GREAT REPAIR DEPOT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25473, 1 March 1944, Page 5

GREAT REPAIR DEPOT

“SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRALIA” SERVICING OF AIRCRAFT (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, Feb. 29. Hidden in the scrub “somewhere in Northern Australia” are huge camouflaged buildings covering many hundreds of acres. They house the United States Fifth Air Force Service Command Depot, the largest installation of its kind In the southern hemisphere. The equipment and machinery alone are valued at more than £45,000,000. Probably more than any other single factory, these repair workshops helped to turn the tide of the South-west Pacific aerial war in the Allies’ favour, The depot, the existence of which is now officially revealed for the first time, was established in the dark days of 1942 when the Japanese were driving towards Port Moresby, and the issue on Guadalcanar was still in doubt. Then only a thin stream of sorely-needed aircraft was trickling into the Pacific theatre, and the future looked uncertain.

It was at this stage that Lieutenantgeneral George Kenney, commander of the Allied air forces in the Southwest Pacific, made the decision triat changed the aerial fortune of the Allies in this theatre. Since the

greatest use had to be made of every available machine, he decided to transfer the main plane repair base of his command from the south of Australia to the north. Such a move would result in the saving of from three to four days in ferrying damaged planes to workshops and back to combat areas.

It was in November, 1942, that the work of constructing the new base began. Every man was expected to work up to 18 hours a day. Later this was slackened off to 14 hours, but the work was pushed ahead seven days a week. Only 30 days after the ground had been broken the new engine overhaul shop turned out its first completed job. To-day the mammoth workshops undertake every type of aircraft repair and reconstruction. The base has also been developed as an important centre for the improvement of fighter aircraft in the Pacific. Machines are modified and altered for enhanced performance in this theatre. Many of the improvements made have become part of the standard design. There is no part of a plane which cannot be supplied from the depot’s ordnance stores or manufactured in its workshops. Warehouses, which form part of the establishment, list 155,000 separate items of stock.

The driving force behind the rapid development of this key Allied centre was Colonel Victor Bertrand Dias, vice-president of the Douglas Aircraft Company, who flew with the famous American ace of the last war, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker.