THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AIR CHIEF MARSHAL SIR NEVILLE McNAMARA

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© Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2005

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission from the publisher.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this work are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defence, the Royal Australian Air Force or the Government of Australia. This document is approved for public release; distribution unlimited. Portions of this document may be quoted or reproduced without permission, provided a standard source credit is included.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

McNamara, Neville, Sir.The quiet man. ISBN 1 920800 07 7. 1. McNamara, Neville, Sir. 2. Australia. Royal AustralianAir Force - Biography. 3. Air pilots, Military - Australia- Biography. I. Australia. Royal Australian Air Force. AirPower Development Centre. II. Title. 358.40092

Published and distributed by:

Air Power Development Centre Level 3 205 Anketell Street Tuggeranong ACT 2900 Australia

Telephone: + 61 2 6266 1355 Facsimile: + 61 2 6266 1041 E-mail: airpower@defence.gov.au Website: www.raaf.gov.au/airpower

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This book has been created under the Office of Air Force History’s oral history program. The text was derived from an extended interview with Sir Neville McNamara conducted by Wing Commander Ken Llewelyn in October 1994, and a further series of interviews recorded between April and October 2005 by Group Captain Phil Morrall of the Reserve Staff Group.

Tapes of the later interviews were transcribed by Mr David Brian, Mr John Hunter and Mrs Roz Turner. The transcripts were then organised into a text by Dr Chris Clark, the RAAF Historian, with editorial assistance from Roz Turner and Wing Commander Keith Brent.

The book’s layout and design was undertaken by Ms Michelle Lovi, Publications Officer at the Air Power Development Centre. The Australian War Memorial, RAAF Museum and Canberra Times are thanked for giving permission to use their photographs with appropriate credits.

The Office of Air Force History sincerely acknowledges the contribution that Air Chief Marshal Sir Neville McNamara and Lady McNamara have made to the oral history project through their participation.

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Contents

1 Family Matters 1

2 Boarders and Boarding 11

3 I Join the Air Force 21

4 Serving with the Americans 31

5 Instructor on Tiger Moths 43

6 On Morotai and Tarakan 51

7 Occupation Duties in Japan 61

8 A Glimpse of the Outback 71

9 Getting Back to Flying 81

10 Active Service in Korea 95

11 Entry into the Staff World 103

12 Commands and Courses 111

13 More Staff Jobs 127

14 RAAF Commander in Vietnam 143

15 Washington Days 159

16 In the Deputy’s Chair 171

17 Chief of the Air Staff 189

18 Chief of the Defence Force Staff 207

19 Life in Retirement 225

20 Reflections 239

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1Family Matters

egrettably, like so many who find their thoughts turning to family background in their later years, I realise that I left it far too late to enquire and research. The old rule

that young children should be seen but not heard was very much observed during my young days, and there was also a tendency by my parents to respond to any queries I made about family matters with “Oh, you don’t need to know about that”. To reinforce that point, I remember the time my mother caught me going through one of the trunks she had stored under our house, and made sure I was not eager to repeat my display of inquisitiveness. It is a pity, in a way, because it is only in retrospect that you realise how much you miss by not asking questions that encourage them to tell you the answers. In any event, what follows is a less than complete account of my origins based on what I remember and what I eventually found out. A more precise treatment would probably not be justified, considering that I knew little of it when I was growing up and it cannot therefore be strictly relevant to understanding the course of my life and career. The enquiries I made led me to believe that my paternal grandparents, Patrick McNamara and his wife Anne (nee Foran), both came from or near Limerick in Ireland, but were married in Ipswich, Queensland. I understand that during the early part of their marriage they owned or managed a pub at Wivenhoe, near the old river crossing below Esk, sixty or so kilometres up the Brisbane

R

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The Quiet Man

River Valley, north-west of the city of Brisbane, and that Anne’s mother, Mrs Foran, lived with them until she died and was buried in that vicinity. These days, of course, the area is under the waters of the Wivenhoe Dam. Then, for some years, Patrick and Annie worked a small property not far from Esk, which they probably leased, before moving into Esk where Patrick set up a bootmaking shop in one end of the stables at the rear of the house he purchased in the township. This house was eventually removed or dismantled after the Second World War, and the Shire Council Offices built on the site. The old home occupies a very prominent place in my memories of boyhood days, because it became the home of Aunty Alice (the middle one of my Dad’s five sisters) and her large family of six boys and six girls. Most of my school holidays were spent there. My father Patrick Francis McNamara, known as ‘Frank’ to his friends, was born in 1881, the third son in the family. As a young man in Esk, he had a reputation as a good horseman and was much sought after as an amateur jockey by those landowners of the surrounding districts who could afford to own and race horses in the various country turf meetings. There must have been something in the genes from way back, as Dad’s elder brother Tom was quite successful in Brisbane as a racehorse trainer. My elder brother Gerald (better known to most as ‘Gerry’ throughout his life) was also an excellent horseman, stockman and bushman, and was later well regarded as a competent and intelligent mounted policeman. Notwithstanding his few years of formal education in primary school, Dad obviously had a fair degree of natural ability in the field of shop management. He married my mother, Eileen Julia Frances Kelly, at Esk in 1915 and my brother Gerry was born late in 1916, followed by my sister Maureen (always known as ‘Bobby’) three and

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Family Matters

a half years later. Not long after Bobby’s arrival, my Dad was invited to move to Toogoolawah, about twenty kilometres further north up the valley, to join Thompson & Francis in their very large store there. Subsequently, only the year before I was born, he was offered the position of manager of the newly-formed Esk Co-operative Society store in Toogoolawah. My mother was eleven years younger than Dad, having been born in Roma, Queensland, in December 1892. She was one of seven children of an Irish-born father (also from Limerick) and an English (Lancashire) mother. Grandfather Kelly died at about the time I was born, but Grandma Kelly lived on until the early 1950s so I got to know her fairly well. From my contact with her, and from what has been handed down by family tradition, both parents were strong-minded characters and there is no doubt that trait has been passed on through their children and some of the grandchildren. Suffice to say that my Mum’s four brothers lived up to the popular image of the ‘Kelly Irish’. Sadly, two of the brothers—Gerald Mortimer and Reginald Neville—were killed serving with the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War, at Gaza in Palestine and northern France respectively, but their names were to be carried on by my brother and myself. After I joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and could manage to get home on leave, usually arriving unheralded on the late night train, I would sit with Mum in her kitchen, by the wood-fired stove in winter, and we would have quite long talks at times. From these discussions it was apparent that Mum and her sisters, particularly the younger Alma, enjoyed the social life in Esk, but often had to arrange meetings with boyfriends through the active support of their brothers. When I asked her about Dad, she said that

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The Quiet Man

he was a very eligible bachelor and consequently she had to work very hard to get him! Mum’s father was a bit of a tyrant, I gather, and at that time he was an accountant for the sawmill at Esk. I have an idea that he probably gave approval for my Mum to marry my father on the basis that Dad had to promise not to go off to the First World War. In any event Dad did not enlist, and there were no other Service connections in our family apart from my mother’s brothers who I have mentioned. I do not know if there were other factors behind Dad not joining up, such as medical disqualification. He was such a quiet, gentle person, though, that I have often thought that it might have been against his principles to go to war, even though he did not try to dissuade me when it came my turn to make the same decision. Obviously, the years in Esk and the early years in Toogoolawah were good times and years of promise for my parents. The few photos that exist of those days give the impression of a modest degree of status and financial stability. I was born on 17 April 1923 in the house my parents rented in Drem Street, Toogoolawah. My brother Gerry, seven and a half years my senior, used to say that he remembered my arrival very well, as I apparently demonstrated a good pair of lungs. It was great growing up in a three-pub town like Toogoolawah; it really was a marvellous place for a young boy to live. As the centre for a very big district, the town had a primary school with something like eight teachers. Children travelled quite a distance to get there; some by train, others by pushbike or on horseback. Many of them rode twelve or fourteen miles each way to school, often double-backing on a horse. All of us had a wide cross-section of friends in the school and there was a high level of participation in everything.

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Family Matters

In contrast to some of my later education, my primary schooling was tremendously valuable; one could not put a price on it. I remember one of my teachers, a Miss Thompson, was a born natural. I think she, even at that stage, saw something in me and gave me additional encouragement. When I was in sixth grade, she was teaching us poetry one day when she stopped the class, pulled back the screen that separated us from the seventh grade (which she used to teach as well), and told the seventh graders to “Listen to this”. I had to get up and recite the poem. That was the way she was—so dedicated you could not help but like her. There were other teachers with the same approach. There was Miss Grey, who was determined to get our school into the State choir final, and she did. We did not win, we were runners-up, but that was still pretty good for a small country town. There were things I got from that school that have stood me in good stead all my life. My knowledge of geography, for example. I can still draw (maybe not as well as previously) a map of any continent on the globe, including the main features. I think I owe that to the excellent way the syllabus was taught back then. A love of reading was another thing that I derived from my early school days. As a boy, I liked to read the usual weekly comics—by which I do not mean the comic strips found in daily newspapers today. These appeared as a paper book series, seven full stories in an issue, if I remember correctly. Once a month the publishers would produce what we would now call a paperback, containing a single longer story. Most boys were fans of either the Triumph or the Champion; I was a Triumph man myself, and I used to read those avidly, all the way through, and word for word. Simple as it may sound, that was also something that helped me, I think, to build up a better use of English and a wider vocabulary. Reading is something

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The Quiet Man

that I kept up, not simply as a habit, but because having developed that liking, that strong desire to learn about other times, activities and what great men have done, it became natural to carry it on. I still read a lot. Away from school, Toogoolawah was also a marvellous place to be. You made your own fun and games, went swimming together down in the hole in the creek, that sort of thing. Altogether I believe it was just a tremendous environment in which to grow up. During this period I got to know my father really well. He was a wonderful man, very quiet but strong, both physically and mentally; he believed in his God and he conducted himself, in his business dealings and his relations with others, on the basis of Christian principles as he perceived them. Perhaps some would judge him as unassuming to a fault, for he was very reserved. He was not a conversationalist, though when he did speak we listened with respect; I always felt that he led by example. He was a gentleman of the old school and observed traditional courtesies—especially towards women—to the end of his days. Widely respected to his death, he was, I have been told, honoured with the largest funeral attendance that the district of Esk-Toogoolawah had ever seen. I spent a lot of my time as a young boy with my father, as he would take me with him almost everywhere that he went. There were visits to friends (and a distant relative) living on farms, and for many years he was captain of the local Rifle Club, which entailed travelling to various towns for one-day competitions. He had just a few close friends in the town: George Allen, who worked with Thompson & Francis all his life; Jimmy Henderson, an expatriate Scot who was Toogoolawah’s only saddler and a fellow member of the Rifle Club; and George Launder, the station master, another close friend from the Rifle Club with whom we had many trips by horse and sulky to

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Family Matters

the best fishing spots on the river. Occasionally he would meet with these three after work for a ‘shout’ at one of the town’s pubs. Dad did not speak much, except perhaps to point out something of interest, and I did not feel the need to pester him with questions and the like. It was enough just to be with him. I count myself as fortunate to have those memories, for it helps a little to make up for the later years when we saw so little of each other. He never questioned my wanderings in any way; rather he encouraged me to see as much of the world as possible, and I know he enjoyed the long descriptive letters I sometimes wrote to him. In earlier times, families of predominantly Irish descent seemed to have that interesting ability to so conduct their activities and relationships that the mother/wife appeared to be the focal point of conduct, discipline and training, etc, while the father/husband was still allowed to seem like the head of the family, the bread winner, and the final arbiter when required. Without taking away from the strong influence that Dad had, merely by his presence, I have to say that Mum was most certainly the driving force in the family. Where the general conduct of we children was concerned, our schooling, what we were allowed to do, it was she who decided. Mum was also the disciplinarian when necessary. There was no yelling or screaming—the tone of voice and the look in her eyes, sometimes reinforced by a whippy little switch off the peach tree, was quite sufficient. I remember only one occasion when I looked like being subjected to my father’s discipline. It was while I was attending Toogoolawah Primary School. The usual thing after we finished at half past three in the afternoon was for me to walk home, from one corner of town to the other where we lived. On this particular day, for some reason, two of my friends and I decided to go via Mr Coleman’s farm, and

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The Quiet Man

have a look at the big old stallion there and the rest of the things that were so fascinating for kids. That farm was right on the edge of town, next to the Nestlé’s Factory that was there at one time. We wasted a lot of time doing this, and when I got home it was pretty late. I got a hot reception from Mum, but for quite a while I really was not too sure what it was all about. She really got into me, including the little switch off the peach tree, and she said, “You’d better wait until your father comes home.” Well, that really shook me, because Dad never disciplined us; just the thought that he might was enough to stir us up. When he did get in that night, he questioned me very closely—not in an angry fashion, but I could see he was quite upset. It turned out that, coincidentally, some trucks down at the railway yard had been broken into, and goods taken out of cases to see what was in them. While Dad was interrogating me, the phone went and he came back and said something to Mum to the effect that everything was all right, because the police had found out who was responsible for the break-in. Of course, I realised then that my parents were wondering if I had been making up the story about going through Coleman’s to cover up that we had been down at the rail-yards. The thing that threw me the most was that I do not know what he might have done. If he had administered a hiding to me, I was pretty sure it would have been a beauty; but the fact is I still do not know if he would have done it. Because we were so close, the very idea of him suddenly becoming not just my interrogator but possibly the disciplinarian—well, that really scared me. When I reflect on the many ways in which Mum strove to make ends meet, and to ensure that we had what she felt we needed, it becomes belatedly obvious that there was very little she would not

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Family Matters

do for us. I recall relating some of this to Jim Killen, when he was Minister for Defence, and his comment that “The world does not understand little Irish mothers” just about sums it up. My parents had their problems, especially after the onset of the Depression brought about a marked change in the family’s fortunes. The Board of Directors that ran the cooperative store in Toogoolawah saw fit to bring in a so-called ‘efficiency expert’ from Brisbane to take over the management of the place. I imagine the chap was merely looking for a position to tide him over during the Depression, but the board was persuaded to take him on and my father was relegated to shop assistant working only two or three days per week. It was rather unfair, I thought, but typical of the circumstances in which many people found themselves during that period. I was, I think, seven or eight years of age, but I can remember very clearly the move from our comfortable house in the prime position of Drem Street down to a lesser quality house in Abbotsford Street. It coincided with a period of heavy continuous rain and I can now understand, after the later experience of our own numerous house moves, something of the stress of circumstances that Mum and Dad must have experienced. And it did not end there, for another move was necessary a few years later on, to an even lesser quality house in the upper end of Fulham Street. As things improved, a third move was undertaken to a better house in Fulham Street on my mother’s initiative. About the mid-1930s the ‘efficiency expert’ returned to Brisbane and Dad was reinstated as manager of the cooperative store. A butcher shop was established in the same grounds as the store but, while the butchery seemed to do reasonably well, the total cooperative establishment did not fully recover. Being the sort of man he was, Dad accepted many of the tasks that should have been

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The Quiet Man

the responsibility of others. For example, in those days each butcher shop had its own killing yards out in the country, and Dad would often assist in that area. Similarly, on many weekends he would take on the task of starting the refrigeration plant at the butcher’s shop. This entailed starting up the engine and then casting the drive belt first onto the compressor and then onto the drive off the engine. The belt was perhaps ten foot long and about six inches wide, and very heavy, so the casting was no easy task to perform. Indeed, if the operator mishandled it, he could be thrown right across the room—and this did, in fact, happen to Dad on one occasion. These are just two examples of the many ways in which he helped to keep that store going right through the Second World War years, but eventually it closed down. The building was left unoccupied for a couple of years before it burned down in June 1955; I understand that the butcher shop next door is still operating today. In the meantime Eric Gorrie, who worked for many years with Dad, had opened a small shop and he kept Dad employed as shop assistant for the remaining years of Dad’s life.

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2Boarders and Boarding

lthough the family’s circumstances began to improve by the mid-1930s, I think that Mum could see that something had to be done if we children were to have

a good education beyond primary school. I believe it was for this reason that she took the initiative and went for a place of better quality, so that she could take in boarders. There is no doubt that doing this tided us over the hard times. We had a maximum of three boarders at any one time, and I distinctly remember the people that we had in the house in my early years. They were all very fine types, bank clerks and school teachers mainly, and I grew to like them and had a great respect for them. I should explain that the ‘better quality’ house was only marginally so by comparison with what we had lived in previously, but at least as children we were happy, comfortable and well fed. The boarders took priority with the bedrooms, except that Mum kept her own bedroom. Each bedroom was provided with a dressing table, wardrobe, washstand, a large china water jug and basin, but the only shower (cold) was downstairs in the closed-in area under the main rainwater tank. With the exception of Mum, all the family slept on the large side veranda and used a small room at the rear end of the veranda as a washroom/bathroom. Being entirely dependent upon rainwater collected in two tanks, baths were a once-a-week occurrence on Saturday. It was my duty to clean and polish the copper boiler downstairs, fill it with water,

A

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The Quiet Man

get the fire going, keep up the level of boiling water all Saturday afternoon, and carry the buckets of hot water upstairs as required. Mum would be the last at night, and in winter she would sometimes bring up the big washtub and bathe in comparative luxury in front of the wood-fired stove in the kitchen, after the boarders had gone to bed. Wash day was bad enough, since it involved a wood-fired copper boiler in the open; a bench under the house with the standard three tubs in decreasing size (wash, rinse and blueing); and clothes lines with wooden props that occasionally broke from the wind and weight, allowing part of the washing to drag on the ground and necessitating a re-wash. But ironing, particularly in summer, must have been a test of endurance; sixteen shirts and whatever else was about the norm, and the iron was a petrol-fired device that was a heavy, roaring mini-furnace in itself—and that on a midsummer’s day in southern Queensland! When the electric iron came on the scene it must have been a huge blessing to women like Mum. While I took much of this for granted in those days, now with the time and inclination to reflect I just marvel at what Mum and so many of the mothers of those days achieved and, of course, what it cost them in terms of deteriorating health. Probably as a result of the family’s financial situation, my brother Gerry chose for himself not to go to secondary school. He did start off at the Ipswich Technical College, but after a year decided it was not for him and sought work on a cattle station in the bush about two hours away on horseback. I remember that he would ride home to spend the weekend with us before saddling up again for a Monday morning return to the property, and it might be a few weeks or a month at a time before we would see him again. I have always suspected that he was wise beyond his years and, in fact, left school

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Boarders and Boarding

because he was well aware of the difficulties that Mum and Dad were facing. I doubt that my sister Bobby really had the opportunity either. It may sound a bit harsh, and in these modern times would be labelled as discrimination against women, but I doubt that she was included in the plan of things—a not uncommon attitude in those times, and especially for people with financial problems. Whether she desired secondary education or not, I do not know. She stayed on at Toogoolawah, working behind shop counters in the town there. Mum was determined that at least one of her three children was going to have a secondary education, and that is why I was packed off to the Christian Brothers’ College in Warwick, where I boarded for a year. There was, however, another purpose in this. From about the age of ten, or thereabouts, I suffered from fairly frequent bronchial problems, and I understand doctors had said that if I was to have any chance of overcoming the condition then I needed to go to a drier climate. One of our boarders who Mum had taken in at that time came from a farm community called Swan Creek, up near Warwick on the Darling Downs west of Brisbane, and he had a brother boarding in Warwick. I gather it was his suggestion that I stay at the same boarding house as his brother and attend the Christian Brothers’ College, on the understanding that his family would keep a watchful eye on me on their farm at Swan Creek at weekends. This sounded terrific, and from that medical point of view it was just what the doctor ordered. It must have worked because I have had no problem with bronchitis since that time. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Warwick, particularly going out to the farm at weekends. The family at Swan Creek had another son at home who suffered from cerebral palsy. Freddy was a few years younger than me, but we had huge fun together, usually with

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The Quiet Man

me carting him around from place to place on my back. I was really saddened, about eight years after this, to get a letter from his mother telling me that he had died. Even while Warwick was a good experience, I could not say that I was the best student. Nor did I really, then, have any clear view of what I should be doing to map out my future, and no true motivation to settle down and study. It was as a result of my mother’s ambitions that, after the year in Warwick, I was moved to another Christian Brothers establishment, St. Joseph’s Nudgee College, at Boondall, which is about twelve kilometres north-east of the city of Brisbane overlooking the Brisbane River at Virginia. I had cousins who had been to Nudgee, so it loomed big in my mother’s plan of things for the family. The original building at Nudgee College, dating from 1891, has long been acclaimed as one of the great architectural attractions of Brisbane. It has been aptly described as a building of rare beauty and, together with the chapel completed in 1916, as a classic piece of Italian Renaissance style. I doubt that anybody would dispute those claims. Certainly, for me, the chapel will always be remembered as one of the most attractive and appealing places of worship that I have ever encountered. I boarded at Nudgee for a year and a half. I was very much in the mediocre category both in the classroom and on the playing fields, which is why I regard myself today as among the least of the College’s sons. Let me make the point, straight forward and honestly, that I do not think the Christian Brothers’ style of teaching was very good for me. I found it too much straight down the line—bang, bang, bang, this is the way it is. The strap was always at the ready, especially if you did not finish your homework. Sometimes I did not finish my homework, because I just went to sleep, so I copped my share of

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Boarders and Boarding

the strap. It did not do us any harm, psychologically, and I don’t believe that it was traumatic in the way a lot of people have tried to represent that form of discipline in recent years. But at the same time it was not a good teaching method. A particular episode remains in my memory. One day we had a debate sprung on us. We were divided up into teams for a session to be held on Saturday night, and told the subject. Naturally, being an ignorant country boy, I said I knew nothing about the subject and asked where I could find some information. I was packed off to the library, and told I would find some books on it there. But there was practically nothing in the way of reference material in the library, and the whole event was a disaster from my point of view. There had been no effort to teach us anything about the debating situation, no help in developing ideas and how to present these as arguments, no explanation even of what was meant to be achieved in a debating session. That was really why I got through the Junior examination (or Intermediate as they call it now) at the end of my first year with one A, three Bs and four Cs. I had been successful in passing, but on those grades I was not really going to get any job offers. That is why I went back for a second try. I think the Head Brother there talked my mother into getting me to go back to achieve a higher pass, with the idea that my prospects for employment might improve. Again, I enjoyed the experience of Nudgee, and I guess that it was beneficial in many respects. But thinking back over it, I have to say that I did not make the best of what was a potentially wonderful opportunity. Again, too, I think that I had not reached the stage where I was prepared to project my thoughts forward, and really focus on what I should be doing with my life.

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The Quiet Man

About halfway through that second year at Nudgee, my mother came along to see the principal and spoke to him about the direction she felt I should take. She explained that, regrettably, she could not afford to keep me at the College any longer; health factors, with diabetes the main culprit, were beginning to catch up with her, there were no more boarders and my parents were once again dependent on Dad’s pay. The time had come for me to earn a living, so she wanted me to sit the entrance examination for the Queensland Public Service with the aim of securing a junior clerk’s position that existed in the Ipswich Railway Workshop. Of course, I did what she wanted. I sat the exam, was successful, and got the job. Life in Ipswich was pretty good. I lived, with three other young fellows, in a boarding house run by Mrs Murphy (of course) right next door to the Catholic complex. I use the term ‘complex’ deliberately because, in typical style for those days, the Bishops had been fairly wise in buying or acquiring large blocks of land. This one contained not only the church, but the convent, all the playing fields, and the Christian Brothers’ College, so it was quite a complex. Of course, we used the sporting facilities there on a regular basis. I became a member of the Catholic Young Men’s Society, which was primarily a sporting organisation, and consequently, on weekends, from early Saturday morning until late on Sunday afternoon, we indulged ourselves in sport to the full. It was either football or cricket, according to season, and tennis throughout the whole of the year. I mention this because I think that being active to such an extent has stood me in good stead for the whole my life. During the week, one was out practicing at either football or cricket. It was such an active life that I was very fit physically, and I think that is almost a necessity for a young man.

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Boarders and Boarding

On the other hand, I had mixed feelings about my job at the Railway Workshop. I was never really inspired by office work, and I was not terribly happy in my junior clerk’s position. I found it boring and repetitive, and I did not like the idea of constantly watching the Gazette and applying for higher positions—it just did not appeal to me. My basic desire was to be doing something active outside an office. As a consequence the chief clerk found it necessary, justifiably so, to keep chasing me to complete courses on shorthand and typing, etc. My heart really was not in it, and I chafed at the bit while hoping to get into something else. The trouble was that I still had no idea of what I really wanted to do. While I was at boarding school at Nudgee, my mother used to worry that I might be tempted to join the priesthood. It was probably a carry-over from the Irish tradition, but every time I went home on leave or holidays she used to tell me, “Don’t let them talk you into being a priest now.” I imagine she was also expressing a mother’s point of view in that she did not like the thought of me being slotted away in a priestly order somewhere, and not enjoying the opportunity to marry and have a family; I suppose she had an interest in having grandchildren as well. She need not have worried, really. Although religion was a very big influence on me in the sense of moral issues—pursuing tolerance, patience, understanding, resisting the urge to get angry with people, developing an intense dislike for hatred—my interests were not in that direction at all. There was only one thing that had grabbed my attention, and that was flying. Ever since I was old enough to think about it, I had a fascination with aircraft—in particular Service aircraft—and that is no exaggeration. Apart from the odd American magazine, there were two main publications that dealt with aircraft in those times; I think they were

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The Quiet Man

Aeroplane and Flight, both English productions. If ever I could get my hands on either of those, I would soak up the contents, front to back. One of my cousins at Esk was Edmond Heap, who was much older than me and used to receive these magazines regularly. Whenever I went down there on holidays, I would get into his pile of reading material as much as he would let me, and satisfy my obsession about flying and aircraft generally. The games my friends and I played involved, more often than not, building model aircraft and using them in make-believe scenarios that we invented. Although there were lots of dreams of being a pilot, and it would have been the only firm desire in my mind as far as a future occupation was concerned, it had never occurred to me as a young man to put some money into realising that goal and to actually try flying. I suppose I was somewhat lazy in the sense of not going out and seeking what I really wanted; I have often thought about that later on. But I was also happy with the external environment—the sporting field, as I mentioned—and the part that played in my life in Ipswich. I think I had also tended to write off the possibility of making it as a pilot, because at that time one had to have Senior level education (Senior level as it was in Queensland then) in order to qualify for entry into the Royal Australian Air Force. Since my mother had made it clear that she could not support me through secondary school, I had pretty well accepted that was enough of that line of thought for now. But it was not all that long after I left school that the opportunity arose to apply for the Air Force after all. Now, nobody wants a war, but I would have to say in a very selfish sense that the occurrence of the Second World War in 1939 did me a favour. Because of the war, the entrance standard that had applied to the peacetime permanent

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Boarders and Boarding

Air Force was lowered, so my Junior level, to which I had qualified before going to work, became sufficient for entry into the Empire Air Training Scheme. I guess I had an interest in joining the Air Force on two counts. One was my fervent desire to fly, but there was, I suppose, a semi-patriotic motivation as well. We are talking about the end of 1940 or early 1941, by which time I was approaching eighteen. Even so, I still consulted my brother, who by then was in the Queensland Police Force in Brisbane and always prepared to provide sound advice if I needed it. He suggested that I should wait a little bit, because my mother was not well at the time and was about to go into hospital. So I duly waited till she came out and was fit again, and then applied for the Air Force. When I told my parents that I wanted to join as soon as I reached the age of eighteen, they took it pretty well—my father better than my mother. When I approached him about joining he was very understanding of my desire, and just expressed the view that if that was what I wanted to pursue then I had his blessing. My mother was not quite so enthusiastic, on account of the two brothers she had lost in the previous war. I really did not appreciate the trauma that she must have gone through when I said that I wanted to join up, or her reluctance to sign the papers allowing me to do so. I only came to understand that in retrospect. Joining the RAAF did me another favour. Although I did not think that I might have a permanent career in flying after the war, I felt pretty sure that I would not be going back to my old job of junior clerk in the Ipswich Railway Workshop either. When I came back, I would have to be on the lookout for something else apart from the Public Service.

~ 20 ~

The Quiet Man

~ 21 ~

3I Join the Air Force

aving been accepted for the RAAF, on 12 October 1941 I went into No. 3 Initial Training School (ITS) at Sandgate, only about five kilometres up the road

from where I had spent my time at Nudgee College. It was a good life at ITS, an active life and physically enjoyable. I was doing what I wanted to do, embarking on the life that I preferred, and enjoying the company of the fellows there. I really had no trouble adjusting to it at all. Perhaps my time in boarding school and the boarding house at Ipswich had prepared me to some extent for that. I certainly recall that I had absorbed enough of my cousin’s aircraft magazines to ensure that I had no problem with the aircraft recognition part of the course. There is one lasting impression that I have of that time. I suppose like every other fellow who joins aircrew, my thoughts were primarily on being a pilot. It was not until late in the three month course at Sandgate that it dawned on me that I might, in fact, be selected for one of the other categories, either navigator or wireless/air-gunner. I well remember all the talk that floated about among us trainees before the final selections were made. There was a lot of sage advice going around as to how you should present yourself to the interview board, and what sort of answers might get you selected as a pilot. One piece of wisdom was “Don’t do too well in the exam”, because if you got close to one hundred per cent you would automatically be selected as a navigator.

H

~ 22 ~

The Quiet Man

Other advice warned that we could normally expect to be asked if we rode horses, and did we sail. The good word was that you always said yes. One can understand the reasons for those questions, I suppose, and the idea of creating the impression that you had a good sense of balance, that you were not prone to seasickness or troubled by motion. Maybe one would have to doubt the expertise and intelligence of the people on the interview board if they were persuaded as simply as that, but we all took the advice of the seers and gave those good answers anyway. Whether they had any bearing on whether a man was selected as a pilot, I am not too sure, but I was one of the fortunate ones who was categorised as pilot. In February 1942, some thirty or forty of us trainees from Sandgate were sent to Lowood, which was actually not far from my home town in the Brisbane River Valley, to start flying training at No. 12 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS). I have no idea why, but I was put in charge of the group going up there, although it was not a very arduous job. The flying school was not a big place and had only recently started—I have an idea we were only the second intake, the first one having started not long before we came along—so things were pretty primitive. There were no sealed strips or things of that nature, it was just a grass field with tin huts for accommodation, messing, and the like. My first flight in one of the school’s open-cockpit Tiger Moths was a thrill, no doubt about it. The only qualm I had was an apprehension as to whether I was really going to cope with something so entirely new—after all, I had not flown before. I felt reasonably confident, but the question mark was always there. It turned out that I took to flying reasonably easily. I cannot recall ever having a problem with any of the sequences, and that applies right through the elementary and the service flying phase. I cannot

~ 23 ~

I Join the Air Force

say that I developed any particular affection for the Tiger Moth as an aircraft, not at that stage anyway. I did later on, when I found myself instructing on them at Narrandera, but not so much in the elementary training phase. One would have to bear in mind that the Tiger Moth was the only type that was flown at that time, so there was no chance to compare, nor had a person developed that degree of airmanship which would help make some judgement of that kind. At Lowood I was fortunate, I believe, in having as my instructor a chap named Lionel Brain, who was the brother of Lester Brain of early Qantas days. One simply could not have wished for a finer instructor to put one through elementary flying training, because he had such expertise in light aircraft by virtue of having been a bush pilot in North Queensland and the Northern Territory before the war. He was such a calm and patient man, and I never saw him angry or remonstrate in front of people. Lionel obviously picked me for his pupil because he was the officer in command for our flight of about forty trainees. He presumably got first choice, and I imagine picked me for no other reason than I had been designated as the group leader for our course. He would not have known anything about me otherwise; I doubt the ITS had sent any records ahead. He told me from the outset what it was that he would be doing with me. He said he would teach me all he could in the time available and, to the extent that I wanted to go, I would be learning aerobatics too before I left there. I realise that in doing this he went much further with his pupils than an instructor in the elementary phase would normally be required to do. While some instructors might show their pupils slow rolls and loops and things, they did not teach them. But Lionel went out of his way to demonstrate the

~ 24 ~

The Quiet Man

full capabilities of the aircraft, beyond what was expected within the syllabus. We might be completing a particular sequence over some bush country at the back of Lowood and he would say, “What would you do now if you lost an engine?” I would look down and think, well, all I could do is try and land it as slowly as possible in the middle of the trees. And he would say, “No, no, no. You see that little clearing down there? I’ll show you.” Now little clearing was correct—you had trouble finding it—but he would sideslip that aircraft down, literally into the clearing and out again. And he said, “Now certainly, you are going to hit the trees at the other end, but you’ll hit them much more slowly than you would if you went straight into them”. There were lots of little episodes like that. Unfortunately we did not complete the elementary flying phase at Lowood, because on 11 March the school was hit by a severe cyclonic storm that was really catastrophic. A lot of the aircraft were damaged, and before we could resume training there was a big clean-up required—not that we pupils got very involved in that. I do not know where the people came from but they certainly descended on the place, and replacement aircraft were also flown in so that we could get on with the course. Soon after that, Lowood was handed over to the Americans as a sort of satellite field for some of their air units arriving in Australia. Our course had not yet finished, but we were required to move. In fact, even before we left I recall that there were P-39 Airacobras operating from Amberley that used to come into Lowood and land, leading to some very spectacular or horrendous accidents. Anyway, the Americans gradually took over and we were moved out to Narrandera (some went to Temora) in New South Wales for our final month. Our instructors did not go with us, and I lost track of Lionel

~ 25 ~

I Join the Air Force

Brain from that point. However, I enjoyed my time at Narrandera. It was a great place to be and I had no trouble in completing the phase. Like most pilots, or budding pilots, I was keen to go on training for single-engine aircraft and consequently fighters, but that was not to be. I was rather disappointed when I found I was undertaking the next training phase at the Service Flying Training School (SFTS) at Point Cook outside Melbourne, because that meant learning on twin-engine Oxfords. Of course, we had no influence over where we were sent, none at all. At the time we were leaving the EFTS we were asked what our preference was, and in those days we were given a sealed envelope—sealed in the sense that it was stuck down—containing our final papers, and recommendations, which we were supposed to carry to the SFTS and hand in there. Most of us immediately went round the corner and steamed the envelope open to see what the recommendations were. Like lots of others, mine was for fighters. But I suppose the personnel people in Air Force Headquarters had such a monstrous task trying to cope with expansion of the Services that not too much notice was taken of what our particular preferences were. So, I went to Point Cook in early May and began the SFTS phase on the Airspeed Oxford. Again, I think I was fortunate there, because the other twin-engine type that some people trained on was the Avro Anson. I flew the Anson later on, and there is no doubt that the Oxford was the better training machine in the sense that it had just a few vices, whereas the Anson was a very gentle, docile aircraft by comparison. And while I felt I had received very good training overall, I have to admit that during my final wings assessment flight I experienced some strange attitudes on the part of instructors. Later on, when I was myself instructing, I saw students often suffered

~ 26 ~

The Quiet Man

because people in the instructional world were not suited for their role, but understandably that was part of trying to man a rapidly expanding air force in a time of war. In October I graduated and was presented with my wings. In common with the majority of my course, I graduated as a sergeant pilot; only four, I think, were commissioned off our group. None of my family could afford to get down to Point Cook for the occasion, but it was probably a good thing anyhow. I felt really ill at the time, and as soon as the parade was finished I reported to the medical section. It turned out I had measles and was put straight into hospital, where I spent the first week of my leave. It is perhaps a point of interest to describe what happened at the end of that course at Point Cook. Right at the point of graduation, I was subjected to an interview in which I was marched in and seated on a chair in the middle of a room. The Chief Flying Instructor (CFI) sat at a table at the top and all his instructors were gathered around him and around the sides of the room. And there I sat in solitary splendour right in the middle, subjected to questions. Perhaps it had some serious intent, but it struck me as something akin to the Spanish Inquisition and more in the way of providing light entertainment for the CFI and instructors. For many years I imagined that all trainees received this treatment, but subsequent inquiries I made among members of my course revealed that I was, in fact, the only one. The questions asked were simple enough, like “What aircraft do you wish to fly?” Whether it was my Irish background or not, I do not know, but when they asked me that, I said Bostons. Of course, that brought chuckles from all of the instructors, and there were comments like, “So do we”. Then I was asked what theatre I wanted to serve in, and I said I would like to serve in the South-West Pacific

~ 27 ~

I Join the Air Force

Area (SWPA). That brought a silence, and I was asked why I did not want to go to Europe. I replied that it was not that I did not want to go to Europe, because I would be very happy to go there and I would certainly go if I was posted, but since I was asked to state my preference then it was for the SWPA. I knew that the expectation on the part of most of the men on our course was that they would go to England. After all, it was well known throughout the community that the Empire Air Training Scheme was primarily for the purpose of building up aircrews for the European scene. When questioned further, though, I said that I felt that there should be some more people staying behind and taking part in the war in the SWPA, on the basis that there was a positive threat to Australia. That might sound a bit much for a young man of that age, but it was honestly my feeling. I certainly did not have any conscious thoughts of objecting to participation in the European theatre. The only other factor in my thinking was that I did not fancy the idea of operating in a cold climate—I was never one who liked the cold—so it appealed to me more to operate in the warmth of northern Australia or the Pacific. Anyway, the matter was passed over at that point, but the incident left a lasting impression in my mind as to the odd way in which things were done at that time. The upshot was that I stayed at Point Cook for one more month and did what they called the Beam Course. All the rest of the chaps—the whole course with the exception of two of us—went off to England. We two were posted up to North Queensland, to a place called No. 1 Reserve Personnel Pool (RPP) outside of Townsville, and that was a less than enjoyable experience. Our camp was set up in the scrub and was all under canvas. In fact, we were given a tent and had to rig it ourselves. It was a case of find what you could.

