In late 1932, Australia deployed Major G. P. W.
Meredith and troops armed with two Lewis automatic machine guns to Campion, Western Australia, tasked with culling thousands of emus destroying local wheat crops. While popular history remembers the feathered menace as cunning military tacticians, the Australian army's embarrassing failure was heavily driven by a comical logistical blunder involving ammunition transport. The heavy Lewis guns consumed massive amounts of .
303 British ammunition, which was packed into heavy timber and metal transit boxes. To keep up with the fast-moving birds, soldiers mounted a Lewis gun to the back of a civilian truck. However, the bumpy terrain of the Australian Outback quickly turned this setup into a disaster.
During a high-speed chase, the improperly secured ammunition boxes bounced violently across the truck bed, breaking open and scattering thousands of loose cartridges into the dirt. Worse still, a stray box jammed the gun mount, causing the weapon to cease firing after discharging a mere burst. The emus scattered unharmed into the bush while soldiers spent hours scouring the dirt for unspent rounds.
The logistical strain of transporting bulky, fragile ammo containers across rugged farm plots severely limited mobility, allowing the emus to outmaneuver automatic firepower and ultimately win the legendary conflict.