Charleville II
History Lesson today 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...