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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0021.PDF
3 January 1958 21 SYDNEY'S RADAR DEFENCE SYSTEM >4 Potent Combination of Australian Personnel and American Equipment (Abore) The plotters marking information received on the screen. They work on the reverse side, writing back- wards with great rapidity. (Below) The reporting room. Information is fed in via cathode-ray tubes and relayed to the plotters working on the transparent screen. The plotters' results are also displayed in the control room (below, right), where fighter controllers are seen carrying out an interception on a P.P.I, tube. T^OMINATTNG the heights above the Sydney suburb of Manley*-* are two massive 30ft structures supporting the search aerials of the R.A.A.F. No. 1 Control and Reporting Unit. Costing £Alm, thisnew station is entrusted with the protection of the Sydney Harbour district, and the combination of American radar equipment andAustralian personnel appears to be more than equal to the task. Illustrated at the top of the page is the AN/FPS-6 30ft-diameterheight finder, which is brought to bear when an aircraft has been picked up by the other aerial, a 40ft AN/FPS-3A search unit, whichrotates through 360 deg. The system can pinpoint aircraft flying supersonically at over 50,000ft. Information collected by the aerials is displayed on P.P.I, tubes inthe reporting room and interpreted by recorders who radio-phone all the information they gather to plotters at the other end of the room.The plotters collate this information and write the results on a large Plexiglas screen representing the defended area. Their work is duplicated by radio-phone on a similar screen inthe control room next door where the fighter control staff, with the complete tactical picture in front of them, direct operationsaccordingly. To test the system, a force of Canberras from Queensland recentlytried for one day to attack Sydney. Not one of them, it is reported, succeeded in penetrating the screen. Every bomber was identified,tracked and successfully intercepted by fighter squadrons operating from instructions received from the station, though the attack wasdirected and executed by R.A.A.F. officers with considerable experi- ence of wartime flying operations. The Brookvale radar station is commanded by S/L. F. J. Boorman,who received special training in the use of the new equipment in the U.S.A. Many of his staff also received training in America or GreatBritain; but the station is now completely self-sufficient, and conducts its own training courses in the practical and theoretical sides of radardefence. This system is complemented by the extensive airfield development programme referred to in Flight of December 20.
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