A bomber for a country without an aircraft industry

In mid-1939 Australia had built, by one estimate, fewer than a hundred aircraft in its entire history, most of them wood and fabric. Then the government, fearing that British supplies would dry up in a war, decided to build the Bristol Beaufort, a large all-metal twin-engined bomber. An Aircraft Construction Branch was created on 1 July 1939 and an initial order for 180 placed that month. Nothing came easily. The Australian Beauforts needed American Pratt & Whitney engines, Britain embargoed parts after the fall of France, and there were no ball bearings made in Australia, so a local substitute had to be found. The first Australian Beaufort flew in August 1941.

Railway workshops and the Beaufighter

The Beaufort was a national effort. More than 600 companies and organisations contributed, and major assemblies came from the railway workshops at Chullora in Sydney, Newport in Melbourne and Islington in Adelaide, and from General Motors Holden at Woodville; final assembly took place at Fishermans Bend and Mascot. By the time production ended in August 1944, 700 Beauforts had been built, a total beaten among Australian-built aircraft only by the Wirraway and Tiger Moth. The same network then built the Bristol Beaufighter: the first flew on 26 May 1944 and 365 were completed before the war’s end cancelled the rest.

Lincolns, Canberras and the hunted one

Peace cut the Australian aviation workforce by 90 per cent, and the Department of Aircraft Production was reorganised and renamed the Government Aircraft Factories. GAF built 73 Avro Lincolns with a lengthened nose for radar, the first flying on 17 March 1946, and from 1953, 48 English Electric Canberra jet bombers, many of which fought in Vietnam. Its own design was the Jindivik, a jet target drone born of an Anglo-Australian deal that gave Britain the Woomera range for missile tests. Its name is an Aboriginal word for the hunted one; it first flew in August 1952 and 502 were built by 1986, for Australia, Britain, Sweden and the US Navy.

Mirages, Hornets and the Nomad

GAF assembled 114 Dassault Mirage IIIO fighters for the RAAF from 1963 and later 73 F/A-18 Hornets from McDonnell Douglas parts. Its most ambitious civil project was the Nomad, a twin-turboprop STOL utility aircraft first flown on 23 July 1971. It was dogged by tragedy: in June 1976 a Nomad crash in Kota Kinabalu killed Sabah’s chief minister Tun Fuad Stephens, and in August 1976 a stretched N24 crashed on test, killing chief test pilot Stuart Pearce, father of the actor Guy Pearce, and chief structures designer David Hooper. Only 172 were built by 1985, short of the 200 needed to break even, and the RAAF and Army withdrew theirs by 1995 amid airworthiness concerns.

From GAF to Boeing

In 1987 GAF was reorganised and renamed Aerospace Technologies of Australia. ASTA was privatised in June 1995, returning 40 million dollars to the Commonwealth, and bought by Rockwell International, which Boeing in turn acquired. The old government works at Fishermans Bend became the nucleus of Boeing Aerostructures Australia. The Nomad type certificate passed to GippsAero in 2008, which planned to revive it as the GA18 before the project was stopped.

Fabrikalar

• Fishermans Bend · Melbourne, Victoria — Main factory; later Boeing Aerostructures Australia
• Mascot · Sydney, New South Wales — Second Beaufort final assembly line
• Railway workshops (subcontract) · Chullora, Newport and Islington — Major Beaufort and Beaufighter assemblies

İnsanlar

• Stuart Pearce · chief test pilot — Killed in the N24 Nomad test crash, August 1976
• David Hooper · chief structures designer — Killed in the same crash

Rekorlar ve ilkler

• Beaufort: third most numerous Australian-built aircraft after the Wirraway and Tiger Moth