~ 28 ~

The Quiet Man

The only other thing we were issued was a palliasse, which we filled from a big room full of straw down at barracks. In our tent we went out and cut saplings, which we joined together to make bed frames that we threaded the palliasses over, so at least we were up off the ground. I forget how many of us were at 1RPP but there must have been hundreds. Not just aircrew, of course, in fact there were relatively few aircrew really. We were mustered each morning, divided up into groups, and sent off to the dock, the rail-yards or the post office, or wherever they required additional hands to perform certain work. It was a frustrating time, but fortunately it did not last long; after about a month I was posted to No. 9 Mobile Fighter Sector, the control and reporting unit at Cairns. This was rather an odd experience in the sense that it was a small unit at that time working with No. 75 Squadron, which was reforming at Cairns prior to going back to New Guinea. The Commanding Officer of the control and reporting unit really did not know what to do with a sergeant pilot. At first I was put on, with another couple of chaps, as watch-keeper on the radio communications side. They were a wonderful bunch of guys—very, very helpful. Knowing that my speed on wireless transmission was not up to the sort of standard required, they trained me to recognise all the call signs, so that when my turn came to keep watch I would listen to the call signs and if ours came up I would wake one of them and they would take the message, so we got through all right. Then the CO put me on intercept control, and that was much more suited to my qualifications and I found it quite interesting. While this was going on, I was pestering the CO for a posting to something more in line with what I was trained for. He was a very patient and understanding man, a marvellous type really. He

~ 29 ~

I Join the Air Force

had been in the Middle East, where he was shot down and injured, then graded medically unfit for flying. So he understood my case perfectly, and I think it was through his efforts that in January 1943 I was posted to an American B-25 squadron.

~ 30 ~

The Quiet Man

~ 31 ~

4Serving with the Americans

he unit I was sent to was the 13th Squadron of the 3rd Bombardment Group, United States Army Air Corps, based at Charters Towers, one hundred

kilometres inland from Townsville. Initially, the thought of serving with the Americans was quite exciting. The four squadrons of the 3rd Attack Group had been sending detachments to bases at Port Moresby from Australia, to hit back at the Japanese in New Guinea, and the group as a whole had come to be regarded as the premier strike formation in the South-West Pacific Area. The B-25D Mitchell operated by the 13th Squadron was a type that had already achieved quite a reputation as a very effective aircraft, with fairly high performance in comparison to most others that were in service with the RAAF at that stage of the game. There was every reason to see my posting as a very positive move. When I and four other non-commissioned aircrew arrived out at Charters Towers by rail, we discovered that our new unit was in the process of actually moving to Moresby. There was no question of doing any flying. The aircraft and crews had already left, along with the advance party of ground staff. The Commanding Officer of the squadron, Major Harold Maull, was there to supervise the pack-up, along with about half a dozen other aircrew who were all officers. This in itself presented something of a problem, because the major was not too sure how to deal with Australian sergeant pilots.

T

~ 32 ~

The Quiet Man

What had happened was that the Americans, at that stage of the Pacific War, had not got their training system fully into gear. The result was that they had sufficient pilots to captain each aircraft in a squadron but they were short of copilots, so the RAAF had been asked to provide pilots to make up the numbers. That practice had been going on for at least six months, and there were, as far as I can remember, perhaps two or three RAAF officers already with the squadron when we joined it—some of whom I think we were meant to replace. Maull was not quite sure, though, how to handle the situation of non-commissioned aircrew, as all the American pilots held officer rank, but he made the sensible decision that as aircrew we should eat and be accommodated with the officers, so that worked out reasonably well. Only a matter of weeks later we found ourselves, with the bulk of the 13th Squadron’s personnel and equipment, put on board a liberty ship, the USS George Matthews, at Townsville on 24 January 1943. For our journey we were escorted by two RAN vessels, the sloop Swan and corvette Colac. It is less than 1100 kilometres between Townsville and Moresby, but because of diversionary routing to minimise the risk of the ship being attacked, it was a four-day voyage. There was another American unit embarked in the George Matthews, the 90th Squadron, and it occupied the forward half of the ship, while the 13th was accommodated aft. With so many on board, we were packed in like sardines below deck. It was pretty unhealthy down there. Because it was so unbearable in the hold, most people spent as much time as they possibly could up on deck. The ship’s rules placed severe restrictions on going up at night, but if you could get away with it you did. Two meals a day were served, the main one consisting of baked beans, hard biscuits and apple jelly

~ 33 ~

Serving with the Americans

jam. This diet had dire consequences for me, and bound me up so badly that it was ten days after I boarded the ship before I eventually managed to move my bowels. All in all, the voyage was not the most pleasant experience. On our arrival at Moresby, we were trucked out to the squadron’s new base at Fourteen Mile. This was literally cut out of the jungle fourteen miles from Moresby and close to the Laloki River, which flowed past the southern end of the airstrip. The operations area, dispersal area and operations hut of our unit were all on the eastern side of the single steel-matting strip, while the accommodation quarters occupied an area of small hills on the opposite side. There was a squadron of P-38 Lightning fighters based at the far end of our airstrip, in similar circumstances to our own. Most of the tented camp was in a little valley, which was a terrible choice because it was stinking hot; if there was any breeze blowing, you did not get the benefit of it stuck down there. I was partnered up with Septimus (‘Sep’) Gibson, and when we were issued a two-man tent we erected it on top of the ridge. That was also a stupid thing to do, in a sense, since we had to cart our water and everything else up there and it meant a bit of a hike down to get our meals, but it was a lot cooler. With proper mosquito netting, we were actually quite comfortable. The routine that we settled into at Fourteen Mile over the next three months was both pretty disappointing and frustrating. Apart from the fact that my particular squadron—and I emphasise that particular squadron—had difficulty in getting to grips with non-commissioned pilots among its aircrew in the first place, I have to say that in my humble opinion it was not a well-organised unit. They really had not thought about how to handle an intake of inexperienced copilots. There was no set training course, no program of training

~ 34 ~

The Quiet Man

to acquaint newcomers with the aircraft and convert them onto what was (for us Australians) an unfamiliar type. As copilots, we should have been brought up to first pilot proficiency so that if our skipper copped it in action then we were in a fit state of capability to handle the aircraft. There was nothing of that, at all. It was more or less suggested that we should read the pilot’s handling notes and told that our captain would guide us from there on. There was no encouragement to really become familiar with the aircraft or gain some skill on them. There was another discouraging aspect to matters that emerged, too. By now the US Army Air Corps training system had caught up a bit and there were more of their own copilots starting to come along. Fairly soon some of the captains found they had two copilots allocated to their aircraft, an American as well as an Australian. My captain, Lieutenant Ray Tabb, was one of those. Understandably, any time we were scheduled for an operational mission, he took his American copilot along; obviously he wanted to develop his American copilot rather than his Australian one. The result was that the Australians in the unit really did not get enough flying to develop any real feel for the conditions in New Guinea. In the two and a half months or so that I was there, I only flew a total of about twelve hours. None of that amounted to much, and I notice from my log book that I did flights with Major Maull, Lieutenant Small and Captain McWhirt, as well as with Tabb. Occasionally when the squadron got airborne for training, I would go along, and perhaps at some point Tabb might want to go back to talk to the navigator, or something like that, so he would tell me to take over the controls until he returned. But as I have said, there was never an ounce of instruction, and I remember one occasion when we came into the circuit Tabb told me to land the

~ 35 ~

Serving with the Americans

aircraft. By the time I got round on base he could see that I was in big trouble, so he took over. That was the end for me; I never got any more time actually flying our machine. Without wishing to labour the point, I would emphasise again that the problem was with that particular squadron. I learnt a lot about this aspect from historian Lex McAulay, when he was doing his research on the Bismarck Sea battle. He had interviewed a range of our people who served with American squadrons, particularly in that 3rd Bomb Group, and it became evident that those in other squadrons—the 90th for example—were exposed to a very positive training program; they did gain proficiency on the aircraft, and they participated in operations. When the Battle of the Bismarck Sea occurred on 3 March 1943, our unit had a part to play in it. All of the Australian copilots in 13th Squadron were champing at the bit, eager to get into it, but few saw any action in that fight. We spent our time just waiting around the operations hut until our aircraft started coming back, then crowded around trying to get some news on what was going on. So I think I was just unlucky being in the squadron I was with. I should say that Tabb, who lost his life a little later on, was a very fine fellow, and I had a great respect for him. The problem I experienced was no fault of his. For what it is worth, I understand that Major Maull was withdrawn and sent home not long afterwards. The whole matter was resolved the following month, anyhow, as a result of one of the last of the big Japanese air raids on Port Moresby. I recall that on this day, about mid-morning of 12 April, most of the pilots were standing about near the operations hut, which was at the entrance of our squadron dispersal area. The dispersal bays were small clearings just large enough for each aircraft, and these surrounded a bigger clearing which made space for taxiing in and

~ 36 ~

The Quiet Man

out. We were talking and waiting to see if anything might happen; the air raid alarm had sounded, but quite often it was a false alarm. This time, though, things seemed to be different. The P-38s from the squadron at the other end of our strip were scrambled, and we could see fighters from other airstrips climbing away. Then we saw the Japanese bombers—about thirty silver specks in a rough V-shaped formation, high against a brilliant background of blue sky, and coming straight towards us from the north. We were fascinated and continued watching as they approached to almost directly overhead, until someone remarked that if we happened to be the target the bombs must be about due to arrive. This really threw us into action and there was a mass scramble for slit trenches. When life is threatened, it is amazing how many men can fit into one slit trench! Our move was none too soon, because our dispersal area was indeed the target and bombs crashed all around us. It was scary while it lasted but that part was over in seconds; the next sound we heard was that of burning aircraft. The bombing had been very accurate, and since the Japanese had used fuse extension rods (daisy-cutters) on the bombs, the blast and shrapnel effect on the parked and fully armed aircraft was devastating. Most of our B-25s were either blown to pieces or left as flaming hulks. Some time after the enemy bombers had departed, the fuel tanks exploded on one of the aircraft about fifty yards from where Sep Gibson, Scotty Melville and myself had taken shelter. We were fortunate that no slit trench suffered a direct hit, but regrettably one person was still upright when the bombs burst and the fragments cut him to pieces. It was a sad day for the squadron, which had been effectively wiped out and would have to wait for re-equipment. This brought matters to a head in the sense that, while taking stock of their

~ 37 ~

Serving with the Americans

situation, the Americans realised that they really did not require the RAAF pilots any more, so at the end of April we were sent back to Australia. Added to the disappointment of leaving an operational area without having had a chance to really do much was the feeling of not knowing what lay ahead for me from that point on.

~ 38 ~

(right) The author (left) with fellow boarders Bernie and Dave, at Mrs Murphy’s house in Ipswich.

(below) After the Wings Parade for No. 22 Course (Empire Air Training Scheme) at Point Cook, October 1942; author is fourth from right in the front row.

~ 39 ~

The B-25 of 13 Squadron (tail no. 714, nicknamed ‘Fair Dinkum’) in which the author flew, pictured at Fourteen Mile airstrip at Laloki on 30 March 1943.

The same aircraft after the Japanese bombing raid on 12 April.

The small slit trench in which the author (and about five others!) sheltered during the raid.

~ 40 ~

The author as a Sergeant Instructor at 8 EFTS, Narrandera, NSW, 1943-44.

Members of 75 Squadron at Tarakan at the end of World War II; the author is third from the left, on the Kittyhawk wing. Squatting in the front row are the CO, Squadron Leader Al Thomson (second from left) and the wing leader, Wing Commander ‘Congo’ Kinninmont (third from left).

~ 41 ~

A formation of 77 Squadron Mustangs which the author was leading, photographed at Labuan from an American Liberator on 16 November 1945.

Bofu, Japan, 1947: author (seated on Mustang wing) with fellow members of 82 Squadron, (from left) Flying Officer Ken Blight and Flight Lieutenants Morris (‘Tiger’) Payne and Doug Hurst. (AWM neg. P02032.003)

~ 42 ~

The Quiet Man

~ 43 ~

5Instructor on Tiger Moths

hen I arrived home from New Guinea, I initially went back to the Reserve Personnel Pool at Townsville for a couple of weeks. Then, in mid-May 1943, I was sent to

No. 3 Wireless Air Gunners School at Maryborough, in Queensland, to act as a staff pilot on the school’s Wacketts for about a month. Next, it was off to Central Flying School at Tamworth, New South Wales, to do the Instructors Course. I guess that was the start of my progression, to any worthwhile extent, through the RAAF. Prior to that, it had just been bits and pieces of no consequence. I enjoyed the Instructors Course and had absolutely no trouble with it. I picked it up quite well, and apparently did fairly well in the final assessment. In August I went back to Narrandera, instructing at No. 8 Elementary Flying Training School (8EFTS) for the next twelve months or so. Looking back, I would have to say that I had mixed feelings about the period of instructing on Tiger Moths. On the one hand, there was a lot of satisfaction in being an instructor, if you could overlook the repetitious nature of the work. You were trying to make something out of a young fellow in terms of becoming a pilot, and that at times could be very rewarding. I think, too, there is a lot of truth in the old adage that there is nothing like a pupil to teach you to fly. Certainly, after that period of instructing I was a lot more capable, confident, and perhaps possessed a greater sense of airmanship than I had at the time that I was with the American squadron. So I would

W

~ 44 ~

The Quiet Man

have to say—and this is with hindsight, and perhaps the wisdom of maturity—it was beneficial; it all paid dividends in later years. On the other side of the coin, Narrandera was somewhat frustrating for all instructors. Most found it a bit disappointing, in the first instance, when it became evident we were going into the instructional world, because we were left wondering whether we were going to see out the war without ever really getting a decent opportunity to take part in operations. Accordingly, we were eager to complete our period of instruction and get to an Operational Training Unit (OUT) and back onto operational flying. Some, too, found this type of occupation very testing. It happened right throughout the war that chaps were thrust into the instructional role simply because they were qualified pilots. While they may have been marvellous pilots, they were not necessarily the best instructors. I suppose all of us are patient and tolerant to varying degrees, but unfortunately for some whose possession of those qualities were at the lesser end of the scale it would often result in them becoming what we called ‘screamers’. They got to a stage where they saw errors being made and could not resist the temptation to scream at a pupil, hence the name. In our Tiger Moth trainers we had the Gosport tube system, which was a Heath Robinson kind of device for communications between pupil and instructor. A rubber tube carried spoken commands from a mouthpiece in one cockpit to two earpieces in the other, and vice versa. The mouthpiece in the front cockpit of practically every Moth would have the bottom part bitten off, through the instructor having sunk his teeth into it to stop himself from screaming when he could see the next mistake coming. Sometimes during night flying, when the conditions were still, you could even hear an instructor on a downwind leg screaming away at a pupil, using language that

~ 45 ~

Instructor on Tiger Moths

was generally unrepeatable. The unfortunate side of this was, of course, that many pupils suffered accordingly and did not get the proper benefit of good instruction. I think a lot failed who might have otherwise gone on and made good pilots, and made a genuine contribution to the total war effort. There was another frustration for me, because nearly all those from my initial course who I counted as my closest friends were ‘at the front’ in Europe. A number of those were lost, several very early in their operational tour. Others had gained a wealth of experience, and went on to enjoy varied careers. Most of them were over there at a time where they did get into specific squadrons and into meaningful operations. They were the lucky ones, because aircrew from later courses arrived in England when demand for aircrew was not as high, and consequently many of those chaps spent a lot of time doing odd jobs, not in worthwhile flying positions. I realised you can always ask the question: where might I have been had I not done what I ended up doing? It was during this period at Narrandera that I was fortunate enough to be commissioned. It was very much a surprise because I had never really contemplated it. Throughout my Service career I have never particularly worried about promotion or career prospects. All I wanted to do was fly, and I would have been happy to have remained a squadron pilot forever. But there were a few wise people in the Service who led me to see that was not the way to go, and either by genuine encouragement or kicks in the bottom showed me the right path. I had reached the exalted rank of warrant officer only a couple of months earlier, but by some odd twist of administration my appointment as pilot officer was backdated to the same date as that promotion, with the result that personnel records do not even show my period in warrant rank.

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The Quiet Man

Towards the later part of 1944, the powers-that-be over in Britain began to realise that they had far more aircrew than they needed for the war effort in Europe. The Allies had pretty well achieved air superiority and the loss rates were nowhere near as heavy as expected, so they were starting to get swamped with the build-up of personnel. This was the time to start running down the Empire Air Training Scheme, and at Narrandera we introduced what was called the PNBW Scheme—which I believe stood for Pilot Navigator Bomb-Aimer Wireless-Operator. I do not know if the same system applied at other EFTSs, but at Narrandera we had one flight where the instructors gave each pupil just ten hours. If they had not made it in that time, out they went. It was simply a way of getting rid of some of the surplus. There were other sorts of courses going on that had the same aim as the PNBW course and were as equally severe on the trainees; if they did not meet certain standards quickly, they were out. There was some ruthless stuff put on as part of that process, and consequently the whole atmosphere on that base was the ugly one of pure survival. I really felt for some of those kids. They so much wanted to fly, just like all of us, and we really tried to get them going solo. Under normal circumstances some of them would not have been sent off solo, but we knew they were going to be discharged so we just wanted to give them the satisfaction of getting there. It meant that we instructors had some hairy experiences, I can tell you, but for the most part it was just day after day of circuit and bump, circuit and bump. The only time we got out of the circuit area was to show the pupils how to get out of a spin. That was when a lot of instructors became screamers, because after a while they could not contain themselves.

~ 47 ~

Instructor on Tiger Moths

Eventually, of course, there was a move to actually shut down some of the elementary flying schools, with Narrandera being one of those chosen to close. The staff were given a choice of three main options: we could stay on with elementary instruction, but would have to accept a posting to one of the remaining training schools; we could go on to some other form of flying duties, like staff pilot or similar; or we could go through a refresher course and then on to OTU, an Operational Training Unit. Surprisingly, some elected to stay on instructing; I suppose they thought they were best cut out for that. Most of us, I think, chose the third option. More or less on the eve of leaving Narrandera, I was promoted to the rank of flying officer. There were ten of us who went down to Deniliquin, where the refresher courses were held. We were feeling a bit more secure, because we knew we had a fair chance and they were not necessarily out to scrub us. But there was a very good friend of mine named Bill, one of a group of three of us who used to knock around together, whose father died while we were on course. He came from Sydney, where his father had operated a small business in something like the rag trade, and naturally he went home on leave to attend the funeral. While he was there his mother pleaded with him to leave the Service and run the family business, which otherwise would have to be sold. When Bill came back he was weighed down with this burden. We all talked and talked about it, and eventually he decided that he could not let his mother down and applied for discharge. The Officer Commanding the base interpreted the application as evidence of LMF, ‘lack of moral fibre’, believing that Bill just did not want to go to war. He got Bill up on the stage in the base cinema and accused him of this in front of everybody, in fact stripped his wings off him. Poor Bill had to live with that for the rest of his days: deprived of the

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The Quiet Man

opportunity to get into operations and then to have that happen on top. That was the sort of atmosphere that prevailed in that place. It was truly terrible. For me, though, things took an entirely different twist. When we arrived at Deniliquin at the start of November, we were met and briefed by the Chief Instructor who said that there was a surplus of people on the course who were trained on multi-engine aircraft; I think nine of us had trained on multies and only one on single-engine types. They wanted at least one more to go on a singles course. I thought this was my opportunity to do what I had always wanted, so I volunteered to make the switch. That proved to be a real break for me, because as soon as I finished the elementary instructors’ refresher course on the Wirraway, I went to Mildura to the Kittyhawk OTU. From there I was sent to Sandgate in March 1945, to do a ‘hardening up’ course. By mid-April I was with No. 75 Squadron at Morotai in the Dutch East Indies, or what is now Indonesia. At the end of June my unit moved to Tarakan in Borneo. We were still operating from Tarakan when the war in the Pacific finished. In comparing notes later with the other instructors who did their refresher in the multi-stream, I found that I had progressed through that phase and been up in the Islands for months before they even got to their OTU course. This was because they were pushed off first to do a GR (general reconnaissance) course. They had barely started their conversion course on Liberators at Tocumwal when the war ended. So, it turned out to be another one of those fluke moments in a man’s Service career. In a philosophical way I find it interesting to reflect on that, because it was the first of perhaps three or four occasions of chance or lucky breaks—whatever you might like to call them—which were significant in allowing me to continue on to a full career in the Air Force.

~ 49 ~

Instructor on Tiger Moths

Needless to say, my time on the Kittyhawk was absolutely great. I thoroughly enjoyed the course at Mildura and felt I was really where I was meant to be, at long last. The Kitty was no world-beater as a fighter aircraft, but for someone with my background it was a real delight to fly. It was one of those aircraft that was initially produced in somewhat of a hurry in the United States to meet high demand in the Pacific. There had been a series of developments to the original design since, and with each new model the type’s performance had improved tremendously. At the OTU they still had the old P-40E, the early model, and we flew that and some of the various later models—Ks, Ls, Ms and the first Ns—both at Mildura and up in the Islands. By the time the war finished, No. 75 Squadron was operating what was called the P-40/N-40 model. This was a vastly different aircraft; it was tough and capable of taking a lot of punishment. It still probably was not in the top category for air-to-air combat but it was ideal for what we were doing, which was all ground attack by that time. I think the main point that I would like to make about my experience on Kittyhawks was that it stood in absolute contrast to that occasion I related earlier when I was on B-25s. Then, as I mentioned, I was totally unprepared. The American squadron had no program for fitting untrained pilots to cope with an unfamiliar type, there was no thought or real guidance given at all, and hence a complete feeling of frustration resulted. This time I had the benefit of very thorough preparation. We had learnt all the sequences on Wirraways, before going onto a full OTU, and consequently within a short period after joining No. 75 Squadron at Morotai I felt that I knew the Kittyhawk well. I felt I was competent on the type, and confident that I could handle the aircraft to the limits of its capability on whatever missions my unit was assigned to do. The

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The Quiet Man

two situations were so very different: the first time was no way for any young pilot to go to war, the second was exactly the way to go.

~ 51 ~

6On Morotai and Tarakan

ith my friend Peter Murray, I joined No. 75 Squadron in the Halmaheras on 10 April 1945. Both of us were pleased to be part of such a famous unit, but we soon

discovered that there was a big gap between our expectations of seeing action at last and reality. By the time we had reached Morotai, there really was nothing left of the enemy’s air forces to engage. Our squadron and the other units based there had been operating down into the Celebes, where there were still pockets of Japanese ground forces, but these did not really represent any tangible resistance to the Allied advance at that stage of the game. As a consequence, our squadrons were doing missions that need never have been flown. This was what pushed eight senior officers of the First Tactical Air Force (TAF) to attempt to resign their commissions in April, about the time that I arrived, in what was called the ‘Morotai Mutiny’. Although naturally we heard talk of this, as a very junior pilot at the time I knew none of the details of what subsequently unfolded over that affair. I remember that there was a degree of excitement and anticipation in the period leading up to Operation Oboe One, the taking of Tarakan Island, and subsequent operations scheduled to take place over Borneo including the support of the 7th Division in its assault on Balikpapan. ‘P’ Day for the assault on Tarakan was to be 1 May, and the squadron was expected to be established on the airfield at Tarakan on 7 May. Peter and I thought we would just have

W

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The Quiet Man

time for a few flying hours of familiarisation at Morotai before the squadron prepared for embarkation and deployment. Regrettably, the stiff resistance of the Japanese, the surprisingly bad state of the airfield and the frequent occurrences of heavy rain resulted in the flight of No. 75 Squadron from Morotai to Tarakan being delayed for something like six weeks. As a consequence, all air support for the 26th Brigade on Tarakan had to be provided by longer-range aircraft of the Thirteenth Air Force, USAAF, and such units as B-24 squadrons of the RAAF. I noted in my diary that I flew only nine hours in two months, so that was one gauge of our level of activity, or inactivity, during the period. When the squadron’s delayed deployment to Tarakan finally took place on 28 June, it nearly resulted in me not being here to tell the tale. Fourteen Kittyhawks took off for Tarakan, and we had two Beaufighters with us (one leading, one following) for navigational purposes. We were almost at our destination when we encountered a big storm front. The Beaufighter leading us turned north and climbed to try to get around it. He just left a trail of Kittyhawks spread out all over the place to fend for ourselves. I was tail-end Charlie, right down at the back end of the formation, and the others were all slowly disappearing away to the north. I said to myself that this was not for me; I was not going to bend the throttle just to chase a disappearing Beaufighter. So I lost contact with them, and said to myself, “I’m on my own.” By that time the cloud was getting to the stage where I thought the visibility could not be too bad, and I would chance it. If I went down underneath, visibility might be just enough to see my way through, so that if I approached an island I would see it in time. I did that, and came out the other side where the visibility was good.

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On Morotai and Tarakan

One might hark back to the fact that I had lots of practice as an instructor on map reading and simple pilot navigation. In fact, in anticipation of the crossing I had made up a map with five degree variation lines on it, times and distances, circles of probability, etc. Certainly I think that helped me with what happened. While I felt confident that I could map-read my way down, the question was: did I have enough fuel to get there? If I could have knelt down in the cockpit and prayed then, I would have, but I certainly said to my Maker on that occasion, “I’m not sure about this situation, I’m going to need your help.” Well, I got down at Tarakan okay, no problem at all—in fact I was the first to arrive. The whole island, it seemed, was there to watch us come in, so I was really pleased that I managed to make a good landing. The rest of the team began straggling in about ten minutes later; one had ditched, two ran out of fuel in the circuit area, and some others had similar misfortunes. It was an occasion where I could have blown my standing very easily—become a new pilot as just another statistic, seen to be unable to hack it, and away I go—but through whatever agency that did not happen. Even when the Balikpapan operation commenced a couple of days later, No. 75 Squadron’s attempts to give support did not fare well. My memory and logbook entries indicate that only two of the planned attempts were successful; one more was cancelled before take-off, for some reason or another that I cannot remember, and a further two were beaten back by adverse weather before the aircraft reached the target area. Peter was lucky and took part in the two successful missions, but I happened to be in both that were recalled because of bad weather. I made the comment in my diary that it was just about as frustrating as it had been at Moresby, not being able to get anywhere with operations.

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The Quiet Man

Other missions flown by No. 75 Squadron from Tarakan included air-to-ground strikes in the interior of Borneo. These were rather frustrating as we were simply given map coordinates to bomb, often in thick jungle terrain. We would be told that intelligence had disclosed there was a Japanese camp that was invisible from the air, and we were needed to force the enemy out and disperse them, so the Dyaks, the natives working with Australian officers on the ground, could pick them off. I never really heard how successful these attacks were. We had a liaison officer come to our unit on one occasion, and he maintained that they worked, but I did not see anything definitive that confirmed it at all. Sandakan and other targets in the north-east of Borneo came in for a fair degree of attention but there was rarely significance in any of them. Even on Tarakan, there were still Japanese on the island. But by the time our Army had been through, the remaining enemy had been broken up into isolated pockets, cut off from their supply chain, to the extent that they did not represent any threat as such. There was no Japanese air activity, and I do not remember any of our pilots being lost in action. We did lose a number of pilots, thinking back on it, but they were mainly through accidents, malfunctions, faulty equipment and events of that nature. Certainly there were problems at different times, but generally engine reliability was very good, especially when you stop to think that we did a lot of over-water flying in the single-engine Kittyhawk. The flight from Morotai to Tarakan was one glaring example. The direct flight between those two points took five hours fifteen minutes, the majority of that time over water. And there were many, many flights, not all of that duration. Overall, I consider the reliability of our aircraft was pretty high.

~ 55 ~

On Morotai and Tarakan

Towards the end there was a certain amount of frustration among the pilots that there was not a real job to do. I would have to say, though, that we were not terribly upset about the whole situation by that stage of the war. Once it was clear that we were not going on with the Americans in the advance to the Philippines, it became evident that, as far as the RAAF or Australian participation in the South-West Pacific Area was concerned, operations were virtually coming to an end. Had we gone north with the Americans it would have been quite different I am sure. I suppose we were doing what was necessary, and in accordance with the policy at the time, to assist the Dutch to regain their territory. Tarakan was, of course, full of oil; it was so abundant, in fact, that it was laid on the roads to keep the dust down. But as far as flying operations were concerned, one could only describe the scene as very tame. Our levels of activity were really winding down, and there was nothing terribly significant to go on with. It was difficult for us pilots in the units to understand Australian Government policy as to why we were not going on with the Americans, but we had only limited knowledge—especially at our level within the Service—about the negotiations and discussions between American and Australian leaders. We certainly did not know what agreement had been reached. Whether it was a case of General MacArthur being dogmatic about it, or whether it was the Australian Government saying that we will not participate, we were just not sure. There were all sorts of rumours going around, but no one knew what the real truth was. For my own part, I was quite happy just being there. I liked the flying, and I was actually very sorry to leave. As I have explained earlier, I was never a cold climate man. I enjoyed my time in the

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The Quiet Man

tropics, and had no qualms about shedding a couple of pounds in fluid loss through flying in the hot weather up there. The actual living conditions at Tarakan were better than they were on Morotai, and better than I had experienced at Moresby at Fourteen Mile, because we were in some old Dutch barracks. The buildings had no doors, shutters on windows, or things like that, but we had a very solid building with cement floors and a good roof over our head for protection against the weather. As far as the airfield was concerned it was less than attractive. It had been intended that the airfield seized there would be restored and used to support the next in the series of Allied Oboe operations in Borneo, the landings at Labuan and Brunei Bay. But there were so many problems in preparing the airfield that the air support for these operations did not eventuate until mid-June, nearly two weeks before No. 75 Squadron could make the transfer to Tarakan. Part of the difficulty was that the western end of the airfield at Tarakan was mangrove swamp, and it took ages to lay all the perforated steel planking. Most of the wartime airfields up there had this metal matting, including in the dispersal area, and if you got off that you had problems. You could only take off to the west, you could only land to the east: fairly tight sort of conditions. But apart from the need for care on the western end of the strip, and in dry conditions, you had ample distance for take-off. You could carry a load off, no problem—there was not much reserve, but nothing that ever really worried us. By comparison, Morotai had magnificent strips. One of these was Wama, down on the coast where all the fighter squadrons were, with some of the Beaufighters and Beauforts. Up into the higher part of the island there was Pitu, which was where all the Liberators and other ‘heavies’ were based. These strips were all excellent, built

~ 57 ~

On Morotai and Tarakan

of coral and very solid, good in rain or wet weather, ample lengths, good dispersal—no problem at all there. The standard of food depended on where we were. When we were on Morotai we were supplied, in part at least, by the Americans; we still had Australian rations, but we used to get some supplementation from the Americans at times, and that was good. When we went to Tarakan we existed solely on Australian rations, and that, to put it kindly, got a bit monotonous. There is a limit to the variations that a cook can think of in terms of tinned bully beef, etc. We did get fresh rations in the later stages, but not on a regular basis; supply was a bit spasmodic. We used to get a beer ration too. I do not remember exactly what it was, it might have been something like three bottles a week, or two bottles a week—I forget now—but that was not always on a regular basis. When people got their rations, most would keep it for a while and try and build up the stock. The mess would do that too, and we were expected to allocate our ration to the mess; there were a lot of variations on themes there. Nevertheless, we had some good parties, some rip-roaring parties. The extent of our mixing with the Americans on Morotai was more or less up to the individual, but generally we got on very well together. Often one would get an invitation to go down to their mess and have a few beers and a meal with them. I remember that the unit had a particularly good relationship with the PT Boat base there, and I would have to say they mixed up the most powerful brew that I have ever come up against. We also did a bit of trading with the Americans, and from a personal point of view I believe that was necessary because living conditions on Morotai were all tented. To make our place of accommodation at least useful in a utility sense, it was necessary

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The Quiet Man

to do a little bit of trading to get a few things to build up your tent into some state of comfort. It is interesting that when Justice Barry was required to do an inquiry into allegations of gross trading of liquor in the Islands, he acknowledged that almost everyone entered into a level of trading with the Americans, and in most cases it was necessary in order to establish some reasonable degree of comfort. I think my reaction to the Japanese surrender was jubilation, the same as everyone else. Everyone was happy that the war was finished. Perhaps underlying that initial response was regret that operations had come to an end and, of course, following closely on that was the question, “What the heck am I going to do now?” But first there was the need to have a big party to celebrate. Previously we had often saved our liquor stocks—sometimes we had ample, and sometimes we were a bit scarce—to ensure we could have a decent party when peace was declared. By the time that point arrived, the flow of stocks was good and regular, so the makings were on hand for a great celebration. It can probably be asked what the heck can you do to party in a place like Tarakan? Sure, you can drink a lot of beer and engage in deafening talk—I could not even tell you what we talked about—but what then? Well, I can tell you that the party tends to flow from one unit to another. We would be in one squadron’s place, having a few beers there, when someone would say, “Let’s go over and see so-and-so”, so off we would go in a jeep or a weapon carrier, or something. Perhaps that was the most frightening aspect: as the night went on, I doubt that people were really capable of driving those vehicles. I remember at one point we finished up down at the port area where some American PT boats were based, and we had a few drinks with them. There were two jeeps; I was driving one and I forget who was driving the other. Coming back, the lights on the other driver’s

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On Morotai and Tarakan

vehicle failed, so I drove along behind and to one side with my lights showing the way as far as possible. As the roads on Tarakan are not the best, it was a pretty hairy sort of ride. All in all, we made our own fun. I could not describe precisely what we did in that time, but there were some huge hangovers afterwards. Re-reading my diary from that period, I am reminded that we still flew after the Japanese surrender. One mission that I undertook on 18 August 1945 involved going to the Sandakan area to drop leaflets to the Japanese troops, telling them of the terms of the surrender. We kept doing reconnaissance sorties too, and one that I flew on 13 September was to Mostyn, which is located about forty-five kilometres north-east of Tawau, on the east coast of what is now Sabah. Leaflets had already been dropped there the day before, telling the Japanese to display either a ‘Y’ or an ‘N’ to signify whether they had any Allied POWs. When we came over there was a big white ‘N’ visible on the parade ground, and about a dozen Japanese soldiers, all big types, were standing about waving white flags. I noted in my diary that they would have “made a beautiful strafing target”. We made a few low-level runs over the barracks area, so low that we could “even see the grins on their faces as we flashed past”. I was with No. 75 Squadron for five and a half months until the end of September 1945, and in that time I flew a total of sixty-eight hours which included fifteen operational sorties. It had been a fairly quiet time, and my operational contribution had been a modest one when compared with the experience of many other RAAF aircrew members during the Second World War.

