The Legend Bluey Traditional Geocache
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(regular)
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The fascinating and once highly secret WWII RAAF Air Base 'Truscott' is located some eighty kilometres north of Drysdale mission in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is named after the now ANZAC legend Squadron Leader 'Bluey' Truscott (killed in an air crash in Exmouth Gulf March,1943).
Established in 1943 to stage air attacks against Japanese establishments in S.E. Asia. Some of the aircraft types stationed out of Truscott included Spitfire fighters, Catalina flying boats and Liberator heavy bombers.
At Midday 12:30pm Thursday the 16th Nov 2nd 1944 flying in from RAAF Strauss airfield 2x Spitfires A58-364 piloted by W/O Bushell and A58-300 piloted by W/O Posse collided mid air while preparing to land. Bushell escaped with minor injuries after parachuting to safety but unfortunately Posse was killed slamming his aircraft adjacent to the runway.
At 5:30am the morning of May 20th.,1945 Liberator A72-160 of 12 Sqdn.,RAAF crashed on take-off and all eleven crew members were killed. Due to Truscotts isolation the crash is largely untouched and much of the debris from the crash of A72-160 remains at the site to this day.
Those killed in this crash were:-
F/Lt. F.L. Sismey
F/O W.S. Bell
W/O T.N. Rust
F/SgtL.M. Bailey
Sgt L. Duncanson
F/Sgt I.N. Easton
F/Sgt T.W. Allen
W/O B.L. Cox
F/Sgt D.D. Benson
F/Sgt J.A. Hollis
F/Sgt J.R. Herps
Truscott today is used as a forward base to transfer crew from the Oil rigs by helicopter and by Coast Watch for refuelling purposes and coastal surveillance.
Most historically minded people will find the base very interesting, as it is still in its 1948 state, never found by the Japanese with many items of war equipment still in place. In the area can be found WWII gun emplacements, Aircraft taxiways and revetments, engineering equipment, pieces of spitfires, a crashed DC3, a Japanese Dina reconnaissance aircraft and magnificent aboriginal rock art and sacred burial sites.
The journey to the Cache site will take 2 hours all up by foot or about 15min by car.
From the main airport complex/apron head westwards along the airport perimeter fence to a windsock located at 14’04.927S 126’22.454E. Posses spitfire wreckage is located on the fence line over the other side of the airstrip opposite the windsock where the fence kinks around a bit(. Not much remains as it is so near the airstrip. Keep heading west along the old runway not used these days and enter a looping taxiway 14o04.741S 126o22.069E. Keep going till you find tracks heading off to the liberator crash site. One at 14o04.784S 126o21.952E and another at 14o04.794S 126o21.818E. The cache can be found amongst A72-160's wreckage. It should be said that the site is now totally safe and free of ordinance and requires no disturbing of the site which is special to a lot of people especially old WWII Diggers. There is a memorial cairn at the site to pay respects to the 11 who gave their lives trying to keep their Australian families safe.
W/O Bushells Spitfire crash can be found by following the looping taxiway round to 14o05.130S 126o21.860E.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gur Pnpur vf ybpngrq va gur Nzzhavgvba fgbentr ungpu va gur onpx bs N72-160’f Onyy gheerg oruvaq fbzr rzcgl znpuvar tha yvaxf.