Category: On This Day

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History On This Day

30 Aug 80 – RAAF provided tactical air support to Vanuatu

 

 

 

On this day, No 38 Squadron Caribou A4-152 departed Richmond for Port Vila, Vanuatu to provide tactical transport support for the PNGDF’s Kumul Force.  The Prime Minister-elect of the newly-formed nation of Vanuatu (formerly the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides), Father Walter Lini, had asked for help from members of the South Pacific Forum to quell a Francophile secessionist movement centred on the island of Espiritu Santo.  Sir Julius Chan, the PNG Prime Minister, after private talks with Lini, announced that PNG would provide a military force to put down the rebellion in conjunction with Vanuatu security forces. Supported by the ADF, an ad hoc 300-strong PNG light infantry contingent — supported by Australian-donated patrol boats and aircraft —  called Kumul Force deployed with Australian support personnel to Vanuatu.  This force backed up a 65-strong Ni Vanuatu police contingent.   Within a few days key secessionist leaders had been arrested.  Kumul Force returned to Port Moresby after six weeks on operations to a warm and triumphal welcome.

 

More here:  http://sdsc.bellschool.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/2016-03/107_Vanuatus_1980_Santo_Rebellion__International_Responses_to_a_Microstate_Security_Crisis_%28Canberra_Papers_on_Strategy_and_Defence%2C_107%29_Matthew_Gubb_66p_0731520947.pdf

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History On This Day

22 April 1964 – First Caribous delivered to the RAAF

On this day, three DHC-4 Caribou Mk 1 light transports arrived at RAAF Base Richmond on delivery from the De Havilland Aircraft Company of Canada factory at Downsview in Toronto, Ontario.  The Australian Government had placed an order for 18 of these aircraft in May 1963, the intention being to completely re-equip No 38 Squadron (then operating C-47/DC-3 Dakotas) by December 1964.  A second consignment of three Caribous was similarly received in June, following a route across the Atlantic to Europe and through the Red Sea, but then the third and fourth batches were diverted to Vietnam instead (see 8 August). In September, seven more Caribous were ordered –– six to enable the re-equipment program to continue, plus another to replace one wrecked in a landing accident in July.  Eventually a total of 29 airframes of this type joined the RAAF, the last of which were withdrawn from service in 2009.

More information here:  http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/research/aircraft/series3/A4.htm

Information supplied by Craig “Smithy” Smith

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History On This Day

25 June 1980 – Caribou escaped ditching in Banda Sea

A Caribou light transport (A4-179) faced a dire emergency on this day after losing an engine on a routine flight between the Indonesian islands of Tual and Ambon. The aircraft was flying in support of Operation Pattimura, a three-year project conducted by Army under Australia’s Defence Cooperation Program to provide maps of Indonesia’s eastern Maluku province (better known as the Moluccas or Spice Islands).  With five passengers as well as the crew on board, it was still 75 kilometres short of its destination when one engine cut out.  Despite full power being applied to the remaining engine, the Caribou lost 4000 feet in altitude. The rate of descent was stabilised at 450 feet above water only by jettisoning the aircraft’s full cargo load into the Banda Sea –– less the barest essentials which the RAAF medical officer on board assessed would be required if forced to ditch.

 

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History On This Day

21 Jul 1950 – RAAF transports flew in Malayan Emergency

On 21 April 1950, the British Government asked Australia for a direct contribution of air units to help in defeating a Communist-led insurgency which had broken out in Malaya 22 months earlier. Australia agreed on 19 May to send a squadron of eight C-47 Dakota transports, and a month later No 38 Squadron arrived at Changi airfield on Singapore Island. The unit flew its first mission in support of Operation Firedog (the RAF name for the air campaign during the Malayan Emergency) on this day, when a Dakota completed a routine courier run to Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Taiping. In November, four of 38 Squadron’s aircraft were transferred to Japan, to provide support to Australian forces engaged in the war which began in Korea in June, and by November 1952 increasing demands on the RAAF’s transport fleet led to the rest of the unit being withdrawn back to Australia.