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The Quiet Man

~ 61 ~

7Occupation Duties in Japan

did not come home from Tarakan immediately the war ended. We had been given the option of applying for the occupation force that was to go to Japan or flying the

aircraft home, and I volunteered to go to Japan. My particular desire by now was to continue a career in the Air Force, and although there was an element of excitement at the prospect of serving with the occupation force, my primary aim was to stay with the RAAF at all costs. I had also whipped a letter into Air Force Headquarters applying for a permanent commission. Eventually a reply came back saying that they had not sorted out their post-war policy, so I proceeded with my application for Japan anyway. In October those of us who volunteered for the occupation force went across to Labuan, on the north-west side of Borneo, where the fighter wing going to Japan was forming. There we converted to Mustangs, the aircraft type that was just being received to re-equip the three squadrons of No. 81 Wing. A small team of about four instructors had been sent up to Labuan, and they set up a conversion course there. As we had no dual-control machines, it was just a matter of getting briefed on the Mustang and off we went. While I enjoyed the Kittyhawk, as I have mentioned previously, I must say that the Mustang was truly a significant step up in terms of aircraft performance. When you put that throttle up to full power on the brakes, and then released the brakes on take-off, it was a pleasure to feel that punch in the middle of your back. I have always

I

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The Quiet Man

believed that the Mustang was one of the outstanding achievements in aircraft design during the war; it was perhaps the forerunner of multi-role aircraft, in the sense that it was an excellent compromise between all those qualities needed for air-to-air combat, long-range escort and ground attack. People who are dedicated to, say, the Spitfire, could perhaps argue that it was not as good in air-to-air combat as the later models of the ‘Spit’, but that is not the point. The Mustang was good enough in that area to hold its own, and it could also perform very well in those other roles. I was transferred to No. 77 Squadron by this time and we were reasonably active working up on the aircraft and preparing the squadron for departure, but it became a game of waiting—mainly for word that the route was prepared and that the base in Japan was ready to receive us. It was while we were cooling our heels at Labuan that I eventually got some leave and went home to see my family. The response from my parents was typical. They had accepted that I wanted to stay flying, and they had no objection to it. There was no saying, “Well, we thought you’d come home and stay home, or, go back to your old job,” no pressure of that kind. They fully accepted that this was what I was going to do. Even though my father did not offer a lot of advice to his children throughout his life, he did in fact say to me, “I think this is wonderful that you gain experience in other countries.” He wrote subsequently exhorting me to do just this, to visit as many countries as I could. So the response was very encouraging and positive. It was the same thing from my sister and my brother—both were right behind my pursuing an Air Force career. My mother had obviously overcome whatever reservations she might have had initially. She was proud of me, all three of us really, and it showed. My brother Gerry was always the apple of her eye, because his job as a policeman on

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Occupation Duties in Japan

horseback in outback Queensland was the sort of manly image that she wanted her eldest son to present. But she could be equally proud of my participation in what was also a manly pursuit. It was March 1946 by the time we finally departed from Labuan bound for Japan. The whole wing flew up—the aircraft were not taken apart and put on ships. Of course it was still winter in the northern hemisphere, and the weather en route could fluctuate fairly quickly. We flew with appropriate escorts; Catalinas out ahead for weather reconnaissance, and Beaufighters or Mosquitos leading us for navigational purposes. Each of the three legs of the route was around four hours to four and a half hours long: from Labuan to Clark Field in the Philippines, then Clark Field to Okinawa, then from Okinawa to Bofu on the western part of Honshu Island in Japan. We did not have a lot of personal belongings or equipment to be transported, and what was surplus to what we could carry in our aircraft went by transport aircraft. But in the main we could pack most of our gear in what little space there was in the Mustang, and that went mainly into the ammunition bins in the wings. I remember about halfway through one of the legs I had the doubtful pleasure of seeing the tail of one of my shirts creeping out between the join in the covering panel of the ammunition bins and main wing structure, and gradually flapping itself away in the breeze. Ferrying so many single-engine aircraft so far was a massive undertaking really. The whole event was a masterpiece of organisation and went extremely well. Our squadron was fortunate on the way up, as we had no mishaps. We had one aircraft turn back after leaving Clark Field, but that was for reasons of unserviceability. One of the other squadrons, No. 82, was very unlucky. It lost three Mustangs, which were formating on the escorting Mosquito in exceptionally

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The Quiet Man

bad weather and low cloud, while coming up through the straits between the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. With such poor visibility, they ran into the long peninsula that juts out from Shikoku into the straits, and everyone in the four aircraft was killed. Arriving at Bofu was something to remember, after having been so long in the tropics. Although we were briefed on climatic conditions, it was something of a shock to land and open the canopy, and feel that cold blast of the last of the winter air. However, it was a relief to get there, and to look forward to whatever next the tour of duty might bring. Bofu was quite a reasonable base, and while the airstrip was not outstanding it was adequate for our purposes. We were quartered reasonably well there, although the conditions were fairly rough for a start. There was very little flying activity when we first arrived there, mainly because the supply system had not really set up properly. We received our fuel in forty-four gallon (two hundred litre) drums, and it quickly became evident that these were far from pure as far as quality was concerned. It was largely through the efforts of our engineers, in devising adequate means of filtering the contaminated drums to remove all the muck that was in them, that we were able to get any flying hours at all. Even then, there were many occasions where flying just came to a halt and we twiddled our thumbs waiting for aircraft to be available. Our job was predominantly to fly patrols over several prefectures and observe the traffic movements, both on land and sea, to try and detect any illegal activity. The Mustang, or any fighter really, was not exactly the best equipped aircraft for this role. While we could count shipping and give some idea of road movements, I often wondered if much value came out of it. Perhaps we did a useful job as a deterrent to some degree, but of course it was impossible to really tell. With

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Occupation Duties in Japan

nothing else in the form of positive tasks, there were periods in Japan that were a sheer waste of time. It all got pretty boring and fruitless, and a bit depressing. Everyone tended to let themselves go, and we smoked more, and drank more. At different times we did attempt to run squadron training programs to keep up skills, but almost invariably these would be interrupted part-way through by a requirement to go to Tokyo, or Kyoto or somewhere else, to participate in a fly-past, a display, or something of that kind. There were also goodwill visits to be made to American bases, and they used to come to our place quite frequently as well. We were active in a whole range of ways, but I would have to conclude there was not terribly much in a productive, positive sense as far as air operations were concerned. I suppose there was benefit in those parade-type tasks, in that it helped us to see a bit more of the country and meet a lot of other people, but from the point of view of maintaining squadron proficiency it was fairly detrimental. We had a lot of fun, do not misunderstand me, particularly with the Americans. Our relationship there was very close and we had some great parties with them, no doubt about it. How we ever flew back to our base on some occasions I do not know. I did not drink much in those days, so I could go to these parties. They were so big that you could get away with standing around with a glass in your hand, and no one noticed or bothered that you were not consuming very much. There were occasions where I probably did drink more than was good for me, but if I knew I had to fly the next morning I was a bit more careful about it. As far as I was concerned, and without patting my own back, I felt my own flying skills at this stage were pretty good. After all, through instructing, and then through No. 75 Squadron, and then through the conversion onto Mustangs, I had been flying pretty consistently.

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The Quiet Man

Many of our fellows seemed more interested in enjoying themselves and seeing a lot of the country, so those who really had their heart set on flying (like myself ) were usually able to get extra flying hours by volunteering to do other people’s patrols. Perhaps I was not in the exceptional category of people like ‘Bay’ Adams, for example, but I certainly felt very competent on the Mustang. It was in terms of learning something about Japan, I suppose, that our first tour up there was reasonably beneficial. Many of the better places, those which would now be called the high-class tourist resort, had been taken over as a part of reparations and were run by British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF) staff for the purposes of providing recreational facilities. About every four months there was an entitlement to take ten days recreational leave at one of these spots. Usually you could nominate where you wanted to go, but sometimes you did not get your choice and were directed to other places. By that means we were able to see some of the better parts of Japan. And there is no doubt about it, from a geographical point of view, the country itself has some genuine beauty. Places like Nikko, up behind Tokyo, where I went twice, once in the winter and once in the spring, are places of truly scenic beauty. We naturally wondered what sort of reception we would get from a people who had lost everything in their bid for power in the Pacific, and in the world generally, a people whom we had been led to believe were of an entirely different culture. Of course that was true, they are most certainly different. The more infamous efforts by the Japanese in the course of their conquests of the western Pacific perhaps gave us an impression that made us wonder just what the relationship would be. It was pleasantly surprising to find that there was no animosity, at least none shown outwardly. I suppose that many of them still held a grudge within themselves that they had

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been beaten, but then we did not manage to achieve all that much contact with the general population. The Japanese we mostly saw around the camps were the men working as labourers and general hands for the occupation forces. Our maintenance squadrons used the technical capabilities of some of these local men—not to a large extent, but they did use them. They were not those we would normally make contact with, primarily because of language problems, and their own insistence within their culture. People at that level do not talk and associate with people at a higher level, which is the way they looked on us. The other main contact was through the room girls. I shared a room with four other officers and we were looked after by three room girls, one of whom was more mature than the other two. Dick Fenton and I took on trying to learn the local language, and we used to visit the older girl’s house to meet with her family and try conversing with them in our limited Japanese. Three of us also used to take language lessons in the home of a man who was a teacher at a primary school, and whose wife also spoke reasonably good English. I was always impressed with the absolute cleanliness of the houses, and the welcome we were given. For my own part, I never had a feeling of hatred or animosity towards the Japanese. Since that time I have read a fair bit on Japanese culture, traditions, attitudes and so forth, and I think I have some understanding of why they went the way they did, and why they acted the way they did. But even back then I was inclined to forgive. Undoubtedly my religion helped me reach that state. I have very strong but basic beliefs in this regard. I do not agree with those who choose to never forgive. If someone maintains that they are a Christian, then it is essential that they accept from the outset that forgiveness is an essential part of it.

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I do not consider that a religious philosophy needs to be at odds with a career in the profession of arms. The Bible, like history, is full of examples of inspiring leaders, many of them soldiers, whose attitudes have been largely governed by essential Christian principles. I remember General Sir Arthur McDonald saying one day, in the course of general conversation at a meeting, “It’s a great story, that Bible; great military stuff.” It is, too, when you read of David’s exploits and the like. There are others who thought this way as well, several of them during the American Civil War, and others in later history. I do think some people went a bit overboard when it came to the forgiveness side of things. There was no official encouragement of contact between our people and the Japanese, it was a matter of personal choice what individual encounters took place. In the early days at Bofu, the incidence of venereal disease (VD) got so bad that special measures had to be taken to combat it, including laying emphasis on moral aspects. Two chaplains, Dave Byer and ‘Bish’ (short for Bishop) Morrison, did an absolutely tremendous job in that regard. They interviewed practically everyone on the wing, and I think it was very much to their credit that the VD rate was brought down. It was always present, of course; in an environment like that it would have to be almost impossible to eradicate completely. In later stages there were also those—including officers—who elected to live out with a de facto wife. Probably not many, but they were there. That was their choice; it was not what the majority did by any means. I am not a man who was without all those normal feelings, so I can well understand those who were tempted to set up such an arrangement, almost establish a home there. Some of the chaps formed very strong relationships. I remember when, a few years later, I greeted the chaps coming out of the prisoner of

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war (POW) camps in Korea. As they were released across at the prisoner exchange point at Panmunjom, one of the first questions one of them asked me was how was his de facto wife in Japan. I was left nonplussed, because I had never even thought of finding out, and he was a bit angry that no one knew. I only mention it because it demonstrates the fact that often these were quite genuine relationships. As we were getting towards the end of that first tour in Japan, which was eighteen months, I realised that if I went back home then I was quite likely to be discharged. This was because a policy for an Interim Air Force had been brought out which stated that people who had not applied for appointment to the Interim Air Force would not be considered for further employment. Well, I had not applied, because I did not want to be part of an interim organisation—I was intent on getting a permanent commission in the real thing. Now I looked like being booted out. I was worried enough by the prospect to look at entering civil aviation, and started to do the correspondence course with the object of qualifying in the ground subject. I was also one of the six or so RAAF men who applied when the Royal Air Force (RAF) advertised that they would accept applications for transfer to it. I remember being interviewed by Air Vice-Marshal Bouchier, who was the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) British Commonwealth Air Forces of Occupation (BCAir) in Japan. There was a backhanded compliment involved here, in the fact that the others were in with him for only ten minutes whereas I had about forty minutes. Maybe Bouchier saw something in me he thought worth investigating, because he asked me all about my religion and my father’s politics—all manner of things that were never even mentioned in RAAF circles. That was the only time I

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had ever deviated from my principal motivation of staying with the RAAF. Being worried about my situation, I also consulted a wise old friend named Bede McCauley, who was serving as wing adjutant up there at the time. He said to me, “Oh, that’s easy. I think you should apply for a second tour of Japan. By the time you have finished that, they will probably have sorted out who they are going to have in the permanent air force, and you will stand a better chance.” I applied for the second tour and of course got that, so stayed on in Japan as ‘A’ Flight commander with No. 82 Squadron until that unit was scheduled to disband at the end of October 1948. That second tour was a waste of time in most respects, although there was marginally more flying on offer for part of it. This was because the RAF withdrew from the occupation forces early in 1948, and in March No. 81 Wing moved to Iwakuni and increased its flying rate to cover most of the prefectures previously patrolled by the British. It was nonetheless beneficial because it did just as my friend had forecast. I got back to Australia after nearly three years in Japan and it was not long after that when I was offered a permanent commission. At last that problem was solved, and I had managed to stay on in the Service.

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8A Glimpse of the Outback

n my return from Japan in December 1948 I went on leave. I realised that I had not seen my brother Gerry for almost eight years, so I resolved to spend some of my leave with

him. He was then stationed at the police post at Coen in Cape York Peninsula, where he and two others were responsible for 200,000 square miles of bush country. To get to Coen in those days was quite an exercise. I travelled from Brisbane to Townsville in a Skymaster aircraft operated by Australian National Airlines, and then joined the New Guinea DC-3 service. Coen was not a scheduled port of call but aircraft would land there on request, using the old emergency airstrip built by the Americans during the war. Provided one had given prior warning to friends in Coen, the remaining ten miles of travel presented no problem. On this occasion, the crew could not get the DC-3 into Coen so they carried on. I had the doubtful pleasure of staying the night at Thursday Island and then flying back down to Coen the next day. When I stepped from the plane I was greeted by my brother with two extra saddle horses and a packhorse. It was only at this stage I found that the floating population of Coen was to increase by yet another visitor, for Bill Garbutt, a fellow passenger and cattle buyer from Townsville, also disembarked. After introductions and loading of mail and travelling bags onto the packhorse, our small cavalcade set forth for Coen; from seven hundred miles by air in four hours, to ten miles by horse in two

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hours. It was quite a leisurely ride but it was the first time I had been astride a horse in fifteen years, and after six years of constant flying, there was some adjustment required in my mental approach to methods of travel. Coen boasted a total of six buildings: the police quarters and lock-up, the pub, post office and three private homes. In this respect it was probably similar to many small Australian country towns, but as we rode in I was impressed by a completely different atmosphere—one of quiet, contented isolation. There was no road or railway line to suggest a connection with the outside world, no footpaths or front fences to indicate the division between private property and public way. Just six houses gathered together on the grassy clearing by the banks of the creek. My introduction to the people of Coen was rather like that of being introduced to the members of a large family for, without any apparent interruption to the local routine and certainly without invitation, we seemed to find that most of the population was conveniently at hand for introductions. After we had splashed our way over the creek, the first port of call was Bill Kennedy’s house where one corner of the front veranda acted as the post office for the district. Bill was a cheerful character but very inquisitive and his house obviously filled the role of communication centre for Coen in more ways than one. After a lengthy quiz session at Kennedy’s, we graduated to Mrs Armbrusters’ place. This quiet and charming woman made us really welcome and treated us to a much appreciated feast of hot scones and tea. I am not sure to this day whether the quantity and quality were part of the normal morning-tea routine or a special effort for our benefit. If it was a special effort, then half the population

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of Coen certainly made sure that they did not allow the opportunity to pass unheeded. Finally we graduated to the real meeting place of the town, the pub. This was a simple shingle-roofed addition to the front of a house and contained a bar and an open ground level veranda. The publican was Herb Thompson and we found him in his favourite position in an old arm chair, sheltering from the heat of the day on the front veranda. At seventy-eight years of age, Herb was already a legend throughout the Cape for, as a young man, he had arrived in this area at the turn of the century, when there was hardly a white man in the territory, and had carved a place for himself in this rugged portion of Australia. Now, with two cattle stations being run by his sons, he was quite content to relax in singlet, trousers and bare feet, and dominate the conversation of the locals. It was for the purpose of inspecting cattle at one of Herb’s stations that Bill Garbutt had arrived in Coen, and during the course of conversation Herb was most insistent that I accompany Garbutt on his trip. The prospect of about a hundred miles on horseback in the next three days raised some doubts about the resultant shape of my legs and ability to eat my meals at a table, but the opportunity to see the country first hand was too good to miss. So, with my brother’s help, I spent the afternoon preparing for the trip. At six o’clock the following morning we set course for our destination forty miles to the south-east on the narrow coastal plain. We had a police black-tracker as a guide and a packhorse to carry the few supplementary supplies that were always sent to the station whenever opportunity offered. If clothes make the man, my transformation from fighter pilot to stockman was complete. I had borrowed a battered old hat (ten gallon type) from my brother, police shirt and trousers from the other constable, my brother’s leather

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belt complete with pocket knife, watch and wax matches, and the indispensable ‘laughing-sides’ boots. I felt as though the gum trees were holding their arms aloft in horror (or mirth) at this intrusion, but the horse expressed no concern as I mounted, so I accepted his reaction as a favourable judgement on my appearance. The track took us south down the back of the range until we could pass eastward through the ridges, then down the eastern slopes and finally turning south to the Silverplains Station. It was a slow ride and to anyone unaccustomed to the heat and humidity of a north Queensland summer at the end of the wet season it was a very tiring business. On the western side of the ranges the going was not too bad, for the bush was more open, but once on the eastern side there were large areas of thick lantana scrub, grass as tall as a man on horseback, and numerous watercourses—most of which were bound to harbour crocodiles. It was an interesting ride but I was not sorry to see the homestead come into view about four-thirty in the afternoon. I have called it a homestead but, in fact, it was little more than the roughest of bachelor quarters surrounded by four or five lean-to sheds necessary for the housing of harnesses, blacksmith’s forge and other essential station equipment. The quarters consisted of one room for cooking and eating and a veranda at the front and rear ,which contained rough bunks for the three men who ran the station and any others who may pass by and require a place to sleep. The floors were hard-packed earth and all timber in the building was rough hewn. This station and the men who ran it could have come straight from the books of Banjo Patterson or Henry Lawson. It was a rough life with the simplest of foods and no amenities except for the annual visit to Coen for the picnic races. However, despite the roughness, simplicity and isolation, these men were

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some of the finest characters I have met. Naturally, the talk that night went on to the small hours of the morning, while the bottle of scotch we had brought with us was laid to rest quite early. Nevertheless, we were up early the next morning and out onto the cattle runs for Bill Garbutt’s benefit. Most of it was quite easy riding, for some of the cattle had already been mustered, but where the ‘scrubbers’ still played hard to get I waited on the sidelines, for chasing cattle through scrub is a job for experts and I did not flatter myself to that extent. The second night on the station I was in bed very early and slept like a log despite the wooden bunks and the stiffness that I was now beginning to feel after two days of riding. The third day we made our way back to Coen. Despite the fact I was sorry to see the end of such an interesting sortie, I had to admit that another day in the saddle and I would have been physically prevented from attending another dining-in night. When I dismounted at Coen I felt as though my feet were permanently fixed about three feet apart. However, the usual five o’clock session was in force at the pub by the time we arrived and a few glasses of beer worked wonders in lubricating stiff joints. In fact, after a few hours I was quite confident that I could start off again and repeat the whole trip. Fortunately no good reason was found for setting off on a further expedition. I left Coen a few days later by air and settled back into life in the peacetime Air Force. Up to this time I had seen a fair portion of the world and was to see quite a bit more in the course of Service duties, but I value my visit to Coen more than any other experience. Coen was no high adventure or startling experience, but I believe that in those few days I saw part of the Australian life that very few people have the opportunity to glimpse or are even aware of. What the Thompsons and the Armbrusters and the police of Coen were

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doing in those days was an essential part of the complete picture of Australian primary industry, and yet their way of life was not far removed from that of the early pioneers. It is like a faded picture in a family album. For younger people, modern methods and better means of transport have taken the place of the old in Coen. In fact, there are few places in Australia, if any, where one can still obtain a glimpse of the old ‘outback’.

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Flight Lieutenant McNamara, pictured at Brisbane 1949

Author and his brother Gerald (then living in retirement at Toowoomba, Queensland) with the saddle he used in his outback experience at Coen, 1948.

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In the 77 Squadron Mess at Kimpo, Korea, 1953. The author, then the unit’s Executive Officer, is seated at left and the CO, Wing Commander Al Hodges, is seated at right. Flight Lieutenant Keith Williamson (later Air Chief Marshal, RAF) is standing at far right.

Panmunjom, Korea: author chatting with Flight Lieutenant John (‘Butch’) Hannan, one of five RAAF pilots released from communist prisoner of war camps on 1 September 1953. (AWM neg. JK080)

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No.10 Staff College Course at Point Cook, 1956. The Commandant, Air Commodore Bill Garing, is in centre of the front row, with Group Captain ‘Ginty’ Lush seated fifth from right and Wing Commander ‘Mike’ Moore alongside him. The author is standing over the commandant’s right shoulder (sixth from left, centre row), while the future Air Marshal Sir James Rowland is standing at the rear, second from left. The future AVMs ‘Sam’ Jordan and Jack Cornish are also in the back row (sixth from left and fourth from right respectively); Geoff Blackwell, the other member to later achieve air rank, is in the centre row, fifth from right, standing beside Norm Lampe (spectacles).

A mess function at 2 Operational Conversion Unit, 1960, attended by the OC of RAAF Base Williamtown, Group Captain Bill Townsend (standing front row, third from right); the author is standing beside him, second from right.

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Outside Buckingham Palace, 1961, with wife Joan and daughters Julie (left) and Shelley, after the author had been invested with the Air Force Cross in 1961.

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9Getting Back to Flyingnly a couple of weeks after my adventure in far north Queensland, I discovered that my troubles with the Air Force were by no means completely over. I was recalled

from leave and posted down to Point Cook to do an Air Traffic Controllers course. Now, here I was, a flight lieutenant aged nearly twenty-six, at what I saw as close to the peak of my flying prowess, and fully expecting to go to one of the squadrons—perhaps again as a flight commander. Being diverted to Air Traffic Control (ATC) was a little disappointing, to say the least. But I did not think too much of it, because it was not unusual in those days for fully qualified General Duties people to have to take a turn on ATC and then return to flying duties later on. On this occasion, however, when course members gathered at Point Cook, we were greeted by the CGI (Chief Ground Instructor), Squadron Leader Noel Quinn, who promptly informed us that there had been trouble in the past with aircrew doing the Air Traffic Controllers course because they did not put their hearts into it. He expected us to knuckle down and give it our best, since we were all either too old for flying duties or medically unfit. This rather knocked us back on our heels, since it was not at all our understanding of why we were there. The others appointed me as a sort of unofficial spokesman to ask to speak with the CGI about the situation, which I duly did.

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Quinn said to come on over to his office, and when I got there I told him, “Sir, as far as I know, the majority of us are certainly not medically unfit for flying, and, while there are a couple of chaps of higher age, we are not too old.” He expressed some surprise at that, because he had been informed that this was the new policy and we were to be the first course in this category. However, he was good enough to phone the personnel people at Air Force Headquarters in Melbourne while I was still in the office, and they informed him that they were sorry, they did not have enough of the people he had been promised, and that he would have to make do with what he had. This threw the future for me very much into doubt, as I was still in the position of holding only a Citizen Air Force commission (the offer of a permanent commission was still some weeks away). I had no option but to proceed with the course. At the end of ATC training I was posted to the Brisbane area. Here I shared the duty of area controller with two other officers, Fred Boorman and ‘Speck’ Taylor, working with the civil controllers at Eagle Farm Airport. For domestic purposes I was based upon No. 23 Squadron at Archerfield. Since the area controller duties involved shifts, I used to work two days on and three days off. During my days off, I was able to participate fully in flying with No. 23 Squadron, which was of great benefit and I enjoyed that part of my posting tremendously. Shortly after I took up the position, in January 1949, I did receive the offer of a permanent commission. As can well be imagined, I could not get pen to paper fast enough to accept it, assuming that would then get me back to flying. However, it appeared to make no difference, and I continued on with ATC duties. Indeed, what information I could get seemed to indicate that I may well stay there forever.

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While this really was one of the lowest points of my career, I have to acknowledge the very significant influence that the Commanding Officer there, Squadron Leader Milton (‘Mike’) Moore, came to have on me. Mike was a marvellous fellow, one of nature’s gentlemen. When the first lot of promotion examinations came up, I really did not take much notice of them because, as I have explained, I was pretty happy with the flying time I was getting. He rang me up and said, “I haven’t seen your application in to sit these exams.” I responded that I had not thought about them and had no application prepared. “I think we can cope with that,” he said. “Tell you what, I’ll come to the bar of a night and sit over a beer for an hour and talk about things with you and Doug Hurst.” (Doug was an officer in No. 23 Squadron in the same position as myself regarding the exams. He was, and still is, a good friend from the days in Japan.) Mike did just that. He would come over and talk us through the Principles of War, providing examples from his flying experience in North Africa and that sort of thing. I learnt more out of those coaching sessions than I ever would have from ploughing through books. It was a special encouragement, and caused me to think a little bit and realise that I should be concerned about moving on. When I sat the exams, I got through everything except the Q exam, the qualification to enter Staff College. I mentioned earlier that there were two or three significant markers in my Service career, where at any one of those points I could well have gone off in an entirely different direction, or gone out of the Service altogether. While I was with No. 23 Squadron, one of these moments occurred. At that time, Central Flying School (CFS) used to come around each year on examining flights. They would check out each pilot both in terms of his proficiency from the flying point of view, and in a ground examination. When CFS came

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to No. 23 Squadron I fronted up for my test, and the chap leading the team, Flight Lieutenant Ian Parker, said, “Oh, it is not necessary for you to do it, since you are on Air Traffic Control duties.” I said that I would like to do it, if only to see how my standard compared to all the rest. He said all right, so we did a flying test. Of course, nothing more was heard for a while. Life went on fairly normally, except for one very significant event: I met the girl whom I decided I would like to have as my companion for the rest of my life. It happened that we ran some small but fun parties while I was with No. 23 Squadron, and it was during one of those that several hostesses from the Trans-Australia Airline (TAA) exhorted me to go in and rescue this poor unfortunate girl who was still slaving over a teletype machine back in their office. I reluctantly went in and brought her, Joan, out to the party. We did not hit it off too well for a start. Joan was not all that keen on going to the party, and I was not all that keen on going in to pick her up, so it was a fairly cool—but not unfriendly—atmosphere at first. But then we found we had a lot of things in common. We were both country people (Joan came from a small country town in Western Victoria), we both had a Service connection (she had served with the Women’s Royal Australian Navy during the war, and was very proud of it), and we found we liked many similar things, so from there we got on famously. Joan and I went out together quite a bit. But bear in mind, I was nearly twenty-seven by that stage, and I started to wonder if I really wanted to give up my bachelor style of living. Joan detected this, and she asked me direct one day, “Do you want to continue this relationship?” I suddenly realised I would be letting go a very good thing if I stayed a bachelor. We were married in May 1950, in what was a Service wedding with a small modification. I chose to

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be married in the drab uniform, whereas traditionally I should have worn blue. I had served practically all my service, up to that point, in ‘drabs’, except for some short time down in colder places like Point Cook, and I had almost a sentimental attachment to the drab uniform—that was my uniform. Joan and I found a nice little flat behind a shop down at Fortitude Valley and we settled into that. We were only in there a matter of weeks when I received orders to get myself to East Sale as fast as possible and to join a Flying Instructors Course. Arriving in Victoria at the end of June, I chanced to pass Ian Parker, the Flight Commander of the Instructional Flight. I asked him what had happened, and he explained that after the instructors’ course started they lost two fellows off it, for various reasons, in the first week or so. When replacements were sought for the course, while there was still time for someone to join in, Air Force Headquarters responded that they did not have available any more people who were suitable for it. Ian Parker had asked, “Well, what about that chap McNamara up at Archerfield? He flies reasonably well and he was instructing during the war.” So they looked up the record and said, “Oh yes, we forgot about him.” So that was how I managed to come back into the flying world. I cannot help but say that, thinking back on various instances involving the personnel managers at Air Force Headquarters, that side of administration left a lot to be desired in those days. One wondered what the heck they were doing there. The Flying Instructors Course held at Central Flying School was a very good course at that time. It was broad in the sense that you qualified as an instructor on both elementary and advanced types—what was known as an ‘all through’ scheme. It meant that you qualified as an instructor on Tiger Moths and on Wirraways.

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You were also required to convert to Dakotas as the medium multi-engined aircraft, and on Lincons as the heavy ones, so that if you went to a squadron you were at least qualified on those types for instructional purposes too. In addition, you had the benefit of flying the Mustang as an experience for those who had not flown the Mustang before. That was interesting and very rewarding. Towards the end of the course, when postings were due, I was asked if I would like to stay on at the Central Flying School, on staff. I was delighted to do this, so I stayed on at Sale for another two years. The Commanding Officer at that stage was a Royal Air Force officer on exchange, Squadron Leader Alan Picknett. He was a really fine gentleman, another who again encouraged by example. When he was leaving CFS to go back home, he said to me, “I’m going to keep in touch with this unit, and I want to be able to see that you have done your Q exam and qualified for the Staff College course.” That was an additional bit of incentive, and a very important one. If you received encouragement like that, you could not help but move along. When I had first received orders to go to Sale, Joan and I tentatively agreed that she would stay on in the flat we had just occupied in Brisbane while I did the course. We would see where I was posted to after that, and make arrangements to go there together then. That resolve lasted all of two weeks before she told me to find somewhere to live, anything, because she wanted to come down and be with me. I was fortunate enough to get an extra day’s leave with a weekend, so in those three days I rocketed up to Brisbane by car, packed up the few things we had (which was not much) and dashed back to Sale. There were a lot of people in the same circumstances as us, trying to rent something privately on Service pay. We did get a

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marriage allowance, something like a shilling and six pence a day, but that was equivalent in purchasing power to a couple of dollars today and certainly did not provide much. The result was that everyone took whatever they could find to live in. There were guys and their wives living in all manner of funny places, many of them converted garages—some of the conversions having been primitively done, too. We were able to rent a couple of rooms in an old colonial house, one of those places with a classical veranda along the front and down both sides. There were other couples there, I recall: Cliff Fivash and his wife, Gordon Steege and his wife, and someone else who I currently cannot remember. Our two rooms were off the passageway, one being a bedroom and the other where we ate and sat. For a kitchen, Joan had what used to be the pantry of this big house in earlier times; the area was so small that two people could not stand in it together. Joan would get in there and cook on a funny little gas stove, then she would have to step out so I could go in and carve the meat, then she would take the meal out into the area which served as a dining room. The whole time the landlady used to monitor everything that we did. She would walk in and tell Joan she was using too much gas and to turn it down, that sort of thing. She nearly drove us up the wall. It may seem funny to say, but we still managed to have a good time—mainly because of the company of the others who were in the house at the same time, particularly the Fivashes. East Sale was the sort of place that many people thought was not far from the end of the earth. There was a cinema in town, but not much else in the way of recreational facilities. Everyone had to make their own fun, and we did. At weekends we went fishing, or we would take a keg and a picnic lunch up to Glen Maggie Weir. We all taught our wives to drive, if they had not already learnt, on the

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straight stretch of road to Maffra. Of course, everyone’s expectations were so much lower back then. I remember it was only during our last year in Sale (and we ended up being there for two and a half years) that one of the local retail stores advised that people could put their name down for a kerosene-powered refrigerator. You literally had to put your name on a list, and when your turn came you could buy this marvellous appliance—if you had the money to afford it. By that stage we had moved into another place nearby, which was much like our first house except this one did not have verandas. This time Joan and I had half a house to ourselves, with a passageway down the centre separating us from the owners, Mr and Mrs Lyons, who lived in the other half. This arrangement was a lot more comfortable, and we were very happy there. At least we had a nice big kitchen with a wood-fired stove; we had both grown up with wood fires and I did not mind chopping wood. The place fronted onto the lake in Sale, Lake Guthrie, which I recall caused a funny situation for us because of the way fogs formed very quickly over the water. I was not really aware of this, and being from Queensland I was a bit of a fresh-air fiend. The house had these full-length French windows, and on our first night there I insisted on having the window open for air. When we woke next morning we could not see the end of the bed for the fog in the room with us, and it was very cold. In March 1952, Joan and I were blessed with the arrival of our first child, a daughter, Shelley Maureen. We had to move again, and this time we finally got a whole house, up by the police station. But we had barely unpacked our things there before I was posted away from Sale. I do remember, though, that we were very proud of the new place, and I felt it was about time that we invited the Commanding Officer, Alan Picknett, and his Australian wife Barbara, to dinner. Joan and I were not big

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drinkers of table wine, but I thought we should have some wine with dinner so I bought a bottle and put it aside. Well, Alan and Barbara came out and we had a very fine time around the dinner table. It was not until we had moved away from the dining room for coffee that I finally remembered the wine that I had meant to serve up. I admitted my faux pas to Alan, and said that I hoped he was not going to give me a bad P/P29 (confidential report), but he thought the episode was hilarious and just laughed it off. I enjoyed my time on instructional staff at CFS. As before, it was rewarding in the sense that you were making something of a potential instructor, but you were also dealing with more mature men, as distinct from raw pupils, and that was rewarding in itself. There were other interests in it as well, because not being very long after the finish of the Second World War, we still had a comparatively large number of planes in the Service. Indeed, from the point of view of instructor practice at Sale, if you tried really hard you could get as many as eight types in the one month. I think I achieved it on two or three occasions. It is not claiming too much to say that I think my flying skills probably peaked when I was on staff at the School. While I was at the School there were often things other than instructional duties that we were asked to do, such as bush fire surveillance. One task that I found very interesting was a requirement to drop supplies to our Antarctic research people down at Macquarie Island early in 1951. The only aircraft that was suitable for that sort of mission was the Lincoln. Flight Lieutenant Ted McKenzie was given the job of skippering the flight, but he took a while to decide who was going to be the second pilot. I was bidding for it furiously against another chap who was much more experienced on multi-engined aircraft, and I think Ted was at first inclined to take him. Wisdom or pressure prevailed, and I eventually got the nod. Of

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course, I was a qualified Lincoln captain, from a purely flying point of view, so in effect we had two qualified captains. We also had three navigators, all from the staff of the School of Air Navigation at Sale. Dropping medical supplies was the principle objective, but we took the opportunity to put in a package of fresh meat and another one full of newspapers and other items that might be of interest to the scientists. We launched a bit after midnight on 1 February and it was a thirteen and a half hour flight, so we got back at half past three in the afternoon. The navigators did a fantastic job, because although it may have been possible to take a few star shots until we reached the southern tip of Tasmania, once daylight approached we also entered complete overcast so the navigators could not get any sun shots. I believe they relied on manual dead reckoning, ably assisted by a ham radio operator on Macquarie Island who was very helpful. They were able to take bearings on his transmission signal and that aided in keeping us on course. When we got over our destination we did a let down to seawards before coming in under the overcast. By that time we were down pretty low, certainly well below a thousand feet. The people on the ground wanted us to drop the stores on a narrow isthmus that comes off the southern end of Macquarie Island—the rest is a mountain and the cloud cover was solid by that time—so we made our approach over the sea towards this area. It so happened that this was the breeding season for seals that were gathered on the beaches, where the bulls had set up their domains and established their harems. I was intrigued that every time our aircraft made a run, the bulls would stand up and challenge this thing out of the sky. It was just fascinating to watch. We did our storpedo drops successfully and then headed for home.

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On landing at the conclusion of a long and tiring flight we were met by the Officer Commanding the base, who was then Group Captain Bill Townsend. He insisted on taking us up to the mess, opening the bar and having a few beers. This was absolutely fatal for me because up until then I was still wide awake, not feeling tired at all. But after I had drunk two beers the realisation hit me that I could not drive home. More than anything in the world, I just wanted to drop off to sleep. Fortunately I met up with a friend who lived in at the mess, so I arranged to ‘borrow’ his bed; I went over to the sleeping quarters and just crashed. Not long afterwards Joan rang up to enquire about where I was. Someone went looking for me, found me, did everything possible to wake me up, almost failed, but eventually I struggled back to consciousness and drove to the hotel where Joan and I were temporarily staying at the time. Joan was waiting to go down to dinner before I got in, and while we waited for our meal she wanted to hear all about the mission. All I could remember to say to her was “Seal bulls, lots of seal bulls”, so she gave up in disgust. That was just indicative of the sort of tasks that we often got at what was otherwise an instructional school. In July 1952, I was promoted to squadron leader. In that second year of my time at Sale I had also been put onto the examining flight, and it became my turn to go around to the various squadrons and formations for four to six months each year, to check out the proficiency of all the pilots. That had its problems in some respects, because the squadrons rather resented us. Understandably they could not see that CFS had a role in testing the proficiency of otherwise operationally qualified pilots. They really misinterpreted the intention, which was to check purely their flying ability—standard of flying, airmanship, and knowledge—not operational capability.

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Our usual way of proceeding was that I would take a team of three or four instructors to each base, and after discussing our purpose with the Commanding Officer we would hold a briefing for all the pilots to explain what our charter was. There would be ground examinations, then we would break up the pilots or squadrons into groups that each of the instructors would take for flying tests. I would fly with the Commanding Officers and the Flight Commanders, and that worked pretty well in the main. But we really did have to emphasise the message that we were not there to talk about operations at all. This was a period of almost confusing adjustment in the RAAF. The Service was taking on board some practices that the RAF had introduced, often while the British system was actually in the process of discarding them after having decided they were not worthwhile. One example of this was the ‘P’ (for Pilot) Category. Our airmen pilots were graded P1 to P4, with P4 being the equivalent of a corporal, P3 a sergeant, and so on up the scale. The result was that airmen pilots bore some sort of stigma, because they were not considered anything like a commissioned officer even though they were doing the same thing. A P3, for example, could still be an aircraft captain if he was qualified for it. Things got more iniquitous. If the examining flight went away from Sale for a visit to, say, Amberley, then when we arrived there any P3s on my team would be rostered to do guard duty, that sort of thing. It really was a stupid system. Thankfully it only lasted a couple of years before it was thrown out, and we moved towards commissioning all aircrew. The Service was also having to get rid of many people very quickly in an effort to run down to manageable proportions. A lot of good people left who would have liked to have stayed in, and the people who stayed in had a mixed bag of experience. It is always

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dangerous to generalise, but it deserves to be said that the conduct of many pilots in the General Duties world during this period of moving to a peacetime environment also did not create a favourable impression in the minds of many people. The mess games and other antics that went on in many units left fighter pilots in particular with a lot to answer for, although to be fair I suspect they were only determined to make life interesting and humorous and fun. But the cost in terms of restoring furniture, and other things, must have been horrendous at times. There were other problem factors at work in the Air Force at this time, some of which really did not make a lot of sense. For example, there was antipathy between those who had served during the war in Europe or the Western Desert, or Burma even, and those whose service had been in the South-West Pacific Area. There was an unfortunate attitude among some middle rank and senior officers in the latter group. People coming back from overseas were told in no uncertain terms that now they were back in Australia no one wanted to hear talk of this ‘sand in the shoe stuff ’ and they should buckle down. I also heard of some people who came back from England after serving in RAF Transport or Bomber Command and on joining our transport world on Dakotas found that captains flatly refused to let them even handle the controls. There were others who found that people would not even talk to them in the mess. What really mattered was that there was a fairly wide standard of flying skills and airmanship across the Air Force. Where there were shortcomings, a lot of it was a matter of what individual pilots had become accustomed to doing of their own volition. There was not a lot of direct supervision and monitoring of flying capability. I think it started to pick up from there, not just because CFS went round examining, but because Commanding Officers and wing

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Officers Commanding began to take more of a direct interest in the standards of proficiency. There was also perhaps a filtering process going on in the whole GD Branch throughout the early 1950s, with personnel coming up the stream who genuinely wanted to get on in the Air Force and were prepared to accept whatever it entailed to develop a decent career. Towards the end of my time at Sale, the CFS was given one of the early single-seat Vampires so that we could build up our own experience on jet aircraft. That was a very interesting transition, too. We all went from a long experience on tail-wheeled type aircraft, multi- and single-engine, to a tricycle undercarriage aircraft with virtually nothing in front of you in the cockpit to give a feel for attitude. Now that was something for us to think about at CFS. Even with a jet aircraft as simple as the Vampire, we were also going into an era where people needed to know about things like compressibility—the distorting pressures placed on a airframe during high speed manoeuvres. There had been pilots who experienced compressibility on the Mustang type of wing when they tried vertical power dives to see what speed they could get up to. We lost a couple of fellows that way, while others emerged out of it with a bent aircraft and as very frightened men. Only a matter of months before I left CFS we also got some two-seat trainer versions of the Vampire, and had set about devising a course to train instructors who would then go out to the flying schools to apply their knowledge. This was all part of a deliberate program to smooth the transition of the RAAF into the jet age.

