Kookaburra2011
CONCLUDING Operation SHOPWINDOW, 1977 with the Skyhawk A4G. Photo Graeme Andrews.
3960. When Operation SHOPWINDOW was held in 1977, the RAN knew that HMAS MELBOURNE's days were ending. Based on a 1942 design, and with her keel laid down in 1943, she had lived on to operate navalized aircraft of a size, weight and power plant that were almost unimaginable when she was first conceived.
Although MELBOURNE had not been brought into service until 1956,and had many modern innovations installed - the angled deck, the steam catapult and mirror landing system - the Skyhawks and the Trackers took the aging carrier to her limits.
The rapid advances in aircraft made the decision of her replacement infinitely more complex, and infinitely more costly, than it had been when Australia acquired SYDNEY [TERRIBLE] and MELBOURNE [MAJESTIC] in 1946-47. Essentially these were two British war surplus carriers that came with complements of surplus WWII designed aircraft going cheap. Everything was at almost give-away prices in fact.
Such a decision as the 1980s approached looked quite different. The question of a replacement for MELBOURNE was to be one of the most politicised and stressed ever to face Australia's defence planning establishment.
While HMS VICTORIOUS and HMS HERMES had both been offered in the 1960s, even then their size and the support costs for the squadrons they would carry had seemed prohibitive.
For a time the 1982 decision to buy HMS INVINCIBLE appeared to have ensure a positive outcome for the Fleet Air Arm, although the VSTOL carrier was a compromise that would in itself have produced big cutbacks and a complete change in the type of aircraft operated.
Then the Falklands War came. Britain sent Australia's deposit money back, and that acquisition was not to be.
Contributor Graeme Andrews has served on HMAS MELBOURNE in 1959-60. But the fixed wing combat Fleet Air Arm as Graeme saw it here as a writer in 1977 was destined to be decimated by MELBOURNE's retirement on June 30, 1982. From that point it would be gone completely within a couple years.
Photo; Graeme Andrews, RAN 1955-1968, RANR 1980, with permission.
A COMPENDIUM of links to some 350 images of HMAS MELBOURNE [II] on this Photostream begins at Pic 5444 and extends over seven entries. It starts here:
www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6707592179/in/photostream
CONCLUDING Operation SHOPWINDOW, 1977 with the Skyhawk A4G. Photo Graeme Andrews.
3960. When Operation SHOPWINDOW was held in 1977, the RAN knew that HMAS MELBOURNE's days were ending. Based on a 1942 design, and with her keel laid down in 1943, she had lived on to operate navalized aircraft of a size, weight and power plant that were almost unimaginable when she was first conceived.
Although MELBOURNE had not been brought into service until 1956,and had many modern innovations installed - the angled deck, the steam catapult and mirror landing system - the Skyhawks and the Trackers took the aging carrier to her limits.
The rapid advances in aircraft made the decision of her replacement infinitely more complex, and infinitely more costly, than it had been when Australia acquired SYDNEY [TERRIBLE] and MELBOURNE [MAJESTIC] in 1946-47. Essentially these were two British war surplus carriers that came with complements of surplus WWII designed aircraft going cheap. Everything was at almost give-away prices in fact.
Such a decision as the 1980s approached looked quite different. The question of a replacement for MELBOURNE was to be one of the most politicised and stressed ever to face Australia's defence planning establishment.
While HMS VICTORIOUS and HMS HERMES had both been offered in the 1960s, even then their size and the support costs for the squadrons they would carry had seemed prohibitive.
For a time the 1982 decision to buy HMS INVINCIBLE appeared to have ensure a positive outcome for the Fleet Air Arm, although the VSTOL carrier was a compromise that would in itself have produced big cutbacks and a complete change in the type of aircraft operated.
Then the Falklands War came. Britain sent Australia's deposit money back, and that acquisition was not to be.
Contributor Graeme Andrews has served on HMAS MELBOURNE in 1959-60. But the fixed wing combat Fleet Air Arm as Graeme saw it here as a writer in 1977 was destined to be decimated by MELBOURNE's retirement on June 30, 1982. From that point it would be gone completely within a couple years.
Photo; Graeme Andrews, RAN 1955-1968, RANR 1980, with permission.
A COMPENDIUM of links to some 350 images of HMAS MELBOURNE [II] on this Photostream begins at Pic 5444 and extends over seven entries. It starts here:
www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6707592179/in/photostream