in 1939 had a strength of 80 men (this was a militia commanded by 2800 men from the standing army), and by early 1942 was deployed with 11 infantry and 3 tank divisions to a strength of 476 people. In total, 730 people passed through the Australian army. Moreover, in this army, a corps of electrical and mechanical engineers with a strength of 28 people was created in the same year of 1942.
This is the consequence of the large-scale motorization before the war. So the Japanese could plan an invasion of Australia, but it was not going to be a cakewalk. Even if the Japanese navy fleet could establish a complete naval blockade of Australia, the Japanese forces would have to fight numerous, mobile and technically competent troops, and in a vast theater of military operations, in which control of roads would become the number one task. Without a complete blockade, the Japanese would suffer defeat in Australia in almost every case possible.
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