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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2044.PDF
846 Missiles and Spaceflight The Establishment's programme of basic upper-atmosphere research has accelerated in recent years with the use of a number of types of sounding rocket. These include the familiar and hard working Skylark (82 of which had been fired at the time of our visit), and multi-stage rockets made up from solid-propellant boosters surplus to the guided-weapons programme such as Long Tom (heights up to 180km), HAD (135km) and HAT (60km). Adjacent to the Weapons Research Establishment is Edinburgh Airfield, the Salisbury terminal for flights to and from Woomera and to and from the United Kingdom. It is also the home of No 4 Joint Services Trials Unit, commanded by Wg Cdr S. T. Underwood and at present engaged in conducting advanced evaluation trials of the Blue Steel missile. Vulcans and Victors carrying instrumented Blue Steels take off from Edinburgh and fire their missiles down the Woomera range. According to Gp Capt P. O. V. Green, command ing the RAF detachment at Edinburgh Field, the Service evaluation trials are progressing very well. These trials, which follow the companies' research and development phase of testing, are designed to evaluate the maximum potential of the weapon. Missiles are first checked out at the missile preparation area at WRE and then taken to Edinburgh Field, where we saw final checks and a demonstration fuelling being made on a Blue Steel slung underneath a Mk 2 Victor, XL161. Careful precautions are taken during fuelling of the missile with kerosine and high-test peroxide: the fuelling crew wear special protective clothing, and the area can be flooded (or an individual dunked in a small water-tank) if necessary. Surrounded by a tall, sloping, steel-ring fence of torpedo netting, with what appeared to be a portcullis in front of the nose of the aircraft, the Victor on its pad looked like a dangerous animal caged before its circus performance. Two days later, we were to watch this aircraft perform over Woomera, and hear the aircraft controller make the agonizing decision to call off the scheduled firing of the Blue Steel because of a system malfunction less than three minutes before the scheduled release time. * * * Woomera welcomed its visitors with a fresh face this year. The rainfall had been relatively high and the broad, flat landscape surrounding the town and the rangehead had sprouted a healthy fuzz of grey saltbush over the red desert soil. The trees in and around the town, tens of thousands of them now where there was literally none before the rocketmen came, looked young and healthy, but careful staking, individual watering-pipes and irrigation ditches hinted at the painstaking and continuous effort that was needed to achieve this premeditated oasis. Fifteen miles south of the town, near a dried salt lake called Island Lagoon, is the big dish of the deep-space tracking station set up by NASA—one of three such stations at roughly 120° intervals around the globe. Nearby is the Minitrack satellite- tracking station, also provided by the US space agency and almost identical to the Minitrack installation at Winkfield, Berkshire (and to those at 11 other locations throughout the world). Thirty miles north of the town is Range E, the rangehead, including four launch areas and the main instrumentation building —control centre and data-collection centre for the range. The rangehead is served by one airfield, Evetts Field, the town by another airport used by the regular Airlines of South Australia services from Adelaide. Four miles from the rangehead are the two Black Knight pads of Area 5; ten miles away is another dried salt lake, Lake Hart, on the edge of which is Woomera's largest, most complicated and most expensive launch site—the Blue Streak pad in Area 6, now being adapted to serve the ELDO vehicle. The firing line of the range, as shown on the map, lies northwest from Woomera. In the Woomera-Mirikata prohibited area (shaded on the map), an area the size of England and Scotland, there are about 500 permanent residents, mainly sheep farmers. All the downrange farms have been supplied with deep shelters, and warning is given before each firing. Apparently this gives the homesteaders time to climb on top of the shelter to watch the rockets—many of the shots are made at night, and they can on occasion be spectacular. Within the Central Australian Aboriginal Reserve, midway down the range, is located the Giles meteorological station. The Talgarno prohibited area (the downrange shaded area on the map) FLIGHT International, 21 