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on the range
You
can’t just pop across the road to the neighbours when you
work at Delamere. For a start, the workspace is the size of a
small country, as Corporal Simone Liebelt discovered.
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WOFF
Greg Brydon, EO Technician, preps a bomb for detonation
at the Delamere Range Facility.
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Photo
by SGT Mark Eaton
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EVERY day it’s bombs away for the explosive ordnance technicians
at Delamere air weapons range.
With an endless supply of plastic explosive and an area the size
of a small country to work in, it’s no wonder they love their
job.
“What isn’t there to like about it, you get to blow
stuff up,” Corporal Aaron Green summed it up with.
The three resident bomb experts at Delamere – commonly known
as gunnies – are responsible for clearing any unexploded
ordnance dropped on the range by jets during training missions.
Warrant Officer Greg Brydon – who’s currently on relief
manning from RAAF Base Williamtown – said their job starts
the moment the bomb is dropped, when it is then recorded by range
cameras and instantly transmitted back to them in the control
tower for analysis.
“From the imagery, we’ll know straight away whether
it has actually detonated and we’ll be able to pinpoint the
location fairly accurately where the bomb has impacted” he
said.
“We then apply a wait time depending on the type of electronic
fusing that the bomb has, to ensure that it bleeds off its energy
and its battery power so its in it’s safest possible condition.
Once that time has expired, we then go out to the site to look
for it.”
After jumping on their quad bikes laden with plastic explosive,
detonators and excavating equipment, they search the area for
the ordnance, in what can often take countless hours.
“We know where it has impacted, so we just have to find where
it finally lands, which could be anywhere,” he said.
“Quite often a bomb will travel under the ground for a good
distance, so it may come out several hundred metres away from
where it impacted; sometimes it can travel for kilometres.”
While highly trained to handle explosive devices, he said uncovering
a bomb is always a dangerous procedure.
“You can’t say there’s not a risk with unpredictable
explosives, because a bomb has been dropped by the aircraft and
hit the ground with high speed, so anything could have happened
to it.
“Our smallest high explosive bombs are 500 pounds, so that’s
a lot of explosive. When you’re working right over the top
of it, it doesn’t matter what protective equipment you’ve
got on, it’s not going to save you.
“You just have to get in and get the job done, and if anything
happens, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He said if the bomb is located on the surface, they dispose of
it using counter charges, but if it’s buried, they have to
mark it and then return later when there’s a break in range
practice.
Once they’ve uncovered the ordnance, they use plastic explosive
and then hook detonators and time fuses up to it, so they can
light the fuse and get to a safe distance before it explodes.
“When you’ve blown it, there’s going to be very
little left. The bomb breaks into quite small fragments and they
get left out there on the range as there are so many bombs dropped
here, it’s an impossible task to clear them all off. We just
have to ensure that the range is maintained as a safe environment.”
He said the main difference with ordnance is the type of fuses
used by different countries, like Britain and Singapore. The bombs
being dropped during Exercise Southern Frontier also have different
fuses, which they factor into their disposal procedure. They keep
up to date on all the different ordnance used around the world.
As well as disposing of the bombs and maintaining the range, the
gunnies also score all the drops for the squadrons in the control
tower. They have a video scoring system for recording high explosive
bombs hitting the ground, and another air to ground gunnery system,
which scores bullets being fired at banners.
“It’s instant feedback that we can feed straight back
to the Range Safety Officer so he can radio it through to the
aircraft,” Warrant Officer Brydon said.
“We then fax those results back through to the squadron’s
ops room, so it’s waiting for the aircrew when they return
to their home unit.”
He said there isn’t much more satisfying than the work they
do out at Delamere.
“I absolutely love it here, it’s fantastic,” he
said.
“It’s just one of those environments where you can really
have a lot of fun and do stuff you normally wouldn’t do on
base. This is the bread and butter; everything that I train to
do is actually happening here.”
Corporal Green agreed. “The experience out here has been
great – the lifestyle, the big bangs. You get to see the
end result as a gunnie, both from your work at the squadron and
from demolitions.”
The
perfect place for 'Big Brother'
Australia's premier spot to drop bombs
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