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Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 15, 2009 21:14:39 GMT 12
I have been watching a video tape that Shorty kindly sent me with various aviation things he taped over time off TV. One item, un-named, is a documentary piece that is introduced by (I think) a younger Jack Thompson and is really interesting.
When the British tested a nuclear bomb in the Australian desert six retired RAAF CAC Mustangs were lined up as one of the things being tested to see what happened to them. After the bomb, they were virtually intact. They were left there.
14 years later an ex-Air Force engineer bought the six planes from the Government supposedly to scrap but when he looked at them he realised how good a condition they were in, so he set about getting one flying. It was A68-1, the first Australian Mustang ever built. He and a team restored it to flying condition and eventually he flew it to Adelaide. He hoped to get permission to fly it permanently but the CAA held him up so he sold it to the USA. The dickheads on the ship wrecked it in transit. Ten years later the remains were saved and rebuilt again by a US restorer and it flew in the USa till crashing again, and again being rebuilt. By the time this show was made it was flying and racing in the USA.
they never mentioned what happened to the other five aircraft apart from being trucked out and put up for sale for rebuild. Are any of these six machines now flying anywhere?
And are any of the guys involved still alive? Surely the lanes would have been toxic with radiation, as would the zone they worked in, in the late 1960's, to restore these aircraft.
I'm surprised to hear there was a warbird movement active in Australia as early as 1967 which is when I calculate that the recovery of these aircraft began. Good to hear.
The documentary had great footage of early engine runs, taxiing trials and the first flight back in the air, etc, so they had a professional camera person with them I'd think.
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Post by Bruce on Jun 15, 2009 22:17:07 GMT 12
There was an article about it in a Flypast or Aeroplane Magazine last year, will try and find it. The atomic test site was Emu, South Australia - not quite the middle of nowhere, but pretty close to it! two test were carried out at Emu before moving to Maralinga. The Emu tests were of devices of similar yield to the Hiroshima bomb, which was compatively low (therfore the "cooldown" period was fairly short). The Mustangs were positioned at different angles to the blasts to determine damage profiles. ex RAF supermarine swifts were used for similiar purposes at Maralinga. All the mustangs surved with minimal damage, although one was blown onto a nearby road where someone drove into it afterwards! the site was "cleaned up" in the 1960s when radiation had dropped to "negligible" levels and everything had "cooled down". The Aussie government insisted that Australian surplus property must be put up for open tender on disposal, much to the disgust of the British MOD who ran the site. All prospective tenderers were allowed to visit and inspect the aircraft for sale. The Magazine article tells of a group of aero club enthusiasts who placed a token bid solely for the purposes of being allowed to fly in to the Emu site. They did some exploring whilst there (watched from a distance by British Guards) including visiting ground zero of one ofthe tests. The eventual winning bidder arrived just as they left, and managed to get A68-1 ground running. It was later ferried out with the gear down, and without Airwortniness approval to Adelaide via Coober Pedy, as the limited window he was allowed to dismantle the aircraft in was running out. This is what got him into trouble with the CAA. I have also heard that at least one set of wings off the Emu Mustangs passed through New zealand at some stage. I have spoken to an engineer that helped unpack them in the 1970s. Aparently they werent legally supposed to be here so it was kept very quiet. When the boxes were opened the wings were found to be infested with Redback Spiders. Rather than call MAF to deal with them and start asking questions, an all out assualt with 6 or 7 cans of flyspray was used. The arrangement was that the wings would be rebuilt in NZ, but the deal fell through and they left the country again via shadowy means.
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Post by ZacYates on Jun 15, 2009 22:26:59 GMT 12
Interesting you bring this up Dave! I remember reading about the Emu nuclear Mustangs in an old Classic Wings Downunder - a dive into the mag pile reveals this to be issue eight. The Mustangs were, according to Craig Justo's article, A68-1, -7, -30, -35, -72 and -87. All were salvaged and all eventually exported to the USA. And a quick look at the Warbird Registry: A68-1 - airworthy with Wiley Sanders, Troy, Alabama A68-7 - parts source with Cavalier Aircraft, Florida A68-30 - same as -7 A68-35 - same again A68-72 - believe it or not, spares source at Cavalier A68-87 - guess, go on, I dare ya! Parts source at Cavalier Aircraft Odds are at least some parts from the other five will be flying somewhere, but sadly it appears A68-1 is the only Emu Mustang to fly today.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 15, 2009 22:42:56 GMT 12
Thanks Zac. Yes a lot of that story detail was covered in the documentary Bruce, I just didn't type it all out. But it's a very interesting one. Are there other radioactive warbirds around then? I know a bunch of the B-29's that were rescued from China Lake were in a weapons testing area, were they nuked?
Was that wing that came to NZ connected with the Rob Vuletich collection of Mustangs at Rotorua??
