18 March 2015, RAAF Oodnadatta, South Australia
Warrant Officer 1 Brian Sparks was effectively in charge of the logistics of every new arrival at No 100 squadron. There were only five officers present at the whole base despite it's size, the C.O Squadron Leader Tennant, a preservation officer, two taxiing officers and a security officer.
His grunts did most of the work, storing preserving and in some cases destroying archived aircraft and, since 1983, tanks and armoured vehicles for the army as well.
The base was spread over 8000 acres or 13 square miles, consisting of a series of interconnected runways, storage sheds and it's own train station. The very dryness of the climate assisted in the preservation of the material stored within, which included numbers of out of service RAAF machines, including the huge and recently retired He 166. The current inventory was:
He 166D Tanker 18
He 166E Bomber 44
He 166G EW 5
RF 111 6
Lockheed Neptune 16
Avro Arrow A5 48
De Havilland Caribou 26
Historical: CAC-15 4
Army:
Bell Iroquois 30
Leopard1A5 Tank 55
Hammerhead Tank Destroyer(up armoured Leopard 1 with 120mm gun) 24
M113 APC 308
Navy:
Grumman Trackers 4
Sea King Helicopter 12
Many things came here to die, but generally only the large, big ticket items. Smaller equipment was stored in the respective services own storage facilities.
Oodnadatta had, for a time, been the home of the Kingdom's nuclear warheads as they had been progressively been decommissioned, stored and then dismantled in that order. This work had finally been completed in 2004, although some of the Blue Streak missiles had been stored as a hedge against their being used for satellite launches.
The days were full of routine and heat and it was not a popular posting. It was, of course, a non operational squadron, the only one of it's kind aside from Reserve Units. It's aircraft awaited the call to battle that mostly never came, cared for by his own skeleton staff.
There was, of course, the RAAF historical flight and museum based at Point Cook, near the active base. The army had co-located it's own historical section on the same base. The navy had it's own historical section on Garden Island, where the old cruiser Melbourne, victor in the Australasian/Indonesian conflict and the last surface conflict between gun only ships lay. Along with a Snake Class submarine and two Bathurst Class corvettes, she was the centerpiece of the navy's historical display. The Dss Moines Class cruiser, which had commissioned into the RAN in 1949, was to remain in service until 1996 and in reserve until 2003, being upgraded in 1982 in an expansive refit similar to that of the Iowa Class battleships in the USN.
Warrant Officer 1 Brian Sparks was effectively in charge of the logistics of every new arrival at No 100 squadron. There were only five officers present at the whole base despite it's size, the C.O Squadron Leader Tennant, a preservation officer, two taxiing officers and a security officer.
His grunts did most of the work, storing preserving and in some cases destroying archived aircraft and, since 1983, tanks and armoured vehicles for the army as well.
The base was spread over 8000 acres or 13 square miles, consisting of a series of interconnected runways, storage sheds and it's own train station. The very dryness of the climate assisted in the preservation of the material stored within, which included numbers of out of service RAAF machines, including the huge and recently retired He 166. The current inventory was:
He 166D Tanker 18
He 166E Bomber 44
He 166G EW 5
RF 111 6
Lockheed Neptune 16
Avro Arrow A5 48
De Havilland Caribou 26
Historical: CAC-15 4
Army:
Bell Iroquois 30
Leopard1A5 Tank 55
Hammerhead Tank Destroyer(up armoured Leopard 1 with 120mm gun) 24
M113 APC 308
Navy:
Grumman Trackers 4
Sea King Helicopter 12
Many things came here to die, but generally only the large, big ticket items. Smaller equipment was stored in the respective services own storage facilities.
Oodnadatta had, for a time, been the home of the Kingdom's nuclear warheads as they had been progressively been decommissioned, stored and then dismantled in that order. This work had finally been completed in 2004, although some of the Blue Streak missiles had been stored as a hedge against their being used for satellite launches.
The days were full of routine and heat and it was not a popular posting. It was, of course, a non operational squadron, the only one of it's kind aside from Reserve Units. It's aircraft awaited the call to battle that mostly never came, cared for by his own skeleton staff.
There was, of course, the RAAF historical flight and museum based at Point Cook, near the active base. The army had co-located it's own historical section on the same base. The navy had it's own historical section on Garden Island, where the old cruiser Melbourne, victor in the Australasian/Indonesian conflict and the last surface conflict between gun only ships lay. Along with a Snake Class submarine and two Bathurst Class corvettes, she was the centerpiece of the navy's historical display. The Dss Moines Class cruiser, which had commissioned into the RAN in 1949, was to remain in service until 1996 and in reserve until 2003, being upgraded in 1982 in an expansive refit similar to that of the Iowa Class battleships in the USN.
Last edited:
