"Bloodhound Mk. I" Missile test in Woomera, South Australia (1958, HD) 

XTV4 and 5 Test Vehicles used to develop Bloodhound's Ramjet engines and other systems fired at Woomera between 1953 and 1957. Bloodhound Prototypes first fired from mid 1956 at that range. Bloodhound Service Acceptance Trials were between 1958 and 1960 (this firing was one of them, though there were actually two version of the Missile. The Series 1 which was overweight and couldn't do high altitude intercepts and the lightweight Series 2, which became the production Bloodhound 1). This missile was a series 1, Meteor attitude was 15,000 feet and Impact range was 15,000 yards. The later Bloodhound 2 was developed using a series of Test Vehicles called XTV-11 through to 17. Most of the XTV-16's and XTV-17's were fired at Woomera. Also Bloodhound 2 Missile Evaluation Trials were done between 1962 and 1965. Bloodhound 1 wasn't operational until 1961 / 62 and in late 1962 they started shutting squadrons down to save money. Bloodhound 2 wasn't operational until early 1966.

@@richardvernon317 Wow. Thanks. The little I gleaned from Dad before his death, was that he was a Range Controller on Range B, then Koolymilka, trialling Thunderbird (RED Shoes?), RED Duster which might have become Bloodhound and also Sea Slug- these notes were taken 50 years after he had returned. I went back to Woomera Village in 2011 and gave Dad's photos from that time to the museum there.

@@lovethe70s Red Shoes and Red Duster were not related bar the fact that they both in the running for Army and RAF contracts for a while. Red Shoes was EE Thunderbird, Red Duster was Bristol Ferranti Bloodhound. All of the Red Duster stuff was done on Range E.