I read somewhere that Woomera might be a good place to look for aircraft wrecks. I understand parts of this large site are still off limits, so might contain a wreck or two from that days of testing rockets, missiles and the odd A Bomb?
Can anyone verify this?
By: mark_pilkington - 15th August 2007 at 08:02
A further photo from my work collegue accessed from a public website of Nuclear Test veterans private “happy snaps” this one shows at least two of the Swifts in the background of an army tank placed in the blast area.
regards
Mark Pilkington
By: mark_pilkington - 15th August 2007 at 06:25
Woomera Swifts burnt and buried
A work collegue/aviation enthusiast who is a keen researcher of the Woomera and associated A Bomb tests has just returned from the public records office in London and advises the 6 Supermarine Swifts were dumped into a former ground test hole in the late 1960’s, set on fire along with other rubbish (including buses, and then buried with a concrete cap laid on top).
……and he had photos to proove it
(makes for an interesting morning tea chat at work!)
Regards
Mark Pilkington
By: JDK - 12th September 2006 at 01:58
By: mark_pilkington - 11th September 2006 at 17:52
I have seen modern photo’s at a Government Establishment related to that site showing at least two Swifts remain on site left were they stood, no significant blast damage was evident.
regards
Mark Pilkington
By: Steve Bond - 11th September 2006 at 17:28
Yes indeed, a number of Swifts were positioned out on the ranges for tests on radio-activity decay and so on, i.e.non-destructive. I’ve seen a photograph of them somewhere, and I seem to recall they were painted white overall. Possibly still there.
By: Mark12 - 11th September 2006 at 17:17
Mark
By: David Burke - 11th September 2006 at 17:10
Supermarine Swift’s from memory shipped out there for tests.
By: BIGVERN1966 - 11th September 2006 at 17:10
Shooting at Woomera
Chances are most of the wreckage of the aircraft targets were recovered for analysis, as they fitted with miss distance cameras and other instrumentation with recorders. The same for a lot of the missiles. This information was later used for early computer modelling of the weapon’s performance. However, there may be the odd Blue Danube casing buried in the ground (36 dropped in total) and the odd remains of other things.
Photos are of Bloodhound 1’s kicking the cr*p out of Meteors and Canberras 😀 and Thunderbird 1 doing its usual trick of just missing 😉 during the No 8 JSTU trials of the two weapons in 1957-60 at Woomera.
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September 11, 2006 at 4:26 pm