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Post by Bruce on Jun 15, 2009 23:08:54 GMT 12
I'm not sure who imported the mustang Wings Dave, the guy I was speaking to was keeping it pretty quiet, but he was reputible. The Collings Foundations B17 "Nine - O - Nine" is a survivor of several nuclear tests in Nevada. I dont think that China Lake was ever used for nuclear tests, so the B29s probably havent been nuked. The valiant at RAF Cosford dropped the first British H Bomb at Christmas Island, so that would make it a "survivor" of sorts.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 15, 2009 23:23:46 GMT 12
Hey Bruce, did you know the late Gordon Easter from Cambridge flew an H-bomb from the UK to Christmas Island in a B-50 Washington. It might have even been for that test you mentioned. They made him watch the test and he described the entire flight and test to me in detail when I interviewed him a few years back (not online yet sorry). From memory I think he made a couple of trips there actually.
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davidm
Warrant Officer
Posts: 30
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Post by davidm on Jun 23, 2009 11:42:06 GMT 12
The Emu Mustang story is essentially as set out above. Cavalier broke the aircraft into parts and some of these (an engine bearer here a tail cone there) have been identified in/on current restorations but A68-1 is the only one to survive in relatively complete form.
Neil Follett (a very skilled photographer and one of the enthusiasts who inspected the a/c at Emu) took a lot of photos. Until recently the only ones published have been in B & W but he also took some colour and these have appeared recently. I used four or five in Southern Cross Mustangs; they look a little odd as the desert colours are so strong and the Mustangs are so weathered. SCM also illustrates the aircraft in RAAF before their Emu deployment and gives an outline of their story.
There is a TV documentary of Tony Schwert's recovery of A68-1 called 'Rise like the Phoenix (The story of A68-1)' that has some excellent footage and covers its subsequent history up to the 1990s. I will ask my contacts if Tony Schwert is still around.
HTH,
David
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Apr 16, 2018 19:29:31 GMT 12
from The New York Times....Australia's Least Likely Tourist Spot: A Test Site for Atom Bombs“Yes, there is still radiation here,” Australia's only nuclear tour guide says of Maralinga, where the Australian and British governments dropped seven bombs between 1956 and 1963.By BEN STUBBS | Sunday, April 15, 2018Robin Matthews, Australia's only nuclear tour guide, takes tourists to visit a former atomic-weapons test site in Maralinga, South Australia. — Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times.MARALINGA, AUSTRALIA — Maralinga, a barren stretch of land in South Australia's remote western desert, is the country's only former nuclear test site open to tourists. And Robin Matthews is Australia's only nuclear tour guide.
Visitors to Maralinga, a deserted military installation the size of Manhattan, who expect to find their tour guide dressed in a yellow jumpsuit and ventilator mask are bound to be disappointed.
Instead, Mr. Matthews, 65, can be found wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and a cigarette hanging from chapped lips. His skin, deeply tanned, is covered with a narrative of faded tattoos inked long before they were fashionable.
“Yes, there is still radiation here,” Mr. Matthews said as he drove a minibus to the sites where the Australian and British governments dropped seven bombs between 1956 and 1963, which dotted the earth with huge craters and poisoned scores of indigenous people and their descendants.
Back then, the government placed hundreds of human guinea pigs — wearing only shorts and long socks — in the front areas of the test zones. The effects of large doses of radiation were devastating.Nowadays, after a multimillion-dollar cleanup, radiation poses little danger to visitors, Mr. Matthews said, unless they choose to “eat mouthfuls of dust.”
Maralinga, which means “thunder” in the extinct Aboriginal language Garik, is an unlikely tourist destination. It is hot and arid, and at 700 miles west of Adelaide it is difficult to reach. When tours started in 2016, the village was accessible by only two flights a week from Ceduna, the closest “large” city, which itself has a population of fewer than 3,000 people.
But the Maralinga Tjarutja people hope to increase the number of visitors to the site this year. The Maralinga Tjarutja Administration, which operates the site, is increasing the number of regular flights to the village, increasing the length of the tour to three days and working with the South Australian government on a business plan to lure more visitors, said Sharon Yendall, the group's general manager.The Australian and British governments dropped seven bombs between 1956 and 1963, which dotted the earth with huge craters. — Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times.Don Richards, who served at Maralinga as a clerk in the Australian Air Force from 1963 to 1965, was one of the 1,000 tourists who have so far visited the site.
“I learned more in that tour than I really learned in the two years I was out there,” he said. “It was a pretty interesting place to be — a fairly motley crew lived at Maralinga once.”
Today just four people live full time in Maralinga village, a veritable ghost town. Amid the old buildings are new lodgings built for tourists, complete with hot water and Wi-Fi.