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10Active Service in Korea

hroughout the time that I spent with the Central Flying School, the RAAF had been involved in the Korean War. In fact, that conflict had started just as

I went to Sale to begin my flying instructors’ course. Australia’s contribution to the air war was No. 77 Squadron, flying Mustangs for about the first year of operations and then re-equipping with British-built Gloster Meteor jets. When others around me started getting warning notification that they would be going to Korea, it set me wondering whether and when my turn would come. I later found immensely interesting to read what was said by Professor Bob O’Neill in our official history of the Korean War, about RAAF Mustang pilots being posted to do a second tour in Korea because there were not enough in Australia to keep the flow going. That is a claim that I would certainly challenge, based on my own experience. I, for one, was never approached about going, even though I had pretty extensive experience on Mustangs from my two tours in Japan and further flying on the type at Archerfield; and I know of others, with similar experience on the Mustang, who were also never asked to go. I suspect that this was a situation that arose from not having a well-organised personnel branch at headquarters, where perhaps they lacked the sort of database that allowed them to readily look up who they did have available. This was all relevant to explaining how I ended up going to Korea. While I was still at CFS, having just been promoted to squadron

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leader, my good friend Cliff Fivash received an instruction telling him that he would be posted to Korea at a future date. This really set me thinking about what was happening with me. One day when I was down in Melbourne, I went and saw Squadron Leader Frank Schaaf in the postings area at Air Force Headquarters. Frank was an old desert Kittyhawk pilot who I knew from our days at Mildura together, so I asked him the direct question, “Am I going to get my turn to go to Korea?” He answered, “Oh, do you want to go?” I said, “Look, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, or go over anybody. I would just like to do my turn, that’s all.” To which he replied, “Just hang on a minute”, and he went in to see his director. When he came back out, he said, “You’re on. You’ll get a PZ in due course.” It was not too long after that I received a PZ, a posting order, sending me to No. 77 Squadron. As it happened, I went up to Korea before Cliff Fivash did, which I think left him unimpressed even though it had never been my intention to upset anyone else’s opportunities. Of course, I had to go home and tell Joan what I had done. She was very understanding about this, I suppose partly because she had been a WRAN during the Second World War, and it was still not all that long after the end of the war. I think, also, she was accustomed to accept the idea that the life of a serviceman entailed these sorts of moves, and that he went where he was sent. She has borne the brunt of it many times. Perhaps that is the reason I respond to her so much in retirement, as a form of return for the many times that she was left to keep things going at home. In preparation for service in Korea, I was sent to Williamtown in January 1953 to undertake the Operational Training Unit (OTU) course. The first half of this training was done on Mustangs and the second half on Vampires, which was handy since I had gained a little experience on the Vampire while at Central Flying School. By that

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stage No. 77 Squadron was flying Meteors, but the OTU did not have any of those, which meant that new arrivals at the squadron had to convert onto that type at Iwakuni, in Japan. Joan came with me while I did OTU, and we had a funny little flat at Nelson Bay. When it came time for me to actually leave Australia in June, I took Joan down to Western Victoria to a cottage that her father had built in the Grampian mountains. He was managing a property twenty or so miles from there, as a promise to an old friend, but Joan would be close enough to him and her mother that they could get together regularly. That arrangement did not last very long, as it happened, because my sister Bobby convinced Joan that the wilds of the Grampians in winter was no place for her and a young baby to be living, and that she should go north and stay with her in Townsville. Joan went up there and it was definitely much better. By the time I finished my conversion onto Meteors at Iwakuni and made it across to Kimpo in Korea, it was already 10 July. I only had time to fly about a dozen missions before No. 77 Squadron flew its last combat operation ten days later. The records show that I took part in that mission—an attack by sixteen Meteors on an enemy-occupied village, during which we fired off one hundred and ten rockets and supposedly destroyed twenty-two buildings and left the target area in flames—but I cannot say that I especially remember it. A week later, on 27 July, the cease-fire agreement was signed and the fighting finished. It was not the first time (or the last) that I caught the tail-end of a conflict. As the squadron’s Executive Officer, I was sent off up to Panmunjom to meet fellows like ‘Butch’ Hannan and Gordon Harvey who were being returned from captivity by the communists. Although the Korean War was over, No. 77 Squadron remained in-country until early October 1954. I ended up staying at Kimpo until

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I had completed a normal tour (at that time six months) at the end of 1953; tours were subsequently lengthened to nine months, but I did just over six months there. As it happened, the Commanding Officer of the squadron finished his tour in mid-November, and I ran the unit until his replacement arrived three weeks later. Not a lot of interest happened following the cease-fire. One of the few memories of events that I have is of my being back in Japan on leave and spending my break in a rather unusual way. Gone were the grand old days of the occupation forces, because the splendid Japanese resorts we could once visit were now too expensive. I was expecting to relax by just lazing around Iwakuni, maybe doing an occasional test flight, having a few beers in the mess, that sort of thing. But then the transport unit at Iwakuni, No. 36 Squadron, found they had a requirement to fly Lieutenant General Wells, the Commander-in-Chief of British Commonwealth Forces in Korea, around Japan while he was on a visit; they were short a Dakota copilot and asked if I was interested in coming along. Of course I was, so off we went and had a fabulous time. On reflection, my time in Korea was a useful experience. Those final days while the war was still on certainly produced a number of lessons to be tucked away for use in later years, but they were also frustrating and very disappointing. Disappointing in the sense that the aircraft that our Government, in its wisdom, had chosen to buy—the Gloster Meteor, a British aircraft—was not really designed for the purpose for which we were using it. It was bought, I understand, in the hope that it would be suitable for the air-to-air mission and be capable of combating the MiG, but its employment in that role in the early stages was almost disastrous. My understanding is that the Australian Government faced a real problem over what was available to buy, and perhaps if they

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had been given the opportunity they would have purchased a better aircraft. But it is often said that our Prime Minister, Menzies, was very much orientated towards British products and wanted to buy British. I gather there was an attempt to acquire American F-86s, a type with which the Americans were having a great deal of success, but the message from them was that they did not have enough to supply themselves. And yet, in response to that, one has to ask, how did the South Africans manage to lease F-86s; to my mind, there is still a question mark about that. The plain fact is that the Meteor was inferior to the MiG in air-to-air combat, mainly in performance at high altitude in the manoeuvring spectrum of its capabilities. Its mach speed made it, at best, a fairly good, sub-sonic aircraft, whereas the MiG was capable of getting close to Mach 1 in the manoeuvring field, and could exceed Mach 1 in other circumstances. Now, the Meteor was never capable of that. It was a reasonably heavy aircraft, fairly ponderous; it was not as manoeuvrable, either in roll or in turns; and speed-wise, it could not keep up with the MiG. Any opportunity that our people employed during the early active phase of operations could have had to fire upon a MiG would have been a fleeting one at best; those who were successful did very well in accomplishing what they did. As a consequence, the Meteor had to be withdrawn from the air-to-air role and was then employed in the air-to-ground role, a role for which it was never intended. The only weapons it had were forward-firing guns, and nothing else. It was not capable of carrying bombs, although we had people from the Aircraft Research and Development Unit doing trials, trying to fit it with bombs. Through the initiatives of our own armament engineers, a system had been devised by which we could fire rockets from the aircraft. We could carry about ten rockets, fitted with either sixty-

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pound (twenty-seven kilogram) explosive heads, a very cleverly designed napalm head, or a solid rocket (which were not much use operationally). And rockets generally were very ineffective. The other problem with the Meteor was the very short radius of action. By the time I arrived we were in a static situation, the operational targets were fairly well to the north, and we did not have the radius of action to get us into those useful target areas. It was the cause for some depression on the part of the pilots of the squadron. There were a number of times that I, as deputy commander of the squadron, would go along to the Tactical Control Centre with Norm Williams, our operations officer, and implore them to give us more worthwhile targets. Now, Norm had been the RAAF’s most highly decorated air-gunner in England during the Second World War, so it was no less frustrating for him to be in Korea at this particular stage. The American response to our pleadings was always the obvious question, “How far can you go, and what can you carry?” When we told them, they would say, “Sorry, but all we can give you within that radius of action is suspected billeting areas, the odd gun emplacement, things of that nature.” So really, in that final part of the Korean War, I do not believe that we, No. 77 Squadron, were providing a terribly useful contribution. Kimpo, of course, was an extremely busy base and in that respect we were something like small fish in a big pond. The 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing of American F-86s was based there, the entire wing. There was also the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, composed of B-26s and numerous other aircraft. Domestically we were based upon the 67th for rationing etc and we got to know those fellows very well. In the main, we had a very good rapport with all the Americans; both nationalities were always welcome in each other’s messes, and we had some very fine parties at times.

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And of course the Americans were, as they always have been, very willing to speak up and compliment we Australians for being there alongside them among the other nations participating in that war. But I must say that I could not help but detect at times an underlying lack of regard for the operational capability of the aircraft that our Government had chosen. We were billeted in tents, and winter in Korea under those conditions was not to be recommended. It was a static sort of situation, so at least we could make the tents reasonably comfortable. Once again, the well-known initiative of Australians came to the fore, and they devised some magnificent heating devices using fuel oil on a drip system on a pot belly stove in the centre of the tent. Admittedly there were some accidents, and on one unfortunate occasion a life was lost, but we made ourselves as comfortable as we possibly could. I really felt for the airmen. All we had for maintenance purposes was a cantilever type hangar, which might have provided some shelter from the direct fall of snow and rain, but no protection at all from the ambient temperature. With temperatures in winter well below zero, getting down to –30°F on occasions, I really felt for those fellows who had to work with cold metal. Indeed, it was so bad that they had to bind their tools with string or material, to stop the skin from sticking to the metal. My feelings really went out to them. One thing I should mention about Korea was that we also had with our squadron some RAF exchange officers, six at any one time. They were splendid fellows, and they probably had more jet experience than any of the RAAF people who served with No. 77 Squadron, but unfortunately my predecessor had seen fit to institute a policy that prevented them from graduating up to section leaders or deputy flight commanders, or whatever. I immediately changed

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the policy and gave them the right to compete fairly for promotion to element and section leader, and they responded tremendously well to that. It obviously gave them a boost, and it was noticeable that they were much happier and at home under those circumstances. It was rewarding in much later years, when I was Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), to make an official visit to England and be greeted by my opposite number, the CAS of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith (‘Willie’) Williamson, who was one of those exchange officers there in No. 77 Squadron in Korea.

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11Entry into the Staff World

hen I got home from Korea, I was still dedicated to continuing in the Service; I had no ideas of anything else. I was prepared to accept whatever came my way,

but I must admit that I had not thought of doing a ground job; my focus was entirely upon flying—a GD (General Duties) career in other words. I was posted down to the Melbourne area but the precise appointment was left in abeyance until I had talked with Frank Schaaf, who was still with the personnel people in Air Force Headquarters at Victoria Barracks, and had requested I come and see him. When I fronted up, Frank very understandingly asked, “How do you feel? What do you want to do?”, and I had to say to him, “I’m almost afraid to say this, but I have the feeling that I’m getting stale on flying.” The truth was that during my final days up in Korea, I found that I would look forward to going flying, but once airborne I became bored and had the feeling that there was not much point to it. He said, “What about some time in a staff job?”, and I agreed that might be a wise idea. So I went across to Training Command, situated on the other side of Albert Park Lake, and into the job of Staff Officer Pilot Training. Group Captain Charles Read was my boss there, as Staff Officer Air Training; Air Commodore Charles Pearce was SASO (Senior Administrative Staff Officer). I thoroughly enjoyed it there, although the place was going through a fairly slack period. It is interesting to

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compare the atmosphere of staff duties in that Training Command headquarters and the atmosphere in staff officer posts today—it is so vastly different. Back then it was a nice, easy, leisurely position. Charles Read wandered into my office one day and asked me what I was doing. When I told him that there was actually not a lot to do, he said, “Well how about writing a new Flying Training Syllabus.” I beavered away on this document, and when I had finished I gave it to Charles. He said, “That’s pretty good, but leave it now—for about five years or so.” So it was placed in a B/F (bring forward) file. Someone mentioned this to me years later, and asked me if I remembered the syllabus I had written. It turned out that when the file came up, my syllabus was found to be outdated and they did not use it after all. Anyway, that job lasted less than a year, and in January 1955 I was thrust into Victoria Barracks as Staff Officer Fighter Operations in the Department of Air. I had no preparation for the post, no staff training, and felt I had been thrown in the deep end. At the same time I would have to say, without any exaggeration, that the situation in that area at the time was most confused. I do not think there were too many people who really knew what was going on. It did not reflect much credit on the organisation of the place, and I say that kindly because Group Captain Brian Eaton was our Director-General and I had a great liking for him. Brian was a bit of a player, and some days he would come in briefly, then not be there for the rest of the day; enough said. Wing Commander I.F. Rose was the Director, and I reported directly to him. I think Rose liked to see himself as the epitome of how a staff officer should operate. When you were called into his office, his desk would be clear of everything except for the one file that had to do with what he wanted to talk

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about. Mind you, behind him there was a battery of about six filing cabinets. As an example of my view that our area of headquarters was not the best organised, I should mention the Friday afternoon that we were summoned to the office of the director on the engineering side who was responsible for the fitment of the new Mk 35 Vampire. He told us that we had that afternoon and the weekend to decide what we wanted to put into this aircraft, and he literally just sat there and read out the list of items—ejection seat, Maxaret brakes, etc—to which we said yes or no. I saw the result of this later on, because I flew quite a bit in the Mk 35 and it had a very cramped cockpit with an ejection seat that was so positioned that the pilot ended up with a colossal pain in the back after three or four hours flying a day. I recall also that we were called in every now and again to talk about the proposal that was being mooted at the time to acquire the F-104 Starfighter. All this stands in total contrast to the way that major capital projects were staffed during my later time in the Department of Defence. What this position (and the previous job) did for me was gave me time, with others, to settle down and pick up study on the Q exam that I needed to pass to enter Staff College and open the way for promotion to wing commander. It is worth mentioning that when I did the Q exam I was absolutely delighted, because every question on the paper that I looked at I knew I could answer. Unfortunately, as I worked through the questions I answered each so fully that I did not have time to complete the mandatory section of the paper. Realising that this was the situation, I could only do a skeleton outline of the remaining questions, although I knew that was not going to be good enough.

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In my job at the Barracks, I shared an office with Jack Cornish, who was Staff Officer Transport Operations. One day the man responsible for conducting the Q exam, Wing Commander Mick Mather, appeared at our door and, in Mick’s inimical style, called me out into the passageway to talk with him. When I joined him, he said straight out, “You are stupid, aren’t you. You didn’t complete the exam questions.” I told him why, and he said, “I can see that, but what you did write is so good that I’m going to pass you.” Living in Melbourne at least provided Joan and me with the opportunity to acquire our first home, which we built in Edinburgh Street, South Bentley, with my War Service entitlement and a small mortgage. It was not a big house, only about ten squares of living area, but to us it was a beautiful place. Our second daughter, Julie, was born while we lived there, on 10 November 1955. It was only a couple of months after Julie’s arrival that I was sent off to the RAAF Staff College at Point Cook. Considering how I felt about the job I was in, I can only say that I was pretty glad that my name came up on the list of those selected to go. I was on No. 10 Course, which ended up being dubbed the ‘Supercourse’ on account of the number of students on it who eventually reached air rank; apart from me, there was Jimmy Rowland (a later CAS and Governor of New South Wales), John (‘Sam’) Jordan and Jack Cornish (both later air vice-marshals), and Geoff Blackwell (later an air commodore). I was not conscious at all of that aspect at the time. My main qualm was that I was not too sure what the whole business was all about, and how I would go. In retrospect it was undoubtedly the best thing that had ever happened to me. At Staff College I learnt to apply myself regardless of whether it cost a bit in time and effort. There were at least two occasions where

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I—in common with others on the course—worked right through the night on some assignment and typed it up, then in the morning had a quick shower and went all the way down to the college office to put it in the box before breakfast. I had never done that before. The principal thing that I gained from the course, though, was the extent to which we were taught the application of logic and sound reasoning to help us know what we were doing. The methodology and mental appreciation involved in doing a staff paper applies, of course, not just to defence work; it can be used in whatever walk of life one is in, and I really wished that I had experienced it a long time before I reached the Staff College. I had never had any of this teaching before, certainly not during my schooling at Nudgee, and the benefits of it came to me time and time again as I went through my subsequent career. We had a very capable team of people on the directing staff in 1956, but the person who really stood out for me was Group Captain ‘Ginty’ Lush, the deputy commandant. The College really needed him, because Air Commodore Bill (‘Bull’) Garing was our commandant. With all respect to an old friend, Bull was not a commandant in the true sense of the word, friendly and likeable though he was. Ginty Lush was the one who held the place together, sometimes patching up the brickwork after dear old Bull had been up in front of the course members to have a go at us. Ginty provided encouragement to the students. In fact, at the very start he told us, “I don’t want you to approach this course by just setting yourself a hard road to hoe, at it all the time, with no time for relaxation. At night do some work, but then come over to the mess at nine or ten o’clock and have a couple of beers. If you want to go back to study afterwards, well that’s up to you.” There was a catch to that advice because quite often when we went over to the mess,

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to have those few beers to relax, he would close the door and say, “Nobody leaves this mess till I say you can go.” But that was fine, too, because he did not take it beyond reasonable bounds. He would also have students out to his house, perhaps four or five at a time, with their wives. We would have a very pleasant evening and then, after the dinner was over, as was the custom in those days, his wife would take the ladies off somewhere and he would take us into the room where he had a table covered with a green top to play Liar Dice. It was extremely interesting the way that Ginty worked at sizing up the character of a person. The Liar Dice games were a good way for him to see how people thought and how they used their mind. He would just sit back, watching like a hawk while he puffed away at his pipe, making no comments at all. I remember bungling a few things on the course, which I suppose was inevitable, but one episode stands out in particular. We had to do a country project and I was given Persia, or Iran as it has become. I started off really well and put a lot of work into preparation, but then I got caught up with competing demands for time and ended up finishing it in one hell of a hurry. There were some pertinent questions that I did not prepare for, with the result that my presentation fell down in important respects. Toby Garrick, the DS (Directing Staff) who provided guidance for this exercise, asked me afterwards what went wrong, and I could only explain that I had let myself get too tied up on other things. At the end of the course Ginty interviewed everybody, and when my turn came he said he would read out what he had written in my report. His comments were not exactly scathing, but his assessment was very critical and did not present me as a bright student at all. When he finished, he looked up at me and asked, “Do you agree with that?” I said, “Yes, I do,” so he told me, “All right, away you go.”

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Some years later I was talking to a colleague, ‘Bay’ Adams, about the Staff College course and I mentioned this interview and what was said at it. He laughed at me and said, “That’s a lot of rubbish. When I was in Personnel I had to look up your report from Staff College, and you got a very good report.” Ginty had been just testing me in his peculiar way, and I do not hold it against him. The truth was that I did not think I had done very well, even though I rate that course as a definite milestone in terms of what it did for me.

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12Commands and Courses

aving completed Staff College, I was sent in January 1957 to RAAF Base Pearce, over in Western Australia, as Commanding Officer of No. 25 Squadron. This was

my first unit command and it was a great pleasure, both domestically and from the point of view of Service responsibility; in July I received promotion to wing commander. The squadron was a Citizen Air Force (CAF) one, operating a mix of Wirraways, Vampires and Dakotas, and had the task of training pilot and ground crew reservists to help expand the RAAF in the event of an emergency. We had only a small nucleus of permanent people, which included myself, the two flight commanders, two other staff pilots (who were not qualified instructors but still played their part in training), engineer officers, equipment officers, and so on. It was a small unit, and—joy of joys—the whole base ran at that time solely for No. 25 Squadron. Later, the Flying Training School was positioned there and the place grew and developed. Pearce was one of the three principal bases that the RAAF operated from before the Second World War, the others being Laverton and Richmond, and it had very solid, purpose-built brick buildings. This included the married quarters for both officers and airmen. The officers’ quarters were in two-storey buildings, with two flats upstairs and two below. Each flat was very spacious, and well-equipped, although the kitchen area was fast becoming out-of-date

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with a wood-fired stove and things like that. Nonetheless, my family were very comfortable and we had a happy time there. There was a lot of time for flying, because the CAF fellows used to come in every second weekend and also had to attend a two-week camp once a year. They were splendid people and I enjoyed working with them and instructing them. We did a lot of other flying in other respects, too, as we were frequently called on to take a flight of Vampires over to the east to participate in various exercises. The Dakota that we had was there in support of the base, and since I was the only captain qualified on that type, whenever it flew so did I. There were some wonderful trips in that aircraft—some humorous, others very demanding and tiring. It was a long slog to the east and back in an old Dakota. It was while I was at Pearce that I learnt I had been selected to go to the UK, to do the RAF Flying College course starting in January 1959. This course had a pretty intense operational focus, in that it involved using knowledge of what certain aircraft types could do, and how they could best be used to achieve particular strategic or tactical objectives. For that reason I thought it was one of the most enjoyable and valuable courses that I have ever done, and a distinct highlight of my career. All that aside, the real purpose behind the course was to better equip officers at wing commander level for staff duties, so viewed with hindsight somebody in our personnel area had obviously decided that I needed to get a bit of that sort of experience into me. The course itself entailed half flying and half syndicate work. When it started off in earlier years, the two components were compatible in the sense that the syndicate work involved the aircraft types that the students would actually be flying. By the time I did the course, though, the aircraft being flown were Canberra B.2s

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and Hunter Mk 4s, while the syndicate work focused on Vulcans, Lightnings and similar aircraft. In fact, it was not long after my time that the flying side of things was scrubbed entirely, and students simply went to bases to get briefings from the fellows who flew the various types, listen to the strategies employed, and so forth. Nonetheless, because of the flying element of the RAF course as it then was, I was required to come back from Pearce to the east coast for some conversion training. I went to Williamtown and did the Sabre conversion course, and then up to Amberley to do the Canberra conversion. During this I left Joan on her own over at Pearce, and, in fact, because the UK course was of six-months duration, I had to proceed unaccompanied. The RAAF policy then was that you had to be away twelve months or more before you could take your wife with you. That was bad enough, but because it was also policy that a wife was not meant to stay in a married quarter if the husband was posted away, Joan found a bit of pressure being applied on her to move out of the flat that we had on base so that someone else could move in. Fortunately, the CO of the Base Squadron supported Joan. When the time came to leave Australia, I flew out on one of the Super Constellations that Qantas operated back then. There was a bit of a story to that, because a month or two before I was due to go I was supposed to receive a package of pre-course exercise material to be completed on arrival, but in the event it reached me only a matter of days before my departure. That caused quite a bit of midnight oil to be burnt, because the course involved a lot of mathematics—some of which I had not touched since school, or had not been taught at all. In an effort to catch up on all this, I worked hard on these papers on the aircraft. That is, until we reached Rome and there was a change of crew. After we took off again I was the only passenger

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in the First Class section, and the hostess came and told me that the captain would like to see me on the flight deck. I went on up as requested, to be met by a chap with whom I had flown in Japan on occupation duties. He informed me that I was their ‘honoured guest’ and could stay up there for the rest of the trip, so that was the end of my reading. When I got to Manby, in Lincolnshire, where the Flying College was located, I found I was the only Australian among the course’s twenty or so members. I was not the only foreigner, since there was also an American and a New Zealander. There was a specialist navigation course underway at Manby while I was there, on which there were two RAAF fellows as well, but I saw little of them. I must admit I encountered a bit of colonial antipathy from some of my British colleagues. An episode that particularly stuck in my mind occurred on the first or second morning after I arrived. When I went to breakfast there was this chap sitting at a table reading a paper, so as I sat down almost directly opposite him I said good morning. That was apparently a big mistake, because he looked up with a pained expression and said, “Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning! There are seven, that should do you for the week.” The course itself was a real challenge. As I have explained, I had never done a lot of the maths involved, which concerned logarithms and the use of the slide rule. In fact, I had not even learnt to use a slide rule until Ken Jansen taught me while I was doing the Sabre conversion at Williamtown. ‘Probability’ was another big thing, because it was a large part of planning for free-fall bombing attacks—we were not, at that stage, really into the business of guided missiles for ground attack. Except for one instructor on the directing staff, the group I was working with were really fine people. For example,

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when we were divided up for syndicate work I found myself paired off with a chap named Jerry Wade, who later reached the rank of air vice-marshal, although we all thought at the time that he would probably go even higher. Whereas before I was not overly keen on syndicate work, for once I discovered that I rather liked it. Because I was enjoying myself, I was a little surprised when my performance on the course was called into question. I was not much of a question asker by nature, but on one occasion I thought I would put a question to a DS who was telling us about ballistic missiles. My question about shear wind forces on fragile-skinned missiles seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but he got that pained expression on his face too, and gave me some partial answer. The next thing I know, I was called up to the Chief Instructor, a fine pilot named ‘Chick’ Sparrow who I liked very much. He sat me down and told me that it had been suggested to him that I might be having some trouble with the course, that some things might be over my head. I said, “I think I know where that comes from. It’s in the aerodynamics line.” I went on to explain that while I did not regard myself as a boffin at aerodynamics, I did think that I knew a reasonable amount about the subject and used to teach it at Central Flying School, so from my perspective I did not feel I was having a significant problem with the course at all. We laughed about a few things and I walked away from his office. I think that episode also owed something to the attitude towards ‘colonials’ that was around at the time. As the course was about the finish, I received advice from Australia telling me that I was required to fly this special aircraft called a U.10, which was a Canberra that had been converted for use as a target drone, to the Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera. A navigator was being sent across to the UK, and the two of us were to pick up the aircraft from Short Brothers and Harland

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in Belfast, and fly it back home. Unfortunately, the Shorts factory was beseiged by union strikes at that time, and could get nothing done. There would be a message one week that they were back working and the aircraft would be ready for collection next week, and we would go across all prepared only to find that they were out on strike again. This went on for the best part of a month. The navigator, Clem Whiteley, and I were staying in the RAF Club in central London, during what was the best summer the British had ever had, and I was starting to develop a guilty conscience about the situation. Eventually a message arrived, telling me to come home; Clem was to stay, and the plan was to borrow a pilot from the RAF. I had been really looking forward to the flight, but in the end I missed out. In July 1959 I went back to Williamtown and onto Sabres as Commanding Officer of No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit (2OCU). This was a wartime unit that had been reformed as No. 2 Operational Training Unit during the Korean conflict, to supply trained fighter pilots for the RAAF’s Mustangs and Vampires. When the Sabre began entering service, there was a Sabre Trials Flight within the unit that handled training on this type. That was Dick Cresswell’s baby, and he ran a very tight course, which was probably a good thing until the right attitude to that type of flying had become well-established. By the time I got there, Sabre training was the sole focus. Vampire courses had ceased the year before, and the unit’s name had been changed too, to 2OCU, in recognition that we were a conversion unit and there was only a limited amount of operational training being provided. This posting was only my second command, and was particularly interesting. The OCU was down the other end of the tarmac from No. 75 Squadron, which was an operational unit, and we were the

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training ground for its pilots. As occasion required, we would be called on to run a fighter combat instructor’s course, in addition to our normal work. We also took part in a lot of exercises, and were often required to deploy with No. 75 Squadron up to Amberley, Townsville or Darwin. So there is no doubt about it, we provided a key element in preparing fellows for manning of the RAAF’s fighter force. While the 2OCU job at Williamtown was good value, it was also a little traumatic, because we had three fatal accidents on Sabres during my time there. The nature of these incidents was that an emergency, real or perceived, occurred in the cockpit which caused the pilot to decide to eject, but in the course of ejection he was killed. If I remember correctly two of the accidents occurred in OCU and one in No. 75 Squadron. Up until the second one we were probing in the dark, we really did not know what was happening, but then we noticed there was a similarity between the cases. The front of each man’s flying helmet was smashed in and his forehead was crushed. The Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) already had a team up working with us when the third accident occurred. I actually watched this incident taking place from the backyard of my married quarter, and it was not a good experience. Eventually it was worked out these fatalities were the result of a problem with the canopy when operated from the American ejection seat that our Sabres had, not the English-designed Martin Baker one. The American seat had two levers that the pilot had to operate, one on each armrest. The first lever unlocked the canopy and fired it rearwards, while pulling the second lever ejected the whole seat. The problem was that, when the first lever was pulled, the airflow lifted up the rear of the canopy while it was still on its front runners

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and dipped the front metal bow of the canopy down into the cockpit space, with the result that as it shot hard back the canopy edge staved in the front of the pilot’s helmet. The ARDU people did a clever job in devising a response to all this. They put in a canopy breaker just behind the top of the seat. This was simply a metal rod about twelve inches (thirty centimetres) long with a metal knob on the end of it. Pulling the first lever did not move the canopy at all, instead it fired this bolt which simply shattered the canopy while it stayed locked in position. The canopy was then just loose flapping perspex, and when the second lever was pulled the seat went straight through it without damage. The head of the ARDU team that came up with this technical fix was Jimmy Rowland, who features prominently later in my story. One of the things that came out of this whole episode deserves particular mention. There was a rather aggressive journalist with the Newcastle paper at the time who convinced the parents of one of the dead pilots to allow him to represent them at the coronary inquest. He set out to cause a sensation and directly accused the RAAF of failing to devote enough investigation into installing the Martin Baker seat instead of the American one. He went on and on in this vein, claiming we were guilty of not adequately considering pilot safety. I came up against this chap when I was put in the witness box during the inquest. I answered his questions by explaining that nothing terribly difficult was asked of the pilot, who was simply required to pull first one lever, then get well down in the cockpit for the canopy to move, before pulling the second one to eject. There was evidence that this had been done quite successfully several times in the United States, and where it had not been successful it was apparently due to other factors. It was while giving my responses

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that I noticed the chap typing the record of proceedings just down in front of me was having trouble keeping up, so I began waiting until he gave me the nod that he was ready before I answered. I did this several times, before the journalist fellow got really fired up and accused me of deliberately delaying the process and playing for time, etc. At this the coroner got angry too, and tore into this fellow. He put him firmly in his place, telling him that he considered the witness was being extremely cooperative and bending over backwards to ensure that the process was being adequately recorded. Now, the inquest was sufficiently important to the RAAF that the Secretary of the Air Board, F. J. Mulrooney, had come up to Newcastle to sit in on proceedings. He did not want people to realise he was there, but just sat in the rear seats where he would not be noticed. When the inquest was over and we got back to base, I received a message from the Officer Commanding to present myself at his office. Mulrooney was there with him, and congratulated me on being the most professional witness that he had ever seen. I was only with 2OCU for a matter of eighteen months before I found myself sent back to Britain again to do the 1961 Joint Services Staff College (JSSC) course at Latimer, in Buckinghamshire. This course was only six months long, too, but the arrangement was that it would be followed immediately by a longer posting in which I would take over as Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO) on the RAAF staff at Australia House in London. This meant I did not expect to be coming home again until towards the end of 1963, so this time Joan and the girls could come with me. Buckinghamshire is a lovely part of England, but because I was going to be on staff in London after the first six months, Joan and I decided to rent a house in Ashstead, in Surrey. As I was required to live in at Latimer, the routine I adopted

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was to travel up there on the Monday morning and stay until Friday evening, then back home at weekends. To be honest, I felt a degree of ambivalence about my time at the JSSC. In part, I was a bit tired of courses by this stage, and at Latimer it was all staff work in syndicates; there were a couple of visits involved but nothing of significance, and we were pretty much cloistered at Latimer the whole time. I also grew very impatient with the few you invariably get on courses who particularly want to make their mark, the type I regard as the ‘soapbox orator’. You could bet your bottom dollar during any session that one or more of them would get up and precede their question with a lengthy introduction. Of course, we were supposed to marvel at the question that was asked, and then we would get the explanation in response from the directing staff, and it went on and on like this. A couple of times the thought occurred to me that I really should be asking a few questions myself, but I just gave up. I doubt that I asked a single one the whole course. On the other hand, I did not mind the written course work and found it quite interesting to put something into that side of things. As an example of this, the students were tasked at the beginning to write an essay, nothing too long, on an adventure we had experienced or some highlight from our life at some time. I wrote of my visit to see my brother in outback Queensland about ten years earlier, pretty much the story that appears in Chapter 8. The Staff Director at the College was a RAF man, and he told me afterwards that he considered my essay was excellent and he had really enjoyed reading it. He said, “You understand our purpose in doing this is to have a look at the standard of each student’s writing”, and added “You won’t have any trouble in that regard.”

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He also mentioned that it was usual to select a number of the essays and publish them in the College journal, but he went on to say, “I hope you won’t misunderstand or feel offended, but while your essay is very interesting we won’t publish it because we want to give exposure to some of the ones from other course members, the ones from the British Services.” This did not worry me at all, but I thought it exemplified the fact that the College was really focused on their own people because, of course, it meant a great deal to them in terms of whether they went on in their Service or not. In my case they were simply pleased to have me there, to join in everything as I wished. At the end of the course it was usual for each student to be interviewed by the Commandant, who at that time was a very down to earth Royal Navy chap named Scatchard. He was a fairly quiet and softly spoken fellow, and I liked him very much. He also had a nice sense of humour, typified when he introduced me to one of the guest speakers in the mess as ‘the cleverest man on course’. I did not take that up at all at the time, but I was surprised some years later when I read the comments he had written in my final assessment, which included “This man can be good on paper.” At my interview with him he remarked, “We didn’t hear much from you for the first half of the course.” So I told him what my observations about the course were, and he responded that he thought something like that might have been going on. “But”, he said, “I noticed that you did play a more active part in the second half.” I agreed, explaining that I had started to realise that I was not doing myself any favours by not contributing anything to the course, and that I did pull myself up a bit. It was while I was away overseas that my father died, quietly and peacefully in his sleep, in the early morning hours of his eightieth

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birthday in 1961. At one time my brother, my sister and I had tried to interest Mum and Dad in moving to Brisbane, where we thought we could set Dad up in a small suburban store and they would also be closer to where my sister lived. Dad would not move, however, and in retrospect I can understand his reluctance; he was a man of the country and for the whole of his life I imagine that he would rarely have moved beyond a radius of eighty kilometres from Toogoolawah. On Dad’s dressing table, along with his few personal effects, was the remainder of his pay after he had given the bulk of it to Mum for housekeeping. It was the total extent of his finances, as he had finally retired on the previous day. Also on the dressing table were a couple of letters from his grandfather to his father; these provided the first specific information we knew about our family’s Irish background. Years later, at my brother’s funeral in Esk, I spoke with Kevin Noonan whose father and mother were good friends of my parents, and Kevin said to me, “I feel I should tell you now that after you left for England, your father was talking to my father after Sunday Mass and said ‘Neville has gone to England and I will never see him again’ .” It had just not occurred to me that might be the case, and it was a bitter blow.

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A Saturday afternoon match of “combat rules” volley ball at the Joint US Military Assistance Group quarters at Ubon, Thailand. The author is at the net at left.

The Minister for Repatriation, Senator G.C. McKellar (right), welcomed to Ubon on 26 December 1966 by the OC RAAF Contingent (the author, left) and the USAF vice-base commander, Lieutenant Colonel J. Cox. (Office of Air Force History)

Snapped on the front porch at home in the Canberra suburb of Hackett, prior to performing duty as aide-de-camp to the Queen during the 1971 royal visit.

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Author visiting 2 Squadron at Phan Rang, Vietnam, 26 April 1971, in company with Air Commodore “Spud” Spurgeon (second from left), who he was replacing as COMRAAFV. (RAAF Museum)

Army chief, Lieutenant General Sir Mervyn Brogan (left) during a visit to Vung Tau, South Vietnam, in 1971. With the author is Group Captain Bruce Martin (right), the OC of the RAAF Contingent based there.

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Author as Chief of the Air Staff (seated) with members of the CAS Advisory Committee 1980-81; from right: AVM Bill Hughes, AVM Ray Trebilco, AVM Fred Barnes (DCAS), AVM Jake Newham, AVM Rod Noble, Air Commodore Reg Candy, and Mr Max Murray (Assistant Secretary Resource Planning–Air Force).

Author with the Chief of the Air Staff of the Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Beetham, during his first visit to Britain as CAS, September 1979. (RAAF Museum)

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The Chiefs of Staff, 1982; from left: Lieutenant-General Sir Donald Dunstan, Admiral Sir Anthony Synnot (CDFS), Air Marshal Sir Neville McNamara, Vice-Admiral Sir James Willis.

Chief of Defence Force Staff 1982-84: the RAAF’s second four-star officer.

After a last helicopter flight before retiring as CDFS, courtesy of 5 Squadron at Fairbairn, 15 March 1984.

