ADGie News 2009 ..............................

Today in RAAF History ...

13 April 1942
Anti-G suit tested in Hurricane

On this day, Flight Lieutenant Ken Robertson made his first flight in the RAAF’s sole Hawker Hurricane, V7476 (A60-1)––a survivor of the fall of Singapore which had been gifted to Australia by the RAF––to test a prototype aerodynamic anti-G suit developed by Professor Frank Cotton of Sydney University. Flight Lieutenant R.H. Thompson, an instructor at the Central Flying School at Camden, NSW, had previously been assisting Cotton to test the suit, including with a flight in the Hurricane in March, but he had since been posted and arranged for Robertson to take over. Between September 1942 and May 1943 Robertson made 75 flights in the suit, totalling about 60 hours of flying, in three different aircraft (Hurricane, Kittyhawk and Spitfire). During July 1943 he supervised the training of pilots of No 452 Squadron at Strauss, NT, who conducted trials to assess the suit’s suitability for operations in the tropics.

13 April 2003

Medical supplies delivered to Baghdad

On this day, a C-130H Hercules transport became the first RAAF aircraft to land at Baghdad International Airport in more than a decade as it took part in Operation Baghdad Assist. The crew was delivering 6.8 tonnes of medical stores and other equipment taken from the RAN’s Landing Platform Amphibious vessel, HMAS Kanimbla, that were desperately required in Iraqi hospitals to meet growing humantiarian needs. Combat operations were still underway around the newly-liberated capital as an international coalition battled to complete the overthrow of Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, and explosions frequently flashed in the night sky as the aircraft’s female captain landed using night vision equipment. Battle damage to the main runway forced the aircraft to land on a taxiway, and this, along with the potential threat from surface-to-air missiles, required a precise tactical operation. After landing, the Hercules was unloaded and got away again as quickly as possible.

Today in RAAF History ...

14 April 1989
No 33 Squadron B-707 ferried troops to Namibia
On this day, a Boeing 707 transport (A20-627) of No 33 Squadron flew into Grootfontein, Namibia, with the first half of the main body of the 300-strong Army contingent sent by Australia to serve with the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) that was to supervise the withdrawal of South African forces and oversee Namibia’s transition to independence. The RAAF aircraft delivered the remainder of the contingent on 16 April. In September, a second B-707 from 33 Squadron (A20-624) was used to convey a replacement contingent on the first six-monthly rotation of Australian troops serving with UNTAG. This group was delivered to Windhoek, the Namibian capital located 450 kilometres south of Grootfontein. As UNTAG wound up after the elections were held, most of the Australians left for home in February 1990 and the rear party followed on 9 April.

14 April 2009
Canberra lost in Vietnam War finally located
On this day, an investigative team from the Australian Defence Force completed a seven-hour journey by lorry, boat and foot into an extremely rugged, remote and sparsely populated area of Quang Nam Province in Vietnam, near the border with Laos, in search of Canberra bomber A84-231 which went missing with its two-man crew during the Vietnam War (see 3 November). Items of aircraft wreckage and military artefacts (including a club badge unique to the RAAF’s No 2 Squadron) were located the next day, which confirmed that the area contained the remains of the missing Australian aircraft. In July that year, a recovery operation, named Operation Magpies Return, found human remains at the crash site. These were transported to Hanoi, where Vietnamese and Australian forensic specialists identified them as those of Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver. The remains were repatriated to Australia on 31 August 2009.

This weekend in RAAF History ...

17 April 1941
RAAF Meteorological Service formed
On this day, all members of the civilian Bureau of Meteorology, except a number engaged exclusively in civil duties, were enlisted in or appointed to the RAAF’s newly-formed Directorate of Meteorological Services. When war started in 1939, the Commonwealth had transferred operational control of the Bureau to the Air Board, but administrative responsibility remained with the Department of the Interior. This arrangement proved so cumbersome that in April 1940 the function was transferred to the Department of Air. When the RAAF formally established its service, the Bureau’s director since 1938, Mr Herbert Warren, was appointed to the rank of Group Captain and led the new organisation. By 1 May 1943 this had grown to 199 officers, 321 assistants and 301 charters––of whom nearly a quarter were members of the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force. The RAAF Meteorological Service reverted to civilian status in 1946.

17 April 1945
Australians victim of German nightfighter
On this day, three weeks before the end of World War II, Halifax MkBIII bomber MZ467 of No 462 Squadron, RAAF, became the last Allied bomber shot down by a German nightfighter. The aircraft took off shortly before midnight on 16 April from Foulsham, on a bombing mission against Gablingen fighter airfield near the Austrian border. In addition to its load of incendiary bombs and flares, it was fitted with two long-range fuel tanks. Near Augsburg at 3.40 am, the Halifax encountered a Ju-88G-6 which blasted it with 200 rounds of 20 mm ammunition and sent it into a steep dive. The bomber caught fire and exploded before it hit the ground. Only the Australian pilot and two others were able to escape the final blast; two RAAF men were among the five crewmen who perished. The survivors were made prisoners until liberated by advancing American forces a few weeks later.

