A message for Bluenose
Hi Bluenose,
Interesting info re Preddy.
I live in Albury, on the state border between New South Wales and Victoria in Australia
About 100 kms west is a town called Tocumwal and I suggest you fire up Google Earth and have a look at it.
The Americans established a huge air base there in 1942 and it was called McIntyre Field.
You may wonder why it was so far south.
There was a very real fear that the Japanese would invade the top end of Australia and, if so, the Allies intended to defensively withdraw behind what they called the Brisbane Line.
Get out an atlas, draw a line from Brisbane in Queensland, across to Adelaide in South Australia and you can see how Tocumwal would have fitted into the picture.
When General Kenny was drafted in to run Macarthur’s air wing, he took one look at Tocumwal and said: “Great facility, but too far south.”
He ordered the transfer of units / supplies to Townsville and gave Tocumwal to the RAAF lock, stock and barrel for nothing.
While the Yanks were in town, it was a pretty busy place and it’s possible that Preddy might have passed through.
If you have success with Google Earth, let me know if you spot the surviving hangars and strips.
Now, get out a handkerchief / napkin.
In 1961, when I was a very junior reporter on a local newspaper, I sneaked into the field just after the RAAF had shut it down.
I followed a set of rail lines and the first things I saw on a platform, were stacks of crated Packard Merlins and various radials.
Then in a nearby field, dozens – and I mean dozens – of ex-RAAF Mustangs and, yes you guessed it, Mosquitos.
I crawled all over them and I can still bring back the visual impressions and the aromas of the aircraft.
What I had stumbled on was a wrecking / smelting operation and I learned much later that they reduced the Mosquitos by dropping the engines, lighting a match and then raking up the alloy slag.
The steel bits and pieces went into local dumps; about a decade ago, another aircraft tragic and I recovered some Mossie bits and the few fragments of surviving timber laminations are fascinating.
We also visited a former employee of the scrapper and his Tocumwal garage was a treasure trove of aircraft bits and pieces.
He gave me a Mosquito undercart rubber compression block which makes a wonderful paperweight.
Very few Mossies have survived in Australia.
Oh, one other thing.
Another aircraft I crawled over at Tocumwal was a B-29 / RAF Washington seconded to the RAAF for guided weapons trials at Woomera in the South Australian Outback.
WW353 [ she still carried her RAF number] was still intact when I saw her.
On the return a decade ago, all I could find were some sections of laminated [nine layers] windscreen panel.
No B-29 died further from home; it was a tragic loss.
A Lancaster – originally intended as a pattern for local manufacture which never came to pass – was also dismembered at Tocumwal.
When the Brits finally got going with their jets, a couple of very Special Lincolns – Merlin inboards and outboard Python / Theseus turboprop test units – also made the final trip down from Woomera to destruction at Tocumwal.
Do you remember the extraordinarily powerful opening scene in the classic film, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” when the character played by Dana Andrews walks among the B-17’s in a US boneyard?
Mate, I’ve been there.
Sniff.
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