80 years ago this week: A plant celebration for the 100,000th Bren gun built at the John Inglis and Co. factory, Toronto, Canada, 20 August 1943.
Photographer: Alexandra Studio. August 20, 1943. City of Toronto Archives. Series 1057, Item 2180
Another shot of the above from a different angle. Note the flags.
The light machine gun with Czech lineage (ZGB 33) had been put into service with the British and Commonwealth armies as early as 1936 and production started of the simplified Mark II (“Garage Hands”) model at Inglis in 1940.
A beautiful original Kodachrome of a 1st Canadian Division soldier with Bren gun in England, 1940. Note the “tortoise” No.3 helmet
The company delivered 143,000 .303 models to Commonwealth and European allies and another 43,000 8mm Mauser variants to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese– hence the Chinese official speaking and the KMT “cog” flag (modern Taiwan flag) alongside the French and British in the above image.
With that, it only made sense that the 100,000th Bren would go to the KMT.
Original Toronto Star caption: The gun was entrusted to Maj.-Gen. S. M. Chu, military attache to the Chinese embassy in Washington. Gen. Chu. holding the gun is shown with Dr. Liu Shih Shun, the Chinese minister plenipotentiary to Canada. Both expressed their country’s thanks to Canada and the workers. The City of Toronto Archives TSPA_0110116F
At this stage of production at Inglis, the company was peaking at some 10,000 guns per month in addition to 9mm Hi-Power production. At the time, 18,000 workers were working around the clock on 5,000 machines.
Veronica Foster, “Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl”, was arguably the most famous Inglis war production worker.
A real assembler from the Bren line and not a model, she was photographed for a campaign spearheaded by the National Film Board and predated the American “Rosie the Riveter” campaign, going on to be a cultural icon.
Of note, the 100,000th Canadian Automatic Pistol (Hi-Power) was made by John Inglis co. on 21 August.