17 April 1971
BEM for Gallantry won in Vietnam
On this day, an Iroquois helicopter of No 9 Squadron was called to the Long Hai mountains in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, to evacuate a government soldier who had been grievously wounded in a mine ambush. As the aircraft hovered to winch the injured man from the boulder-strewn hillside, an enemy machine gun opened fire and shot the helicopter down. The aircraft fell to the ground, killing several men it landed on, then rolled on its side and burst into flames. The aircraft’s five occupants were also immediately in peril. Despite the efforts of Corporal Bob Stephens to free the Army medical orderly carried on board, this man remained trapped by the legs and perished in the flames. Stephens continued to give assistance to fellow survivors while further help was dispatched to the scene. The award of the British Empire Medal for Gallantry to Stephens, announced in December, was the only one made to an Australian in Vietnam.

18 April 1942
RAAF party rescued by US submarine
After a survival ordeal lasting eight weeks, a party of 29 RAAF personnel, four Australian Army men and one RAN officer were taken off Timor by the US submarine, Searaven, over two nights beginning on this day. The RAAF men were members of No 2 Squadron which had been manning the Penfoei airfield outside Koepang, the capital of the Dutch (western) half of Timor, until Japanese paratroopers invaded the island on 20 February. Japanese air raids on Darwin the previous day prevented the airfield demolition party being brought out of Penfoei before the Japanese landed, and an arranged rendezvous with a Sunderland flying boat at the mouth of Kapsali River was similarly thwarted by a raid at Broome, WA, on 3 March. The group’s rescue by sea concluded what has been hailed as one of the largest and most unusual escapes from enemy occupied territory by RAAF personnel.

18 April 1999
F-111 crashed in Malaysia during exercise
On this day, the RAAF suffered one of its worst peacetime accidents when an F-111G fighter-bomber from No 6 Squadron crashed on Pulau Aur, a tiny island in the South China Sea lying 65 kilometres off Mersing, on the east coast of Johor, Malaysia. The aircraft (A8-291) was one of two making a simulated night-time strike against British, Australian and Singaporean warships during a Five Power Defence Arrangement exercise, when it struck tall trees on a ridge line of the island’s peak. The aircraft tumbled through the air for a further mile before crashing into the jungle. Owing to the inaccessibility of the site, most of the wreckage of A8-291 was left at the scene, with a memorial established to the two crew members––Squadron Leader Stephen Hobbs and Squadron Leader Anthony Short––who were killed in the accident.

Pom

Our History in one set of words.. please post

The Eagle and Her Young

By Glenn Lyons

Written in Iraq July 2008

We are the unclean, the unwanted mob,

Quasi soldier come airman who trades his life for a cause,

Neither entirely Air Force nor Army, and to both unknown,

Who gives protection for the eagle and her young.

10 April ’45 we were born unto this world,

Under the Morotai sun we learnt our trade,

In May of that year we lost our first Tom Irvine

Our bar in his honour bears his name.

We are the son of those first men, those men without guns,

Amongst the jungle entwined the yellow horde they did fight,

When time was stopped over Hiroshima that day,

We returned to Australia, for there was no more fray.

The cold years went by without protection for the young,

‘Til Jan ’66 born again for Vietnam,

Men grew used to new sounds of rotor chop and jets roar,

They served day’n’night on the ground & in the air at the door.

More gave their lives during that south eastern tour,

And, for those who returned, the lost liveth evermore,

Last from the ground the ADG made his claim,

No more fighting to be had in that ten thousand day war.

At four different bases we continued to train,

Though we thought times had changed, we were still shunned as shame,

Baggy green outfits at odds with the blue,

But we continued to give, there was no way we were through,

In ’83 we reformed amongst the sheds was the call,

And, once again men stood together, in defence they stood tall,

Officers and Airmen for one purpose they were formed,

For protection of the eagle and her young, never torn.

Form four different locations we came together as one,

At Amberley airbase on a hill under the sun,

Over the years she has grown both the eagle and her young,

So to keep pace with the needs men remained focused and strong.

In Sep ’99 the unit heads north,

Komoro Airfield we are called to the jungle entwined,

In vehicles we are at our trade as well as by foot and in the air,

And for our time over there a Citation was the award,

Since that day on Morotai we’ve come a long way,

From Lee Enfield to Austeyer and Bushmaster from Jeep,

From Jungle green outfits to one that’s Infra Red,

The slouch hat replaced by a Beret that’s blue,

Though we still LOOK like Army we’re Air Force through and through,

Sometimes I do think that we’re bluer than the blue,

So we’re no longer at odds with those that did shun,

For now we a team... All Air Force.... All one.