In 1932, the Australian military deployed soldiers armed with machine guns to fight emus — and lost.
In late 1932, the Australian government sent soldiers of the Royal Australian Artillery — armed with two Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition — to the Campion district of Western Australia to cull a population of roughly 20,000 emus that were destroying wheat crops. The operation was so absurd that the media immediately dubbed it the 'Emu War.'
The emus proved to be remarkably effective opponents. Rather than massing together as an easy target, they split into small, fast-moving groups whenever troops approached, making sustained machine-gun fire nearly impossible. At one point the gun jammed after killing only 12 birds as over 1,000 emus scattered in every direction.
The military even tried mounting a Lewis gun on a truck to chase the birds — but the emus outran it, and the rough terrain made accurate fire impossible. After six days and 2,500 rounds of ammunition, the army estimated fewer than 500 birds had been killed, out of 20,000.
Major Meredith, who commanded the operation, later paid grudging tribute to his enemy: 'If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world. They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks.' He compared them to Zulus who couldn't be stopped even by dum-dum bullets.
Public and parliamentary embarrassment led to the military withdrawing on November 8, 1932 — less than two weeks into the campaign. The ornithologist Dominic Serventy summarized it diplomatically: 'The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic.'
The farmers' problems didn't end there. They requested military assistance again in 1934, 1943, and 1948 — and were turned down each time. The government instead expanded a bounty system; in one six-month period in 1934, over 57,000 bounties were claimed, proving that armed farmers were ultimately more effective than the army.