HARS tour guide and Lex McGowan award winner, Mr Glenn Owens, this week donated to the HARS museum a rare Government Aircraft Factory Turana radio controlled drone – serial number 22.
Developed from the Ikara anti-submarine missile, the Turana was intended to provide a parachute recoverable pilotless target for use in gunnery and missile defence training by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) with a small gas turbine Microturbo 022-01 jet engine with a booster rocket for launch from a warship’s Ikara missile launcher. Prototypes were built in the late 1960s by the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF). In 1971, the RAN ordered twelve Turana targets at a cost of $1.183 million from GAF despite the fact that trials had not yet been completed. Turana Technical Evaluation Trials were conducted by HMAS Swan (III) in February 1978. Failures exposed during this period involved redesign work costing an additional $3.40 million. The Turana project was subsequently cancelled by the federal government in September 1979.
Many thanks to Glenn for his kind donation.
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2 Comments
Turana was trialed in HMAS Swan during 1974 not 1978 as a sea skimmimg missile. These trials were lengthy and boring to us in the operations room with many live firings had to be aborted due to Bloc country shipping.
In 1973, I was on hmas brisbane which was used to perform several launch tests of the turana. Unfortunately the jet engine failed to keep running after the launch each time. The ikara mqo was extensively rewired by the boffins and the mqo team was told to look but do not touch!!. They had their own launch panel which bypassed the automatic guidance checks that occurred when ikara was launched.I think there were about six unsuccessful launch tests.