November 1963 covers an impact area roughly the size of France, in which about 100 people live as permanent residents. On the road between Woomera and the rangehead is a notice stating "DANGER, KANGAROOS ABOUND ON THIS ROAD AT NIGHT." Just inside the town, a different hazard is placarded: "WATCH OUT FOR CHILDREN." This is a fair warning, for Woomera has approxi mately 1,600 children among its total population of 5,300. The suburban calm of Woomera town was torn apart as a powerful motor cycle banked round the corner and roared past the shopping centre. Long, blonde hair streaming in the bike's slipstream, the girl at the controls weaved to one side and waved to friends in a passing car. "There's Floss," commented our coach driver, content that we had now seen everything of importance. "Floss," alias Miss Laurine Hall, 24, from Bristol, England, is one of Woomera's more colourful notables. She operates an Askania cine-theodolite in a chintz-curtained downrange station, and has worked her way through four motor cycles during her nine-year stay at Woomera. In a television interview with BBC- man Reg Turnill, Miss Hall confessed that Woomera was fine but she wanted to return to England, where you could really live and where people laughed all day. "You're 24 and you're still single," Turnill accused. "Are you a career girl?" No, Miss Hall replied emphatically, she wasn't a career girl but she had certainly had a ball being single . . . Meanwhile, back at the range, the main press party was continuing its tour of the Woomera facilities under the guidance of the WRE Director, Mr Boswell, and the Woomera Superintendent, Gp Capt J. R. Perrin. In rapid succession we visited the Junior Staff Club, where at the long bar they serve beer out of long plastic garden-type hoses; Island Lagoon; the Senior Mess and Lake Hart, before being flown some 150 miles out of harm's way for the night to a steel town called Whyalla. The next morning we flew in to Evetts Field in time to be pre vented from watching the landing of a Jindivik target aircraft which buzzed in to join the circuit as we were leaving our aircraft. Later we were given an instructive and witty outline of Jindivik operations by Sqn Ldr Max Holdsworth, commanding officer of the target aircraft squadron, but were not allowed to take photographs of any of the Jindiviks at Woomera. We were in fact given a photograph of a Jindivik by the WRE authorities before leaving; only a few of us were ungrateful enough to turn it over and read the date "9 Oct 1959." The date of our visit was November 7,1963. A comprehensive outline of the operation of the Woomera range was given by Mr H. J. Higgs, Principal Officer Ranges, who previously had spent some years in London as Australian Depart ment of Supply representative. A "box" of airspace 100 miles long and 50 miles wide, into and through which the missiles and rockets were fired, was completedly covered by the cluster of optical and electronic tracking stations at the rangehead end of the range, with Mirikata, Mount Eba and Red Lake as the main outstations. Nerve-centre for the control of the range, for the tracking of rockets and target aircraft, and for the reception of telemetry data is the instrumentation building at the rangehead. Again we were not allowed to take photographs, but were given an official WRE picture, this time dated 12 October 1960. From the roof of the instrumentation building we looked out to the horizon over the harsh orange scrubland. The two gantries at Lake Hart in the distance, the two Black Knight towers nearer and to the left, and the row of launchers 1, 2, 3 and 4 directly ahead. These four are used for (1) Seaslug; (2) Skylark, Long Tom, and other research rockets; (3) Thunderbird and (4) Bloodhound. Launch areas 2 and 5 we visited at closer range. * * * This was Woomera, and these were some of the impressions gleaned on our brief and hectic visit. In two further articles the work of the Weapons Research Establishment and of the Woomera range will be described in more detail. This sketch would not be complete without mention of a few more incidental aspects of the Woomera scene—the ubiquitous light-blue Holden saloons and station sedans, the orange trucks, the dark-red gibber stones which cover the desert area. The straight roads, the long distances, the superb visibility (too superb at times, when refraction effects create the mirage of a launch tower suspended above the horizon). The kangaroo we glimpsed from the coach as we headed out towards Lake Hart. Or was it, the Daily Mirror man asked, a security officer m disguise?
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