Rocket Range Test Plans In Australia

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 September 1947, Page 7

Rocket Range Test Plans In Australia

(Rec. 11.25 a.m.) CANBERRA, This Day.

The British scientists who are coming to Australia in the near future will be concerned directly with the production of rockets at the Salisbury munitions factory, near Adelaide, and with experiments at the rocket range, near Mount Eba ,South Australia. They will be followed by a greater number of engineering technicians from British factories, who will instruct Australian technicians in the manufacture of guided missiles. <. It is understood that tests.will be made at Mount Eba with winged bombs and pilotless bombing aircraft, as well as with rockets. The area has now become known •as the guided projectile range. Scientists foresee, that the time is not far distant when projectiles will be fired into the stratosphere, and then, with the aid of stellar navigation instruments, will be set on a course to reach an objective 5000 to 10,000 miles away. Among the completed works at the range is an aircraft runway, five miles in length,which is estimated to be big enough for any plane yet constructed. • One of the latest types of rockets from a- British factory has arrived in Australia at a secret destination, and will be studied by scientists and technicians associated with the project. For security measures covering the Salisbury factory and range, there is special provision of £14,700 in the Budget. ' . To obtain the assistance of . the unionists engaged in rocket maufacture and in 'other phases of the work, the Attorney-General, Dr Evatt, had prepared a special pamphlet designed to offset Communist propaganda, which at one stage threatened to hold up the early work on the range.