This happened at Panguna Bougainville in 1975. The turbine flamed out (stalled) on a long 12% downgrade. The truck was carrying approx 240 tons copper ore. Park brakes burnt out, still steerable, speed could have reached 60mph collided with Cat 14E motor grader, continued on still at (some speed) and another collision with an Isuzu bucket truck.
7 comments:
I was a Heavy Equipment Fitter on the field crew in the seventies, and I have the 'Euclid' badge that was fitted to the radiator of the that truck
That is, the gas turbine powered Euclid on Bougainville island
My dad has more photos of this truck and the machinery it crushed. He worked in the workshop from 1970-1989.
I'd be interested in any more photos if anyone has them. My uncle Joe worked here as well. He mentioned that these pictures were combined from different days as it happened twice. He also mentioned that he converted the engine to run on diesel after this.
hi I was also there at the same time, 1974/75 i worked on the 2 parts ofb the body that had to be cut in half to get around the tight bends of the road from the arawa port to panguna, myself and Paul [HENRY] Higgings worked alongside Ted KUNZ from Euclid and LIONEL WHITTENBURG from AVCO LYCOMING Paul & myself are still in contact but unfirtunatelky we have long lost Ted & Lionel we leart a lot from those 2 great intelligent men RIP boys
I worked in the Componet REbuild section too Tony Mitrovitch was the the boss and we had Charlie Belmont as our foreman, both have left us now another 2 great guys to be associated with too, along with so many others TOO many to name
yes the kerosine wasnt agreeing with the engine hence the FLAME OUT the poor grader n cherry picker
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