In the 1950s and '60s, at the height of the Cold War, 35,000 military personnel lived here. There was a permanent airstrip, then the longest in the Southern Hemisphere, plus roads, a swimming pool, accommodation and railway access.
The first nuclear test was conducted in September 1956, two months before the Melbourne Olympics. That blast — as powerful as the bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan — was the first of seven atomic bombs set off here.The first nuclear test at Maralinga was conducted in September 1956, and was as big as the bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan. — Photograph: National Archives of Australia.But it was the so-called minor tests that were the most harrowing. Carried out in secret, the tests examined how toxic substances, including uranium and plutonium 239, would react when burned or blown up. To ensure tourists' safety in the area, a zone was cleaned up by radiation scientists at the cost of more than 100 million Australian dollars, about $77 million.
Around one area tourists can visit are 22 major pits, each at least 50 feet deep and cased in reinforced concrete to prevent dangerous radiation from seeping out.
The site looks like a recently tilled garden bed, stretching out for hundreds of yards, in a near perfect circle. Dotting the red desert earth are shards of twisted metal. Aside from a few feral camels loping nearby, it is still and silent.
But on October 4 1956, a “nuclear land mine” was detonated here, tearing a crater 140 feet wide and 70 feet deep into the earth.
The resulting atomic reaction took only a fraction of a second, but its effects on one indigenous family would last decades.The site of a building where nuclear bombs were built before testing. — Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times.The Australian government has spent millions to make the site safe for tourists. — Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times.In early 1957, Edie Millpuddie and her family were traversing the Great Victoria Desert plains. “The Millpuddies needed shelter for the night, and they came across this enormous hole where the ground was still warm,” Mr. Mathews said. “They drank rainwater from the bottom and lit a fire. All the rabbits in the area seemed disoriented; they were easy pickings for dinner before the family went to sleep in the crater.”
Two weeks later, Ms. Millpuddie delivered a stillborn baby.
Later, her surviving children's children would all be born with “physical and mental deformities,” Mr. Matthews said. “This all happened right where we're standing.”
Survivors of the blasts, their children and grandchildren suffered from cataracts, blood diseases, arthritic conditions, stomach cancers and birth defects. In the 1980s, a Royal Commission investigating the tests awarded Ms. Millpuddie 75,000 Australian dollars.
There was no overt pressure or media scrutiny over what happened at Maralinga until the 1970s, when those injured by the tests came forward and a small group of journalists and politicians cast a more critical eye on the tests and the secrecy surrounding them.“We now bring our kids and our grandchildren here to explain what happened,” Mr. Matthews said. — Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times.Mr. Matthews first visited Maralinga in 1972. His wife, Della, is a member of the Anangu people, and when the land was decontaminated, the couple were asked to be Maralinga's first caretakers.
One recent morning, Mr. Matthews busied himself with preparations for the arrival of a charter plane full of tourists.
He would love it, he said, if indigenous people replaced him as the guides at Maralinga, though he also understands why they would choose not to.
“We now bring our kids and our grandchildren here to explain what happened,” he said. “This is their land and their ancestors' land.”__________________________________________________________________________ • Dr. Ben Stubbs is a writing and journalism academic. His background is as a travel writer for publications in Australia and overseas. He was a regular writer for The Sydney Morning Herald's Traveller section for many years. His current academic research focuses on exploring the plurality of the travel writing form. Stubb's first book, “Ticket to Paradise: A Journey to Find the Australian Colony in Paraguay Among Nazis, Mennonites and Japanese Beekeepers”, about his search for the remnants of the Australian utopian colony in Paraguay was published by ABC Books in 2012. Ben is fluent in Spanish and his latest book, “After Dark: A Nocturnal Exploration of Madrid” (2016), explores the nocturnal lives of the Madrileños (people of Madrid). Stubbs has written long-form travel essays for Meanjin on the US-Mexico border, on Christmas Island for the Griffith Review and on the Muslim harmony of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for The Guardian. In addition to this he am also currently exploring virtual reality in journalism and was awarded a teaching and learning grant for a 2017 pilot study.__________________________________________________________________________ Related to this topic:
• Mending Fences in the War Between Dingoes and Sheep
• Through the Outback
• Australia to Ban Climbing on Uluru, a Site Sacred to Indigenous Peoplewww.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/world/australia/maralinga-nuclear-tourism.html
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Post by htbrst on Apr 16, 2018 19:50:01 GMT 12
Is there a story behind the name of "Test site Taranaki" in the photo below or was it a randomly allocated code word ? from The New York Times....The Australian government has spent millions to make the site safe for tourists. — Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Apr 16, 2018 19:57:50 GMT 12
Yeah, that intrigued me too when I saw that photograph, but I wouldn't have a clue what is behind that name.
