Australian Vintage Aeroplane News

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Cleopatra Brittney Bennett
5 years ago
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1 Well this is the first edition of AVAN for quite a while; we are looking for an editor to take over preparation of the newsletter, so this edition is a stop-gap measure with me, Ross Stenhouse, as the pro-tem editor. Need AVAN Editor: If you are interested in taking over editorship or being a reporter or have written a article for publication for AVAN please contact the President, Ross Stenhouse or the Secretary, Liz Finlay by using the hyperlink embedded under the names (hit on the name). Big Request: If you know of anyone who may be interested in joining QVAG/AFM please get them to fill out a membership form and you forward it to QVAG/AFM Anyone who joins between now and 30 th June 2016 gets membership for the balance of this year and all of next financial year. QVAG/AFM Web Site: We are in the middle of changing out web hosting provider and we should have the QVAG/AFM web site back up and functioning. QVAG Annual Meeting held 31 st January 2016 A well-attended AGM was held and the following members were elected to positions on the QVAG/AFM management committee: Ross Stenhouse President Phil Ridley - Treasurer Liz Finlay Secretary Peter Biddle Committee Member WBMA Airfield Council Delegate Jan Stenhouse Committee Member Membership Officer The position of Vice-President is unfilled. I am sure all members would like to thank the retired committee members for their past services to the group. Kilcoy Lunch Fly-in - 28 February 2016 It has been quite a while since QVAG/AFM held a fly-in at other than Watts Bridge. Thanks to the Mal Shipton, we are able to hold a fly-in at Kilcoy. The fly-in is scheduled to take place between the 1000 and 1330hrs. A light lunch will be available for purchase at a reasonable fee. Soft drinks and tea/coffee will also be available. We are looking for help with setting up and selling the food and drinks. We would greatly appreciate any help we can muster. Please contact Ross Stenhouse By coincidence a breakfast fly-in is being held at Watts Bridge on the same day ( hrs) so if you want to have an airfield crawl then fly to Watts then make the minute trip across to Kilcoy. This is a stretch for the group to put this on so please support the event. It s not limited to QVAG/AFM members so please encourage all to come. Exercise Red Thunder - Red Radial SQN Goodbye Breakfast- 15 th May 2016

The QVAG building is used as a base for operations and briefings and it s great to see it being used for this purpose.

2 The QVAG/AFM building is going to be used again by the Red Radial Squadron for Exercise Red Thunder from 11 th to 15 th May. This group of pilots hold this fiveday event to enhance their formation and general flying skills enhancement. The QVAG building is used as a base for operations and briefings and it s great to see it being used for this purpose. Last year they held a similar event and 22 Nanchang and YAK aircraft and crew took part in event. This year s event looks like it will have an even larger attendance. The opportunity presented itself for QVAG/AFM to host a breakfast to say good-bye to the visiting crew and aircraft and for members to meet the visitors had have an informal chat over a meal and give a wave good-bye to new friends. Tentative Caboolture Lunch Fly-in June or July The committee are looking at dates in the middle of the year to hold a fly-in at Caboolture. Member Guy Kendell is helping with the early planning for the proposed event. Further details will be made known to members once they are known. Watts Bridge Gathering of Eagles 27/28 August 2016 This is the annual event stagged by the Watts Bridge Memorial Airfield Inc. QVAG/AFM strongly supports this event. Last year we opened our building to the public for the QVAG Café and sold soft drinks, sandwiches and salad rolls to those attending. The theme was The Healthy Alternative The WBMA has decided not to hold the May The All In Fly In event this year and so The Gathering of Eagles is the only big opportunity QVAG/AFM has to do some fund raising. We are looking for ideas on how to make QVAG/AFM s café a winner. We are also looking for volunteers to help run the café. Please contact the President, Ross Stenhouse or Secretary, Liz Finlay or Treasurer Phil Ridley if you can help out with the QVAG Café.

3 If you wish to to help out with the planning and/or conducting of this event contact our WBMA Council Delegate Peter Biddle. Kingaroy Fly-away 10/11 th September 2016 On this weekend the Kingaroy Machinary Club hold an event adjacent to the airfield and the Australian Warbirds are holding a formation flying practice. Our group has been invited to attend both events. Further details will be made available closer to the date. Please contact the QVAG/AFM President Ross Stenhouse if you are likely to be able to attend. QVAG/AFM Christmas Party November 2016 Early days for the planning of this event, however we would be interested to hear from anyone who thinks they would attend a Christmas party at Watts Bridge. Last years event was very successful and a reasonable number of members attended. What was for certain was those who did attend had a good time. Please contact the QVAG Secretary Liz Finlay if you have ideas about how we should conduct the party or anticipate that you are likely to attend.

