Mystery (?) Ohakea Building

[shorty]

During my time at Ohakea there was large building I couldn't ascertain the purpose of. It was on the corner half way down the switchback road leading to the lower sports field (by the MQs) When I did enquire I got a story that it was for a RAF detachment that were to supply oxygen for Vulcans and Victors! Most unlikely! Certainly if it had been RAF they would have been seen around Base.
It was probably for something more mundane like sports gear or lawn mowing tractor etc.
Any one know who or what it was for?

[oj]

It used to be the Ground Equipment Bay Compressed Air Charging Unit.
Originally an Oxygen Charging unit during earlier years.
I have written about this in some other thread ...

[glycol]

On an initial posting to Ohakea about 1954, I shared accommodation with I think, three RAF servicemen who worked in that unit. They said it was secret but finally said they were air sampling
About 1958-60 when i was working in the Goblin power plant bay, I worked there for a while under Sgt Jackman and got the units, which were in storage, running again. The units were compressors.

[Dave Homewood]

The RAF sent personnel out to New Zealand during WWII to set up oxygen plants for filling O2 bottles for aircraft. Maybe this was set up by them. The RNZAF had a plant at Rukuhia, and one on Vella Lavella, during the war.

[oj]

When i was working in the Ground Equipment Bay in 1963-64, two personnel would spend a whole day down at the Air Charging Unit, refilling the trolley-mounted compressed air bottles from throughout the base.
The two big diesel engines had no electric or any other starting aid. They had to be hand-cranked, with ether used as a primer combustion fuel.
The massive flywheels made it very slow cranking to overcome the static inertia. There was a decompressor system to unload the cylinders during cranking and it had a foot-operated lever to trip the decompressor off when you thought you had reached sufficient cranking speed and then hopefully one of the ether-primed cylinders would fire and get the rest going.
I was never able to start one myself, being not strong enough to get the flywheel up to sufficient speed to kick-off a start.
So the crew always required a strong-man with a practiced technique to get them started.

[dazz]

May 7, 2022 22:12:38 GMT 12 glycol said:

On an initial posting to Ohakea about 1954, I shared accommodation with I think, three RAF servicemen who worked in that unit. They said it was secret but finally said they were air sampling
About 1958-60 when i was working in the Goblin power plant bay, I worked there for a while under Sgt Jackman and got the units, which were in storage, running again. The units were compressors.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the Poms did various forms of air testing/sampling around NZ and the Pacific in the late 50’s-early 60’s in connection with their nuclear weapons testing in Oz……… related?

[tbf2504]

That rings a bell. Around the mid 1950s, a Mustang of 42 Squadron was fitted with sensors on the wing pylons and made several flights over the Tasman for air sampling. Was about the same time as the British Atomic bomb tests in
South Australia. Perhaps they were checking for fallout drifting towards NZ

[Dave Homewood]

Canberras and Bristol Freighters were also sampling air after atomic/nuclear tests, I believe.

[tbf2504]

Dave, I think you have been misinformed there. the tests were carried out between 1952-1957. Our First canberras arrived in 1959. The Mustangs were the only aircraft on the inventory that could carry the samplers and fly
extended patrols at medium to high altitude over the Tasman.

[Dave Homewood]

Maybe confused with the RAF Canberras that did that job?

[Dave Homewood]

There is some good discussion of the nuclear tests here:

rnzaf.proboards.com/thread/22632/radiation-cloud-monitoring