Rattlesnake Island (Queensland)

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Rattlesnake Island and surrounds (click to zoom).

Rattlesnake Island is one of the islands South of the Great Palm Island group, North West of Magnetic Island and directly East of Rollingstone in the Halifax Bay.

The RAAF Townsville (323 Combat Support squadron) conducts live firing with military aircraft on regular occasions (telephone 0747521207). When the RAAF are not live firing, they also conduct survival courses on the island ^[1].

1 Aircraft crash
- 1.1 B25 Mitchell
- 1.2 Kittyhawk
2 Aerial photos & maps
3 References

[edit] Aircraft crash

[edit] B25 Mitchell

On 23 September 1943, a B25 Mitchell bomber crashed several kilometers from the coast of this island. The 4 persons killed were:

Major Robert P. Duncan
Major Julian ("Jake") S. Schuster (Serial No. 0-377988),
Major George T. Starck (5th Air Service Command)
2nd Lt. James G. Helton (Serial No. 0-888616).

This island was at the time used as a live firing range and on this day, some modicications were made to the aircraft and the flight mission was a test flight. The possible cause of the crash was due to a pistol flare and subsequent fire.

The original modifications proved successful that it was assigned to the 15th Air Depot Group situated at Mount Louisa, Townsville (Depot 2).

Eventually, several hundred B-25's were equipped with four 20-calibers, four nose 50-calibers, four side mounted 50-calibers and even several with a 75-mm artillery field piece.

As many as 4,000 American personnel worked and lived at Depot #2 at the base of Mount Louisa. Entertainment in the camp was held at Helton Hall, which was an open aired building named after Master Sergeant Helton who was killed in the B-25 crash at Rattlesnake Island. Some famous Hollywood stars appeared at Helton Hall including John Wayne, Joe E. Brown, Gary Cooper, Una Merkel and Phyllis Brook. The famous Woody Herman's orchestra also appeared at Helton Hall.^[2]

[edit] Kittyhawk

A Kittyhawk A29-446 was recovered from the western sand spit of Rattlesnake Island near Townsville in approximately 1982 by Keith Hopper.

How the remains of A29-446 ended up on Rattlesnake Island, is a matter of conjecture. However the most plausible explanation is that 6 CRD transported the remains to the island for use as gunnery targets.^[3]