Radiosondes

Max, in his reminiscences, and Joyce (1993) in his, mention that late in 1941 Allan Cornish was joined by Lieutenant-Commander Dimitrevic of the US Navy who assisted in the further development of the radiosonde. In the winter of 1942 they were working on the establishment of a radiosonde ground station in Charleville and also visited a number of other sites in Queensland to arrange for the installation of other ground stations for radiosondes. Max also indicates that about this time arrangements had been made for the manufacture of the US Bendix-Friez radiosonde under license by Radio Corporation in South Melbourne.

The publication of the full details of the Bureau's development of its radiosonde network requires considerable further historical research but published and unpublished notes by H. N. (Bill) Brann, Max Cassidy, Allan Cornish, Tom Haldane, Don Handcock and John Joyce (1993) provide useful information.

Records in the Bureau's National Climate Centre, kindly provided by Anne Brewster, suggest that the first routine radiosonde observations were made at Laverton RAAF Station (near Melbourne) in April 1943, followed by observations from Hamilton Reach US Navy base (Brisbane) and RAAF stations at Townsville, Cloncurry, Darwin, Charleville and Norfolk Island, in that order, with the Norfolk Island station commencing in October 1943. 1944 saw radiosonde observations commence at Port Moresby, Lord Howe Island, Rathmines (near Newcastle) and Alice Springs, while in 1945 observations commenced at RAAF stations at Amberley (near Brisbane, replacing the US Navy station at Hamilton Reach, which closed) and Parafield (near Adelaide). Radiosonde records from 1943 to 1946 from the National Climate Centre are summarised in Appendix 4. These records may be incomplete, particularly as there is evidence of a Bureau ground station being established in Charleville in 1942, although this may have been an experimental project.

Bureau of Meteorology