The War Years and Optical Munitions

The outbreak of the Second World War profoundly changed the work of the Observatory. To support the war effort there was an urgent need to establish an optical munitions industry, supported by physicists and mathematicians. Stromlo Director Richard van der Riet Woolley was recruited to lead an optical design and manufacturing program and Stromlo transformed into an optical munitions factory, remaining so for the duration of the War. Almost all work unrelated to optical munitions ceased and the facilities were extended to include a larger workshop, optical shop, assembly shop, store, and heat treatment room, with a focus on designing and manufacturing instruments such as gun sights and artillery directors.

Among the physicists recruited to work on optical munitions at Stromlo were Ben Gascoigne, Cla Allen, Noel Chamberlain, Walter Stibbs, and Jim Dooley, assisted by technical staff including Jim Banham, Francis Lord, and Syd Elwin. Another recruit was Kurt Gottlieb who came to Australia from Austria as a Jewish refugee in 1939. Gottlieb was a qualified engineer who initially worked as a mechanical designer and draftsman and then later as a Research Engineer in charge of the workshops at Stromlo after the War.  

In addition to leading the optical munitions work, Richard van der Riet Woolley was also asked to take up the role of Chief Executive Officer of the Army Inventions Directorate in 1942. 

The team at Stromlo were experts in instrument design and fabrication and their optical munitions work was a resounding success. The first large-scale batch of optical glass was poured in September 1941 and by the end of the war, 43 different instruments were produced.