RUNAWAY TORPEDO
Charge Through Beach Crowd
(N.t. riuss HssocnmoH—Copyright) I SYDNEY, August 26.; A runaway practice torpedo 1 charged through a crowd of morel than 200 holidaymakers, many of i them children, at Clareville Beach, north of Sydney, this afternoon. Equipped with a dummy war-' head, it leapt from the water at' the feet of a young couple and hurtled 40 feet through the air I before finishing at the gate of a nearby home. The missile, which was being tested at a naval station, wasj about half a mile away when it swept back on its tracks after' launching.
Two young children had been sitting on a box where the torpedo hit the beach seconds before. Their mother had unwittingly saved their lives by calling them to lunch. Two workmen, watching from a construction site above the beach, saw the torpedo launched. One of them, Mr Evan Marsh, said the torpedo hit the water and bouriced when it was launched from the end of a long jetty at the testing base. The second impact must have damaged the gyroscopes because the torpedo suddenly stuck its nose up like a speedboat and charged in a wide arch out into the bay. “Then it submerged and we watched horrified as it began to curve in towards the beach. From our position above the beach we could see the wake clearly. The torpedo must have been doing more than 40 miles an hour,” Mr Marsh said. The torpedo missed a 58 foot luxury yacht by inches, as it tore towards the beach. “We were too far away to shout,” he said. “We just had to stand there and watch as the torpedo shot out of the water, past a young couple, and ploughed a deep trench through the grass behind the beach until it stopped at the open gateway of a home behind.” A Navy crash boat sped across the bay and swiftly retrieved the runaway missile. The crew grappled the torpedo alongside the boat and hauled it back to the base.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28985, 28 August 1959, Page 7
Word Count
340RUNAWAY TORPEDO Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28985, 28 August 1959, Page 7
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