DAP – Aviation Historical Society of Australia

DerekB22/03/202321/05/2024

AHSA Melbourne Meeting March 2023 (Annie Floodin: Boeing History)

Our March 2023 Melbourne meeting featured a presentation by Annie Floodin, a historian from Boeing Historical Services who is currently visiting Australia connecting with...

1942 Five B-25 Mitchell bombers of the USAAF became lost during a ferry flight from California on 14 August 1942. The incident involved a flight of five Mitchell bombers, the first to be ferried by the USAAF from the west coast of the US to Australia. The flight plan was to refuel at Hawaii, Fiji, New Caledonia and to fly to Amberley in Queensland. They had no problems with picking up navigation beacons at Hawaii, Fiji and New Caledonia, but Australia had not been fully geared up to a war-based navigation system along the whole of its coast and the crew were consequently instructed to tune into the frequency of a Brisbane commercial radio station and follow its beam of maximum stength until they saw the city of Ipswich and then change course to land at Amberley. Unfortunately they were running a bit behind schedule when they hit the Australian coast and night was falling. The navigator tuned into the advised radio station frequency but it was very faint (because they were unknowingly a bit off course). He tweaked the freuency dial slightly and picked up a very strong radio signal (the wrong one), and the lead crew unfortunately then used this as their navigation aid. They had also been advised that a very busy river full of shipping was a further aid to their navigation. In the dark they could see a river but it was very quiet with only a few lights (most likely the Clarence River instead of the Brisbane River). They circled for a short while, but two aircraft were extremely short of fuel and had to ditch in the Casino area with the crew having to bail out (one was killed - he had no parachute but had tried to jump clinging on to a fellow crew member), two aircraft landed at South Grafton but overshot the short runway and were damaged (but were repairable) and one was escorted to Evans Head by a Fairey Battle - this last aircraft had a minor incident with a fire tender the following morning. Source: Bombers Over Grafton, Clarence River Historical Society.

1953 CAC Test Pilot Flight Lieutenant Bill Scott broke the sound barrier in Australian skies for the first time, flying the first prototype CAC Avon Sabre A94-101 on 14 August 1953 at Avalon, Victoria. Source: The Sydney Morning Herald Sat 15 Aug 1953, Page 5, Australian Sabre Breaks "Sound" Barrier

2006 At Los Angeles International Airport, 288 passengers were evacuated onto the tarmac from a Qantas Boeing 747, after it collided with a luggage cart on 14 August 2006. One of the engines was believed to have been damaged. Source: AAP. via aph.gov.au website