Range History

In late 1945 Britain began the search for a rocket testing range. Although Australia was comparatively undeveloped in its capacity to support such a project, the vast space of land and sea along with the favourable climatic conditions made the desert regions of South Australia ideal. Unlike many areas of the United Kingdom and Europe, Australia had suffered a relatively small amount of damage during World War II. These factors identified the potential to build a partnership between Britain and Australia committed to improving defence capability.

In 1946 following a preliminary inspection of the desert regions of Australia, Britain requested that Australia provide a site for a range to facilitate the research and development of guided missiles and supersonic pilotless aircraft. The brief of the mission outlined the need for an area approximately 1600 km long and 300 km wide at the target end. Essential site capability was to support full scale firing trials of a variety of guided projectiles. With these requirements in mind the area around Mount Eba was identified as an ideal site.

Initial costings were estimated at three million pounds for the construction of the rangehead with 500 km of range and three million pounds a year for operational costs. The final costing for the project was estimated at 14 million pounds inclusive of building costs, services, cables, rail link, airstrips and aircraft.

The first trials to be held at the Range were bombs and objects dropped from aircraft. In March 1949 the first bomb was dropped on the new permanent ballistics range, Range E. By the mid 1950s approximately 1800 bombs had been dropped on the small target area at Range A, additionally over 1500 drops of proximity-fuzed bombs on Range B, the dry salt bed of Lake Hart were made. 1957 saw all trials transferred to Range E.

Between 1948 and 1957 nine independent and subsidiary ranges were developed and over 15 numbered rocket and missile launching sites were established in the Woomera Prohibited Area. Range E, also known as Woomera Instrumented Range (WIR) is still in use today. Range E was established in 1951 as the main missile range and houses the chief Instrumentation Building (IB). Its early use in 1951 was for the Fairey VTO trials and then again in 1953 for the Rocket Test Vehicle No 1 (RTV1), formerly known as LOPGAP, Liquid Oxygen and Petrol Guided Anti-Aircraft Projectile. Trials on the RTV1 were primarily used for research. Different versions of the test vehicle were created and each was concerned with a different aspect of control, guidance, propulsion and aerodynamics of the complete rocket.

Range E became a general-purpose range trialing projects ranging from small bombs to large multi-stage satellite launching rockets. Today Range E is the central nerve centre for controlling rocket, missile and other airborne vehicle flight tests and trials.

For more information about the Woomera Range click here.