In early June 1944 the RAAF’s No.457 Squadron, one of three Spitfire units recalled from Britain for homeland defence, began exchanging its near-obsolete Mk.V aircraft with more effective Mk.VIIIs. As deliveries of the latter began arriving in the Northen Territory, squadron pilots would ferry equal numbers of the former south for overhaul and re-assignment – […]
Author: bauple58
Ipswich Railway Workshops
As a consequence of the 1939 British Air Mission to Australia, the state railways in Victorian, New South Wales, and South Australian each became involved in the production of military aircraft and aero engines. Following a visit to Queensland in March 1939 by the Mission’s Technical Member L C Ord, serious consideration was also given […]
Toy Story
Yesterday I visited – for the first time – both the historic Evans Head airfield in northern New South Wales, and the co-located museum run by the Evans Head Memorial Aerodrome and Aviation Association. Although filled with heavy – and light – metal of the kind you’ll see replicated in similar museums throughout the continent, […]
Gundaroo’s Ventura
I just remember the biting cold thinking, all the while, that perhaps we shouldn’t have been traipsing – in winter – through bush-land in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, especially while it was sleeting. Thoughts of all that wasted organisational effort might have dissuaded me from postponing, along with the knowledge that any […]
Down on the Downs, twice.
In early February 1942 an American single-seater aeroplane – low on fuel – force landed in a paddock on the Darling Downs west of Brisbane whereafter, the hapless pilot presented at a nearby homestead asking to use the telephone. Two days later, at about 8 p.m. on Tuesday, 10th February 1942 an American Sergeant of […]
‘It was a cloudy night’
‘After a few seconds I heard the engines of the plane stop and the sky was lit up in a half moon’ Karl Stager, 5th May 1942 (Police Witness Statement) As a teenage undergraduate in North Queensland in the late 1970s I struggled to pass History 101. Even though I had great lecturers I could […]
Alternative perspectives
Aviation literature is frustratingly uncommon, especially here in Australia where one hand is probably all you need to count the number of author’s who have produced significant works of artistic merit (e.g. Xavier Herbert, Ivan Southall, Don Charlwood, Gordon Taylor and Geoffrey Dutton). While the writings of author and historian Gavin Souter have never attracted […]