Thx Comoford, good video.

Any stops on the way? Aka. Williamtown?

No stops on the way.

I think the plot would be:
Depart Friday morning
DC-10 tanker (note: no boom, drogues only) off first.
5 Rhinos depart and R/V with tanker.
When everyone airborne, C-17 t/o and flies direct to Amberley.

Rhinos stay topped up with tanker across the ditch, and descend for low overfly of Canberra. (Tanker either has departed this stage for Richmond or Amberley, or orbits overhead to tank Rhinos again out of Canberra, then departs.)

Rhinos R/V with F-111s northern NSW, and according to media will do a joint low level overfly of Gold Coast, (poss Brisbane?), Ipswich and Amberley.

Auster VI

Aussie Auster VI A11-201 on skis in the Antarctic, c 1955

In the former category I think the seminal book covering British types is Jack Bruce’s ‘bible’ first published in 1957 (Putnam) “British Aeroplanes 1914 – 1918”.

While I have all the Putnam “company” books, I find some of their generic overviews by necessity aren’t very deep. Thetford’s Aircraft of the RAF was like this, I am unsure of Bruce’s book as I have never bought it.

What I can recommend are the old Harleyford “bibles”. I have two:
Fighter Aircraft of the 1914-1918 War (1960), and
Reconnaissance and Bomber Aircraft of the 1914-1918 War (1962).

Because of their A4 format, the diagrams (some fold-outs) are better than the smaller Putnam books.

Re: F-14

and specifications weren’t released until the summer of 1958…

I guess you meant the summer of ’68 (a full decade later)

I’m curious why the RNs F4Ks didn’t carry gun pods whilst the RAFs F4Ms did. Were the pods introduced post Ark Royal? Or was it something to do with carrier ops?

I would think it was physical clearance for deck launch and recovery of the F-4K.
The pod was carried on the centreline station. For launch, the nose gear oleo was elevated to full extension which would have restricted centreline stores clearance, and for recovery there may have been some fouling problem with the cables.

Defence here is Australia has become an ongoing joke and the rot really set in about 15-20 yrs ago.

Longer than that – you could probably go back 35 years to the Tange changes of the mid-70s.

The Defence procurement has become so convoluted, too many committees, too many studies – so much money and so much time is wasted on unique “orphan” solutions to fill capability gaps. Defence strives to get a 100% high-risk solution for its handful of platforms, when buying off-the-shelf (COTS/MOTS) and achieving an 80% outcome is just plain common sense.

Trying to get the orphan Super-Seasprite just wasted over $1bn. 🙁 The C-17 and F/A-18F off-the-shelf acquisitions were on time and on budget :), and must show a sane approach for future procurement.

U-461

One interesting aspect of the U Boat war was that U-461 was sunk on 30 July 1943 in the Bay of Biscay by Australian Sunderland ‘U’ of 461 Squadron (U/461) !!