Aviation Historical Society of Australia – Page 7 – Recording the nation's aviation heritage

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Book cover - Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm by Cameron Hazlehurst.

DerekB18 November 201322 April 2021

Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm by Cameron Hazlehurst

Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm by Cameron Hazlehurst The crash of Hudson A16-97: An Australian tragedy ‘In the whole history of government in Australia,...

DerekB15 November 201318 June 2017

Welcome to the AHSA website

Welcome to the Aviation Historical Society of Australia Inc (AHSA) website. We are Australia's oldest historical society devoted to aviation history. AHSA holds a...

DerekB15 March 201315 December 2021

Members-only content

This page is accessible by members only, to allow a test of the membership management system. This page is not listed on any menus,...

Book cover - Flyers of Time by Kevin O'Reilly

DerekB18 June 201222 April 2021

Flyers of Time by Kevin O’Reilly

Flyers of Time by Kevin O'Reilly Winner of the Victorian Community History Awards 2013 award for Local History This collection of aviation reportings, documents...

Book cover - The Purple Stripe by Brian L. Hill

DerekB18 June 201222 April 2021

The Purple Stripe by Brian L. Hill

The Purple Stripe by Brian L. Hill A history of Flight Engineers in Australia While the publication is essentially about FEOs, an enormous amount...

1940 Lockheed Hudson Mk II A16-97 operated by 2 Squadron RAAF crashed at Canberra, ACT on 13 August 1940. Based at Laverton, A16-97 was the first RAAF Hudson to be fitted with passenger seating and was tasked with flying James Fairbairn, the Minister for Air and Civil Aviation from Melbourne to Canberra for a cabinet meeting. In addition to the RAAF crew of four (pilot FLTLT Robert Edward Hitchcock, PLTOFF Richard Frederick Wiesener, CPL John Frederick Palmer and AC1 Charles Joseph Crosdale), Fairbairn invited three other senior officials to join him on the flight – Geoffrey Street, Minister for the Army; Henry Gullett, Minister for Information, and General Brudenell White, Chief of the General Staff. Fairbairn's private secretary Dick Elford and White's staff officer Frank Thornthwaite were the two other passengers. The Perth Daily News reported: "The plane was seen by watchers at the Canberra Aerodrome and the Air Force station to circle the drome, and then rise and head south. It disappeared behind a low tree-dotted hill. There was an explosion and a sheet of flame, followed by a dense cloud of smoke... The Canberra Fire Brigade and ambulances from Canberra and Queanbeyan, across the border in New South Wales, as well as several Air Force tenders, arrived soon afterwards and fire extinguishers were played on the blazing wreckage. After about half-an-hour, when the blaze had died down, it was seen that the entire undercarriage, wings and structural supports of the plane had been torn away and were a smouldering mass in which were the charred bodies of those on board." The Court of Inquiry into the accident found that it was most likely from the aircraft stalling on its landing approach, resulting in loss of control at a height too low to recover. Sources: aviation-safety.net website; Hazlehurst, Cameron (2013). Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm: An Australian Tragedy. Canberra: ANU E Press. ISBN 9781925021011