In 1932, Australia sent soldiers with machine guns against emus. The emus won.
Around 20,000 emus were devouring wheat in Western Australia, so the army sent a major, two soldiers and two machine guns. The birds scattered into small groups, outran a gun-mounted truck and shrugged off wounds. The commander compared them to tanks. After weeks of ridicule, the operation was called off.
After the First World War, the Australian government gave land to many returning veterans to farm in Western Australia, often in marginal country. When the Great Depression hit, they were urged to grow more wheat and promised subsidies that never came. Then, in 1932, an estimated 20,000 emus arrived. The birds migrate after breeding, and the cleared land and water supplies of the farms made ideal habitat. They ate and trampled crops and broke fences, letting in rabbits.
The ex-soldiers knew what machine guns could do and asked the defence minister, Sir George Pearce, for some. He agreed, on condition that soldiers operated them and the state and farmers covered costs. Major Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery set out with two soldiers, two Lewis guns and 10,000 rounds. A newsreel cameraman came too.
It went badly. From 2 November 1932 the emus split into small, alert groups that were hard to target. In one ambush more than 1,000 birds approached, but the gun jammed after about a dozen were shot. A gun mounted on a truck was useless because the truck could not keep up and the ride was too rough to fire. After six days and 2,500 rounds, estimates of birds killed ranged from 50 to 500. Meredith's report said his men had suffered no casualties, except to their dignity. Amid mocking press coverage, the guns were withdrawn on 8 November.
A second attempt that month did better; Meredith claimed 986 kills for 9,860 rounds, plus 2,500 birds that later died of wounds, a figure historians consider likely inflated. He marvelled that the birds could face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. Farmers asked for the army again in 1934, 1943 and 1948 and were refused. A bounty system proved more effective, and exclusion fences became the lasting answer. Conservationists in Britain protested, and the episode has been a byword for military farce ever since.
Source: Wikipedia — Emu War · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
