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Blackwall Military Airstrip WW2
Overlayed
photo
from 1943 taken at 45,000 feet showing the original
strip
running
along Trafalgar Ave , MacMasters Ave runs along the top
During World War 2 the
R.A.A.F constructed an airfield in the center of the Woy
Woy Peninsula, running roughly along what is now
Trafalgar Avenue between McMasters Road in the North to
Oxford St in the South. Proposals were made for eight pens for medium bombers
to be constructed in the nearby streets and bush blocks,
these pens were to be camouflaged from enemy eyes by blending
in with the local surroundings, local ti trees were to
be used
as well as man made objects like disguising a hangar to
look like a house.
Lead in paths to the streets from the pens were to be screened
from above by large camouflage nets and by painting the
white sand a dark colour ( probably sump oil or bitumen
), actual streets were used for small taxiways to the
strip and some local roads were first constructed for
this purpose ( Palm St , Inkerman Avenue ), Springwood
Avenue was widened to give the appearance of being used
as a main road.
The 8 pens were to be located as follows: 1,2,3 located
along McMasters Road between Trafalgar and Blackwall Rd,
4 located just north of Watkin Avenue on the west
side of Ocean Beach Rd , 5 was to be located 150 yards to the
east probably in Waterloo Avenue, 6,7,8 were to be located at
the southern end in Springwood Avenue around Palm St and
Albion Avenue.
During take off the bombers would emerge from their
hideouts and taxi down the road to Trafalgar Avenue.
A main camp was located in Fairview Avenue and wasn't
camouflaged, local holidays houses were to be used to
house aircrews and some new houses were also to be built to
fit in with the local setting. Scattered around the
Peninsula were proposed anti-aircraft gun positions, fuel and
bomb dumps, an anti-submarine boom was to be put in place at Ettalong
if the need arised.
There also seems to have been some sort of plan to blow
up the entrance to Woy Woy tunnel to stop the Japanese
using the rail link to Sydney, the tunnel mouth was
packed with explosives for most of the war.
Researching this topic as well is Peter Dunn from
Oz at
War who has provided me
with many useful bits of info. It seems the airfield was
a satellite field of the Schofields Naval Airbase at
Quakers Hill Sydney, during the war years many British
aircrews were stationed there and assigned to various
bases around Sydney. These aircrews usually were part of
a British aircarft carriers' crew and it seems highly
likely that the medium bombers to be used at Woy Woy were the
fearsome Grumman Avenger Torpedo bomber, a seaborne
version of the Grumman Avenger.
Aircrews would have rotated during different deployments
throughout the war , there was also another satellite
airfield at Tuggerah constructed in the same method, the
red gravel used at both sites may have come from an old
Goverment quarry at Kulnura it's believed.
The airfield remained
unused by the military for the remainder of the war , at
best it was an Emergency Landing Strip , though the
strip at Tuggerah was marked for this in the records.
A local told me about a few incidents there during the
war years , you can read more
here.
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The airfield remained
unused after the war although some private aircraft
owners and clever real estate agents would occasionally
land there up until the 1950's.
In the book " Good Old Woy Woy " by C. Swancott it is
mentioned that the Woy Woy Riding Club would hold races
on the strip and local hoons would race their cars along
it.
In 1950 an RAAF Tiger Moth biplane was recorded as
crashing at Woy Woy , according to locals it overshot
the runway and ended up crashing into the roof of a
house in Nelson Avenue.
This may have almost certainly sealed the fate of the
airstrip as more and more people purchased blocks of
land around it
By 1954 all associated buildings and land were returned
to their owners or sold off as surplus.
In the late 90's a large rotary engine with possibly 12
- 14 cylinders was dug up out of a backyard in Waterloo
Avenue, this location is close to a bomber hideout and
the strip.
Unfortunately the engine was dumped at the Woy Woy
Refuse Depot. The Grumman bombers to be used at Woy Woy
had a 14 cylinder rotary engine , quite possibly this
was an old unused replacement engine buried after the
war.
Red gravel remains at
Blackwall
A Curtiss-Wright R-2600 Radial Engine
All that remains of the runway today is the occasional
glimpse of red gravel along Trafalgar Avenue and
whenever they clear a block along that strip of road,
the small park at Blackwall is basically the original
runway surface with intact vegetation along one side.
*This page has
been updated on 16/11/2009
More Information
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