Aug 17 ... Darwin ... Garry's 2nd effort!

An easy half-day at the Aviation Heritage Museum, which started off by seeing 6 F18's fly over head after just taking off from Darwin Airport (which like Williamstown is shared with the RAAF) as I waited for the bus.

A pretty impressive main display - a Boeing B-52 G Stratofortress - was the highlight, with all the much smaller aircraft and displays around and underneath it!

The nose of the B52

One wing, four engines!

Just landed at Darwin

The Museum is in a purpose built hanger to house this giant aircraft. The hanger was built in the early 1990's at a cost of $2.2 million. The plane was flown over from the US Airforce Base in Guam, when it closed down, and is the only B-52 G outside of the States.

Its length is close to 50 metres and the wingspan is around 60 metres. It carried almost 190,000 litres of fuel but could also be refuelled in-flight for longer journeys!! As well as a massive amount of bombs (including atomic)  this one also carried 10 Cruise missiles. Although first designed and built in the early 1950's this particular and latest model flew combat missions over Iraq. When based at Guam these bombers used to use the Northern Territory for practice runs, especially at flying to avoid Radar...which meant flying as low as 500feet. Imagine being out in the wilds of NT and having one of these monsters overhead!!

The cockpit

The tail guns,operated by a gunner in the cockpit.

It is so big that it was impossible to get a photo of it; some of these are photos of photos, a little trick that Linda has shown me.

 Other exhibits included a US Huey Cobra that flew in Vietnam, an old RAAF Sabre jet fighter, a Wessex RAN helicopter, a Spitfire replica, (apparently  the RAAF had 3 squadrons based here during the defence of Darwin and Northern Australia.), a Mitsubishi Zero, and a RAAF Mirage. This jet had been attempting a landing at Darwin when the engine failed, causing the pilot to safely eject. Surprisingly the plane finished crash landing itself on the mudflats of Darwin Harbour. Although it was a right off the external damage was not that severe looking so they pulled it out and gave it to the Museum.

Cobra Helicopter

Sabre Jet

Also in the hanger were flight simulators, smaller planes and heaps of photos, models and displays.

Spitfire Replica

Crashed Mirage

 













A major display was on the bombing of Darwin...mainly told through photos and quotes from the people who were here. Some interesting facts that I should have known:-
     * more bombs were dropped on Darwin during the 2 raids on the first day than were dropped on Pearl Harbour (although they had more tonnage dropped on them);
     * bombing raids continued for almost 2 years with a total of 63 raids, mostly on Darwin, but also Katherine, Broome, Wyndham and Derby;
     * around 240 were killed (almost all on the first day's attacks) "officially" - at that time Chinese and Aboriginal people were not counted, and apparently the ratio of Chinese to Australians in Darwin at the time was around 1000 to 1!! So the death toll was probably much higher.
     * after the Japanese invasion has spread across the Pacific the US forces that had been in the Philippines all transferred to the Northern Territory, which made the subsequent bombing of Darwin (only 60 odd days after Pearl Harbour) all the more predictable...the value of hindsight!
     * the Japanese carrier fleet, planes and commanders that attacked Darwin were the same as attacked Pearl Harbour;
     * the airfields around Darwin and to the South (and there were heaps) were used by the US Airforce and RAAF as bases to send bombers to attack Japanese positions throughout the Pacific. I often wondered why there were so many of these airfields, many only as wide as a modern highway, scattered around up here;
      * the Japanese Naval Command was very keen to follow up the bombing of Darwin with a full scale invasion (even having "Australian" bank notes published in10 and 20 shilling denominations with Government of Japan printed on them) but the Army High Command vetoed the idea because they didn't have enough troops;

I had a very interesting day at this Museum.