The No 8-wire gun

Wartime Kiwi ingenuity gets pride of place in museum

A rare piece of New Zealand’s wartime history will go on display after decades hidden away in a safe.

Andy Wickens says his recently acquired Charlton Automatic Rifle is the ‘‘ugly jewel in the crown’’ of the collection he displays at his private militaria museum, Das Bunker Kapiti, near Wellington.

He said the ungainly looking rifle was the holy grail of New Zealand firearms collecting. Only about a dozen known examples remain.

The weapon was designed by New Zealander Philip Charlton in 1941, at a time when the fear of invasion was real. Automatic weapons were channelled into the war effort overseas, leaving New Zealand with little to defend itself on the home front.

Charlton used obsolete Boer War-era bolt-action rifles – designed to fire a single shot before having to be manually reloaded – and modified them to fire automatically. Short of light machineguns, the army placed an order for 1500 Charlton Automatic Rifles.

‘‘It looks like it was made in a shed and it basically was. They took these dungy old .303s and turned them into machine-guns – it was No. 8 fencing wire stuff.’’

He said there had been a number of attempts overseas to make similar conversions, but few succeeded.

Wickens said most firearms collectors could never a Charlton because nearly all of them were destroyed in a fire after the war. He believed there were only two or three in private hands, and the rest were kept at museums in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The gun had been in the safe of its previous owner since the 1970s and Wickens was pleased he’d be able to put it on display and share it with the public.

He was reluctant to say what he paid for it but said the last Charlton sold at auction went for more than $10,000.

A police spokeswoman said police understood there was public interest in firearms and the history surrounding them.

She said bona fide museum directors or curators could apply for an endorsement and permit to possess prohibited firearms.

The Arms Act required vital parts of restricted and prohibited firearms to be removed from the weapon and stored separately and securely.

‘‘It looks like it was made in a shed and it basically was.’’ Andy Wickens

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF Andy Wickens, who runs Das Bunker in Ka¯ piti, says his recently acquired Charlton light machinegun is an example of Kiwi wartime ingenuity.