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he plan had always been that once the JSSC course was out of the way I would take up the SASO posting at Australia House. The description of the job as

Senior Air Staff Officer was a bit of a misnomer really. For a start I would have cut out ‘Senior’ from the title, because I was still a wing commander and the Air Attaché, Group Captain Norm Lampe, was really the senior member of the small RAAF staff that we had. There were a couple of technical people, someone from the equipment side, and an administrative officer, and that was about it. My role in things was mostly to look after the connection between our people at home and the Air Ministry in London. It entailed making contacts so that I could talk to them about what the RAF experience was in a range of matters, how they looked at things, and what their policies were. When the Department of Air in Melbourne had a question on some aspect, it fell to me to explore it with the appropriate people. At this distance in time, I really cannot remember any of the burning issues we had to deal with. About the only matter that sticks in my memory was a particular question that most people would say has never properly been answered to this day. This concerned the distinction between operational control and operational command. I recall going to the Air Ministry and talking to someone over there about it, then going back to my office to draft an answer for Melbourne. At the time I was writing it up, I was thinking that

T

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they are not going to be happy with this. Sure enough, back came a response from home saying, “That does not answer our question, try again.” There was a lot of that sort of thing going on. Viewed realistically, I doubt that the SASO post did anything notable for my career. However, it did provide useful experience in dealing with people in the Air Ministry and just seeing how things worked in their world, and I think it was seen that way by people back home at headquarters. Norm Lampe suggested at one time that, in some aspects of my dealings with the Air Ministry, I might have been a little out of my depth. He might well have been right, because it was such a completely new experience for me and one that I went into with very little preparation. I certainly do not blame him for that comment at all. By the same token, I thought that I worked well with him and we got on extremely well together. While the job at Australia House might have been somewhat mundane at times, the enjoyment that we all got from being in England—Joan, the girls and myself—was a definite compensation. The personal relationships we all developed over our three years there were wonderful. If I mentioned the element of snobbishness or antipathy earlier, then I should also stress the lasting friendships that we all forged, some of which have lasted to this day. At the first place that we lived, in Ashstead, we made friends among our neighbours up and down the street. Joan was regularly invited to morning coffee and the like, and we got on famously with the people next door, Bern and Jean Graves, who remained firm friends. Unfortunately we only had a year there before the lady who owned the house wanted to move back in, so we found another very nice place in Epsom. The chap living opposite us there, Harvey Dongray, was in business in London, and the RAC golf course was over his back fence. He and I

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used to play golf, and our families formed strong friendships. It was marvellous. When I came home from England in 1963 I went into the Department of Air, which by then had transferred from Melbourne to Canberra. I became Director of Personnel – Officers (DPO), which meant I had the responsibility for postings and recommendations for promotions up to and including wing commander rank. While I might be consulted on group captains by the Director-General of Personnel, I really did not have too much say at that level. Now, I think that is the point at which I started to realise there was more to an air force than just piloting aircraft; I really began to learn about the RAAF and what made it tick as a whole. It was a position that made me learn about the people in the Service, their capabilities, characters, personalities, etc. Doug Hurditch was the man responsible for bringing me there, because he was the DPO who posted me in as DPO1 to eventually become his own replacement. Before then he had been pushing me into positions that I would not necessarily have chosen for myself, and he had put me on courses too. I said to him at the time that the DPO job would not have been a posting of my choosing, but yet, in retrospect, I have a lot to thank him for, in putting me there. Once I was in that position, a bit further up the tree, I saw the opportunity to provide the same encouragement and advice that I had earlier received. It was not a practice in those days for Personnel Branch to provide counselling to members of the Service. I remember that we did try and look at possible schemes so that we could guide people, give them some indication of where they were going, without making promises. That was always the great danger involved, because care had to be taken that a man did not go away with an impression based

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on what he wanted to hear, rather than what you actually said. It was very difficult to avoid that sort of situation. I also learnt an awful lot about effective manning, primitive though our practices then may have been by comparison with modern methods. With a total of seven officers in that area, I think we did pretty well—without the benefit of computers and refined systems. I started to maintain a double-sided folder, in which I would list all the officer posts that I was responsible for manning down one side, and all the names of those who might be eligible for posting in that year down the other. Trying to match up who might be appropriate to each post was a constant mental occupation, when one was not doing other things. We did not have any devised system of career planning then. That certainly exercised my mind, because I thought we should have. I tried to work out a matrix at one time of where people might go in, but it got too complicated. I was trying to get the right sort of people for the right sort of jobs, so that we then had a better opportunity to man the next cycle. I broke away from some otherwise strongly-held, never-to-be-broken rules, like transport pilots always belonged only in the transport world, and fighter units were only commanded by fighter pilots. With all due respect to the pilots in various categories, I felt that there was not enough being made of all our people. So I started work on interchanging people, and I must say that it worked well with those I picked out of the fighter and bomber worlds; choosing from the transport world proved much more difficult. I did take one transport chap and put him in charge of a Citizen Air Force (CAF) squadron—CAF units were still flying at that stage—but nothing outstanding came of it. He ran the squadron all right, but I could not put it any higher than that. Obviously there was still a significant difference, although I could see even then

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that things were changing. I took Ron McKimm, who was a fighter man with a reputation as a man with a brilliant sense of impromptu humour, and put him in the command slot to go and pick up the C-130E transports in the US and bring them back to Australia. He was a very capable man and he did very well. It was not just a case of me picking a few best out of the somewhat unruly lot of fighter pilots. I am convinced that we were coming out of that old situation anyway. The aircraft we were acquiring, and the very nature of the jobs to be done across the Air Force, were changing the character of our people at the command level, I am sure of it. Enjoying an extended period in Canberra allowed Joan and me to at last regularise our domestic arrangements by buying a house to call home. We had not kept the little place we built in Melbourne, because we were posted away from that locality after barely a year living there. Following a bad experience with a tenant, we decided to sell that house while we were still overseas and to rent whatever seemed appropriate wherever we went. Now we were back in Australia, though, we resolved to acquire a house and keep it, even though we might be posted away again, to give our girls an anchor point. Early in 1964 we bought a straightforward ranch-style house that had been built as a speculation property in Hackett. The grounds were completely undeveloped, of course, and when we came back from a later posting to America we put on extensions, but that was the place we counted as home for the next thirty years. At the end of 1966 I was sent to command the RAAF Contingent at Ubon, in north-eastern Thailand. We had a half-squadron of Sabres that had been deployed there to provide air defence against a perceived threat coming from southern China through Laos. This was part of an initiative taken in 1962 by some of the countries in SEATO, the South-East Asia Treaty Organization, although not

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under formal SEATO arrangements. Eventually the British and New Zealanders went home, but we stayed and the Americans brought in the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing to take part in the war against North Vietnam. By the time I arrived, there was a worry that the North Vietnamese or the Communist Chinese air forces might attack either the bases the Americans were using in Thailand or US aircraft returning from strike missions. So, from mid-1965 the RAAF Sabres were integrated with Thai and American aircraft in the local air defence plan. Our aircraft at Ubon had been taken originally from the Australian units based at Butterworth in Malaysia. What was called No. 79 Squadron was still being manned from there, with the pilots being rotated every two months. The personnel of the base squadron, including the contingent’s Officer Commanding, were sent up from Australia for a six-month tour of duty. There was not much happening at that stage, because, as I have explained, we were only there to guard against the possibility of an attack. We had a pair of Sabres on strip alert during daylight hours, and that arrangement had to be manned all the time. This got pretty monotonous, so we would always manage to cook up a reason for a scramble—not every day, but usually three or four times a week, towards the end of the day. There were several occasions when the Sabres were scrambled for real. Once or twice it proved to be against another aircraft, but other times it turned out to be things like a flock of birds that was big enough to produce a serious radar signal. Our fellows were never involved in actual operations. As OC of the contingent at Ubon I made it my practice to have an active engagement with what the No. 79 Squadron pilots were doing. The squadron did not, in fact, allocate hours for the OC, but I decided that I would take five hours a month off them

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so that I could get in some flying. There were days when I went out to fly and everything worked fine, but there were other days when I did many things wrong. I learnt two valuable lessons out of that. First, it reinforced my view that to maintain a reasonable standard of proficiency and airmanship, a minimum of about fifteen hours a month was required, depending on the aircraft type. The other lesson was I realised that I was getting to a stage where my place was no longer in the fighter world. We would go up for some one-on-one practice, and every time the young pilot I was flying against would be on my tail very quickly. I knew then that I would have to be satisfied with the good career in fighters that I had enjoyed so far, and leave it now to the younger fellows. Even so, I know of other OCs at Ubon who were simply denied permission to keep up their flying skills. Bill Hughes was one who was told by his seniors at the time that he was being sent up there to command a contingent, not fly aircraft. I believed that was the wrong way to approach things, and when I found myself filling a similar role later in Vietnam I made sure that I was allowed to stick with my preferred practice. In mid-1967 I experienced something of a change of stream when I was put onto C-130A Hercules transports as Air Staff Officer at the Headquarters RAAF Base Richmond. I was essentially the Executive Officer to the base commander, who at that time was Air Commodore Keith Hennock. That was a wonderful education, and I really valued that time there. It taught me something different again, about people operating in a role unfamiliar to me. While there, I was also promoted to group captain in January 1968. It was at Richmond that I first dealt with Charles Read to any intensive degree. In March 1968 Keith Hennock was moved to Air Officer Commanding Operational Command and Charles came up

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from Point Cook, where he had been Commandant of the RAAF Academy, to command the Richmond base. I know that Charles Read is not everybody’s cup of tea, and some people did not like his methods, but I came to have a pretty strong association with him there. We seemed to get on well right from the start, and I do not remember a time when he ever had to smarten me up, so to speak. He knew what he was about, and I liked the way that he went about things. It was never a case of him saying “you gotta do this” or “you gotta do that”. The way I did things seemed to fit in with the way that he thought things should be done. If he did want me to do something different, he would usually just stroll down to my office and say “I think that we might do this with that”, but otherwise he let me have a pretty free range. Keith Hennock and Charles Read were probably responsible for giving me a push along in career terms. I think the two of them had got their heads together and were looking for people that they could push through the system and get to the top on the basis of selection, rather than seniority. I recall one occasion there was a bit of a conference going on at Operational Command at Glenbrook, and I went up there with Charles Read. He spent the time salted away in Keith’s office while I got on with what other business I had to do. It was while we were in the car on the way back to Richmond that Charles asked me if I wanted to do the course at the Imperial Defence College (what became in 1970 the Royal College of Defence Studies) in London. I said that I would like to do it, because it involved some visits to unusual countries and was a marvellous opportunity to mix with some very capable people. But I had been doing a lot of courses about that time, so as far as doing another one was concerned I felt I would have to say no thank you. “I don’t want to become a professional student,” I told him. Charles Read just said, “Fair

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enough,” and left it at that, but he obviously reported my response back to Keith Hennock. I am sure that it was as a result of this that Keith used his influence to get me posted—surprise, surprise—back to the Department of Air in Canberra at the end of 1968, into the position of Director General of Organisation. I do not know who his contacts were, but I am sure that was what happened. The DGORG post was where I began entering into a stage of my career when it dawned on me that I had to start adapting and learning fast. The truth is I was never naturally inclined to staff duties, and if I could have opted out of it I would have. In retrospect, I can see that there were a number of people in the system who saw me as a staff officer, and seemed to like what I did even if I was never really happy with it. At the time, though, it was more a case of my old fascination with mental endurance coming to my aid. I was forced to have a really solid think about myself and ask why I could not be as good as the next man in these higher staff posts, why could I not accept the challenge to get in and do even better than others. It was an intellectual threshold that I really had to cross if I was going to get ahead—and it was obvious that people wanted me to go on. Here I was a still junior group captain, with two of the most senior group captains in the service—John Handbury and Ivan Podger—as my directors. Neither of these two were easy cases to work with, but we got along alright. The seniority gap situation did not worry John two heaps. Ivan, I think, was just a little put out, even though he never voiced it; I suppose it was understandable that he would feel a bit irritated by a young upstart. There was only one occasion when there was a problem. Ivan had a RAF exchange officer on his staff, a squadron leader, and this particular day Ivan came into my office with a very set look on his face and the RAF officer in tow. He explained to me that he was having trouble with

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this officer, told me what the difficulty was, and said that he wanted to put it to me to resolve the situation. I just said that the problem could be solved by the two of them getting on together and I would not be issuing any direction in that respect at all. He went off and I never had any further problems. As DGORG, I found myself working for Charles Read yet again (ultimately I ended up working for him three times), and I really valued that experience. He was now Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (DCAS) and it was no surprise to me when he became Chief of the Air Staff in 1972, because he was a very capable man; he just did not operate in the way that a lot of people thought perhaps he should. As he did before at Richmond, whenever he wanted something he would just come down to my office; he never once called me up to his office to tell me his problem or whatever it was. He had another habit, too, of walking down the corridor very quietly so he could hear what conversation was going on in an office before he got there. I remember that at one point he was having a big battle with the civilian side of Defence, and in particular the Secretary, Sir Henry Bland. This was at the time that the British decided to withdraw their forces from Malaysia and planned to hand the air base at Butterworth over to the Malaysians for a token payment. As the RAAF was the biggest organisation on the base, that meant we had to go up there and talk to the Malaysians about how we were going to make the new arrangements work. There were several visits undertaken to negotiate things. The first team was led by a senior civilian officer named Curtis, and the remainder of the team were predominantly public servants too, with (from memory) myself and one other RAAF officer to represent the Service side of things. The Departmental briefing that we received before we left Australia advised that the Malaysians would probably

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acknowledge the RAAF as being the major users of Butterworth air base and in particular concede that Australia’s contribution to base development was a significant factor in deciding cost sharing arrangements. In the event, the Malaysians listened very patiently to our leader’s presentation and then informed us, very clearly and positively, that they (the Malaysians) were now the landlords and we (the Australians) were the tenants, and on that basis we must now proceed to define the costs to be paid by the tenants for using the base facilities. This came as such a shock to our leader that he was initially in favour of seeking adjournment and a return to Australia for rebriefing. However, after discussion within the team we decided to accept the situation and get down to the detail of working out reasonable cost proposals. I was a bit out of my depth in this sort of exercise but I worked with Mick Madden and this was when I first came to appreciate his knowledge and expertise. During a subsequent visit, when I was again a member of the team led by Air Vice-Marshal Bill Townsend, the Air Officer Commanding Operational Command, discussions were primarily related to division of responsibilities, and the matter of helicopter rescue, in particular, presented some difficulty. For example, there was some doubt as to the adequacy of the winch capability of the RAAF helicopter where penetration of jungle canopy might be necessary. There was discussion as to whether the RAAF would take over responsibility in the event that the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) could not meet the requirement. There was a school of thought that Air Vice-Marshal Townsend had given some form of commitment, but we in the Department of Air did not really want to go that far, so Charles Read came down to see me and ask if I could draft a suitable letter. I produced one draft, and when that got

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knocked back I wrote another one, tempering it down and saying there were implications, inferences drawn, etc. That one came back rejected too, and finally I had to write another one that maintained that he did not promise in so many words but the Malaysians could well have gained that impression. Eventually that was accepted, and we took the responsibility for providing helicopter rescue. It may be worth mentioning, just incidentally, that while I was DGORG there was a proposal to change the RAAF uniform. A screed came round asking officers to put their name to the case for retaining the old blue uniform, on the basis that they had served and flown in this uniform for so long. I had to put at the bottom of it, “Whilst I like the blue uniform, I’m sorry, I cannot put my name to this because I served practically the whole of my wartime service in drab uniform.” I do not know what people made of this, but I have never been afraid to be my own man and express a view at odds with what others were thinking. In a similar vein, another paper was circulated that proposed that navigators in the GD (General Duties) Branch should be limited in promotion to the maximum rank of group captain. This stemmed mainly from the belief of some GD pilots that command positions of both ground units and crewed aircraft should be manned only by members of their own category. From my experience as DPO I was very much against this rather extreme measure, for there were some very intelligent and capable men in the navigator category, and there were a number of command appointments that could be manned by either pilots or navigators. So I stated: “I could not put my name to a proposal that condemned navigators to the stigma of being navigators. I am sure that if navigators are allowed to compete on merit for limited promotion vacancies the appropriate ratios

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would fall into place.” No more was heard of that rather thoughtless proposal. It was not long after I arrived in the DGORG post that I also found myself appointed Honorary Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to the Queen. I had not been sounded out about this at all beforehand, and the notice just appeared out of the blue one day in 1969. I went to the Director General Personnel’s area and said to someone, “Can you tell me what I’m supposed to do, what are my duties and responsibilities?” He just laughed and replied, “Don’t worry about it, it’s just a nominal appointment. You won’t have anything to do unless the Queen comes out here, and there are no plans for that at the moment.” Well, guess what, the Queen decided to visit shortly afterwards, so I got called on to do my bit as ADC. It turned out that there were some aspects that were a bit menial, or could have been done by a well-presented leading aircraftman, but if you overlooked those it was a very interesting job. There were several occasions when I had the pleasure of not just meeting the Queen but also talking to her and Prince Phillip. The event that sticks in my memory is an investiture at Government House that Her Majesty conducted. I was on hand over on one side to indicate to people who had just received their honour how to return to their seating place. This arrangement all worked well until it came to this very elderly couple. They came in together because they were both very feeble, although the wife was a little bit better than her husband and she was supporting him. They did all the usual stuff in front of the Queen—he bowed as well as he could, received his honour and stepped back—and it was as the two of them turned around it was obvious that they were both absolutely, completely lost; nothing in the room or the people around them registered. I realised that I had to go up and help them, so I went over and led them right up to the

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back and into their seats. As I turned around to resume my appointed position, I realised that everything had stopped. Everyone, including the Queen, was watching me. Nothing was ever said, either then or later. I think Her Majesty realised it one of those situations where it was just better to wait, but I will never forget it as long as I live. By January 1971 I had been in the DGORG job for two years, but my next post—and promotion—came about purely through circumstance. One day Air Commodore Geoff Newstead, the Director-General of Operational Requirements, came into my office, plonked himself down in a chair and said, “Do you know, they want me to go back to Vietnam again.” Geoff had been Commander of RAAF Forces Vietnam (COMRAAFV) before taking up his current appointment, so I asked, “What, in the same position?” His response was “Yes, they say they haven’t got anybody else they can send.” I just commiserated by observing that it was a bit of an imposition, or words to that effect. That is when he said, “Why don’t you go?” “Geoff,” I said, “I’m a group captain, and if I indicated I wanted that position they would say I was just looking for a promotion.” “Yeah,” he said back to me, “but if you were posted, would you go?” “Of course I would go,” I replied. “I’ll go wherever I am posted.” Off he went and within days I had a PZ, a formal notice of posting, to Vietnam. Geoff had gone straight around to Charles Read and put a case forward to send me instead of him. Charles was in with the Personnel people and obviously supported the idea of me going, initially with acting rank of air commodore, although that was made substantive a month or so before I left in February 1972.

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So that was how I got to Vietnam. From my own personal point of view, I could not have been more surprised. I know that this does not sound right, but whenever I had given thought to how far I might go in the Air Force, I had never looked beyond group captain. I figured that if I got to that rank, and perhaps command of a base somewhere, that would be nice. Yes, I would not mind that. I am very conscious of the fact that I have people like Charles Read and Keith Hennock to thank for the fact that my career kept moving on. I would have to emphasise, though, that I think those people saw more in me than I then saw in myself. My philosophy, however, was always that if the system wanted me to have a go at a particular position, then I was quite happy to have a go at it. I realised that at some time I may well fall flat on my face, but I went along on that basis anyway.

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14RAAF Commander in

Vietnamust before Anzac Day of 1971, I went to Saigon as COMRAAFV, Commander of RAAF Forces Vietnam. I was also appointed Deputy COMAFV (Commander of Australian Forces Vietnam), which meant at that

time I was deputy to Major General Don Dunstan. In the briefings that I had received before I left Australia, I was informed that I would share a house with COMAFV, and I remember my reaction was one of some qualms since I had so little experience with senior Army officers. As it turned out, I could not have wished for better. Don proved to be a marvellous colleague and an interesting character; he was also very knowledgeable because he had been in Vietnam before. Much later on, I learnt that there was dissatisfaction within Air Force Office back in Canberra that the COMAFV job always went to Army. There were those who argued that the experience of being head of our national forces in the field was so valuable for the training of senior officers that it should have been rotated with the other Services, particularly Air Force since we had the second largest contingent in theatre. Now, I was surprised to read all that correspondence, because based on my own experience up there working with Don Dunstan I did not see the situation that way at all. Not only was there no special benefit in training that

J

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warranted rotating the post, but it seemed to me quite natural that Army should hold it because, after all, they did have a task force of three battalions and a total of nearly eight thousand people up there, compared to the RAAF’s seven hundred and fifty. While the Air Force also had three units deployed—No. 2 Squadron (Canberra bombers), No. 9 Squadron (Iroquois helicopters) and No. 35 Squadron (Caribou transports)—our position was quite different to Army’s. It was not just a matter of numbers, but also line of responsibility. Only No. 9 Squadron formed a direct part of our national presence and operated in support of the Australian Task Force; both the other units were tasked as part of the US Seventh Air Force. While COMAFV did not command anything operationally (and neither did I as COMRAAFV, for that matter), he did have more or less a domestic responsibility, and the units coming within the scope of that responsibility were overwhelmingly Army ones. Sharing accommodation certainly cemented my friendship with Don—in fact, we still correspond back and forth. The house was a well-built place left over from the days of French rule many years before, and stood just a few doors down from the Presidential Palace. We had a nice glassed-in den there, to which we used to retire after dinner and where Don would suck on his brandy and I might have a scotch and water while we discussed the day’s events and issues. These days it might be questioned whether there was a need to live in a grand house like that, but actually it was appropriate to the total circumstances in Saigon. All the equivalent people at General Dunstan’s level were in equally good houses, and it would have been unwise to have done anything different. Most of the officers on staff in Free World Headquarters, mainly the Australian Army people, were in a hotel further down in town and it was not the most pleasant, or safe, place to be. It was very noisy at times,

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with occasional mortar bombings in the vicinity. I remember that Don’s Chief of Staff, Colonel John Salmon, lived there and at one stage he was having a medical problem and could not get any sleep. So we brought him up to our house for a while and he stayed with us until he recovered. We had all sorts of VIPs from Australia come through Saigon, and they usually stayed with us at the house too. Among the visitors who I recall was the Minister for the Army, Andrew Peacock, and his lovely wife Susan. They were very pleasant to have in the house, but we very quickly came to know from the conversation around the breakfast table that she was terrified of flying, absolutely petrified. On one occasion we were all going down to Vung Tau: General Dunstan, the Minister, Susan, myself and also General Dunstan’s aide or personal assistant, a young captain named Kell. When we took off in the helicopter, Susan was wedged right in the middle and was in no danger of falling out, so that was fine. But then the General, the Minister and I got off at Nui Dat, leaving Susan with the general’s aide to go on down to Vung Tau township, where they were to visit the orphanage and places like that. There they were, just the two of them, sitting in this helicopter with the doors off the side and everything wide open. We stood waiting for the aircraft to lift off again, and as it did so watched as Susan threw her arms around Kell in a bearhug and clung to him all the way to Vung Tau. Poor Kell never lived that down! The Peacocks really were a delightful couple, and never any bother. The only troublesome guest I can recall was a senior Army officer, and I am not going to talk about that one. I remember that the Chief of the General Staff, General Brogan, also visited, and he was fine. All in all, one would have to say that it was a good experience.

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There were two parts to what my role in Saigon actually entailed. My main job was just keeping in touch with the people that we Australians dealt with, my equivalents in the American and South Vietnamese organisations, and handling whatever administrative matters came through the office. Helping me with this workload were two officers, one an engineer and the other an equipment specialist, and they were both great fellows; between them, and the two orderly room staff there, they kept the office running. The other part of my role involved keeping an eye on the performance of our squadrons. This meant getting to know how the units worked, and whether what they were being called on to do was meaningful or otherwise. To this end, I used to split my time. I would go down to Vung Tau on average about two days a week; sometimes it might be one and a half days, at other times three days—depending upon what was going on. And I made a point of going on operations with them. Our Navy had a helicopter unit in the Mekong Delta area and I visited down there also, usually spending a night and flying some sorties with them too. Even before I left Australia I had resolved that I would fly with our RAAF squadrons in Vietnam, and I wanted to do so as a crew member and not just as a passenger. I told Charles Read what I proposed and sought his agreement for me to undertake a conversion to both the Caribou and the Iroquois. He said yes, so that is what I did. My conversion to the helicopter was done at the Fairbairn base in Canberra, and then I went to Richmond outside Sydney for the Caribou. The helicopter training I rate as especially invaluable. It was probably something of a change for a fighter pilot to convert on a helicopter, but I would honestly say that it was one of the most rewarding periods of my flying experience, in the whole of my Service career. I enjoyed flying the chopper, because the nature

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of the operation was totally different. You got rid of a lot of the complexities in aircraft, it was straight flying and airmanship, and skill in flying. In the event, I notched up two hundred hours flying in Vietnam: ninety-six with No. 9 Squadron and one hundred and four with No. 35 Squadron. I should mention that my flying with the squadrons was an aspect that was a bit misunderstood in some circles. Even Don Dunstan said to me on one occasion, “Why do you go flying those aircraft down at Vung Tau? I don’t go driving tanks or other things, so why do you do that?” I explained to him that, for an air commander to know what his units were being asked to do, it was important to fly with them. More than that, if one is flying a lot with them, then it is not good to be a burden as an unqualified passenger all of the time. It was better, I felt, if you could pay your way and earn your keep. Don accepted that, to the extent that when he came home he learned to fly helicopters. For their part, neither No. 9 Squadron nor No. 35 Squadron seemed to have a problem with me flying with them as a pilot. I was not checked out as a captain on a helicopter—I was on the Caribou—but the fact that I was qualified as a first pilot proved very helpful at times. There was one occasion when the crew on stand-by got an urgent call to go and pick up the Task Force Commander, who was out in the bush with one of the battalions. We immediately leapt aboard the helicopter and hurtled off at low level. The aircraft captain was a fellow named Bevin Pettitt, and he was busy map reading and operating the R/T (radio telephone) as well, so he just told me to fly. He simply indicated which way to go, as necessary, and eventually we came around into a cleared area and spotted the group we were meant to pick up standing under trees over to the right.

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There was another occasion, though, when I was again flying with Bev and we did much the same thing. This time we had to take the commander to a conference with the Americans, prior to an operation the task force was getting into. The brigadier went off to his meeting, leaving Bev and me waiting in the aircraft, and just by way of conversation Bev asked me how many hours did I have on helicopters. When I mentally tallied it up I said I had fifty to sixty at that stage, and he said to me, with a half smile, “If I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have let you fly!” Despite that, I do not believe that the squadron ever had a problem with me. In fact, the rapport I had with the units was so good that at times the young pilots, particularly the Caribou captains, would throw out a challenge. I recall one instance where we had been out all day and were heading back to Vung Tau late in the afternoon, when the fellow I was with came out with, “What sort of approach will we do this time?” There was an easterly wind blowing, not beyond the allowable cross-wind component, so I suggested probably a cross-wind, flapless, left hand, but he said, “What about a full STOL (short take-off and landing) landing on the short runway?” Oh all right, I thought, good idea. We watched as another aircraft immediately ahead of us also did a STOL landing, but finished up going a little bit past the runway intersection. Coming in behind them, I made a good landing that allowed us to actually turn off at the intersection. Of course, it was a set-up, because I noticed the cunning beggars chatting away in the bar afterwards; they had just been trying me out, but I enjoyed every bit of it. I thought the three squadrons we had based in South Vietnam all performed extremely well. In particular the Caribou unit, No. 35 Squadron, did an exceptional job, bearing in mind that they had been up there since 1964. I recall when I was DPO visiting them

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with then Air Commodore Fred Robey. Chris Sugden had the unit then, and they lived in two old villas on the Vung Tau beachfront and fed themselves largely off the local market. They were flying their pants off, but doing a magnificent job in terms of transport support. They were still doing it in 1971, although by then it was a different situation. They were then in a cantonment at the Vung Tau military airfield, properly quartered and with better security. It was fascinating to fly with them, and a real education. Up there the transit times were short. Crews would go out at seven o’clock in the morning, come back at seven o’clock in the evening, and in that time get in fourteen, sixteen sorties, no problem at all, ranging over all that southern part of South Vietnam. I expect the longest missions were down into the Delta. The unit used to operate up north from Da Nang also, but two aircraft would be detached for that purpose and they would remain up there for a period of time. The point I would like to emphasise is that was the way the Caribou was meant to be used. The problem faced back here in Australia was the percentage of hours expended in getting the aircraft to the area in which we might want to operate it. The Caribou is, without question, an outstanding aircraft. I was certainly very impressed with its performance, and so were the crews who operated it. The Americans were also hugely impressed by the way that our small RAAF unit operated the Caribou. I remember the commander of the US airlift group to which No. 35 Squadron belonged came down to Vung Tau several times and expressed his very high regard for what the squadron could do. And I do not think it was just American blarney either. In fact, I know some of the American units operating the Caribou were criticised by way of comparison. The question was asked why this Australian squadron was doing so

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many sorties a day and lifting so much tonnage at a time, so “How come you can’t do the same thing?” Stan Clarke was the Commanding Officer of the unit for most of the time when I was up there. He was an officer dedicated to his responsibilities, and so were all the crews in their own ways. There were dangers aplenty from both small arms fire and mortars in certain areas, particularly down in the Delta. I did not operate up north, but I would think the same sort of conditions applied up there. Apart from the attendant risks, the crews worked a very full day. When they got back at the end of the day they relished a beer, and a good sleep. I think just the nature of their operations made them a very close-knit unit. When they got back to base there was a fairly small mess life, so that made for a close association as well. The fact that they were in an operational area, and working hard at it, I think, created that esprit de corps, that comradeship, the thing that made it all work so well. The same point goes for No. 2 Squadron, and No. 9 Squadron also. The Canberra bomber also proved itself as an aircraft capable of delivering its attack under circumstances when the aircraft that would normally have been employed by the USAF could not do so. In other words, it could do bombing of ground targets at low level when the cloud base precluded, say, F-4s from getting in. I know that utility was highly valued by the US forces, and there were many times when the Canberra provided very valuable support in that regard. I visited No. 2 Squadron in their base at Phan Rang several times during my time there, and I know the rapport they had with the Americans was first class; there were very complimentary remarks from US commanders in the area. The point I would mainly like to touch on with No. 9 Squadron was its support of the Task Force at Nui Dat. It was well known

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that there had been problems in the early stages of the unit’s time in Vietnam. These difficulties chiefly derived from different understanding, on the part of both Army and the RAAF, of command and control relationships. There were also some problems with the policy emanating from back in Australia, in Air Force Office. The situation was at its worst when A.L. MacDonald (later General Sir Arthur MacDonald) was Task Force Commander, because he used to get particularly hot under the collar about operational control and would persecute Group Captain Pete Raw, who was the Officer Commanding of the RAAF contingent at Vung Tau and had the primary responsibility for working with the Task Force in the use of the helicopters. Arthur MacDonald would take Pete to task and bawl him out, and generally make himself unpleasant. I was at Ubon at the time, and when I heard that poor old Pete was having a bad time I sent a message across saying, “If you can get away for a couple of days, come over and sit and have a few beers.” He did come and stay with us for several days, and it proved a valuable circuit-breaker. Now, by the time I got to Vietnam, we had overcome those problems in practice, so that to a large extent they were all sorted out. There was, however, still some residual difficulty in getting a clear understanding of what the term ‘command and control’ might mean in all circumstances. I was well placed to witness an episode that highlighted one of the trouble spots, after my duties in Vietnam changed and gave me a third command hat to wear. In about September, Bruce Martin was finishing up as Officer Commanding at Vung Tau, and the personnel people in Canberra were preparing to send up a replacement—I think it was going to be Jake Newham—although I had heard they were having some difficulties in manning at that level. This prompted me to send a message back to Australia suggesting that we really did not

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need a new man. The nature of my duties was such that I could take on the Officer Commanding job as well as COMRAAFV and operate without any problem, especially as I was routinely sharing my time between Vung Tau and Saigon already. That idea was adopted. This brought me into much closer touch with command and control matters as they related to No. 9 Squadron, particularly that of the Task Force Commander’s right to control aircraft allocated to the Task Force when specific operations so required. There was only one occasion when I had an argument with the Task Force Commander, and it related to the provision of a helicopter for his use on a daily basis. The aircraft had to be positioned up at Nui Dat by a certain time—say, seven o’clock in the morning—and remain with him all day until he released it. Now sure, it was our responsibility to provide an aircraft for him, and we did just that. But on this occasion the aircraft that we put up in the morning had only enough hours left before it was due for servicing to take it through until we had another aircraft coming out of post-servicing inspection at Vung Tau, which we could take up and use to replace the first one. That is what we did. We took the replacement up—in fact, I flew in the aircraft—and put it on stand-by, then took the other aircraft out for servicing. The Commander of the Task Force, Brigadier Bruce McDonald at that time, objected strongly to this. It was his view that if we put an aircraft with a certain tail number up there first thing in the morning, then that particular aircraft could not be taken away until he released it. We had a discussion about this question over a pleasant lunch, in company with Wing Commander Pete Mahood, the Commanding Officer of No. 9 Squadron, but neither Bruce nor I would give ground on the principle involved. In the end, we had to agree to disagree, and that was fine because we got on well after

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that. But I still maintain that it was our right, within the terms of command and control, to do just what we did because we still met his operational requirement that an aircraft be available to him for the whole of the period he wanted it. Those little differences still occurred, but aside from such instances the support that No. 9 Squadron gave to the battalions was well received. There were, again, some minor variations in that too. With one of the two battalions that were doing tours of duty while I was there, we never had a problem at any time; the confidence was there, and they were very happy at the level of support they got from the squadron. With the other one, there was always a little reservation. The explanation that I was given by Don Dunstan was that the commander of that particular battalion had been through a bad experience with air support somewhere previously—long before his time in Vietnam. I think it was in Korea, and involved US aircraft, not the RAAF. That was the reason given for his battalion now carrying this doubt about Air Force providing support for them. It was not to the extent that it detracted from the successful conduct of operations, but we could at times feel that element of doubt was there. I flew with No. 9 Squadron as often as I possibly could. I know those operations went very well. I know of no instance during my time where the RAAF did not give the full support as requested by the Task Force, and in the main it was very well received. I had a great admiration for the way the No. 9 Squadron fellows flew, and what they coped with. Later on I wrote to Don Dunstan, when he was retiring, and made the point that it was a very rewarding experience to go in and lift out a bunch of diggers who had been through the mill on operations; they would be dirty and smelly, but the happiest bunch of fellows you ever saw. That was, I think, what

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was so rewarding about it. I think the rest of the No. 9 Squadron fellows felt the same. I never heard any dissent within the squadron in terms of their having to support the Army; on the contrary, there was a real enthusiasm about it. Imagine my disbelief when subsequently, after my retirement, I heard all these stories in favour of the Army’s case for taking over the helicopters, about how the RAAF really could not meet the Army’s requirements in Vietnam. Some of the stories were pretty disturbing, but I cannot think they were based on evidence. Thinking back on my time as Officer Commanding RAAF Contingent Vung Tau, I really cannot remember any significant dramas that occurred. I do recall a minor incident when we had a couple of ‘cowboys’ who got on the booze a bit too much one night and fired off some Very pistols. Bear in mind that Vung Tau was an operational area that had experienced its share of enemy incursions. The RAAF had deployed a detachment of ADGs (airfield defence guards) which was responsible for guarding inside the airfield perimeter, and of course there were Vietnamese police outside the wire and American MPs (military police). The two lads who started firing the Very pistols were soon stopped, and the next morning they were fronted up to me in my office. I told them what they had done would ordinarily justify a full inquiry and possibly even go right to court-martial (maybe it would not have, but I said it anyway). I gave them the option of allowing matters to take that course, or they could accept the punishment I had in mind for them. They opted for the latter. My solution was to send them individually to the flight lieutenant in charge of the ADG detachment, a fine officer named Nev Clarke, who had the responsibility of maintaining base security. On my instructions he placed them separately on the roster to do

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a full night’s patrol duty with the ADGs. These guys got the works. They were taken around all the base’s danger spots, they were shot at, the lot. One of them came back and thanked me, saying that he had no idea what went on in the place at night and he had learnt a lot; the other fellow just never came back. There were a few little incidents of that nature, but nothing of any magnitude. It was in August 1971 that the Australian Government publicly announced that we would be withdrawing all our combat forces from Vietnam. As Don Dunstan had just gone down to Australia for consultations with the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Chiefs of the three Services, John Salmon (Don’s Chief of Staff) pointed out that it would be appropriate for me, as acting COMAFV, to go and advise General Creighton Abrams, the Commander of US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, about our Government’s decision. I had met Abrams before but did not know him, so I made an appointment and, armed with the piece of paper containing the announcement, I went round to see him. Abrams received me sitting at his desk, and after I explained to him why I was there I said perhaps it might be appropriate if he read the message. I gave the paper to him and he read it, then he just sat looking up at me, without saying anything, for an uncomfortably long interval of maybe several minutes. Eventually I wondered whether this was a cue that I should act on and I said, “Sir, perhaps I have taken up a lot of your busy time,” but he responded with “Oh no, no, stay there, stay there.” Obviously, the announcement was a complete surprise to him, and he had no idea that it was coming. While I think that he viewed it as bad news, there was no expression of disappointment or disapproval, no comment such as “Does this really have to happen?” or anything of that sort. The decision was just accepted by our major ally, and we went.

