A4 – unidentified aircraft.
I have been sent this picture, and the number seems to be A4-11.
It seems unlikely that the picture below is of a Sopwith
Pup, because the A4-11 pup was supposedly destroyed in 1922, see http://www.adf-serials.com/ - extract below
|
A4-11 |
C532 |
Shipped on SS Barambah 24/12/18
from UK, arrived Melbourne 02/19 and ready for inspection at CFS ARS
29/04/19. |
And there is no evidence of Pups ever having been seaplanes.
The second series A-4 title was first allocated to the single Tugan Gannet which was briefly in the RAAF in 1935 as A4-1,
but it was not a seaplane and I think it was destroyed in a crash in bushland.
See this article, originally http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/131760/20120120-0944/www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2007/oct07/story-2.pdf
Seaplanes which could have been in Point Cook in 1936 include the
Seagulls (A2, second series), that are listed in A2 - Supermarine Walrus on http://www.adf-serials.com/ but no crash
lis listed on this site that corresponds to the information we have about the
picture, which is this:
Email received Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 5:46 PM from Ada Ackerly, secretary of the
Williamstown (Victoria) Historical Society Inc.
A few days ago I
discovered an envelope in the back of a cupboard at our museum. We are sorting
60 years of documents and photos, in boxes, plastic bags, stowed in drawers and
cupboards etc to ready them for digitisation and/or copying.
This envelope contained a
set, not of acetate negatives, but PAPER negatives, all marked 1936.
I scanned and
photo-shopped these into positives and found two images, taken at a Ports and
Harbours pier at Williamstown, with a work barge tied up to the pier, unloading
something to be put on a wheeled flat tray on the pier. The gantry's ropes had
become tangled and the tackle appeared to be fouled.
We first thought it was a
flat item on the end of the rope, but increasing the contrast, etc and
enlarging up mamy times, we got an A4 print of a part
of the original photo about the size of a 5 cent piece.
We believe what is being
winched out of the work barge is the tail part of a plane with folded over
rudder. On the tail piece rudder appears "A4-11" The year of the
photo, as I said, is 1936.
I checked newspapers on
"Trove" internet site and found the following:
"Wednesday 3rd of June
Yesterday an airforce seaplane crashed
into the sea at Altona. The pilot waded ashore unhurt"
Another of the paper
negatives showed what I believe may be an RAAF crash or rescue boat with airforce insignia on the bow, tied up at the Gem Pier at
Williamstown, again, dated 1936. A co-incidence? Taken with the same paper negatives. I believe the
photographer was experimenting with a roll of sensitized
paper in his camera instead of film, so all taken in the same timespan in 1936.
Here are Ada’s photos:
An enlarged section
from the above picture is printed at the top of this page.
The crash boat:
