Talisman Sabre Military Training Exercise - Shoalwater Bay

[John Werner]

Thinking about Military Exercise: Talisman Sabre now on at Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area, north-east of Rockhampton.  My unit, No. 20 Company of the Royal Engineers (20 CRE -Works) based at Kelvin Grove Barracks, Brisbane, constructed the first airstrip there in 1966.  First, the trees were removed by using plastic explosives in auger holes in the lateral roots then TNT slabs were placed on the tree trunks to control the direction of fall.  After clearing the airstrip alignment, we used mobile plant (dozers and graders) to level the strip to survey standards.  Our Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) used to detonate a slab of TNT suspended from a nearby tree branch by CordTex as "Reveille".  I still love the smell of TNT in the mornings.  The airstrip has since been sealed and upgraded to international standards and renamed Williamson Airfield (ICAO: YWIS) as shown in the photo.  Shoalwater Bay is mentioned in "I Was Only Nineteen", the #1 single by Redgum from the 1983 album 'Caught in the Act'.  It is also mentioned in the video game ARMA 2, when a USMC private named Kowalski mentions he had a fun time with the "Aussies at Shoalwater Bay".

[onetrack]

Seems like a typical "Pommy" military ill-organised, slow and expensive clearing operation. As a former military engineer, and a full time dozing and clearing contractor in my earlier life, we cleared large areas rapidly, cheaply, and effectively, by utilising "chaining" - dragging a long length (400 to 800 feet - 120 to 240 metres -  of heavy anchor chain, usually 2" to 2.5" - 50mm to 63mm diameter - stud link chain, between two dozers. 

 

Carried out under the correct conditions (damp soil, without it being too wet for good dozer traction), many dozens of acres an hour can be flattened.

In my own case, our clearing charges were as low as $2 an acre (approx $5 Ha), and rarely above $6 an acre ($15 Ha), in the 1960's and 1970's.

 

Here's a video of some major habitat destruction in Qld in 2014. The Wilderness Society wouldn't want to have been around in W.A. in the 1960's or 1970's, clearing 500 acres a day wasn't uncommon. There were dozens of dozing and clearing contractors in operation in W.A. in that era.

 

 

[John Werner]

3 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Seems like a typical "Pommy" military ill-organised, slow and expensive clearing operation

To be fair, the purpose at the time was as a training exercise in explosives, earthworks, plant operations and surveying for the sappers.  The airstrip construction was simply a training device in the very early days of the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area and I don't think it was an end in itself then.  And what military is concerned about the cost of doing business?  That's for the accountants to worry about and they're all in Canberra.

[onetrack]

When I was in the 17th Construction Squadron, RAE, in S Vietnam, we ran a Land Clearing Team comprising about up to 6 Cat D8H's operating in close quarters, to clear large areas of raw jungle, to deny the area as a hiding place for Viet Cong and NVA soldiers, and to also open up land for agricultural use.

 

It was a pretty intense experience to be clearing and also occasionally under fire via mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire - as well as being the target of mines and booby traps.

There's one of our D8H's on display in an RAE museum with the engine blown right off its mountings, and holed in numerous places as well, as a result of a buried improvised mine, that comprised a 44 gallon (200 litre drum) filled with high explosive, that was ransacked by the VC and NVA, from U.S. aerial bombs that quite often failed to explode.

 

We were shown captured NVA films of NVA engineers disabling unexploded U.S. aerial bombs, bypassing the anti-handling mechanisms by a "trial and error" method, and then hacksawing the bomb casing to within a millimetre of the high explosive - then cracking the casing open with a sledgehammer, and then scooping out the free explosive, to be re-used against the "invaders", in improvised mines and booby traps.

 

We utilised standard D8H Caterpillar blades, as well as an aftermarket style of special clearing blade, called a "Rome plow". The Rome plow was permanently angled, and had a horizontal cutting edge at the bottom. The Rome plow cut the trees and vegetation cleanly at ground level, and rolled it to one side in a large windrow. It also contained a sharp spear on the forward corner, that could be used to splinter large trees before removal.

 

Here's some photos, shown with accompanying aerial support, that was invaluable to us.

 

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C320671

 

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2103163

 

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C42031

 

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1277620

 

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2103136

 

[John Werner]

6 minutes ago, onetrack said:

then cracking the casing open with a sledgehammer, and then scooping out the free explosive, to be re-used against the "invaders", in improvised mines and booby traps

Wow.  I appreciate your post and its history.  By the way, on a break from Panguna Copper Mine on Bougainville Island, staying in Rabaul I met a couple who owned Kulon Plantation near Kokopo, East New Britain Province PNG.  They asked me to look after the plantation so that they could have a well-deserved vacation in Europe.  I agreed and spent a couple of months there after a brief period being "shown the ropes" on what that entailed - basically supervision of the indentured labour on the plantation and the copra processing operation and export of the smoked product through the port of Rabaul.  Simple stuff.
Here are some photos of Kulon and environs at the time (1970).  The tunnels were dug into the soft volcanic ash deposits (tuff or tufa) by the Japanese military during WW2 and still contained munitions like mortar rounds, artillery shells, AP mines and aerial bombs.  Locals used these as sources of high explosives to stun fish on the fringing reefs and quite a few of the men had missing limbs owing to "accidents" during their fishing expeditions.