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Airshow of vintage warbirds and current RAAF assets by HARS.
The Tracker is an aircraft carrier based Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) aircraft designed for the US Navy by the Grumman Aircraft Co in 1950 with the first flight in December 1952.
The aircraft was designed to take–off and land on aircraft carriers with its main role being to protect the aircraft carriers by detecting and hunting enemy submarines. It did this with its retractable Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) boom – an airborne metal detector and sonobuoys (water proof floating microphones) that could hear the submarine underwater.
On detecting a submarine it would attack it with homing torpedos, and depth charges from its bomb bay. Being based on an aircraft carrier, space is at a premium, so the aircraft is physically not big. Its ~6 m long MAD boom was retractable back into the fuselage and its wings were foldable over the fuselage but offset fore and aft to minimise storage space.
The Royal Australian Navy used 32 Trackers from ~1966 to retirement in ~1984
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