4 Where an Old Photo leads Author: Ross Stenhouse Sometimes you start to do something that ends up with completely unexpected results. The story below is the result of my obsession with computing, photography and history. While I wrote these words, I have to acknowledge the great assistance of historian Gordon R Birkett without whose input this story would never have been written. I hope you enjoy the tale and images. Every now and then you come across an old aeroplane photo. Often there is no obvious identification and often the original source has passed into history. I have a number of such photos; they appear to have been taken during WW2 or immediately after. I have had these photos for years and the physical photos are very faded and most are relatively small in size. With the advent of cheap flatbed scanners and software such as Adobe Photoshop a technical solution is now easily and readily available. I used such a setup to scan and process the original resulting in the photo below. The scanned photo is of a RAAF B24 and from the image it is possible to see that its serial number is A The original photo had been printed in reverse so the first thing to do was to scan it and use Photoshop to correct the reversal. Fortunately the original print was in reasonably good condition and so it was just a case of a bit of sharpening and contrast enhancement. I should mention that I saved the scanned image as a TIFF file (not a JPG which is a compressed format). TIFF is an uncompressed format and you can have a good play around with it in Photoshop without losing image quality. Now having the scanned image of the photo in good shape I decided I would pass it on to Maybe they would add it to their collection. Their web site had an address so I ed the image to them. No point in sitting on photos like this, it s far better to share them and reduce the chance that they get lost.

To my surprise I received a reply from Gordon Birkett to my email and he attached the image on the left of A72-358 The text of the email reads:.thanks Ross,.

Tis Mossie was mostly flown by Sqn Ldr R Kinress and F/O J Newton with No 1 Sqn in Labuan 1945 - I had noticed the D.H Mosquito in the background so it was nice to find out a bit about her as well!

I thought I would ask Gordon what he knew of this and to my surprise I received a reply including the following images.

5 To my surprise I received a reply from Gordon Birkett to my and he attached the image on the left of A The text of the reads:.thanks Ross,.Nice A Pic which is MJ-P, at Amberley. Here s another it s a flight picture taken in 1946 BTW: Mossie NA-R in background is A Tis Mossie was mostly flown by Sqn Ldr R Kinress and F/O J Newton with No 1 Sqn in Labuan I had noticed the D.H Mosquito in the background so it was nice to find out a bit about her as well! My father had been in the RAAF at Amberley in the early 1950 s and he had previously told me that there had been lots of Liberators stored on the base. I thought I would ask Gordon what he knew of this and to my surprise I received a reply including the following images. The photo on the left show a great line-up of the B24 Liberators Australia used to have. Shame the government of the day didn t have the foresight to preserve a few of them. Here is a link to the Australian B24 Project. You have to admire the tenacity of these guys to undertake such a huge project. Don t forget we have Ralph Cusack s Beaufort Project at Caboolture, Queensland. They are restoring their aircraft to flying condition.

This image of Amberley, circa 1947, in absolutely fascinating; Gordon had the following comment: 52 B-24 airframes, plus two C-47 on the north apron, some smaller aircraft which I think Spitfire

6 This image of Amberley, circa 1947, in absolutely fascinating; Gordon had the following comment: 52 B-24 airframes, plus two C-47 on the north apron, some smaller aircraft which I think Spitfire MKVIIIs to the north and south. I wonder where the Lincolns or operational aircraft are? Lincolns were the front-line bombers of the day and a number were based at Amberley. My family has a connection with Amberley RAAF Base: My father was there in , I went to kindergarten there in 1954 and my son was there in the early 2000 s with 38 SQN so

The history card above shows that there were lots of aeroplanes awaiting their fate in 1948

7 things concerned with Amberley naturally arouse my curiosity. Was my father correct? Were the Liberators including A still there in 1953? The history card above shows that there were lots of aeroplanes awaiting their fate in 1948 including some Vengeances which I will go into later in this article. Working on my basic principle of Destroy a good argument Introduce facts - the story continues.

A72-358 and the other Liberators made it to 1952 and likely that year or early the year later they met their fate (at the smelters hands).

8 A and the other Liberators made it to 1952 and likely that year or early the year later they met their fate (at the smelters hands). Earlier in this article, I mentioned the Vultee Vengeances; sometimes the trail takes an unexpected twist and I was surprised to find that as of October 1945, Australia had 185 of these aeroplanes 26 of which were at 4AD Amberley.

9 Many of these aeroplanes were Lend/Lease and thus at the end of WW2 were quickly destroyed especially the ex USAAF A31/A35s. Some bits of the Vengeances did survive and when I went to look up the survivor s came across this photo. I was surprised to see that it was taken by QVAG member Warwick Henry. The aircraft is and the photo was taken at Wale World, Albany, Western Australia. I am not sure just where Vengeance A is currently however the last information I can find says that it is a Precision Aero, Wangaratta, Victoria. With further searching the net I found that this Vengeance A was sent to 2AD on January 2, 1945, Struck Off May and sold to disposals June Subsequently it was found abandoned at Lancelin Airfield, Western Australia and recovered in the late 1970s. The story above is not my only connection with Liberators and Vengeances, QVAG/AFM, once had a member called Jim Bigalow and during WW2 he flew in Vengeances and converted to Liberators at Cecil Plains, Queensland. Jim took the time to document his wartime experiences and gave them to QVAG/AFM; my reading of Jim s documentation kindled my interest in those two aircraft types.

EAA Chapter 241 News Letter

1 EAA Chapter 241 News Letter www.eaa241.org/ August/September 2010 A publication by, for and about members of the Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 241 September 2010 Meeting The next general