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I never had a problem with us being involved in Vietnam, because as long as the Australian Government had decided to commit forces then I think the RAAF’s participation, as we played it, was appropriate. Many people today, I am sure, do not realise how much credit Australia gained from its involvement. That we had a very high reputation with the US forces was brought home to me at a cocktail function in Saigon one night. Representatives from all the Allied participants in Vietnam were there, and it was well known that some of them were working the system for their own benefit, which was pretty hard on the US military budget. In the middle of this function, the American brigadier general hosting it called for attention, then he grabbed me and said, “I want you to meet the representative of the only country that pays its way in Vietnam.” That was how the Americans thought of the Australian participation. I think that many people, including some historians, forget the origins of the war there. In the first instance, I think the efforts to support what appeared to be a regime under pressure were commendable. Subsequently, perhaps, there were less laudable attitudes involved in the handling of the Vietnam War, but I will not go into that. I agreed with the decision to support the efforts of other nations in Vietnam, not least because we were allies of the US. It did not strike me as unreasonable that we should support them and what they were trying to do, and I think that the original purpose and concept of that support was valid. It is what happened subsequently that made it a bit of a mess. The main problem that emerged from the conflict was that the American Administration forgot all about the principles of war. The Administration took control of the war from the military and decided how it should be done, and within their concept of the

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situation the Allied forces were never allowed to cross the borders of North Vietnam. Air warfare was carried out against the North, up to a limited point, but the principles of war regarding concentration of force and the selection of a valid aim, or a sensible aim, were ignored. The ‘kill rate’ became the principal means of measuring progress in the conflict, and that is no way to win a war. Attrition was never going to prevent the enemy from operating effectively against the South, especially when the enemy’s homeland remained out of bounds. Rather than resorting to all those ‘penny packet’-type measures that were adopted earlier, like the use of Agent Orange to defoliate supply trails through Laos, etc, there should have been a real thrust against North Vietnam. Until that happened, we had a situation that was sheer waste of manpower and resources. It was not until very late in the war that the American Administration realised this and only then did they come part way towards observing the principles of war: mount offensive action to defeat the enemy in his homeland so that he cannot operate effectively against you. When that realisation eventually came, I was fortunate enough to be in another especially interesting position to observe the course of events.

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15Washington Days

ven before I finished my year in Vietnam, I had my next posting—to America, as Air Attaché in our embassy. I got home from Vietnam in February 1972, in time to have a

bit of a holiday with Joan, and then pack up and take her with me to Washington in April. Our two daughters stayed behind in Canberra; Shelley had just finished a university course, and Julie was working up to her High School Certificate exams. We had three years in the US, less one and a half months. There was a vast difference between that period and our time in England. For a start, we could not help but notice the warmth of the welcome we received. It certainly showed that there had been some good thinking behind my selection, because the Americans made it abundantly clear that it meant a lot to them that they were dealing with someone who had been to Vietnam and worked with their forces there. That proved to be a huge plus, right from the outset. It ensured that there was no problem with acceptance and was something that emerged several times while I was over there. Relationships were also very good, right from the beginning. Perhaps this was an area where I had benefited from my UK experience, in that I was much more prepared for this responsibility and understood that I had to straight away get to know people in the Pentagon. Mind you, the Americans were determined to make that role easy. They had established a position called Chief Foreign Liaison Officer (CFLO), filled by Colonel Kirkpatrick when I was

E

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there; his job and that of his staff was primarily to act as the point of introduction. If I needed to talk to someone in the Pentagon, then I got onto the CFLO and he arranged it. That was very helpful, and ensured that attachés had access to a whole range of areas. More than that, it was the responsibility of the CFLO to arrange, once each year, an attachés tour lasting about ten days. The Americans would provide the aircraft, make the necessary bookings, handle the baggage, and arrange all the introductions; the country of each attaché going along just paid for expenses. Now this was really useful, and certainly should not be thought of as a ‘jolly’ at all. (It was purely coincidental that ‘Kirk’ was a very committed golfer and always managed to be in a place where they had a good golf course for one day in the tour.) The object was to introduce us to State and County level governments, to meet influential people, and understand what went on in America in that regard. For example, we went down to Georgia where we met Jimmy Carter, at that time the State Governor. He took us into his chambers and sat us down, whereupon he gave us a very interesting talk on what they were involved in and what they were about, and it was all very instructive and helpful. When we went to California, Governor Ronald Reagan did the same thing. That was the sort of reception we got, and the way the Americans went out of their way to assist attachés in interfacing. In the Embassy, my role as Air Attaché was to keep a finger on the pulse of the RAAF’s relationship with the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Defense Department, as well as keep track of the myriad financial dealings that we had with businesses in that country. Before I left Australia, I had gone around Air Force Headquarters for interviews with each member of the Air Board—Air Member for Technical Services, Air Member for Equipment,

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etc—and I was just staggered by the number and immense value of the contracts that we had running. I have forgotten the figures, but there were many millions of dollars involved. Because of all these contracts we had a huge air force staff occupying the whole of one floor in the embassy building. Within this staff we had a special cell for the F-111 project, which was run by Group Captain Milt Cottee. In a sense he was separate from the Air Attaché’s responsibility, although not entirely since I had a duty to oversee what was going on without getting into details. I was also supposed to help Milt whenever needed—which was never, as Milt ran his area very effectively. To assist me in the management of all our committed projects, I had an equipment officer and staff, and several technical people, as well as a Deputy and an administrative officer. They were very good and it worked out pretty well. There were several things that cropped up that I got involved in. For example, I had an interest in intelligence feedback. That really came to a head during the final stages of the Vietnam conflict, as matters reached a point where the Americans realised that they could not continue with attrition warfare and dependence upon a daily kill-count. They then went for direct pressure by way of Operation Linebacker One, a bombing campaign against the capital, Hanoi, and the main port of Haiphong. On the strength of that, the North Vietnamese agreed to come to the negotiating table in Paris. Of course, once the bombing stopped, the North Vietnamese started to back-pedal, which meant the Americans launched Linebacker Two. Throughout the whole course of those operations, the Pentagon gave a daily progress briefing to a very select group of defence attachés from Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Britain was very likely

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included too, although I recall that the Americans were a bit hostile towards London at that time because British ships were going into Haiphong. There was a condition attached to these sessions, which was that we were not allowed to take any notes. So when we walked out of the room at the end of the briefing, the drill was to hotfoot it back to our offices while everything was still fresh in the memory, make out a message in a one-time code and get the signals people to send it off. This was not only very valuable, but it was indicative of the significant sort of relationship that existed. Another example of the tasks that came my way concerned the two squadrons of F-4 Phantoms that Australia leased from the US while waiting for technical problems that had held up delivery of F-111s to be sorted out. Eventually we reached the stage where we were ready to hand the Phantoms back. Now the RAAF had probably the best maintenance system in the world for the care of aircraft, and we had gone through those Phantoms with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that they were in immaculate condition. Nonetheless, because the Americans had some bad experiences with aircraft they leased out to certain other countries, they adopted a policy of putting them all through an inspection and overhaul program at one of their big bases in Utah—at the expense of the leasing country. I duly received a message from the Chief of the Air Staff asking me to see if I could impress upon our American friends that a remedial program really was not necessary in this instance. Everything necessary to ensure that the Phantoms were in top shape would have been done by the RAAF in Australia, so could we be relieved of the cost. By this time I had established good contacts in the top structure, all part of doing what one needed to do for one’s job over there, so I went straight to the Deputy Under Secretary, Bill Robinson. I rang him direct and asked if I could come and see him.

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Our rapport was such that he said yes, so I went straight over to his office. It was the one time that I did not go through the CFLO. If Kirk ever found out what I had done, and he probably did, he never said anything. Having told Bill the nature of the subject (of course, he knew about it already), I explained to him what the RAAF did at home to aircraft and the way we maintained them in the first place. I assured him that the Phantoms would have left Australia in first class condition, and I said, “For you to put them through that procedure out at Utah would be entirely superfluous.” Then I rested my case. He sat there, as the Americans sometimes do, looking at me for probably a good ten minutes while chewing on a cigar. At that stage he had just given up smoking, so the cigar he kept in his mouth was still in its plastic wrapper. At length he said, “Let me see what I can do.” We eventually had the charges waived. That was the sort of relationship that we were able to build up with those people. On the domestic side, life in Washington was interesting too. When Joan and I first arrived we went into a hotel until we could find suitable accommodation. While we were still in the hotel, we were confronted by the embassy’s head of administration, Keith Brown, with a proposition. Keith explained that the Embassy had the lease on a place in California Street, which belonged to the American Ambassador then serving in Venezuela and was currently occupied by the Head of the Australian Defence Staff (HADS), Air Vice-Marshal Des Douglas. Meanwhile, the Embassy was also renovating a house in the triangle where the Ambassador resided, which it was intended that HADS would soon take over, so that the Ambassador, Minister Political and head of the defence staff would all be living in the one convenient area. The house in California Street still had nine months of its lease to run, so would Joan and I care to move in

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there? I said that the place was way above my level, but Keith said no, the embassy would pay for utilities, we just had to pay the rental contribution. So I asked Joan, “Would you like to live in style for nine months?”, to which she replied, “Oh, all right, let’s do it.” So we did, and it was quite delightful. It was while we were living there that Julie had a bad car accident back in Australia. She was part of a group who rode horses at a riding school owned by Peter Keir, who later became better known for the local bus company that he ran. To cut a long story short, she and a male friend were coming back to Canberra from Bungendore where they had been taking care of horses; they were on their way to Keir’s farm when the friend, who was driving, ran off the road and hit a tree. They were wearing only lap seat-belts, and Julie smashed her face on the dashboard and windscreen. Joan came home to be with Julie, leaving me to rattle around the big house in California Street on my own. When Julie came out of hospital, Joan rented a funny little flat up in Hackett and stayed on while Julie recovered sufficiently well to travel. Julie had also set her mind on passing the High School Certificate exam despite her condition. And she did get a pass too, for which I really admired her. When Joan came back to Washington, she brought both the girls with her. Julie was still not over the accident; in fact, it took her the best part of a year to recover. She had to go through some facial restoration, and a whole series of dental treatments. While over there she also did a secretarial course, from which she did very well and which stood her in good stead. Not long after that, we had to move out of California Street. Keith Brown came to me with another proposal. The Embassy had just bought a house for the Army Attaché’s use, and on the basis of that experience was planning to buy another. This was still being

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built and was only just above foundation stage. Keith wanted to know if we were prepared to take that one when it was completed. We agreed that we would, but it meant that we would have to find somewhere else in the meantime. There was an Admiral away in Europe, so we got his place—but within a short space of time he found that he had to come back and we were on the move again. We got another place on Fessenden Street that had been vacated by the Trade Minister at the Embassy, and we had several months there until eventually the new house was finished and ready for us to move in. That place was in Maclean, across the Chain Bridge in Virginia. It was a lovely house, with wonderful neighbours, and we helped to establish the grounds. But we were not there all that long, I suppose only about six months, so our accommodation situation really had turned into quite a saga. At least the object was achieved in as much as that house became the residence of successive Australian Air Attachés. There were other compensations that I could mention. Joan and I did a couple of trips to various parts of the US, including one while the girls were with us to spend part of the winter down in Florida. That happened to be the year that they had a winter that extended all the way down to South Carolina, where they never had to have any snow clearing equipment before—it even snowed in Georgia! Regardless of that, we had a fantastic time. Mind you, the social whirl in Washington got a bit much to bear at times. It certainly got to Julie, because the Air Attaché used to attract invitation after invitation—dinners, cocktail parties, receptions, the lot. Some weeks, Joan and I were out every night of the week. One night we came home and Julie hit us, she really let us have it, and we realised that it was just too much for her to be left alone after her accident, so we knocked back a few more invitations after that and stayed at home.

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I recall when Sir Arthur Tange came over from Canberra. His visit was a pretty important one, and he spent a fair bit of time dealing with issues on the air side. At one point, an appointment was made for him to have lunch at the Pentagon with the USAF Chief of Staff and three or four of the more important heads of the various departments there. He insisted that I go along with him, so there I was sitting at the lunch table, listening and munching away, while these fellows talked back and forth about the administrative aspects of a force. All of a sudden Sir Arthur turned to me and said, “What do you think, Air Attaché?” I had just taken in a mouthful of food, so I had to excuse myself until I could finish chewing it, which gave me a little time to think about the question. I explained the RAAF situation where we had (at that time) an Air Board that controlled and managed the Air Force by Air Board Orders and by Board members as heads of respective Branches, none of whom commanded; where the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) was seen as first among equals; and where command was out in the field. I said that we were really not big enough to employ the US approach, and we needed command from the top so that political decisions could be interpreted in a military manner and passed on down with authority. “Oh thank you, Air Attaché,” says Sir Arthur, and we got on with the lunch. Anyhow, that was one of the things that he incorporated in his review. I do not know if anyone else had suggested that to him. Tange was very skilful in the way he operated. We held a cocktail party/reception for him, and he spoke with practically all of my staff there and it gave them an opportunity to sound off at him if they so wanted. I suspect Sir Arthur had noticed that I had a different attitude towards public service–armed forces relationships than most of my colleagues. My view was that the Public Service has a justified place in the organisation and a role to play, however, much

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we might want to argue with particular personalities over the way they went about it. It was undoubtedly fortuitous for me that while I was still in the US, Charles Read had become CAS and Keith Hennock came in as Air Member for Personnel. I well remember the time that CAS paid an official visit to Washington. I went over to Los Angeles to meet him when he arrived there, and the USAF laid on an aircraft to bring him across. We had an opportunity for discussion while travelling in the aircraft, and it was then that Charles Read said, “Nev, I want it made known that I do not want any exchange of gifts. I have not come prepared for that and I don’t want any.” So I got the crew to patch me through on the phone from the aircraft to Jack Boast, who was my deputy in the embassy, and relayed this instruction. He said he would do what he could, and got onto the CFLO. That was the beauty of having that position, because Kirk got busy straight away to tell all the commanders on the bases where we were going, and there were no presentations. But you do not beat the Americans at that game; they sent the presents on afterwards—you cannot win. It is like their hospitality, you cannot keep up with it; you just have to accept that is the way they like to do things and you return hospitality in your own way. You will never get ahead of them. The three years I had in Washington were definitely valuable in getting to understand the Americans. What is more, if I had not had that exposure and just stayed in Australia, I would not have got over my reluctance (I suppose is the right word) to accept the challenges of meaningful responsibility of staff work. I realised how essential it is to be aware of other air forces around the world, and what experiences they have been through. There is so much to take from them, and probably something that can be exchanged with

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them. I believe that is what we in Australia have been doing in recent years. It is understandable that people in the public arena criticise our relationship with America in particular, because most have never been through a working relationship that people like myself have had with the US services. It is so easy to think that the Americans are ruling the roost and calling the play. I had a very good friend named Frank Dane, sadly no longer alive, who was an instructor at Narrandera and then served in No. 75 Squadron with me. In more recent years, during a phone call one day, he said, “These Americans really get up my nose. Why should they be going about the world telling people what to do?” “Frank,” I said, “who else in this world can dictate terms like that. We need some police-type action at times, and that’s what they are trying to do.” However, I do not think that I ever convinced him, because he never had the association. About three months before we were due to come home, I still did not know what post I was going to when I came back—although it was totally outside anything that I could control, anyway. As it happened, the Naval Attaché at the embassy, Commodore Bob Percy, was due to go to California to attend the month-long systems management course for senior officers that the US Navy ran at its postgraduate college at Monterey. This advice was given at about the same time that the Tange visit took place. Sir Arthur was not back in Canberra very long when the Embassy was advised that Bob Percy’s attendance at the Navy College course was cancelled, and I was to go instead. There was no indication of what lay behind any of this, and I just assumed that Bob had been withdrawn for some reason to do with Navy personnel management. It turned out that the course was a darn good one, and very enjoyable. Its content was not specifically naval, nor was it primarily

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designed for Americans. In fact, there were no American servicemen among the students; all the course members were foreigners, and I was the only one from an English-speaking country. If I had known what position I was coming to back in Australia, I think I would have tried to get a lot more out of the whole experience. We had really top lecturers from the Rand Corporation talk to us about financial management in the services. Because defence organisations do not operate to make a profit in the same terms as business companies, they had invented exercises to help show what the real value of projects were, using a commodity that took the place of money called ‘utils’; it was a brilliant game, it really was. Fascinating stuff. It was only afterwards that I learnt I was coming home to become Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (DCAS) on promotion to air vice-marshal. I am convinced that Sir Arthur Tange had something to do with this. As an illustration of the sort of influence he wielded as Secretary of the Department of Defence, I recall that when Charles Read was about to leave the CAS post later in 1975, the senior air vice-marshal on the RAAF List was Fred Robey. But Tange said no, he did not want Robey; he had his eye on Jim Rowland. People pointed out that Rowland was a technical specialist, but they got around that by bringing him back into the General Duties (GD) Branch. As it happened, he had been a GD pilot in Europe during the war, but took advantage of the opportunity to complete an aeronautical engineering degree after he came home and then joined the Technical Branch; it was still an easy matter to transfer him back. But that just demonstrated what Tange could do if he wanted to. Sure, some people detested Tange, but I never had any trouble with him. Maybe it was just my personality, or, as someone once asked me, the Christian element in my upbringing. I have never been a

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really religious man, but I believe in practising the principles of Christianity; as I see it, no one can claim to be a Christian without doing this. One of my basic precepts is that you cannot hold a grudge against people. They are entitled to their views, and they are entitled to sound off about them if they want to; you do not have to accept it, and you do not have to believe it all, but do not fight them over it. So I adopted that approach of not getting into holts with people and arguing to the last breath; I still had my own approach and I would do things my way, accepting that was my responsibility.

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16In the Deputy's Chair

fter the rather turbulent time we had in Washington, coming back to Canberra in January 1975 was a good move on the domestic side. Service-wise, I might

selfishly have preferred to have gone and commanded a base or something like that, but for the family it was undoubtedly the best course. Joan and I set up the house at Hackett again, and our daughters established themselves in their adult lives. Julie got a job, while Shelley went back to university and completed a Diploma in Education before going on to teaching. At this stage I had no idea that my Service postings would keep me in Canberra for the next nine years. My arrival back in Air Force Office was not long after Sir Arthur Tange had handed in his report on reorganising the Department of Defence to the Labor Government, and his recommendations were still being implemented. I would have to say that I had no particular problems with what Tange had proposed. The principal advantage, to my mind, was that it straightened out, and made sense of, the command chain. Prior to that, the Service was administered by an Air Board where the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) was considered ‘first among equals’. Command was in the hands of commanders in the field and not the Chiefs of Staff. There were times when our AOCs, Air Officers Commanding, tended to act like they were ‘regional war lords’. They seemed to think the CAS was there simply to handle the bureaucratic business of paperwork, and deal with the politicians

A

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and public servants, leaving them to the real business of running the Air Force. My feeling then, as now, was that there is a need for the Chief of each Service to command. Not for the purpose of getting his fingers into the operational commander’s field and telling him precisely what to do, but to permit him to take directions from his political masters, as interpreted through the Chief of the Defence Force, and to pass these on to his commanders. He also needs command authority to deal with anything else that happens in the Service from a purely administrative and support viewpoint. I know there was a fear that we could have a Chief of Air Force at some time who might end up putting his fingers directly in the operational pie. Well, if that happens you have got the wrong man as chief, because he has not understood his position as commander of the Air Force, or appreciated what he has got to do. The negatives in the Tange reforms were primarily in the area of the massive tiered structure of committees set up within the Department of Defence, of which, from there on, the three Service Offices were a part. Before, each Service Office made submissions into the centre, and the business side of Defence was managed from there; discussion and debate flowed back and forth, but the Service Offices were never a real part of it, even internally within each Service Office. In Air Force Office, for example, much of the management within the Service, particularly financial management, was done by a group of competent civilians—and in the main they managed very well. But following the Tange report, the Service Offices were directly involved in the committee structure within Defence, and they also became responsible within their own areas for a degree of financial management. The DCAS, in particular, became a business

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manager rather than a deputy chief as such; that is the way the new system operated. There was much good in that change, but at the time I was appointed as DCAS I really had no clear idea of what I was in for. It took me a while to appreciate the extent to which the position had acquired a new set of responsibilities, and that its involvement in the total management process had just escalated tenfold. The committee system which came out of the Tange reorganisation was intended to examine all the plans and financial bids, from the minute levels up to the broad principle level, in accordance with financial and budgetary guidance. As Deputy Chief I took part in the committee that considered major capital equipment projects for which the Services were bidding, before these went up to the Defence Force Development Committee (DFDC) on which the Service Chiefs sat and which the Secretary chaired. This at a time when the RAAF was preparing a whole raft of bids involving really big money, for things like a replacement for the Mirage, and a program to update the F-111 from analogue to digital systems so that we could use newer laser-guided bombs and missiles. It has to be said that the Air Force was not well-disposed to adapt to this new situation. We had all grown up in a system that had taken on certain traditions and values, so the reaction to seeing that way of working thrown out and replaced by a colossal pyramidal committee system was not good. There was a belief that the Tange review was all about putting civilians in charge of everything, whereas in reality it was bringing the uniformed people into the process to take on board bids, to consider them and to make judgements. Tange’s objective was, I think, to have the Public Service and uniformed people working together all the way through the pyramid, right up to the very top, in the decision-making process leading to the budget

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that would be recommended to the Minister. But he also organised it so that there was a fairly high degree of influence from certain Public Service positions; chairmanship of most of the committees by Public Servants greatly assisted in this respect. The Deputy Secretaries in particular carried a very large ability, by virtue of their position and their statement of duties, to influence the direction of things. There also was scope for confusion and undue influence, and in time our main beef in Air Force was that one particular area of the Defence conglomerate, the Deputy Secretary B area, had far too much influence throughout the committee system. Part of the problem was because the committees were never run on a formal procedural basis but always operated on consensus, right up to the DFDC. It was never a case of formal motions being proposed, with amendments that had to be voted for; it was more a case of finding out how people around the table felt about a proposal. Sometimes the chairman (particularly when Tange was still Secretary) would say, “Well, we won’t finalise that now, we won’t make a decision, we will leave that for the moment.” Then he could talk directly to the Chief of the Defence Force Staff (CDFS) the next day or whenever he wanted, or he could do other things before the matter was considered again in committee. When the minutes of meetings were written up, these were always in a general form. Often I, or others like Jim Rowland, would feel these would not quite reflect what was said, and there were arguments back and forward. But the Secretary would always hold the day, saying that was the way he saw the meeting and that was the way the minutes should be written. Another aspect of the committee system that stays in my memory concerns the DFDC. This was supposedly meant to be a small body: just the Secretary as chairman, with the CDFS and the

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three Service Chiefs as members. But every time the DFDC met there were at least twenty people in the room, sometimes more. This was because the Secretary would have all his merry men there with their briefcases and papers, just in case this or that question cropped up and there was an explanation on hand. As a consequence the Chiefs brought along their deputies and anybody else they thought might be appropriate to a project being discussed. In the end the room would be just packed with people, and one could hardly move around the table—it was simply chaotic, it really was. And every DFDC was like that. Later on when I was CAS, I suggested to the Secretary, then Bill Pritchett, that we should operate as just the committee members alone. And, considering the lengthy process of discussion and analysis that the agenda items had already been subjected to, we should have a thin sheaf of paper in front of us with the principal issues to talk about. He just laughed; it was never going to happen. That was the way the system worked. Occasionally things could get pretty tense in the DFDC. I remember one time when there was a contentious issue coming up in the committee meeting that day, Jimmy Rowland walked into my office and asked me, “Is this the day we put our heads on the block?”, in other words, confrontation. I never liked confrontation, and one of the biggest lessons I drew from this period was that whatever system was in place one had to learn to work within it. I know this view was at variance to that held by a lot of my colleagues. For instance, one day when I was CAS I had my staff officer come into my office and say, “Sir, you’ve got to get in there and tell them.” As though thumping the table with what we wanted in a heated way would cause them all to respond with, “Of course, thank you for telling us.” The only effective way of operating within the committee system was to get to know people, to know how they worked and

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what ways we could best achieve our aim. In that type of system, it was no good fretting and carrying on about its inadequacies, or it became just too hard to work with. Sometimes it might be that our aim was too unrealistic or too big and that we might have to modify it. I learnt that nothing was ever gained by way of confrontation, in the sense of working up a lather of hate or a feeling of resentment. I mentioned before that the reaction of the Services to Sir Arthur Tange’s reforms was not good. In fact, an anecdotal tradition has emerged that actually there was, at senior military levels, great resistance to them. In my experience there was nothing of the kind in any group or organised form, but there were certainly individuals who reacted very strongly. I imagine this was mainly because of the factor I mentioned before: they were traditionalists, they liked the way the Air Force was organised and the way things were handled. They did not want to see any change, or perhaps they would accept some finetuning but they thought that in the main it was all right. Until then the Defence Force had been very self-contained, with a large degree of self-sufficiency in terms of maintenance and repair facilities, and in many respects the Tange reorganisation was the first step towards the reductions and dilution of the Services’ authority in their own affairs. On the other hand I could understand that Sir Arthur Tange, or whoever was in the position of Secretary of the Defence Department, would worry about the number and scope of things that the Services were bidding for, and the degree to which that would impact upon the moneys available, or even if the moneys available would be anywhere near the requirement. Sir Arthur Tange asked me once (years later, I must admit), “Why is it that the bases within the Air Force can’t understand their responsibility for keeping within budget?” My explanation to him was that our people bid for what

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they saw as needed to perform the tasks and roles they were given, and they were not involved in budgeting. They never had the same responsibility as their equivalent people did in, say, the American forces, where a base had a specific amount of money per year within which they had to work. Sometimes people found difficulty working with the system that resulted from the Tange reorganisation. It tested one’s patience, no doubt about it, because it was time-consuming going through the committee structure and the amount of paper work and preparation. I do not dispute that by the time everything had gone through the process, a planning program was usually brought out that was consistent with government financial guidelines and restraints. The problem was that we had the Government changing its mind in midstream, almost invariably in the last six months of the financial year. Instead of the two and a half per cent of Gross Domestic Product that might have been given to Defence as guidance initially, the Government would start plying departments with ‘what ifs’—what if we change it to two, what if we change it to one and a half? Three options might be presented like that and the Department and Service Offices would have to go back and redo all the calculations, and come out with a new list. That was so frustrating. I should mention one other point associated with this situation, which refers back to the amount of help that we uniformed people needed in the first place to get to grips with the new system. Bedded into the Air Force Office organisation was a civilian position called ASRP (Assistant Secretary Resources Planning). Holding that post during my time was a fellow named Mick Madden. His office was right next door to mine, and he was tremendously helpful. I am not one who is naturally good at picking up budgetary considerations, and these matters were even more difficult to understand in the

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context of the monstrous Defence structure. Yet I could go into Mick’s office, or he would come into mine when I gave him a yell, and he would guide me through the maze while I talked with him on a man-to-man basis. There were others in the system with whom I found difficulty. The chap on the next level above Mick, to whom Mick had a line of responsibility, was a chap named Matt Hyland. Matt reported directly to the Secretary on a whole range of things, and had a very big hand in the drafting of the overall Budget. He was a different kettle of fish altogether, and I did not find it easy to talk to him. We got on all right, and were friendly enough. Sometimes if I was going home for a quick lunch, I would pick up Matt as he was walking out the gate and say, “Give you a lift home”. But I found I could not go to Matt and have him explain something to me; he might try to explain, but I could not understand him as I did Mick Madden. The whole environment in Defence at this time was very demanding and deeply frustrating for a lot of people. I remember talking with a specialist doctor, Mark Faunce, who did a lot of good work for us identifying people who were potential candidates for heart attacks and similar stress problems. He was examining me on one occasion and I told him, “Mark, I’m not the sort of person that you should be worrying about. There are people of lower rank than myself who need your help. The pressure on them is something terrific.” And it truly was. The structure of the system itself put a lot of pressure on people, not just Service types but public servants too. There were times when I would go into the office on, say, a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon, to do some preparation for the start of the next week, and I would find others on the Public Service side already there and working away.

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During my time as Deputy I had a very sound working relationship with Air Marshal Rowland as Chief. We worked pretty well together I thought, because it was an open type of arrangement. At times he would walk into my office, plonk himself down, and we would discuss something. Similarly, I had free opportunity to go into his office when I wanted to, although I always gave him a buzz first and said I wanted to come and talk. There was only one occasion where I inadvertently crossed a line and copped a bit of a reprimand. I had been addressing the Joint Services Staff College course and I unwittingly made too much of a point about the number of committees in Defence to which I belonged. My mistake was probably in not mentioning anything about what the CAS did, because it appears that somebody said to him, “The Deputy seems to take a lot of load off your shoulders” or something like that. Jimmy took it the wrong way and he said to me, “I notice what you said out at the JSSC. I want you to know that there are times that I have taken a lot off your shoulders. You might well belong to ‘x’ number of committees, but you are not the only one with a big load.” Although we got on well enough as CAS and DCAS, Jimmy was a different personality to me and there were elements of his make-up and character that I found difficult to fathom. We could talk of flying, and we could work together when, for example, the development of certain policies or projects needed discussion and mutual agreement. Aside from the committee work, I got involved as DCAS in a variety of matters related to the administration of the Air Force. Occasionally I would go away, either on my own or with the Chief, on a visit somewhere. Of course the Chief himself, with all his responsibilities, was away quite a lot. Then I would be required to represent him at, say, the DFDC or other of his meetings, as well as

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all my own meetings—and I am not suggesting there was anything wrong with that. One task that came my way was an organisational review that Jimmy wanted me to undertake. Discussions had taken place within the Chief of the Air Staff Advisory Committee (CASAC) that persuaded him it was time we conducted an internal examination of our Air Force structure, to look into where change was needed. As I had been Director General Organisation previously, I guess he thought I was the right person to chair the whole thing. On the review team I had people like Billie Collings and Bill Simmonds (both of whom later became air vice-marshals), Hank Hurley, and also a public servant named Colin Campbell who was an Assistant Secretary. I have to admit that I did not really want to take on this task. I have never been especially good as a forward or strategic thinker—my mind does not work that way—and I am not a great one at thinking up new organisations. But since the Chief asked me to do it, naturally, I said yes I would. Having become a reluctant participant in some respects, I also have to acknowledge that most of the ideas that emerged from the review were not mine and I cannot justifiably claim any credit for them. What came out of it was due more to Billie Collings and his civilian equivalent—primarily Bill, I think. I recall those two engaging in several lengthy discussions, and it was Billie who was the real strength on the team. Some of what Billie was talking about was over my head, and I could not quite see the real advantages of what he was proposing, but I also did not feel confident enough to assert myself and say, no, we would not go that way. I count the whole episode of the organisation review as something I did, but not very well, whereas Billie Collings did.

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The thrust of what we came up with was to try to reduce the degree of involvement of the Chief of Air Force Technical Services (CAFTS) and the Equipment Branch in the total processing and activation of technical and logistic support, and to move much of it back to Support Command level in Melbourne. But, in doing this, we did not want Support Command to just grow into another big single organisation. What we proposed was for the main structure of Support Command to stay, but with various agencies that dealt with things at a lower level and then produced the results of that back into the command structure. My feeling is that the whole business ran away from us a bit, and we made it too complex. That was why, when we first presented the review’s findings to CASAC in August 1978, there was a very strong reaction from CAFTS that we were completely destroying his empire. I honestly had some feeling for him in that regard. The impact on equipment and logistics support was not quite so bad, because they were still really heavily involved in Support Command, in the agency side of things. There were certainly arguments against the review, and when the Chief was asked if he accepted it he agreed not to put it into effect at that time. I did not implement it either, during my subsequent time as CAS, because I felt it was too ambitious and the RAAF was not ready for it at that stage of the game; we were pretty hard put working with the system as it was. Some of what we recommended did get picked up in subsequent reviews and was implemented later on. There were changes made on bases that I thought were highly desirable, if not absolutely essential, particularly during periods when operations were being conducted. These involved making the operational elements of the RAAF, including the wing headquarters of the operational formation, nothing more than tenants on whichever base they occupied, while

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the base itself would be run by a separate group of people. This meant that our operational elements could go off at any time they were wanted and it would not effect the day-to-day running of the base. Under this arrangement the air commodore who was Officer Commanding of a Wing (OC Wing) would still be the senior officer present, but the base was run by a wing commander. What we did not want was for the OC Wing to be the senior officer for the purpose of signing things related purely to the base, or contributing to things like confidential reports on all of the officers on the base, because that brought him back into the base structure. That separation between base and wing did take place after my time, so I like to think that the good points of the organisational review I headed were drawn upon and taken out of it. I have to say that I do not know if they were or not—perhaps they were just thought up afresh by other people. In any event I have been a little disappointed to learn that there has been a subsequent return to the old situation on bases, where the OC Wing is the still the senior officer present for a range of administrative purposes. I still have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth over the organisational review experience. I ended up spending four years as Deputy Chief, which was rather a long time and more than most people had in the position. Although there was no rigid time limit laid down for filling the job, it was normally a two- to three-year posting. My tenure might look like two ‘tours’, but it was more correctly a case of a normal three years plus one. That fourth year arose because Jimmy Rowland came up to me towards the end of three years and said, “I have been asked if I would like to stay on as Chief for another year. What do you think?” I was quite happy for him to carry on, because I was enjoying where I was and was getting on well with the people with whom I

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had to work (given a couple of exceptions), so I responded with, “Why don’t you; there’s nothing stopping you.” So he did, and I saw out a fourth year as DCAS. It was, I recall, at that stage he suggested that he might have to send me down to Melbourne to take over Support Command for a while. I told him that I would go wherever he sent me, and whenever he sent me, but Joan would not go back to Melbourne for various reasons, her health among other things. Nothing more was said about it, but I was quite clear in my mind about the situation and it would not have worried me if I had finished as DCAS, that was my attitude. I certainly do not think it can be said that Jimmy Rowland specifically groomed me to take over the top job after him. Once I was in the Deputy’s chair, I suppose I realised that at least the possibility was there; it certainly went through my mind. The realisation became even more positive after Jimmy told me that he was being invited to stay on another year and seemed concerned about my reaction. It seemed to indicate that he rather thought that I was going to take over from him and might be upset that I was going to have to wait. There was another indication that arose. I used to write minutes to Jimmy periodically, whenever I felt we were being pushed over decisions by public servants trying to have too much say. General Sir Arthur McDonald was CDFS at this time and, in talking to Jimmy Rowland on one occasion he said, “Tell Nev McNamara to stop writing those minutes. His turn will come.” They were the very words he used, so there was a further indication of what might be in store, but no more than that. Again, I have to say that I would not have been upset or worried if I had not gone beyond DCAS, and if someone else got the Chief ’s job ahead of me. I was not looking over my shoulder, although I do

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not doubt there were others who considered that they might also be in the running. Nothing was ever said in that regard, and I was not conscious of any spirit of competition; perhaps such a feeling existed, but I do not believe it was there to any great degree.

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St. Joseph’s Nudgee College, Brisbane.

Members of the Defence Force Development Committee, 1982; front row, from left: Bill Pritchett (Secretary), Jim Killen (Minister for Defence), author (CDFS); back row, from left: Lieutenant General Phil Bennett (CGS); Kevin Newman (Minister Assisting); AVM Bill Hughes (representing CAS); Vice-Admiral David Leach (CNS).

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Author and Ruth Rutherford, a member of Defence Minister Ian Sinclair’s staff, with General Benny Moerdani in the Governor’s Residence at Jayapura, Indonesia, 29 January 1983.

On an official visit to Papua New Guinea: author with Defence Minister Gordon Scholes and a PNG Defence Force officer at Lae War Cemetery.

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Author welcomed by General John Vessey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an official visit by CDFS to Washington in 1983. Like the author, General Vessey rose from sergeant to four-star rank.

At the annual Air Marshals Dinner at Point Cook in May 1984; from left: Ray Trebilco, Bill Townsend, Dugald McLachlan, Sir James Rowland, author.

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Past and present COs leading 77 Squadron in the Anzac Day march through Sydney, 1995; from left: Wing Commander Al Taylor, AVM Bill Simmonds, AVM Fred Barnes, Wing Commander Dick Cresswell, author, AM Jake Newham, AVM ‘Brick’ Bradford, and Wing Commander J.M. Blackburn.

Reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, with a vintage Kittyhawk aircraft at Fairbairn, Canberra, August 2005. (Canberra Times)

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17Chief of the Air Staff have no precise knowledge of how my appointment as CAS to follow Jimmy Rowland came about in March 1979, because I was not privy to the process that decided

it. I think Jimmy was the first to indicate to me that I was actually going to be in the chair, but I do not really recall now. I can say that, after four years in the Deputy’s job, this time I had a pretty clear idea of what I was in for. I was especially conscious of how much responsibility the CAS job entailed, because many of the issues and projects in which I had previously been involved stayed with me; in some cases, these even flowed on into my time as CDFS—only at a different level. It was not so much a case that I was under-confident or reluctant to accept the position; I adopted the attitude that if they wanted me to have a go at it, I was prepared to do that, but I fully recognised that I would have to approach it in my own way. There were times when people came to me and said, “Why don’t you do this?”, or “Why don’t you do that?”; “Why don’t you spend more time out with the units, they’d like to see you out there?”; “Why don’t you write an article on some point of service interest?” But I had to reject a lot of that because I am a relatively slow worker, the type who has to read every word in a brief to absorb it because I do not have that ability to scan quickly and pick out the essentials. If I had a particular subject to address in meetings—and there were several very large projects that were then developing, the main one being

I

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the tactical fighter replacement—then I had to spend a lot of time on those, of necessity. By that time, too, the level of involvement in the departmental system had reached tremendous proportions. There was not a night when I would go home with less than one full briefcase of work. It was not just me, I should add; when I shared this information with other people, I found that they were in the same position. I have never been a natural for working late at night, but one just had to do it. One of the great joys of retirement was that I did not have to see those briefcases any more. If I went away for a day or more, my staff officer would always meet me with my several briefcases. I remember Charles Read doing that, too, in the earlier years. I used to think: how the heck do you do that? There was a whole range of things to which I would have liked to devote some time, especially visits to units to discuss problems in person, but never could. I felt very inadequate and very remiss in that regard. But I did feel, quite consciously, that my primary responsibility was in Canberra, in the system, with the Department and with the Minister, for that was where the battles were fought for what we believed the RAAF needed. In terms of conscience I was quite happy that I recognised the priorities and, within my own limitations, applied my energy accordingly. The atmosphere within Defence could be pretty difficult in the wake of the Tange reorganisation, with relations between the uniformed and civilian staffs often being described as bitter and divisive. Let me say, though, that at the top levels at which I then worked things were generally very good. Sir Arthur Tange retired as Secretary about six months after my appointment, and I had a good rapport with his successor Bill Pritchett. In the main, I enjoyed working with him and on most things we saw eye-to-eye. There

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were a few things that we agreed to disagree on, and there were a few on which we had quite strong exchanges. One was a particular personality in the Public Service, and Bill could not see my point on that at all. Elsewhere in the Defence organisation, General Sir Arthur MacDonald had retired as CDFS the month after I became CAS. He was replaced by Admiral Tony Synnot, who in turn was succeeded as CNS (Chief of Naval Staff) by Jim Willis. Neither of these two caused me any problems. Over in Army, the CGS (Chief of the General Staff) was my old friend from Vietnam days, General Don Dunstan, so no problem there either. The Minister for Defence throughout my time as CAS was Jim Killen, a man whom I held in high regard. He was very skilful and knew how to play most situations. I could ring him up and say that I would like to discuss a particular matter, and he would tell me to come over to his office at Parliament House at, say, six o’clock. When I got there he would ask in a friendly way, “What is it that you want to talk about?” As soon as I started, if he twigged that it was something he did not want to deal with then—or deal with at all—then he would interrupt and have the discussion going off on a tangent, or on another subject entirely. He was a real politician, no doubt about it, but I liked working with him. The big problem that I experienced, both as CAS and later as CDFS, was the continual desire to control the Services from the centre in terms of expenditure of funds. That determination was always there, and there were various measures taken at different times to extend control even further. On most occasions we were able to convince the bureaucrats that they were intruding too much into the Chief of Staff area of responsibility for development and

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maintenance of the force, and all the administrative aspects that go with it. Let me give an example. In one DFDC meeting we were talking about things that the Air Force needed for the support of the Service, and the development of proficiency. I think the particular issue was sonobuoys, with the Air Force bid being for x-quantity of these bits of kit. The Chairman said, “I’d like a report from CAS as to why he needs this quantity of sonobuoys, and this relatively high usage rate.” I thought about it for a minute, and he was about to go onto something else before I said, “If I were to submit such a report, what would this committee do with it?” He replied, “Oh well, if we thought that was excessive we’d have to change it.” So I said, “What you are saying is that you don’t need a CAS, and that this committee will decide what the Service needs to develop x-state of proficiency. Well, I’m charged with the responsibility of raising, training, and maintaining the force, and this is what I’m saying I need to do that.” So far as I was concerned, the DFDC could make recommendations as to what sort of moneys would be allowed, or recommended in a budget, but I did not believe it had the right to say what sort of equipment I needed and how much. If only so much money was available, then I may have to prune my requirement, but that was my prerogative—not the Committee’s. Anyway, the subject went away and was never pursued, but this was an incident that showed the danger of the type of structure that had been devised. There were similar scenes in the DFDC over the new tactical fighter project, with the Air Force being called on to justify absolutely every aspect of the bid. It was not just a matter of which aircraft type should replace the Mirage, or how many of the new type we reckoned we would need—both of which were at least arguably legitimate areas of interest across the Department, given the cost

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implications of a purchase of such magnitude. But it even got down to the tactical formations that the RAAF used! Of course, for a man of my background, I had a particular interest in the fighter project and I put a lot of work into it. I was very conscious of what was involved in trying to get a truly multi-role aircraft that would actually suit our environment in all respects. I was very fortunate in having some great fellows working on the project too; people like Bill Hughes on the project coordination side, Errol McCormack in the operational staff, and many others who I called upon several times to give briefings to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and elsewhere. Jim Killen was quite right when he said that this was the best prepared project that he had ever seen, or known of. I was very happy for the choice to come down to the two aircraft types in final contention, the American F-16 and F-18. Early on I saw a lot of the F-16, but in the latter stages I was firmly of the opinion that the F-18 was the better aircraft for our total environment, and it had to be looked upon that way. I saw some aspects of the F-16 that would cause us problems in support in a deployment situation; I think the USAF has got over those since, but they were certainly a factor then. I was particularly concerned about the vast difference in design philosophy of the engines of the two aircraft and, again, I saw the F-18 as much more suitable to our circumstances. Initially there were three types in the range of contenders, and the French were very upset when we eliminated the Mirage from the list. Even with the choice down to just two types, the final selection was no easy matter. I was challenged over whether we in Air Force were just using the F-16 as a stalking horse for our real preference, the F-18, and I had to give assurances that the F-16 was being genuinely looked at as a viable option. And the question came up in

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the DFDC about whether we could not get by with a much cheaper aircraft like the F-5, which some of our regional neighbours were buying. My response to that was to say the F-5 might suffice if we could get a promise from potential adversaries that they would not attack us in bad weather or at night, because the F-5 was strictly a day fighter. It was the matter of numbers that proved the most vexed issue. Air Force had looked very closely into what we would need to equip a couple of squadrons, adding in provision for the Aircraft Research and Development Unit, and maintenance, life-of-type requirements, statistical loss rate, etc, and the answer came up that we would need seventy-five aircraft. We were adamant about that and we stuck by it, even when our civilian colleagues got to arguing over what constituted a squadron on operations and how we should fly them. We had to defend using the basic formation of four aircraft, working as two elements of two, with three four-aircraft sections making up a squadron. Even after explaining to the DFDC how it worked, I would get one of the public servants come back and say, “Well why do you do that, why don’t you fly in threes?” and the debate would go around yet again. The issue was not settled until Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser made a visit to the US, accompanied by the CDFS. As Admiral Synnot told us when he got back, the Prime Minister got to wondering what he could say about Defence during his visit that would be meaningful in the lead-up to a coming election. After a few possibilities had been kicked around, Tony said that he took a deep breath and suggested that the Prime Minister might say that, irrespective of what aircraft we eventually selected, for various reasons we would buy seventy-five of them. Fraser said, “That’s a good idea”, and there was a big sigh of relief that we had a decision on that at last.

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There are other projects that I wish I might have had success on, for example the drawn-out one over the acquisition of AEW (airborne early warning) aircraft, and the misunderstandings over the RAAF attitude towards Jindalee, the over-the-horizon radar (OTHR). Now, there were a lot of suggestions that Air Force did not want Jindalee, and we wanted to kill it simply because we wanted AEW, but that is not true. The Air Force welcomed the idea of Jindalee, but we still believed AEW to be vital to our circumstances even with the OTHR. I had difficulties with the Department’s representation of the OTHR as the answer to the problem of northern surveillance. Along with my specialists, I always saw it as a very useful inclusion in the total picture, but along with the AEW aircraft. We made the point many times that we viewed Jindalee as another sensor within the total organisation needed to give us proper airborne early warning, and more particularly proper surveillance, so that we would know what was happening in our northern approaches. AEW and Jindalee complement each other; they should not be in opposition. Another project involved the development of Tindal as an operational fighter base in the Northern Territory. The runway and hardstands for demountable buildings had already been constructed under the program to create bare bases at strategic points around Australia. Right from the outset I was a very strong advocate of upgrading Tindal to full base status. I can remember, when I was DCAS, representing Jimmy Rowland in the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and having arguments with General A.L. MacDonald, the CDFS at that time, who was very much against that sort of remote development. There were lots of advantages in Tindal, and I was very pleased to see it finally come to fruition when the base was officially opened in 1989, although that was five years after I retired. I heard it talked about in later public forums in a way that

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made it appear as though nothing had been done before that time. I was tempted to break silence and write to correct that wrong idea, because there was a lot of work done on the concept over many years. People forget that the political decision to build the base was taken long before; construction on Tindal actually began in 1982. The big objections on this issue were mainly in terms of what it would cost us to set up the base at Tindal, as distinct from continuing with, and developing, the Darwin station. But the Darwin situation always had big problems, not the least of which was the reorganisation of the Darwin airfield complex itself, taking into account the longstanding plan that the civil airport would be relocated to a different area. But there were other considerations too—strategic, passive defence, freedom from cyclones—and all these pointed to Tindal, so I was very pleased to see these arguments finally win the day. One project that I would have liked to see get greater support was for developing Woomera into something like the Nellis Weapons Area that the USAF has. When the Australian interest was starting to fade out of Woomera, I felt we could have developed it as a focal point for weapons practice and the development of skills in the operation of weapons systems, in the same way as the Americans do at Nellis. We could run our own version of the Red Flag exercises, with participation by overseas air forces; I am sure that would have been a bonus we could have traded upon. Woomera had a lot of natural features going for the sort of development I am talking about: self-clearing target areas, with the salt lakes, and freedom from urban development as well as civil air focal points. It would have cost a bit of money, but it would have obviated the necessity to provide live weapons training areas elsewhere. Subsequently, the CAS of the day was a strong supporter

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of the development of the range at Tindal, whereas I would have seen that as a purely light-emphasis practice area while we had the main deployment area down at Woomera. That was one of my pet hobbyhorses, but unfortunately it never really got off the ground. One of the big issues that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) had to tackle while I was CAS, and that carried over into my term as CDFS, was whether the Navy would get a replacement aircraft carrier for HMAS Melbourne. This was a very complex and costly proposal, and was a cherished goal for the Navy. But, of course, anyone outside of the Navy was able to find plenty to argue about. What would a carrier do for Australia’s overall defence posture, and were there better or cheaper ways of achieving the same end? Was one carrier enough, or did we need two—one for each of our east and west coasts? Actually, it was well known that Australia could not afford two, so that focused debate on what type we could afford, and what aircraft we put on it. There was still a raft of other points to consider, like how much of the rest of Navy’s strength, and indeed the ADF, would it take to look after even just one carrier. It was obvious, when we started going through the range of options, that the cost of the more capable carriers like the big American type was unlikely to be supported by any government, whichever party was in power. So this narrowed the affordable option down to something like the British Invincible type, which had the Harrier as the only jet fighter capable of operating off it. Well, as it happened the Air Force had very strong and valid criticisms to make about the ability of the Harrier to perform the roles required of our Fleet Air Arm. Our concerns were carefully reasoned and quite sound. I can remember putting them forward—after I had lengthy discussions with my own staff, all experts in their own

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fields—during presentations we made to the COSC, the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The real problem was that the claims made by the Navy’s experts about the Harrier’s capability just could not be substantiated. They were stretching things and we, as an air force, had to point that out. I recall at one point Tony Synnot, who as CDFS tried hard not to be seen as totally ‘Navy Blue’ and to give due weight to both sides of the picture, came out in committee once and said to me, “Nev, you must realise you are not the only aviation expert.” I told him I knew that and never claimed to be, but my formal responsibilities as CAS made me the Minister’s principal adviser on air matters, so I was obliged to take up the argument. Discussion ranged over every aspect of the carrier bid, and just went on and on. I can remember being recalled from leave to appear before Cabinet during part of the debate. There were those who were convinced that the Air Force was antagonistic, decidedly so, to Navy’s aims and ambitions in this matter. I am sure that there would have been some individuals who were like that, but it was not that way at the chief level. At the peak of the argument I rang up the CNS, Admiral Jim Willis, and said to him, “Can I come and talk to you about it?” I went to his office and I asked Jim just a simple question, “How much does it mean to the Navy to have a carrier?”, and he said, “I don’t have a particularly emotional attachment to it, but the Navy does; it means a tremendous amount.” So I told him, “Well, I will endeavour not to be destructive”, and I like to think that I kept to that. By early 1982 it looked like we had a satisfactory resolution to the whole issue. The British decided that they had a carrier (actually the Invincible itself ) that was surplus to the Royal Navy’s requirement and offered to sell it to Australia. The DFDC—realising that if we

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had to have a carrier this was as good a buy as we could get for our money—made a unanimous decision to take up the offer. Navy’s problems looked like they were solved and everybody was happy. By later that year, after I had moved into the CDFS’s office, the whole picture changed again, as I will talk about later. When the carrier proposal fell apart, there were those within the Navy who felt that it was Air Force who had done them in the eye. In 1981, about midway through my term as CAS, I received the accolade of a knighthood. Of course this was in the tradition that had existed, pretty much unbroken, since John McCauley’s day in the 1950s, although it is also true that I was the last CAS so honoured before the imperial honours system went out of use in Australia. I look at it several ways. First, I have always believed the knighthood was as much a recognition of the Service as it was for the individual. But also, whether it was ever intended as such or not, it was a great compliment to the woman who has supported the man through all those years. I, like many others who have expressed the thought before, was very glad to see my wife Joan being able to write her name as Lady McNamara, because a great deal is expected of the wives of Servicemen and, until recent times, not much has been given in recognition. While I was still in the CAS chair, also in 1981, my mother finally passed away. When Dad died twenty years earlier, Mum had initially stayed in the old house, with all the problems that posed for an ageing person in terms of managing her own medication amid frequent episodes of imbalance in sugar and insulin levels. My sister Bobbie (Maureen) was living in Brisbane and used to see Mum as often as possible, but my brother was mostly in distant parts of Queensland and I was either in other states of Australia or overseas. The neighbours were wonderful and would keep a watchful eye

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on Mum, but eventually the occasion arose when they realised that she had not appeared for twenty-four hours or more. When they investigated, they found her unconscious as a result of insulin imbalance. By that time my brother had taken up a police post in Toowoomba and had, in fact, already explored the possibility of a place for Mum in the Lourdes Home retirement complex in Toowoomba. So, after this latest incident, he took the initiative and arranged for Mum to move to Lourdes Home and for her furniture and effects to be sold at auction. I understand Mum protested strongly, but to no avail this time. From there she went to Brisbane, where my sister cared for her as well as Stan Booth, Bobbie’s father-in-law. That arrangement eventually became far too much for Bobbie, and Mum went into Mt Olivet Hospital, where she remained until her death. The really sad part about those final years was the gradual change to that fine spirit of determination, so evident in early years, into an attitude of resentment and rejection of those around her who tried to extend a gesture of sympathy. Maybe it was largely due to the frustration of helplessness and the fact that her world was closing in around her. When I arrived at my sister’s home on the evening of the day Mum died, my brother, who was more inclined to the old Irish custom, said to me, “Now, you will want to go and view the body,” but I said, “No, I want to remember Mum as she used to be.” And that is the way I will always remember her and the part she played in a very sound upbringing for me. It was also while I was CAS that we first started hearing about the Army mounting a bid for ownership of the RAAF’s helicopters. I well remember when my staff officer at that time, Dennis Robertson, came all excited into my office one day and said, “Sir, you ought to be

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aware that there’s a lot of action going on over in Army Office aimed at taking over the battlefield helicopters.” I said, “Thanks very much, don’t do anything about it,” and I immediately got on the phone to General Don Dunstan and repeated what I had just been told. He said, “I give you an absolute assurance that it will not happen in my time here.” In hindsight, I probably should have thought about this episode a lot more and recorded it for posterity, so that others following me might have been aware of it, but I took Don’s reply at face value and let it go at that. What he was really saying was that he knew this push was going on, and his assurance was only good for as long as he was in the chair. Obviously, the theme was picked up again later on, after there was a change of CGS. I understand that General Phil Bennett was undoubtedly of this mind, and that he saw the opportunity, when he became Chief of the Defence Force Staff after me, to make it happen. I do not know that Phil personally initiated the idea’s revival; I believe it came from within Army Office, received support from Phil’s successor as CGS, Peter Gration, and was then carried to CDFS. However it came about, clearly that desire on the part of the Army to have the ‘battlefield’ helicopters under their command and control had been a longstanding one, and existed for several years before the decision to make the change was actually taken in 1986. By late 1981, or early 1982 I suppose it could have been, the question arose of selecting a new CDFS to follow Admiral Synnot. I remember the matter came up very directly at a COSC meeting on one occasion; we did not have anybody else in with us (unlike the DFDC), it was strictly the four Chiefs. At the end of the meeting Tony Synnot said to us, “You fellows had better start thinking about who is going to succeed me in this chair, because I’m going very soon.” Don Dunstan piped up and said, “Well, I’m not interested,” or

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words to that effect; as it happened, he left not long after to become Governor of South Australia, his home state. Jim Willis said, “It’s not for me either, I’m going fishing.” He was about to retire as well. So they all looked at me and said, “Well, you’re it.” I said I did not know that I wanted the job either, but that’s where the discussion finished. As we walked out of the meeting Don Dunstan said to me, “Come over here,” and we walked out into that little lawn area in the centre of what used to be F Block and is now called R3. He tapped me on the chest and said, “You are going to be CDFS and you had better get used to it.” Now that is the way it happened, but I suspect that they had this in mind for a little while. The RAAF had not had anybody take a turn in the senior post since Fred Scherger was Chairman of the COSC more than fifteen years before, long before the Tange reorganisation, and I think there was a conscious thought that they would like to have an Air Force fellow. Also, I think I was seen as one who did not upset the applecart, so they were happy to see someone of my character and temperament in the position. I have long suspected that the Minister for Defence at the time, Jim Killen, initially harboured a few doubts about whether I might be up to the top job as CDFS. Because of these reservations, I believe that he purposely engineered a couple of situations while I was still CAS which gave him an opportunity to check out whether I was the right person for the post, or at least get to know me better. On the first of these occasions, Jim phoned me and said that he was supposed to be interviewed on local evening television about the planning processes associated with the selection of a replacement fighter from the F-16 and F-18; but, he explained, he now had a hitch in his schedule that would delay or prevent him from keeping the appointment and he asked if I would stand in for him. I duly

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fronted up at the TV studios, then located in Hackett not far from home, and while the technicians set up for the session I got chatting with the two journalists who were to do the interviewing. We had barely started recording, when the Minister walked in on us and the whole process stopped. We chatted for a while informally then went home. To this day I believe that he had not been delayed but was present, out of sight, and listening all along—just to see whether I could handle the situation. On another occasion, my wife and I were guests at a Parliament House function that the Minister and his wife also attended. When the dinner was over and everyone was getting up to leave, Jim grabbed my arm and said he wanted us both to come down to his office with them, which we did. While our wives chatted, we also got talking—not about anything substantive or important, just friendly, more personal stuff. I remember him mentioning that he had been sounded out about retiring and accepting an appointment somewhere, and what did I think about that? I think I responded along the lines that if the offer was good enough, he should grab it and run, which I am not sure was what he expected to hear. The point is that I am convinced that he was merely interested in finding out how my mind operated. Quite possibly in the category of another test was a rather puzzling incident that occurred at about the same time. It was, I believe, towards the end of my time as CAS that I was asked to present myself to the Minister’s office in the Department. This in itself was unusual, because although the Minister always had this little office at Russell, he did not use it a lot. I am only guessing, but I figure Killen wanted to talk to me without being observed by anyone over at Parliament House; we were not entirely alone but I cannot recall who else was present—I suspect it was a member

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of the Minister’s staff and someone from the Secretary’s office. Jim Killen made it clear that he was taking me into his confidence when he said, “There are those in the Cabinet who are suggesting that it is time we asked for a senior Royal Air Force officer to come out and do a review of the Royal Australian Air Force.” Now this came as a complete and utter surprise to me. I could not imagine what lay behind such a proposal because I knew of no problem regarding the organisation, administration or performance of the RAAF of a magnitude to provide the basis for such concern. As I actually said to Killen at that time, if there were things about the Air Force that Cabinet felt were wrong, then as the Service Chief I expected to be told, because I thought that the RAAF leadership was intelligent enough to look at our own faults and correct them where necessary. I was also very aware of the history of what happened on a previous occasion, when an earlier conservative Australian Government had done precisely what was now being suggested by inviting Marshal of the RAF Sir Edward Ellington to Australia shortly before the Second World War. Apart from the dissention that resulted, I could not conceive what it was thought the British could have to offer us in the way of advice these days, rather than, say, the Americans. For that matter, we were working more closely with the Americans than we were with the British, but any suggestion of an American coming out and looking over the Australian Defence Force would smack of a return to the days of General MacArthur. We liked the Americans, but I do not think we would want them coming in telling us what we should do with our forces. Anyway, on this occasion I simply said to Killen, “Minister, if the Cabinet chooses to do that there will be those in the Service who will not stay.” He looked at me, nodded and said “Thank you

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very much”, and nothing further was heard of this suggestion. Years later I asked Killen, then Sir James and long retired from parliament, what lay behind this whole business and he could not really tell me. As much as he could recall, there was just a vague feeling among some of his Cabinet colleagues that Australia had steered too far away from its traditional British connection towards the Americans and it was time to correct the balance. Whatever thoughts he might have had, Jim Killen evidently concluded that he was satisfied to support my appointment as CDFS. I took over from Admiral Synnot on 21 April 1982, with promotion to air chief marshal. That made me only the second Australian given four-star rank in the RAAF. The first had been Fred Scherger, who was so elevated after serving four years as Chairman of the COSC and just a year before he retired in 1966. The RAAF had had an air chief marshal before that, this being Sir Charles Burnett who was CAS in the early years of the Second World War, but of course he was a RAF officer on loan.

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18

s I have already indicated, when I was approached about becoming Chief of the Defence Force Staff (CDFS) I really did not want the job. I had four exhausting years

as DCAS and another three as CAS, so I was not greatly enamoured with continuing the same sort of pressured existence in the CDFS post. While it was a good thing for the Air Force that it fell out that way, I did not think that CDFS was a position that one could really relish. I do not care who the man is that goes into it, the job is very demanding and very draining. Perhaps it might be a bit more so for a person like myself, but my philosophy is such that I was not prepared to let it worry me; I certainly was not going to get ulcers over it. I could not have done the CDFS job without the wonderful support I received from people like Errol McCormack, later to become Chief of Air Force himself of course, and several others. I used to regularly call on these officers, and prevail upon the Chiefs of Staff to listen to briefings from them. While the Chiefs might have discussed whatever the subject was several times beforehand, I would make it clear that what they were getting was not just my view coming across, but that these were issues that had been very carefully reasoned. And people like Errol McCormack gave some very good, concise briefings—to the point. This came down at times to a matter of principles, to a man’s awareness of his own limitations and, to some extent, his belief in

Chief of the Defence Force Staff

A

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powers greater than on this earth. I have always been one who is conscious of his own limitations. Certainly there were times, as CAS in particular, that I had to do things or attend meetings, where I had laboured over the subject matter but really did not know how I was going to handle it. In all honesty, I am not one to get down on my knees in my own office and pray. I have always believed that prayer takes many forms and the most sensible and practical form is to talk to one’s God through the course of the day as one would do to a friend. So I would speak and say, “Quite frankly, I don’t know how I’m going to handle this, I need your help.” Whether one accepts it or not, things went through okay. At the moment of discussion, or decision, or representation—whatever the situation called for—I was able to produce what was necessary. I do not put that all down to my own ability, I believe that I had a helping hand; not in the sense of performing any miracles, or giving me something that I would not otherwise have, but at least pointing in the right direction. I firmly believe that I had something to hang onto, I had something I believed in. If I did not have that then, bearing in mind my limited abilities in a whole range of things—academically, intellectually, etc—there is a fair chance I would have very quickly gone under. As a humorous aside, my staff used to know perfectly well that it was my habit as CDFS to take a short afternoon nap at my desk. If I was trying to wade through some deep file or brief, by perhaps two o’clock in the afternoon I would pull a drawer out, put my feet up, and deliberately drop off to sleep for fifteen minutes. I have always had that fortunate ability to say I will take fifteen minutes, and I would wake up fifteen minutes later. My secretary at the time, little Julia Greckowiak, decided that she wanted to see this. But the little spy hole in the door was just too high for her, so she got a chair.

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By the time she had set the chair down and climbed onto it, I had woken up and was walking towards the door. She shrieked, “He’s coming,” and promptly fell off the chair. But my staff all knew that was what I did, and they were very considerate; they let me have my fifteen minutes. It was a coping technique that greater men than me have adopted; it was simply necessary if you wanted to survive. The big difference that I experienced in the CDFS post was that I was dealing with government ministers on a much more frequent basis than ever before. This was not a particular problem, since I had no difficulties working with Jim Killen, the Minister for Defence in the Fraser Government for the first couple of months after I took up my appointment, and I enjoyed working with his successor Ian Sinclair. After the Labor Party under Bob Hawke won government in March 1983, I found that I got on equally well with Gordon Scholes as Minister for Defence. To be frank, though, I discovered that I enjoyed my contact with Killen and Sinclair’s boss rather less. Malcolm Fraser was not my favourite Prime Minister. Within a month or so of becoming CDFS I had my first serious brush with him. What happened was that I agreed to be interviewed by a young female journalist from a certain Melbourne newspaper. We talked a lot about major capital acquisitions and the FYDP (Five Year Defence Program); then she wanted to focus on major issues, the principal one being the carrier project. I did not think there was anything terribly contentious in what she raised with me, or what I said, except that in a later part of the interview she asked, “Are there any things in the FYDP that you think should not be there?” I said I thought there was one or two that, from my point of view, probably should not be included, but that was all that was said. The point was not pressed at all, so I thought that was it.

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Imagine my surprise when I got into the office the next morning and my staff told me that Sir Geoffrey Yeend, the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, wanted me to ring him straight away. When I did so, I was asked to ring Nareen, the Prime Minister’s home property in Western Victoria. I asked Geoff what was it about and he said, “The interview you gave yesterday and the article that has appeared in the Melbourne and Adelaide papers today.” I got my staff to show me the press cuttings for the morning, and it was only then that I discovered that I was quoted as saying that the carrier should not be in the FYDP. When I then rang down south, I did not really have a chance to say much more than “Good morning, Prime Minister” before Fraser tore into me. Of course, I tried to explain that I had not said what I was being reported as saying at all. I also told the Prime Minister that the interview had been conducted in accordance with all the requirements for a member of the Department’s public relations staff to be present, and that it had been recorded so we had a copy of what transpired. I said that if he or a member of his staff cared to listen it would be found that discussion of the two things, the FYDP and the carrier, were not connected, but he would not accept any of this at all—and that is putting it mildly. Fraser insisted that if I thought the papers had published a false account then I should get onto their editors and make them put out a correction. I did, in fact, speak to the editors, in both Melbourne and Adelaide, but they claimed that they had listened to the recording again and saw no reason to change their story. There did not seem to be anything further I could do to retrieve the situation, but as it happened I heard nothing more about it from the Prime Minister anyway; I suppose he had plenty of other things to occupy his mind. I simply notched up my experience as being part of the price one

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paid for being in the position I was in. I did speak, too, with the journalist involved, who assured me the ‘quote’ was the work of a subeditor so I made a mental note about what it said about the methods and standards of subeditors. This episode had also been quite revealing about the fact that the Prime Minister had a close personal interest in the carrier question. I do not know why—I am not aware of anything particularly naval in his background—but there was no doubt that he was a carrier man. I can recall when I was CAS and all the Service Chiefs were summoned across to Parliament House to meet the Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet colleagues on the carrier issue. I cannot think what the particular point was that prompted the meeting, but I distinctly remember Fraser being very agitated and spending the whole time directly questioning Admiral Synnot and the CNS, Jim Willis, about Navy’s argument. The Secretary, Bill Pritchett, and the rest of us were totally ignored. Eventually the Secretary did start with an interjection over something, but that was as far as he got. The Prime Minister was not the slightest bit interested and would not allow any further comment. He just made some biting remark that bordered on the insulting, and I could see Pritchett was very upset and hurt to the extent that he insisted he was owed an apology. The Prime Minister did apologise, in a minor offhand sort of way, but then promptly went on questioning CNS and Tony Synnot. There was a similar episode that occurred after the Falklands War broke out late in 1982, following quite a bit of publicity given to the effectiveness of French-made Exocet cruise missiles fired by Argentinian aircraft against British warships. One night the Prime Minister called us again—the Secretary and the four Chiefs, and others too, not only from the Department of Defence. We were

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summoned to the Lodge for a discussion, if one would like to call it that. What it really amounted to was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to beat us about the ears and demand to know why Australia did not have Exocet missiles, since these were so obviously effective weapons. It was explained to him by the experts that the Exocets were, even then, in the older category; there were already far better missiles available and still others under development. In fact, we had a project within the FYDP for the acquisition of some of these more effective missiles, along with other systems and measures that were employed to counteract anti-ship missiles of that kind. The discussion went around and around, and eventually we just dispersed. Nothing came of that encounter either, although it was interesting to observe the way in which Fraser operated as Prime Minister, and where some of his thoughts and perhaps favoured projects lay. People forget that until the Falklands conflict began Australia had resolved the carrier debate by deciding to purchase HMS Invincible from the Royal Navy, which had decided to dispose of it as surplus to Britain’s requirements. After the Falklands crisis blew up, it was our Prime Minister Fraser who made the statesman-like gesture of saying to his opposite number in London, Margaret Thatcher, that she should not feel locked into the deal in view of Britain’s new commitments in the southern Atlantic. Understandably, Maggie Thatcher said thank you very much and kept the carrier. We were then back to the starting point, and that is when the real trouble began. In the event, neither Air Force nor CDFS had anything to do with the decision not to proceed with the carrier purchase. We had been told before the Labor Party came into government that if they were elected there would be no carrier; and they were true to

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their word. A very short time after Labor gained office in 1983, the decision came down: there will be no carrier. So, in the final count, Air Force had no say in the matter at all, nor did Army or even the Secretary and other civilians in the Department. Following on from the carrier decision the distasteful argument came up, largely from the Secretary’s side of the house, that since Navy did not and would not have a carrier any more, there was no need for them to have any sort of Fleet Air Arm. The Navy still had the A4 Skyhawks, which were good aircraft that were very useful for training surface ships in air defence measures and the like. I was sympathetic to Navy on this matter and considered that, since they still had the wherewithal to maintain their Skyhawks, the aircraft should stay in service. But the Secretary and his people were absolutely adamant the aircraft should go. This attitude even extended to the Navy’s HS 748s, which were really for passive defence and electronic warfare. It was obvious that they wanted to get rid of those as well, by getting the RAAF to take them over, but I put my foot down on that one and said no. I got the Air Force technical people to do a paper on that proposal that said it would be far more economical for the Navy to retain the resources they had, which they did, but the HS 748s and the helicopters were the only things that escaped the net on this occasion. Navy lost their A4s and that was a bitter pill for them to swallow. The Army had an equivalent battle at this time over the Leopard tanks, only not quite to the same degree. I supported them on this issue, which might seem a bit strange for an Air Force man. I did so on the basis that during the Vietnam War, the Army had wanted to send Centurion tanks up there and this triggered a big argument. The tanks were eventually sent, but not before there had been a lot of suggestions that they would be found unsuitable for tropical

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conditions. I had seen the tanks in operation in Vietnam, and I knew about their vital contribution to the battles for the Coral and Balmoral fire support bases, so as DCAS I had supported Army in the Force Structure Committee over the relevance of the Leopard tanks to Australia’s defence circumstances. There was a problem with the development of Strategic Basis papers, because the invariable conclusion of “no tangible threat to Australia for the forseeable future” meant that there was never a time frame to help drive priorities relating to when projects needed to be on the Major Capital Projects list. One of the things that I wanted introduced was for the lead to be taken by the Chiefs of Staff in the production of the Capabilities paper, so that we would have identified those things that needed to be in the Defence Force within certain time scales and that would then help with deciding where things slotted into the five year rolling program. But of course, they are very intelligent people in the Public Service and they could see very readily that such a paper would then drive their program, and they did not want that. They wanted total flexibility where they could argue for the purpose of matching the budget. I suppose that was their prerogative to do that. Although the relationship with Prime Minister Fraser could occasionally be tempestuous, that was rarely the case with the Ministers who held the Defence portfolio. As earlier stated, generally I—and the other Chiefs—got on perfectly well with the Minister, largely I suspect because each incumbent understood the limits to their own authority. Although the Minister would most certainly discuss things with us, it was very rare for him to exercise his prerogative to sit in on the Chiefs of Staff Committee or the Defence Force Development Committee; it was certainly his right to chair those meetings, but he did not during my time as CDFS.

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I believe that it was Lance Barnard, as Minister for Defence in the first Whitlam Labor Government in the early 1970s, who reportedly instructed Arthur Tange on one occasion to tell the Defence Forces to do something. But Tange pointed out to Barnard, “Sir, you cannot order the Defence Force to do anything, because you do not command.” This is the thing that many politicians, including Ministers, have never properly looked at or attempted to understand. The Constitution has given a Minister general control of a single Service in the past, and these days the entire Defence Force, but without allowing him to issue orders. Actually, it was the Tange reorganisation that specifically vested authority to command the Defence Force in the CDFS. The situation never arose where I had to directly draw attention to this position, but I was certainly prepared to do so if ever the circumstances required it. The one time things came close to this was when Gareth Evans, the Attorney-General in the Hawke Labor Government, ordered the use of RAAF aircraft to take aerial photographs of the situation on the ground during public protests against plans by the Tasmanian Government to construct a hydro-electric dam on the Franklin River. What I recall happened was that Gareth Evans, or a member of his staff, rang Air Force Office on a weekend and told the Duty Officer on the operations side to send an aircraft to do the job. Unfortunately the duty officer just did as he was told, and the whole business was a fait accompli before I even learnt what had happened the next day. When I did find out about it I got onto my successor as CAS, Air Marshal David Evans, and had words with him on the phone. I made it very clear that I did not like the way the matter had been handled and considered that I should, as commander of the Defence Force, have been informed at the outset so that I could take whatever

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action I thought appropriate. Initially Dave Evans was inclined to argue with me and support the Duty Officer, but I said that at the very least he had deprived me of the opportunity to properly advise the Minister. It would not have taken much imagination to figure that I would have pointed out to the Minister that he could not just ring up and give directions as he did, or that I would have advised against using Defence resources against members of the Australian public in a purely political matter. To avoid misunderstanding in the matter, I should emphasise that whenever the Minister wanted something done, the Chiefs would encourage him to tell us what he wanted to achieve and we would recommend the best way of doing it—with or without Defence resources. Nothing much happened over the incident at the time, but a couple of years later the existence of the written minute that I had sent across to CAS confirming my dissatisfaction over the matter was picked up by a member of the Liberal–National coalition then in opposition. I remember being asked by the Department if I had any objection to it being made available under the Freedom of Information Act, and I said I did not, so it was used in parliament and spread across the newspapers. In the event I do not believe it became an issue of great consequence, but I think it was important that politicians realised they could not direct the Defence Force to do something and it would be dynamite for them to attempt to misuse the Defence Force in purely political disputes. I would emphasise that Jim Killen never made this sort of mistake; he was actually very good. There was one incident I recall when he was Minister and I was, I think, CAS and acting CDFS. There was a fishing boat that had been apprehended for illegal activity in Australian waters and was tied up in Cairns on Christmas Eve. The crew was still on board and held under guard at the wharf. The

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captain of the vessel was an intelligent fellow and he knew that the guards would be celebrating Christmas in due course, so he waited for his opportunity. At the right moment he had his men overpower the guards and put them ashore, before he cast off and used the tides to make his way to the harbour mouth, then he started the engines and made off. By the time the alarm was raised, he had a good head start. A patrol boat took after him and eventually caught up but he would not stop, even after warning shots were fired across his bow; the Navy crew did everything possible but he just thumbed his nose at them. The decision was made to contact the Minister to obtain approval to fire for effect. At that time Jim Killen was on Christmas leave up in Queensland; he was, in fact, on his way from his home to a friend’s place at Southport by car and we could not contact him. This was in the days before mobile telephones. We had to wait until he reached his friend’s home and could be given a message to phone Canberra very urgently, which he did. Being the man that he is, he gave the required authority to do what was necessary, urging only that it was done in a manner that preserved life rather than wasted it. The essential point was that he said, “Go for it, but don’t lose contact!” The patrol boat captain ordered the crew of the fishing vessel to move to the bow of their boat, leaving the defiant skipper in the wheelhouse. The Bofors gun crew began by knocking bits off the funnel and gradually worked their way down to the superstructure until the skipper eventually gave up. It was a very interesting episode, but the good thing was that Jim Killen was there as Minister and he did not hesitate. When the Labor Party won office, there was a range of things done that were most certainly not in accordance with the rules, but that happened anyhow. In a sense I think we were lucky to have a

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man like Gordon Scholes come in as Minister for Defence, because he was a gentleman and would listen anytime that there was a problem needing a decision. From a political point of view he might not have been the greatest one to have at the helm of the Defence Force, since he was not exactly a driver, but I confess I have a lot of respect for him. I accompanied him on several official visits—to the US on one occasion, to Papua New Guinea on another—and we always got on very well together. While I was CDFS, there were numerous official visits to places such as England, various parts of America (several times), Canada, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia (several times), India and Pakistan, and France and Italy. I particularly recall that for my visit to Japan, I was briefed that the then Chairman of the Japanese joint chiefs, General Murai, was cast very much in the Bushido mould, both in appearance and attitude. I was advised that it was unlikely that we would get to know him very well, and he particularly would not want to have much to do with women. To my surprise, we subsequently established a reasonable rapport, and at a luncheon with his service officers (all males) he raised a question that has come out more in recent times than it did immediately after the Second World War. He wanted to know what Australians thought of Japanese people, and whether we still had a dislike for what the Japanese did during the war. I responded by saying that certainly there were very strong feelings against the Japanese for a long time, and there were still some people in Australia who would perhaps never forgive, but that in the main I felt there was a better understanding now than there was formerly. The General asked, “What do you mean by that?” So I explained, “We’ve had a chance to understand something of your culture,

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traditions and attitudes, and how, particularly at that time, they differed so markedly in some respects from our own. For example, we awarded one of our airmen, Flight Lieutenant Newton, our highest honour, the Victoria Cross, for his actions in Papua New Guinea. When Newton was captured by one of your units, the commanding officer at that time had him beheaded. At the time there was a very strong reaction against that, but with the passage of time we’ve come to understand that that was, in effect, according him a degree of honour.” Murai just looked at me, then said, “Our soldiers performed magnificently; our officers made many mistakes”, then he got up and walked out. I consider that the General showed understanding of our feelings, and handled the situation in a way that did not destroy the diplomatic nature of the occasion; his response did not show that he had any dislike for the example I had chosen. My interpretation that he had understood what I was trying to say was, I think, borne out by the fact that he went out of his way, subsequently, to come and personally see us off at the hotel, quite separately from the official farewell parade. He also made a point of sitting down with Joan and speaking personally with her. When, months later, he found out that Joan had been looking for a little cassette player for her handicapped grandson, he sent one to her with a note that said, “I did not know that you were looking for this, but please accept this with my personal best wishes.” Obviously, he did not have to go to that extent, but I think it was an indication of the strong desire of the Japanese to establish good relations. I really do not know whether Murai had fought against the Allies during the war. His predecessor, Admiral Yata, was the first Japanese chief to come down and pay an official visit here at our invitation; that was also while I was CDFS. He told me that he had served in

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submarines right at the end of the war and that, in fact, his first, and only, operational task was on a submarine that had been sent out to attack American warships. So I would think Murai might have just made the tail end of the war, but that would be about all. By the start of 1984 I was in my final few months of my term as CDFS. In fact, I retired on 12 April, just five days short of my sixty-first birthday. Back then, it was the expected thing that a departing Chief, whether one of the single Service Chiefs or CDFS, would make a recommendation about who his successor should be. This was always done in conjunction with the Secretary, who gave his suggestion as well, with both recommendations going to the Minister for Defence for eventual decision. I thought that, with Air Force having just followed Navy, it would be reasonable for an Army man to receive the appointment this time so I proposed the then CGS, Lieutenant General Bennett. Some may say that was probably a bad mistake on my part in view of subsequent events, but I do not see it in that light and, indeed, I have nothing personal against Phil Bennett. It is just that I did not realise that Phil would go to the lengths he did to achieve his object of having the Blackhawks for the Army. Had he not done it, his successor as CDFS would probably have done so. At the time I was preparing to leave the Service, I agreed to hold a press gathering in the Department’s main conference room. I felt that I had not paid the press as much attention as I perhaps should have, so it seemed fair to give them a chance to quiz me about the state of affairs that I was leaving behind. As I recall there was quite a good turn-up of people and we talked about a whole range of issues, including the usual questions about the Five Year Defence Program. The thing I remember most distinctly, though, was a question towards the end, when I was asked what was the

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point about Australia’s defence arrangements that gave me the greatest concern. I said then it was the fact that we did not know what went on in the air space to our north and north-west. Asked to explain what I meant, I referred to the time when an aircraft was spotted on radar coming into northern Australia a bit to the west of Darwin. It was purely by coincidence that the RAAF had a C-130 also about to come into Darwin and, in the absence of any fighters to scramble, the skipper of that transport was asked to give chase. Eventually the C-130 caught up with the mystery machine, which turned out to be not a light aircraft but a twin-engine commuter type. After ignoring indications to land and leading the C-130 a merry dance for a while, the pilot of the intruder threw it on the ground at an old deserted strip, then got out and set his machine on fire. While I understood that the police did catch this fellow and established that he had been drug running or something similar, it was pretty clear that there would have been similar instances that we had failed to detect or intercept. The same point was emphasised by several other occasions when contrails had been spotted passing very high across our north-west regions, going north and obviously heading to South-East Asia. There had been nothing that we could do to investigate these situations, because we did not have F/A-18s then or anything else based in our north that could do it. Although we conducted exercises up there periodically, the aircraft invariably came back to Williamtown or wherever. Obviously, we did not know what was happening up there on a daily basis. Of course, I mentioned my concern that there were areas of the Public Service in the Department which I felt were placing far too much emphasis on the over-the-horizon radar, with grossly

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exaggerated expectations of what this sensor could do in terms of controlling intercepts and surveillance. I always had difficulty in understanding why there was so much resistance to the proposals for acquiring airborne early warning and surveillance, and I am amazed that it has been another twenty years since I retired before we finally took the step of buying the Wedgetails. I think the step could have been taken much sooner and we would have gone a long way towards covering the deficiency I spoke about. I am still disappointed that so much emphasis was put on Jindalee, to the extent that it virtually excluded the possibility of going for airborne early warning at an earlier stage. There was a requirement for retiring chiefs to make formal departing calls on the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, and the Minister for Defence. All these arrangements were made, and in due course I fronted up to talk with Bob Hawke in the Prime Minister’s office in the old Parliament House. Typical of Bob Hawke, as soon as I walked in and followed his invitation to sit down, he went straight to what was his personal interest. He was about to go on a visit to the US, making a call on CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief Pacific) Command Headquarters while passing through Honolulu. The commander of US Pacific Command at that time was Admiral Crowe, so Hawke wanted to know all about him: what sort of man he was, what his interests were, what dealings we had with him on defence matters. After I finished talking about that, the Prime Minister’s tone became almost dismissive. When he asked me “Are there any other things you would like to tell me, Air Marshal?”, I could not resist responding with “How long have you got, Prime Minister?” The eyebrows came down in his trademark sign of displeasure, so I reassured him that everything was in a general report I had written

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on the state of the Defence Force at that time, which I had put in the hands of the Minister for Defence. The eyebrows immediately went up again and he said, “Oh good, I’ll read that with great interest,” and then I was shown out the door.

