Records of Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) - Royal Australian Air Force

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) formed the No.1 Air Performance Unit in December 1943. The purpose of the unit was the test and evaluation of aircraft and aircraft modification. In September 1947, while headquartered at Point Cook, the unit was renamed Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU). Returning to its wartime base at RAAF Laverton, ARDU expanded its activities and established further detachments at Mallala in SA and Richmond NSW. Another detachment was later established at RAAF Edinburgh, which became the home of ARDU in February 1977.

Content

The records of ARDU are dated between 1944 and 1973. Negotiations concerning their transfer commenced in May 2003. As there were two copies of many of their records, ARDU split the series. Copies were despatched to the Australian War Memorial and the RAAF Museum at Point Cook, Victoria. On 10 February 2006, the Memorial took archival custody of the records assigned by ARDU.

The records span four decades of ARDU activity. The oldest item in the collection, a report dated January 1944, describes the characteristics of the Ventura A57-4 during take off and landing trials.

During the next 30 years, ARDU documented the testing of many variants of aircraft (fighters and bombers) and hundreds of systems. As such, the records possess tremendous technical value. Of the aircraft mentioned by ARDU, many exist in the collection at the Memorial: Beaufighter, Canberra, Dakota, Lincoln, Macci, Meteor, Mirage, Mustang, Orion and Wirraway.

The records of ARDU suggest three prime areas of interest: a focus on aircraft performance; an examination of weapon systems (ground and aircraft based); and evaluating procedures to help with the safe launch and return of pilots and their planes (eg. visual aids to landing and the durability of survival equipment). Scrutiny of the records affords an opportunity to examine the capabilities and limitations of technology prevailing during the era. Whether planning sorties or search and rescue missions, the conduct of operations was likely influenced by the results of such research.

This series covers an era from the end of the Second World War to the end of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. By analysing the date range of this collection, we can determine that 54 items originated in the 1940s, 214 in the 1950s, 486 in the 1960s and 204 from 1970 to 1973. These holdings do not represent the complete administrative record of ARDU.

System of arrangement and control

The records were formally accessioned as OW06/06 on 12 May 2006. Perhaps due to the varied work undertaken by the technicians at ARDU, the Unit devised symbols to help document their records more effectively:

TI – Technical Investigations

TN – Technical Notes

TS – Test Schedules

These symbols prefixed a combination of abbreviations and numbers, creating a unique record number. The method used by ARDU is demonstrated by way of these examples:

TI/4, TN/AERO/1, TS/1008

A small quantity of records varies from this pattern. The Memorial accessioned 36 records whose prefix was MISC (miscellaneous). All prefixes (symbols) were retained by the Memorial when describing the records on the RecordSearch database.

• AWM342 TS - [Test Schedules]