Wednesday, Jul 04, 2018 at 16:26
I'm just going by what is in the SA governments
heritage survey, and this would seem to be confirmed by Wikipedia info.
"The Beresford Wiggle
Another legacy of the Second World War was a new generation of weapons: nuc.lear bombs and long-range missiles which could deliver a warhead over thousands of rrnles. The South Australian outback - flat and mostly uninhabited - was chosen as a suitable place to
test these devices, and the town of
Woomera was established north-west of
Port Augusta in 1946 as the base for a joint British-Australian military and scienti.fic complex. The
Woomera Prohibited Area extended right to the Central Australian Railway near
William Creek, but most of the space activity in the ensuing twenty years took place
well to the south and west of the
Oodnadatta Track.
The rocket scientists arrived in the
Oodnadatta Track region in 1967. Since 1963, Britain had been developing a new missile designed as a satellite launcher, the Black Arrow. After several years of design problems and political delays because of the cost of the program, three missiles were eventually built for testing. Unlike most of the military missiles which were
test-fired toward the north-west of Australia, Black Arrow was designed to launch satellites into polar orbit, so had to be fired northward, across the Gulf of Carpentaria and New Guinea. This called for a new set of tracking instruments to be built along the new flight line. One of the sites chosen was Beresford on the Central Australian Railway, close to the northerly flight path, where a radar station was built on a rise a few kilometres from the railway station.
Black Arrow was to have a short and troubled career, but three tests were launched between 1969 and 1971, the third launching Britain's first satellite, Prospero, which is still in orbit. Beresford briefly became famous for an inexplicable S~bend which appeared on the plotted track of each
test as the missile passed by - the 'Beresford wiggle' • presumably caused by some interference effect in close proximity to the radar station. After the third launch, Britain withdrew from satellite development altogether, and the Black Arrow program was wound up. Other testing continued at
Woomera, but the Beresford tracking station was dismantled. (Morton 1989, pp. 499-525) "
FollowupID:
892266