The author of that article isn't a New York Times journalist, but is a guest writer from Australia they use from time to time. Searching the NYT site brings up quite a few articles he has written for the newspaper, mostly to do with topics about Australia. His bio (accompanying the article) is all I really know about him. I presume the photographer who took the photographs accompanying the article is an Australian.
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Post by nuuumannn on Apr 16, 2018 20:32:37 GMT 12
There's a very good book by Frank Walker called Maralinga, which details the weapon detonations and their after effects on the Australian people. A very stirring and disturbing read. From his own website: frankwalker.com.au/books/23-maralingaThe Taranaki test was part of Operation Antler, which was designed to trial thermonuclear weapons components; there were three detonations, Tadje, Biak and Taranaki, the first two were tower mounted, whilst Taranaki was suspended 300m above the ground by barrage balloons. At 26 Kt it was the second biggest bomb detonated in Australia. Its fallout was among the worst recorded in Australia. The radiation cloud drifted east over New South Wales to Port Macquarie then out to sea, but was recorded in Adelaide SA, Melbourne, VIC and in Sydney. There doesn't seem to be any logic behind the names used; for example, Operation Buffalo tests were One Tree, Markoo, Kite and Breakaway. About the Mustangs, there have been a number of articles in magazines over the years. The now defunct Warbirds Worldwide magazine did an article about the Mustangs at Emu, but the magazine is very hard to come by, but I'm sure there are members that have a few stashed away in their collections. Stewart Wilson's Spitfire, Mustang and Kittyhawk in Australian Service goes into the subject, with images, although again, long out of print. On the subject of irradiated aircraft, the RAAF flew Lincolns into the clouds for sampling, a few of which were so badly irradiated, they were rapidly disposed of. Two were burned at Amberley and the remains buried and it's believed two more were dismantled and dumped out to sea. The British also took Supermarine Swifts ith them for testing as well as the Mustangs.
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Post by planecrazy on Apr 16, 2018 20:42:13 GMT 12
These pic's taken by a friend Langdon Badger the owner of the Mooney in the bottom pic, pretty sure these two were flown out from the site. Details below from this site, www.adf-serials.com.au/2a68a.htmA68-30 CA-17 Mk.20 1355 Delivered 1 AD ex CAC on 01/11/45. Issued 23 Sqn 15/06/50 to 13/11/52. SOC 31/03/53 Flown from Tocumwal to Emu, South Australia to be used in atomic bomb tests. Identified in reports as AS.5. Only suffered minor damage. It and 5 others were sold 05/67 by tender to a syndicate of Peter Hookway, Stan Booker and Tony Schwerdt. Dismantled insitu and exported to USA 01/68. Sold to Cavalier Aircraft as spare parts.
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Post by nuuumannn on Apr 16, 2018 20:49:56 GMT 12
An interesting clip here which shows preparations for an Operation Buffalo test, with Centurion tanks being driven into place and Vickers Valiants getting airborne, although slightly misleading as the Valiant didn't drop a weapon on this test, just photographed it. Supermarine Swift at 4:59 and remains at 8:04. Begins with a Hastings taxiing in.
Mustangs at Emu:
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Post by Mustang51 on Apr 17, 2018 10:28:59 GMT 12
Only one A68-1 flown out. Langdon 'souveniered' at least one rocket rail stub from one of these machines and it is in his study in Adelaide. The Mooney landed on a very short clay pan.
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Post by denysjones on Apr 17, 2018 15:48:23 GMT 12
If you want to dig into the dirty side of the tests, as in what the Aussies didn't know about what the Brits were actually doing and the vast and on-going contamination issues, there's an excellent book "Atomic Thunder" by Elizabeth Tynan, from James Cook University.
It wasn't just the a/c they put out on the sites as they even effectively vapourised a virtually brand new ship, HMS Plym, in a related test series off WA.
Also not to mention not even knowing that Aboriginal peoples were still in the test zones when the bangs went off.
Perhaps if the guys who went in and got the a/c had the current knowledge of the state of the sites they might have left them there!
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Post by nuuumannn on Apr 17, 2018 16:19:52 GMT 12
Forgot to mention, John Smith's Mustang was used for flying into radiation clouds that drifted over to New Zealand during the British testing in Aussie. Also, MoTaT's Sunderland carried radioactive samples during the Grapple tests in the Pacific. The RAF Museum's Valiant dropped nuclear bombs.
Yes, interesting stuff, Denys, although Plym wasn't brand new, she had served in the Atlantic as a convoy escort in WW2 and had been decommissioned by the time of her destruction. She was destroyed in Britain's first nuclear bomb test, Operation Hurricane in 1952.
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Post by ZacYates on Apr 17, 2018 17:08:27 GMT 12
I don't know about radioactive aircraft but the Atomic Tank, a Centurion, was recovered from Emu Field and put back into service (even went to Vietnam) and is now on display at an army barracks.
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