Hello All,
I am trying to discover who made the decision to change (and why!) from using RAAF Lincolns in the Met Recce (and Airborne Sampling) duties during the first 3 atomic weapons trials in/near Australia to using RAF Shackletons only for Met Recce duties..
Four RAAF Lincolns were very heavily radioactively contaminated in the first two tests (and, presumably, their crews?). They were:
A73-25
A73-47
A73-52
A73-54
Does anyone have a detailed history of these airframes subsequent to the weapons trials? I am not interested in the subsequent politics except to note that the words “cover-up”, and “arrogant disregard for human safety” would seem to feature quite often in what literature I have been able to find so far, which may bedevil efforts to get at The Truth. There is a smell of rat upon the air.
TIA
Resmoroh
PS If y’all now git orff the air, I might be able to get into the Oz Archives computer!!!!!!
By: Resmoroh - 3rd June 2009 at 14:16
Just to bring you up to date on this thread.
Some information at last beginning to trickle in!
The RAAF Lincoln crews apparently carried out the Met Recce flights in their ‘summer uniforms’ (= UK KD?). They were dressed similarly when carrying out the post-explosion debris sampling!!!!! Some a/c were heavily contaminated. Ground crews (dressed only in shorts, socks, and boots!!) attempted to decontaminate the a/c with hoses and brushes. Some of the heavily contaminated airframes were shipped out to deep water and dumped overboard.
After the RAF Shacks took over the purely Met Recce aspects the sampling was done by “Canberras”. Presumably UK Canberras? How were they decontaminated? – and where?
An aerial survey was carried out after one test to find areas of contamination on land. How was this acheived? I was, for a few years, the UK Met Office representative on the UK Home Office Civil Defence Cttee which concerned itself with such matters. We had to rely on persons pointing ‘Tickometers’ at bits of ground to find out if (and how) radioactive it was. But apart from ‘how’, the survey was carried out by a ‘Varsity’! Who’s Varsity?
The picture is beginning to become clearer – but not much!! The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have responded with 6mm of A4 sheets of paper. There is even an interview (done a few weeks ago!) with one of the Oz meteorologists actually involved. There are also more References (to the Royal Commission Report) than you could shake a stick at tom-cats in a fish market on a Sunday!
Well done BoM. The RCR was done in 1985. A lot more stones have been turned over since then. Some of what is underneath is not, possibly, very palatable and does not reflect very well on the decision-makers of the time and in the place. But they were being driven by the dreaded Politicians – t’was always thus.
When I’ve read ALL the References (I’ll be about 105 yrs old!!) I’ll keep you up-to-date. Old Nick might allow me an e-mail address if I am assiduous in reading the temperatures of The Fiery Furnaces every hour, on the hour!!
Resmoroh
By: Proctor VH-AHY - 24th April 2009 at 20:39
Some of these aeroplanes ended up at the RAAF Base at Amberley, Queensland in the mid 1950’s. My farther was an engineering officer there and had contact with them for which he now gets some of medical bills covered.
I have heard that they were buried at Amberley on the far side of the airfield – just a rumor. Just an aside, my farther tells me that hundreds of B24 Liberators were scrapped there.
cheers
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April 24, 2009 at 3:21 pm