These were built by the New Zealand Railway workshops, in Hutt Valley, with a Ford 3/4 or 1-ton truck chassis, plus amor plates salvaged from Port Bowen and Mokoia moored hulls. A local production version known as the Beaverette NZ appeared and was rapidly built. Armor was simple and conversion quite fast, which helped secure high numbers (3,000) in no time. These improvised armored cars, called Standard Car 4×2, Car Armoured Light Standard, and better known as the Beaverette, were built upon a Standard Motor Company chassis and engine. With the same idea of local improvisation, “Beaverette” armored cars were imagined in the United Kingdom in the most desperate times in the summer of 1940 by Lord Beaverbrooke, then minister of aircraft production. It was clear to anyone then in the ministry and the general staff that Great Britain could not divert any of its war production, direly needed elsewhere, to New Zealand. This led to the creation of the well-known “ Bob Semple tank“, an improvisation which acted more as a morale booster than a real means of defeating attacking forces. Under sheer panic in face of the swift conquest of South-East Asia and the South pacific by the Imperial Japanese Forces, defence minister Robert Semple organized an embryo armored force with whatever means available. Despite its solidarity with Great Britain, new Zealand itself was ill-equipped locally to sustain a local assault by a major power, which turned out to be Japan after December 1941. The RNZN received a few British destroyers which it used in several campaigns. Early on, in December 1939, its only cruiser, HMNZS Achilles, engaged the Graf Spee. Later, personnel was sent to the RAF and the Royal Navy, before local forces could be mustered, the RNZAF, which operated in Europe and elsewhere. New Zealand declared war alongside Britain, and started mobilization in late 1939. In total, 100,000 fought out of a population of one million, and 16,697 New Zealanders were killed and 41,317 wounded, an astonishing 58% of all troops engaged, making New Zealand the country with the highest casualty-and death-rates per capita of any warring nation. Another famous unit, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, distinguished itself in Palestine. There was a gradual military training and after service, and all men could be still gathered as a militia.ĭuring WWI, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was deployed at Gallipoli, alongside the Australians as part of the ANZACS, were they forged, through all their pain and suffering, a part of the Kiwi national identity. However, through the Defence Act of 1909, the old volunteer system was replaced by an age-based territorial defense which amounted to thirty thousand men. Prior to WW2, where New Zealanders fought with distinction in many theaters of operations, previous interventions included the Boer War (1899), under the direction of Major Alfred William Robin, where ten contingents were mobilized and sent, mostly mounted riflemen providing their own equipment.
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