I went and joined a 'convoy' in the morning. It was a guided tour of the area around the airport, which during WWII had been taken over by the USAF and converted into a top secret Air Force base (no wonder you've never heard of it!).
Charleville was chosen because it was too far inland to come under naval attack or air attack (remember: the bombing of Darwin is very fresh in their minds, as is the USAF getting wiped out in the Philippines). Anyhow they brought a reputed 200 B17 'Flying Fortress' bombers and 3 1/2 thousand servicemen into town and proceeded to upgrade the airport and everything else around town. The Top Secret turns out to have been the use of the super top secret Norden bomb aiming sight, basically a mechanical, clockwork, analogue computer. So top secret that the few they had were housed in a special bunker, kept under armed guard 24 hours a day, escorted to a plane selected at random, and not uncovered until that plane was well airborne. Supposed to have been accurate to within 100ft from 21000ft. There is some doubt about that claim. They were designed by a Dutchman and assembled in the USA from parts made in neutral, but surrounded by axis forces, Switzerland, and smuggled out to the USA. So much for 'good old American know how'.
Anyhow, all the land they took at the airport became USA soil for the duration. When they left, they were supposed to hand the land back as they had found it, and they did what they normally do, bulldozed everything they had constructed, dug holes and buried the lot. That was in 1942. Nobody gave a toss until a few years ago when council, who owns the land, decided to sell it off for industrial development. Only then did someone raise their hand and say, 'Oi, isn't there a WWII bunker in there (mallee scrub) somewhere?' And sure enough they started to poke around and found all kinds of things, then they started asking the oldies in town, then they started asking the USAF. A group from the Cosmos centre / Information centre / beating heart of town put together a tour of the bits they had found and council much to everyone's surprise, agreed to save it and moved the factories somewhere else. The immediate bits of history are: an airport in the middle of nowhere that can handle the largest commercial planes because its got a giant runway, direction beacons, B17 sized hanger that RFDS now calls home, the original 'aid station' (base hospital) and a bunch of concrete footings for buildings such as the kitchen and toilet blocks, fully reticulated water supply and underground sewers running throughout the scrub.
One of the stories they tell is about how the local hospital was built by the Americans, a yarn they picked up from the hospital tour guides. The current airport manager, who is keen enough to have had the aid station repainted to original colours and is now his home, was poking about the hospital and found the original foundation stone: 1939, 3 years before the yanks turned up. One popular and long term myth bites the dust. The hospital however, was completely remodelled and enlarged by the US to meet their needs, so the town has a fantastic hospital as a legacy as well.
Every year these enthusiasts find more remains in the bush and extend and enhance the tour. They are now organising a proper archaeological dig team from one of the Universities: the pot of gold is a complete Kittyhawk aircraft supposedly buried on site somewhere. Good luck to them.
Another thing of interest to me is that all this building etc was done by what they refer to as 'Australian Essential Workers' aka the Civil Construction Corps, and of which my father was a member, but he probably never came here. But then again, it was Top Secret...
Once again, as it did last year, we are struck by just how little the Australian public, either at the time or now, knew about how involved in the war we were on our own soil.
A snap of the only remaining hanger (others were dismantled and sold, most ending up as military museum hangers :
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| WWII Hanger fit for a B17 Bomber. Now Royal Flying Doctor Service, Charleville, Qld |
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