56 replies to this topic

[GeoffR]

Have we missed anyone??

A few more:
Garth Wigston – Roadways touring car driver, now a CAMS steward for V8 Supercars I believe
Bruce Gowans - drove a Lotus sports car & Celica sports sedan for Alan Ling
Danny Newlands – Capri sports sedan driver, star of the huge crash at Baskerville after a coming
together with A. Moffatt in 197??

Ray Long

- also won 9 Tasmanian Rally Championships between 1964 & 1974.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by stuartbrs
.....And Ray, I give in, I even asked my anorak father who came up stumps, who were those WSR boys in that WWII engined craft????

Seeing as this thread's been resurrected, I might as well continue with this one...

I believe this took place in the twenties, probably late twenties... so it's unlikely to have been a WW2 engine. WW1 is very likely.

The story I was told as I went on a Gordon River cruise was that they had built this thing with the engine and propellor sitting up above the deck and that it was a toss of the coin to decide who'd drive it.

That it was dangerous at speed is bad enough, but apparently it had to be started before the pilot got into the cockpit, and then after it was started he had to worm his way past the rotating aircraft prop to get to his seat!

Any help, anyone?

Oh, yeah, I'm still dismayed about the number of also-ran drivers being dredged up...

[275 GTB-4]

Originally posted by GeoffR


A few more:
Garth Wigston – Roadways touring car driver, now a CAMS steward for V8 Supercars I believe
Bruce Gowans - drove a Lotus sports car & Celica sports sedan for Alan Ling
Danny Newlands – Capri sports sedan driver, star of the huge crash at Baskerville after a coming
together with A. Moffatt in 197??

- also won 9 Tasmanian Rally Championships between 1964 & 1974.

Hindaugh? (Torana ...Gown/Hindaugh?)

[275 GTB-4]

Originally posted by Falcadore
The New Jersey and its surviving WW2 vintage sisters the Iowa, the Missouri and the Wisconsin have been decomissioned. Three of the four now serve as museuems in respectively Philadelphia, Pearl Harbour and Norfolk, while the Iowa was abandoned in a bay near San Francisco. They were the last four Battleships the US Navy built, a fifth Iowa class vessel, the Kentucky was never commissioned. They were probably the last Battleships ever built, unless the British of the French built some.

Suison Bay is just North of San Fran and is a Navy ship graveyard. You get a good view from the Carquinez Narrows Bridge (spelling..) and you can peel off and get reasonably close. The Glomar Explorer also used to be parked there.....

[Doug Nye]

Originally posted by Falcadore
They were probably the last Battleships ever built, unless the British of the French built some.

The Royal Navy's last battleship was HMS Vanguard, which completed her acceptance trials on August 9, 1946, a year after the war had ended. She was towed out of Portsmouth harbour bound for the scrapyard in 1960 - and as a final gesture of defiance, she ran aground and had to be dragged out, to her fate as umpteen million razor blades... I was 14, and remember her departure vividly 'cos I loved warships, although she was never the best-looking battleship around - rather gawky, having lost the massive symmetry of the KGV class.

It was already plain as a pikestaff that the day of the big-gun battleship as the ultimate arbiter of sea power was long past - the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm attack on Taranto harbour in 1940 - which crippled an important proportion of the Italian battle fleet while they lay at anchor - had made the case for air power projected by aircraft carriers; a lesson which the Imperial Japanese Navy planners took to heart....see 'Pearl Harbour'.

The difference was that the Taranto attack was carried out by only 21 single-engined Fairey Swordfish biplanes - the Japanese attack by hundreds of the buggers...

DCN

[SJ Lambert]

Off the top of my head:
Circuits
Longford
Valleyfield (or some name like that)
Quorn Hall
Baskerville
Symmons Plains
Hillclimbs
Muddy Creek
Hobart Domain
Penguin
Travellyn
Drivers
John Youl
John McCormack
John Goss
John Bowe
John (Jock) Walkem
I think there was some sort of local Tasmanian law that said you had to be called John
Oh no, there was also:
Gavin Youl
Don Gorringe
Don Elliott
Alan Ling, Ross Farmer, Ray Long (ex NSW)
etc
etc

I’m currently reading a piece on Valleyfield, home to Tasmanian Grand Prix for Cars and Tasmanian TT for bikes 1949-51!!

[ellrosso]

Just one thing re an earlier comment - Ross Ambrose wasn't actually born in Tassy. Not sure where he was from but in his regular Tasmanian Motorist magazine column in 1965, Lyn Archer describes him as a newcomer to the state and he had purchased his (Lyn's) old Cooper Hillman to begin his racing career. Brian Bowe would certainly know his background, as would Bruce Gowans as they still see each other - last time I heard from Bruce he had just been to lunch with him.

Also Dave Powell (Matich A50? from 1977 Rothmans series and a good match for Bowe in Vees), Gene Cook and David Sternberg (ex Clark Lotus 32B and a great rival to McCormack in 1969) should be on the list of drivers too. In modern times, Alex Peroni - F Renault winner at both Monaco and Pau in 2018 is Tassy's best hope for the future.

Pic of Ross and his wife at Bask in 1971.