Un-manned Aircraft Terrorised Sydney (in the 50's)

Saw it on TV the other day. Was trying to look it up on the internet just now but can’t find a darn thing. It’s a funny story though!!! 😀 😀 😀

A pilot back in the 1950s (I think it was the late ’50s but I’m not sure), was restarting his aircraft when it started racing down the runway and eventually took off with no-one on board.

It flew towards, and eventually circled, Sydney for a number of hours and the RAAF was called in to shoot the aircraft down. Unfortunately for our Aussie friends, the first aircraft failed when it’s rear gunners hand froze to the trigger of his machine gun.

Then, to add insult to injury, the cannons on the second aircraft scrambled by the RAAF jammed and eventually a third aircraft was scrambled and managed to shoot the aircraft out of the sky once it had drifted over open water.

And just to hammer the final nail in the the coffin, the crew of the aircraft the aircraft that actually managed to destroy the renegade plane were actually two Englishmen on, I believe, some sort of exchange project with the Aussies and were in transit to a ship when they were asked to take off.

The whole incident hit the press and shortly afterwards the RAAF had many questions to answer when the Aussie’s started asking “If an unmanned Aussie aircraft can give the RAAF the run-around for several hours and eventually evade their guns completely (the English of course being the ones to shoot it down), what chance did they stand against a real enemy?”.

I don’t recall the RAAF’s response.

Anyone else heard about this or know of any websites that have information on it. Talk about embarrassing.

God bless the Aussies 🙂 🙂 🙂