RAF 205 Squadron – Aviation Historical Society of Australia

DerekB06/03/202303/06/2023

Aviation Heritage Vol. 54 No. 1 (March 2023) Contents Listing

The latest quarterly edition (March 2023) of the AHSA journal – Aviation Heritage – has recently been posted to members. The full contents are...

1939 de Havilland DH.60 Moth A7-62 operated by 1 Flying Training School RAAF crashed 3 miles west of Point Cook, Victoria on 29 November 1939. The aircraft spun into the ground inverted after the wing collapsed. Both crew members - Flying Officer R T Vincent and Pilot Officer J R Whitford - were killed. Flying Officer Vincent's funeral, with full air force honours, was held on 22 December 1939 at Highton Cemetry, Geelong. Sources: ADF-Serials; aviation-safety.net website

1962 Australia's first locally-constructed satellite, WRESAT was launched at Woomera on 29 November 1967, making Australia only the third country in the world to build and launch its own satellite, behind Russia and the United States. Using a spare American Redstone rocket from the tripartite Sparta project conducted at Woomera, the Weapons Research Establishment satellite (WRESAT) was designed, developed, built and successfully launched in eleven months. The US and the UK provided assistance on the project, including the US Department of Defense, NASA, and the UK’s Ministry of Technology. WRESAT completed 642 orbits and transmitted scientific information for 73 of these to tracking and research stations around the world. It re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and was destroyed by the resultant high temperature on 10 January 1968 over the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Apart from the experimental data obtained, WRESAT contributed both to the knowledge of the solar-terrestrial relationship and to the studies of atmospheric composition. The project also presented an opportunity for a united approach to a scientific problem with demanding requirements. Such was the interest in space technology that the WRESAT prototype was exhibited in Parliament House, Canberra, and at the London Trade Fair in 1968. Souce: dst.defence.gov.au

2005 OzJet Airlines commenced ‘business class’ Boeing 737 operations between Melbourne and Sydney on 29 November 2005. Source: Tansy Harcourt, ‘Lots of legroom as Ozjet flies’, Australian Financial Review, 29 November 2005, via aph.gov.au website