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19Life in Retirement

ith retirement I was at last able to devote plenty of time to golf, which became my only serious hobby and which I still enjoy very much. Until a few years ago I

would have stated fishing as an equally serious hobby, but I have not fished since my good friend and fishing mate died. Naturally, I miss flying aircraft a great deal, and like to think that I could still handle a Mustang or a Sabre—but maybe I just dream a little of the good times. Naturally I retained an informal connection to the Services, especially the Air Force, of course. The respective Chiefs were very kind and considerate in extending invitations to Joan and myself to attend various things. I was regularly asked to take part in the Air Marshal Symposiums, and the various air power and history conferences that the RAAF put on from year to year, but I certainly did not see attending these as fulfilling a father confessor role for my old Service. There was only one ‘father of the Air Force’ to my mind, and that was Dickie Williams; I would not like to have seen anyone else shuffle in on that position. But I was very grateful to be involved nonetheless, and enjoyed my participation up until a few years ago when I had to start declining invitations because my hearing had deteriorated. My problems with hearing loss had actually started even before I retired, mainly in the form of an occasional failure to recognise key words, but eventually it got to the stage where I was missing whole

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phrases. Joan, for example, would sometimes say something to me, and I would answer in terms of what I thought she had said, only to have her look at me in puzzlement and say, “I didn’t say anything about that!” The situation got especially bad at gatherings such as the RAAF air power conferences, where presenters were often overseas visitors speaking in unfamiliar accents. After a few years I discovered the presenters were also speaking a different language which I found difficult to interpret—new phrases, new expressions, new isms. Consequently even with that part that I actually caught, perhaps only fifty to sixty per cent of what they said, I had difficulty comprehending what they were trying to tell me. There were a few, but not many, occasions when the Department or the RAAF sought my views on official issues. I remember one arose over the Utz Committee, which was appointed shortly before I retired to conduct a review of the Defence organisation. I think I had actually just retired when I fronted up to give evidence there, but I will talk more about that experience later on. Another situation arose with the tabling of the Dibb Report on Australia’s defence arrangements in 1986. I knew Paul Dibb quite well in the Department, and I thought his analysis was quite ground-breaking. I believed that the report, in the way it drew together Australia’s interests, strategic circumstances and defence priorities, could greatly assist in promoting a better understanding of the need for an appropriate measure of defence capability. Given that my response to the Dibb document was fairly positive, I was quite surprised to receive a letter from the former Minister for Defence, Ian Sinclair, writing as leader of the National Party (which was then in opposition in Parliament). The terms in which he referred to the report made it clear that he considered it would, once acted upon, “reduce the defence options available to the

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Government, inhibit Australia’s wider role in our geographic region, and restrict our role in ANZUS”. He invited my views on the report and its recommendations, so these could be taken into account in the formulation of his party’s response. I had to write back and say I was “sorry if I disappoint you in giving support to the main thrust of the Dibb report and in failing to agree with the broad assertions you make in your letter.” As it happened, I recall I was asked to write a formal critique of the Dibb Report—I think it might have been Paul himself who asked me to do this—and I was quite happy to oblige. I know I put quite a lot of effort into producing a response that ended up being twenty-six pages long. For all its length, I was still generally in favour of what Paul was arguing for. I was also asked to take part in a public discussion forum with Paul that was arranged by a Melbourne-based civilian organisation that had a reputation of being primarily Labor orientated. Perhaps that event did not go off quite as well as the organisers expected, because in fact we did not end up having an argument. There were one or two aspects that I thought should be looked at slightly differently, but for the most part we were largely in agreement. At one point Paul suggested that maybe there was a case for air resources to be allocated to, say, Army, for a specific purpose. Well, I was dead against that. I considered that, once that path was followed, it had the potential to break up that powerful resource that the nation has in terms of an air force as a flexible service that can be diverted or applied to wherever it is required. We did disagree on that aspect, but it was only a minor one. Subsequently the same Melbourne organisation arranged another public gathering, which also included discussion of the Dibb Report, although on this occasion it was only part of a much

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wider focus of discussion. I was asked to deliver a presentation which attempted to summarise the whole report in about thirty minutes. I remember saying something to the effect that, although it was contrary—objectionable even—to a man like myself who has grown up under the old system of three very separate Services, I felt that the time was coming when the Services would have to work jointly together even more than they were. More than that, I said, the individual Chiefs—even while they still should remain in command of their Services—might have to devote most of their efforts towards recruiting, training, and so forth, so that forces can be available to support joint operations when they come. When the forum was all over, I recall that Sir Arthur Tange walked up to me to say hello. “Very courageous, Air Marshal,” was his comment. Sometimes there were attempts to involve me in debate over matters of current contention, especially where these were matters effecting the Air Force or that had been hot issues during my time as CAS or CDFS. Generally I tried to stay out of the public forum, even where I had firm views on the subject that ran counter to the course being advocated. I recall, for instance, receiving an approach back in 1997 to become patron of the New South Wales division of the Monarchist League in Australia. This was a case where I had to write back and explain that I am not a dedicated monarchist as such, and could not give my full support to the League to the exclusion of other possibilities. There was a similar occasion in 2003 when I was contacted about adding my name to a long list of former secretaries of Commonwealth Government departments, former senior members of the ADF and senior diplomats who adjured the Howard Ministry and the Labor Opposition to give priority to truth in government, via an open letter that it was intended should be published in the daily press.

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Although I applauded the principle that our politicians should stop wilfully deceiving the Australian public, I felt that publication in the middle of a federal election campaign could not be interpreted as other than a partisan act directed at one side of the political divide alone. For that reason I declined to be party to it. There were some other occasions where I would have quite happily engaged in public debate if my input had been sought or it seemed appropriate for me to have done so. A case in point was the decision, taken barely two years after I retired, to transfer the Blackhawk ‘battlefield’ helicopters from the RAAF across to the Army. Perhaps people wonder about my views on this, knowing what my experience had been with No. 9 Squadron in Vietnam. If we had been starting from scratch—that is to say, the Australian armed services had never had helicopters but were about to acquire them—and the question was asked whether these should be in the Army or the Air Force, then it would not have worried me greatly who had them. This is because the helicopters were purchased, in the first place, in large part to meet Army requirements. But when you consider everything that had developed with the progress of helicopter usage within the Services, and the extent to which engineering and supply support for those operations had been established within the Air Force, then the transfer of ownership seemed to me to be creating a greater problem than it was solving. If there genuinely was a problem in the way that the Air Force operated the helicopters in support of the Army, then surely the more logical and reasoned course was to correct that problem. It did not, to my mind, make a valid case for simply saying, well, the Air Force cannot meet the Army’s requirements, therefore take the helicopters across to the Army.

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I hate to think that there was a lack of objectivity in the way the matter was handled, but it seems clear to me that there was a degree of determination on the part of some Army people to undermine the Air Force. I know a few cases of people in the Army, with some of whom I thought I had a good rapport, who were actively spreading stories about the RAAF’s alleged failings with the helicopters in Vietnam. I even recall a young Army pilot, a friend of my daughter’s, sitting at my dinner table once and telling us about all the things that No. 9 Squadron did wrong in Vietnam, how dreadful the RAAF was in supporting the Task Force, and how, really, the RAAF did not understand the way the Army operated in the field. This fellow had never even been to Vietnam, so he could only have been repeating the claims that were being put about (and still are). In fairness, though, there were other Army officers who I know did not condone that action being taken. The other aspect about this episode that disturbed me was the way in which the decision-making process was conducted. I was not present, of course, so do not have all the evidence, but I have fair reason to conclude that the Chiefs of Staff Committee deliberations, and indeed the DFDC deliberations, were not conducted in the same manner that was insisted upon when I was CDFS, or when Tony Synnot and others were there. The fact was that a Chief of Staff saw fit to set up a committee to examine the whole process—a joint committee, no less, with representatives of Army, Navy and Air Force—and this body came up with a unanimous decision to leave matters the way they already were. At the last minute there was a change of heart and a change of decision. That did not leave a very nice taste at all. I also cannot imagine how the Secretary can have been persuaded to stay out of this process. The sorts of issues involved—costs, use of

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resources, the complexities of requiring two Services to operate the one aircraft type—are all the responsibility of the Secretary as much as the CDF. I would seriously doubt whether the transfer would have been, as was claimed, at nil cost. Had all the cost aspects truthfully been put to the DFDC, as required in earlier days, I expect that the outcome would have been a different story. This whole episode meant that there was now a vast change in the way that things were done within the Department. As I have indicated, I did not have any great emotional attachment to keeping the helicopters in the Air Force, as such. And I can understand the Army wanting to have them completely under their command—that seems a pretty natural desire. But having set up a whole system for operating these aircraft, I do not see that any perceived shortcomings warranted going to such an extent as to change the organisational arrangements. The Chinooks were bought specifically to meet an Army requirement, to provide a capability to airlift 155mm field guns; but the Army did not want to have those, they just wanted the ‘battlefield’ helicopters. When you look at the effects of taking just one section out of the total helicopter system and putting it in the Army, and leaving the RAAF to continue with the support of it, that was in my view a most untidy organisational result. Undoubtedly the whole episode did a lot of damage. During my period as CAS and CDFS, and even part of my earlier period as DCAS, I always felt that we were getting somewhere in terms of welding the Services into a joint force. It did not trouble me that there was always an element of competition, because to an extent I see that as healthy, and inevitable while ever there is a requirement to fight for scarce funds. That is all right and can be accepted; it has always been there and always will be, as long as we have three

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different Services. But I think that the helicopter deal was a poisonous affair, and put us back several steps to where we were before that. I know that Air Marshal Dave Evans published a book in 1990 called A Fatal Rivalry, which talked about the relationships between the Australian Services. I do not know that I would call it a ‘fatal rivalry’ as such. There certainly have been times, throughout the history of the Australian defence forces, and effecting the RAAF in particular from 1921 onwards, when the attitudes and actions of one Service or another has been less than admirable in terms of trying to gain something specifically for itself. Hopefully those times will remain in the past and not adversely effect the drive for better cooperation in the future. On that note, I should add that I do not think it is necessary for Australia to follow the Canadian lead of creating a single unified Service. I tend to favour the retention of the three separate Services, not just on the basis of tradition and past achievements that they would want to keep, but because I think if we attempted to go down that path we would strike the same sorts of problems as the Canadians did. It could be argued that such a course might be justified on the basis of our size, and certainly that makes sense. The problem would come, however, when the nation faced the sort of contingency where it became necessary to expand. The existence of the three separate Services, I think, lends itself better to that sort of potential, so I am not a supporter of going that radical step to just one unified Service. Let me come back to a point I made earlier about having the capability within the Defence Force to cope with whatever contingencies occur, big or small, but particularly the big ones. If you have everything centred in an ADF headquarters, then in the bigger contingencies I think that becomes somewhat unmanageable.

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In fact, there is a danger that the CDF of the day, and his staff, will see the necessity to go back in time and put too much authority in the hands of the commanders in the field. I believe CDF must retain the position as commander, and keep the capability to control the total picture. But I also believe that the Chiefs of the single Services must remain. I would like to see them still be able to operate in the context of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, assisting the CDF in what he is doing by taking on board the political directions and objectives and in turn interpreting and advising the operational commanders accordingly; in addition, they have a role in representing the problems, difficulties, capabilities and potential of each of the Services in that context. What I have seen of organisational changes so far seem to be in accord with the sensible and effective exercise of command and control throughout the ADF. Looking at the reductions in the size of the total defence structure that occurred after I retired, I can only observe—and I have said this before, when I was serving—that the Defence Force has to accept its share of reductions where the Government sees it as necessary across the whole spectrum of the nation’s organisations. The point of actual reduction of numbers is, in itself, not the essence of the problem, as I see it. The real problem resides in changing the nature of the support area, by civilianising it to too great an extent, by making some of the in-Service support areas have to tender in competition with civilian organisations. In doing that, I think the potential is being created for an inability of the Services to confidently cope with whatever contingencies occur, or whatever demands are placed upon it by the Government in terms of the exercise of their operational capability. I know it has been claimed that the ‘sharp end’ has been left intact in all the changes made under the commercial support program,

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but I do not believe it is as simple as that. We have had numerous examples in the past where the commitment is such that you have to up the tempo, or you have to prolong an involvement beyond what, perhaps, was originally assessed. And that is where you need that full, dedicated, unconditional support of all the support areas. It does not matter what the job is in the Service, it contributes to the production of flying hours, and it is the operational end that has the responsibility of applying those flying hours to best effect. If you have got various groups making the contribution in the support area, and responsible for their own management, there is no guarantee that all of that will be available at the right time, and in continuation. Let us take one example. I must precede my remarks by saying that I believe unions have a valid place in the total work structure of the nation, but unions have demonstrated before that they reserve the right to take action as an objection to a government policy. Now, if the government policy is such that they want to employ the Defence Force in a certain action or role, and the unions do not like it—and if you have too much civilianisation—then they have the capability to withdraw that labour force. It might be said that the Government can negotiate, or legislate against it, but I have not seen any evidence that anything has been done to eliminate the risk. It is a nice thought that the people of the nation, whatever their role in the workforce might be, will support the Government, and therefore, the Defence Force, in any action that eventuates, but I maintain that there is still a question mark behind it. I suppose that if the Government has its way on work place relations, then maybe this potential is greatly weakened. There was certainly one senior civilian in Defence who showed a lot of hostility towards the Services. This fellow was in a position of great influence as a Deputy Secretary and was chairman of a

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particular committee. Sometimes I wondered whether he was trying to destroy the Services, to the extent that when any opportunity arose to argue for reductions, he would take it. Even when projects that were essential were concerned, he would fight them. I could not understand it, and I do not know what it was that drove him. Later on, after I retired, I asked one of his colleagues who I met and got talking about old times whether he knew what it was with this fellow, because it seemed at times that all he wanted to do was just destroy. All this particular gentleman said with a smile was, “He certainly had some fixed ideas, and once he formed them he would not give up on them.” Later still, when the Utz Committee asked me to give evidence, I fronted up before the Committee and I presented on this point. The thing that I felt was wrong with the structure was that it did offer opportunities for public servants so minded to unduly influence the system, and I copped it. General Sir Arthur McDonald was on that committee and he tackled me very severely for expressing this view. “Where’s your evidence?” he demanded, “What evidence have you got to show for this.” I had to say that I understood that I had been invited along to express my humble views and I had just given them. I was not about to go looking up specific files in the Department to chase evidence in support of what I considered to be the case. The Utz Committee was itself an example of one of the problems that I saw besetting Defence in the period after I retired. To be blunt, I do not really know why we had to have that review because I never saw anything explicit in terms of precisely what deficiencies it was meant to correct. The head of it was the chief executive of a major business enterprise, and I am not sure what was realistically expected of entrusting an examination of the Defence organisation to a person of such background. I do not consider that it achieved

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anything really worthwhile, and that to me was a disappointment. I could not understand why these ideas came up in the first place. It would seem that the truth behind these organisational reviews is that they were always simply exercises in trying to harvest budgetary savings. Certainly I have not seen any evidence to indicate that a serious attempt was made, prior to the reviews, to define the shortcomings or ineffectiveness of systems that justified them. Also, the question was never asked why the Services had found it necessary over the years to build up so much in-house capability. The thing that worried me out of that was the almost panic-driven measures taken to transfer responsibilities from Service in-house facilities to civilian organisations. I worried about that because of the absence of certainty that Defence activities would get the level and kind of support that is needed during operations. While I am sure that some domestic areas, like catering, could be transferred to civilian enterprises without too much trouble, I have the feeling that the changes went too far, too fast. There are other things like maintenance and support of aircraft on operations, particularly sustained and extended operations—that is the part that worries me. What we have now might work in peacetime environments, or where we are asked to meet contingencies for a relatively short time. But wars have, before today, developed out of what were initially expected to be only short-term contingencies, and that could well happen again. I am not too sure how we will get on. Today we have an Air Force of 13,500 people, but does that represent a fully coherent functioning organisation? I do not think that it does. There are shortfalls in manning that only increases my amazement that the Service has coped so well during its recent commitments. It has done so only by dint of that very special esprit

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de corps or ethos, whatever people like to call it, which can only be a sustaining factor for a certain length of time. In terms of what I have heard and learnt about the challenges faced by the ADF and the RAAF since I retired, I must say that I was very agreeably surprised at how well all the Services have done. The difference between whatever visions I might have had for the RAAF or thoughts about the way it ought to perform, and what actually happened, were really very minor in comparison. The commitments that went with events such as Timor, 9/11, the two Gulf Wars and Afghanistan were significant for a force of the relatively small size that we maintain in Australia. The fact we were able to undertake them, sustain them for the required period of time, and put up a tremendously good show, is little short of amazing. Just think of Afghanistan, for example, and what our fellows did with those 707s in the aerial refuelling role. I am sure it must have raised a few American eyebrows when they saw these old aircraft plugging around the sky and doing an absolutely marvelous job. The serviceability rate that was achieved with those aircraft would have meant that our technical people must have worked their butts off. There is an ethos among Australian forces—and I know this applies equally within Army and Navy, not just Air Force—that allows them to get on with the job, whatever it is, with no complaint. It is an aspect that has been there since the days of the First World War and always commands great respect. My one concern amid this fantastic record is whether we might over-rely in future situations on the capacity of our people to keep things going. It is not terribly well known, for instance, the extent of the response required of our Service personnel in mounting that operation in East Timor in 1999. That was an incredibly demanding commitment for both Army and Air Force, and to a lesser extent

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Navy as well. I am quite sure that if it had continued at the same intensity for much longer than it did, then holes would have started to appear in the fabric. By the same token I think the ADF has been incredibly fortunate to be able to recruit the category of young people who have been willing and able to rise to this sort of challenge, because the record they have created is entirely to their credit. Back in the time before I retired, we used to look at a fellow at squadron leader level and feel sorry for him because he had no ribbons on his chest; he simply had experienced no chance of getting into operations. These days the ADF is into operations up to its neck and even young airmen and airwomen who have only been in uniform for five years or so are sporting three campaign medals. And the young people can be seen blossoming because of it. They have my respect and admiration.

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20Reflections

hen I think back on the course of my life, beginning in Toogoolawah and moving up through the RAAF to the senior posts that I held, culminating in the four-star

position of CDFS, it seems a pretty amazing journey. There is no doubt that I was fortunate in having the career that I wanted, and it is of immense enjoyment to reminisce about it. But I am always conscious that I did not put myself in those top positions, I did not promote myself and I did not gather the appointments to myself. Others had confidence in me; often, I think, they saw more in me than I saw in myself. I have not had the slightest regret over my choice of career, or my time in the Service. My only regret would be that, perhaps, in the course of various appointments, I might have disappointed people, or not acknowledged some people as well as I should have. Instances occasionally cross my mind, but there is one that has always worried me. On all the occasions when I was promoted or appointed, to Chief of the Air Staff for example, or CDFS, or when I was awarded the KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire), I received such wonderful letters of support, often from people with whom I did not think I really had too great a rapport. Sometimes it was young fellows who wrote, saying that they looked upon me as a model. What I should have done was got my staff to draft a formal thank you in reply, which I could then amend just a little bit and add something personal on each one—that would have been an

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acknowledgment at least. But I so wanted to write to each one of them, and of course I never did; I just got swamped. Most of those letters I still have bundled up in a case somewhere. I did not like letting that happen, and cannot help seeing it as an instance where I had let people down. There are lots of things to be grateful about, and pleased about in terms of results. I think the trick is to try and keep a happy balance between those things that you either did in a stupid fashion, or you did not do well, and those that give you pleasure in remembering as successes. When I have been asked to give addresses over the years, something that I have often mentioned is the fact that, where people have had a full career, in a fair number of cases it has not been one hundred per cent due to their own skills and abilities. Of course, there is also a lot of luck involved, and I have tried to highlight those points in my life where it now strikes me that things might have gone along a different path entirely, could even have seen me out of the Air Force on my ear, but did not. There is another element to the luck aspect. I have always believed, and have advocated this to others who worried about their future prospects, that you should leave matters to the system. Whatever job you are put in, you do it to the best of your ability, and the system will evaluate that and judge whether you go on or not—it is as simple as that. While I was at Ubon I encountered an officer who was in the depth of depression and despair over never getting anywhere. I told him, “Frank, just do whatever job you have been given and forget about the blue [seniority] book. If you look around, you will find the students of the blue book never get anywhere anyhow, or very rarely.” Later on, when he was an Air Vice-Marshal, he told me that was the best advice that he had ever been given.

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In my own case, I think I have been especially fortunate. To the extent where, one time at a function I was asked by a lady whether my career and achievements could be taken as an example to all young men. My reply was that it could not, that it was, if anything, a ‘one-off ’ career. These days, young people would be inclined to see it as essential to go for degree after degree. I do not decry the value of higher education, and in fact in some cases it is almost impossible to develop a career without these qualifications. But in my time, it was possible for a man to get by with an Intermediate Certificate, and then do nothing more to better himself academically except depend on so-called postgraduate courses in the Air Force. I am conscious that for me to reach the top was, and is, probably a one-off; it could not happen again. People have asked me if I ever regretted not going to university. For most of my Service life I had no regrets at all; I said it did not make any difference. But sometimes, like when sitting in a Defence Committee meeting, the thought did occur to me that a degree might have been useful. Bear in mind that the Defence Committee included the Secretaries of the principal government departments: Foreign Affairs, Treasury, Prime Minister and Cabinet. The way in which many of them talked was the result of having been through university, and I was not always comfortable with that. I could usually keep up with the theme of what they were talking about, but I felt that I wanted to ask a lot of questions: what do you mean by this, what do you mean by that? That was the time when I felt a bit out of it, in the sense of not having gone through the same academic disciplines. One of the factors in my career story has been my family: how they coped with the exigencies of Service life and the wonderful element of support which they gave throughout my time in uniform.

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I remember when I was DPO, Director of Personnel – Officers, I had to give an address to the cadets at the RAAF College at Point Cook. When it came to question time, someone put to me the pretty reasonable question, “Are officers’ wives reported upon?” I jokingly said, “Well I’m reluctant to spoil it but I’m a happily married man, so obviously I’d have to say no”. Well the answer is no, always was and still is. Wives are not reported on—they cannot be unless they are also serving members. Even so, it was helpful for someone in my position, as DPO, to know the circumstances in a marriage. It was especially important to know whether an officer’s wife was supportive of the man’s career, particularly when it came to considering a person for an overseas posting that carried diplomatic status. If there were any problems, such as the wife was perhaps dissatisfied with Service life, then we would at least have to broach the subject with the man. I used to tell that little story because in my own case I counted myself as extremely fortunate. Joan and I had absolutely no problem in regard to family support for my career, although I am not too sure why. Perhaps it was something to do with our country upbringing and the circumstances of her own family. Her father had been in the First World War, so she understood what he had been required to do and the way he felt about the idea of doing what the Service required of him. Joan herself had several years in the WRAN during the Second World War, so I suspect her own thoughts and attitudes were compatible. There was the time at CFS, when I was on the examining flight, when Joan jokingly said that I only came home to get my washing done. Then there was Korea, Ubon in Thailand, the year I had in Vietnam, and other times that I had to go off on visits, or lengthy courses overseas, when Joan was not permitted to accompany me. The wives bear the brunt of all that disruption, usually while they

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are bringing up children at the same time. They go out and have to buy a lawnmower that suits them, instead of the old one like I used to push around—things like that. My wife did all that very well, and I never heard any complaint from her. As I have admitted in these pages, there were several times when I, in effect, volunteered to go to those places like Korea, Ubon, and Vietnam, but she did not react when I went home and told her. She hid whatever disappointment she felt that I was not going to be there. Although there was never an occasion where Joan complained as such, there were certainly times when I saw her close to tears over what we had to do to get through things. One instance was when I was posted from New South Wales over to Western Australia, to No. 25 Squadron, and as usual the RAAF said I was required across there immediately and Joan could go by ship. That left her to do everything, and since we had two very young girls at that stage, it was not easy. Another time was when we had to get out of RAAF Williamtown to go to England. The packers were due to come the day before New Year’s Eve and they arrived at six o’clock in the evening, having already moved two other people that day. They said they wanted to get the job finished there and then that night, to allow them to get back to base for their celebration. I looked at Joan and she said all right. The packers had not eaten yet, so Joan cooked a meal for them while they started. We had friends who were away and said we could use their house, and as the night wore on eventually it got to the stage that I literally just picked Joan up and took her to the friends’ house and put her and the girls to bed. Then I returned to help with the rest of the pack-up. It must have been close to one o’clock in the morning before the job was done and the packers went off.

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The next day was bedlam as we tried to catch the train from Newcastle to Sydney, where we had to board our ship. We had a car and driver to get us to Newcastle Railway Station, but remember this was now New Year’s Eve, and in those days we had to use the Stockton ferry. We set off but by the time we reached the ferry, sure enough, there was a queue. Understandably our driver was pretty impatient, because if we got on the end of the queue we might not make that first ferry and have to take the next one, which would probably mean that we would not make the train. So he bit the bullet and drove right up to the front of the line. Naturally he got a stormy reception from the guys at the box there, but he told them in no uncertain terms what the score was so they relented and let us on first. We were not too popular with the people behind us, but we made the train and got down to Sydney in time to get on the ship. Joan was totally exhausted by this time, but the saga just went on and on. It turned out that one of the girls, I forget which one, had got measles or chicken pox. She was recovering okay but predictably the other one then picked it up too. When the symptoms showed up I went and saw the doctor on the base and told him the story. After he let me explain the situation, he said, “Strictly speaking, I should tell you that you can’t go because you’re not allowed to—imagine what would happen if the whole ship got it. But go anyway. See if you can bribe a steward to keep her down in your cabin and that sort of thing. If anyone ever asks you, I never told you any of this at all.” So we did just that. I gave our steward a suitably large amount, and he was good and brought our meals down to us. When we stopped at Melbourne, our friends Mary and Jerry O’Callaghan came and took the two girls straight away to their home (Mary was pregnant too) and looked after them until the ship was about to depart, then we rushed them back on board again. We did the same thing when

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we got around to Perth, with the help of a friend who used to be the medical officer at Pearce. By that time our sick one was starting to come good, but it was touch and go whether we would ever get away on that posting to England, and it was definitely a most trying time for Joan. The liner we travelled on was the Himalaya, which was quite a good ship, but it was no rest cure on board for Joan and me because we had to take it in turns looking after the girls. One of us would go up to dinner and the other would stay down in the cabin, then the other would go up. I know the period when someone is infectious is limited, but we needed to be sure all signs of her illness had disappeared and it took her a long while, really, to get over it. Once we got to England we had to settle into a hotel first, and then go looking for a house to live. Staff in Australia House were very helpful in terms of providing a list of agents in the area where you were looking, that sort of thing, but they understandably made it clear that they would not go out looking for houses for you in advance. Again, Joan did most of that, with the two girls. Eventually it all worked out and we got ourselves nicely set up, up until the time when I had to do the JSSC course up at Latimer, which had the requirement that students lived in during the week. Joan was left to keep everything going between the weekends when I got home, and that was nearly a disaster. The place we had at Ashstead in Surrey was a two-storey house with a fairly steep set of stairs. One evening after she had put the girls to bed, Joan stoked up the bricquet-burning heater to last through the night before going to bed herself. Halfway up the steps she trod or tripped on her dressing gown and fell down backwards. She lay where she fell for ages before she could raise enough strength to get up. And the girls could not hear her because they were sound asleep. So, although we look back

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on the many good times we had in England, the reality is that all those great experiences came at a cost. There were similar sorts of stories associated with coming back to Australia, but I will not go into those. I particularly remember what happened when we decided to get ourselves a house to call our own in Canberra, and found the place we wanted in Hackett. The manager of the financial institution that I approached for a loan knocked us back twice, saying things like, “This is not for you, go look somewhere else, you can’t afford it.” Eventually, on the third try, he relented and said, “All right, I’ll go to bat for you, but you’ll need a genie of a wife to make anything of it.” Joan is a dedicated gardener with a particular liking for the English style, so she soon had a magnificent garden out the back and we made it a very nice place that we were happy in until we left Canberra to live in Bowral in 1994. I think the other thing, too, was in those times, the 1950s in particular, people of our age and associations, not to mention our pay status, did not look for a lot. There was not really a lot to have anyway, straight after the war. This meant that we did not look for a really high quality home, nor lots of facilities in the home, simply because they were just not there. We had grown up unaccustomed to those things and we accepted without question the fact that they were not readily available in the community, except in rare cases. Those were circumstances that made for quite a happy existence in what, today, would be considered very sparse and basic conditions. I have mentioned earlier what life was like in East Sale, and described briefly what conditions were like on some of the other postings that we had. But I have to say that Joan and I count ourselves very fortunate that there were no places that we went where our girls, Shelley and Julie, did not have a happy time. They made

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friends easily, never pestered us for better things, and when it came to holidays no one (neither Joan nor the girls) looked for anything especially fancy. We all liked to go camping, and that is what we did for many years. While in England we took the opportunity of buying an excellent French tent, and we used that to camp on the continent. When we came back home, all our holidays were camping holidays usually close to the sea. We liked the sea, and we liked fishing, and they were happy times. Again, the girls never asked for anything. During my annual leave breaks I would usually split the time we had available, so we could spend half of it in Queensland with my people and the other half with Joan’s people in western Victoria. When we travelled long distances, there were very few hotels or motels—certainly none of great quality back in the 1950s—but that did not trouble us in the slightest. I made a frame that I could put in the back of our Holden car to take a fairly large cot mattress. The girls could sit up and read, or they could romp during the daytime, or they could just fall down and go to sleep on the mattress. Of course, there were no seatbelts in those days. We used to travel at night deliberately so the girls could sleep on the back seat, and sometimes Joan would sleep across on the bench-type seat in front with her head in my lap. At an appropriate time she would wake up and drive for a while, and then I would drive. We got the distance done and we did it in comfort while the girls slept through most of it. It was not unusual for us to be seen pulled up a bit after daylight. Joan would put a rug on the ground and pull stuff out of the boot of the car and start to make breakfast. We did not skimp; we ate well. We boiled the billy and had something hot for the girls. So it has always been a happy and supportive life among the four of us. The two girls have continued that right throughout;

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even now, in their married lives, they have been very supportive of both Joan and myself. During the early 1960s there was a big hue and cry from people who were upset about the frequency with which Service families had to move house, principally because of the effects on children of having to switch schools and go into the varying educational systems of different states. At one stage there was even a survey conducted across the Service, asking married couples to fill in a lengthy form to help determine whether their children had really suffered in that way. That certainly made Joan and I exercise our minds, but when we did our response we came to the conclusion that our girls had not suffered at all (bearing in mind that they were only in primary school at that stage); rather, we felt they had gained something because of the beneficial experience of going to different countries. We did not think that they lost anything in terms of their academic progress, indeed they just seemed to cope. In fact, when we arrived at Hackett, Julie certainly ended up a year ahead in her schooling back here. She went to the Dominican convent down the road, Watson Rosary Catholic Primary School, and initially they were reluctant to allow her to continue on in the year she had been doing in England because of her age. They believed that her age should match the year, but we reasoned that they should let her try. The fact that she coped with it very well in itself says something for her. I guess there were some children who did suffer, but it often depended on what sort of teacher they got and other factors. I have since asked the girls whether they felt that Service life hindered them, both in regard to education or in a more general sense, and they both said quite firmly that they did not think it had. They also do not consider that my Service career disadvantaged them in any way; on the contrary, they felt they reaped a great benefit from

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it. When they compared notes with others of a similar age, people they have known, the ones who stayed put were rather envious of the children who had been moved about in Australia or overseas. Both Shelley and Julie are very grateful for the exposure they have had, believing it has helped them greatly. They are much more aware of what the wider world is about, and that is very heartening for us. I know there are people for whom it has not worked out so well, for whom it has been a bit of a trial, but we did not experience that. As I advanced in my career, there was naturally a higher degree of social activity that we had to deal with. While we were in the United States, and particularly when I was DCAS, CAS and CDFS, Joan had to take on the aspect of looking after the wives of visiting officers and dignatories from overseas. She never felt that she was a natural at it, but I have to say she was very good at it. It might have had something to do with being a country girl, but I think it probably had more to do with the fact that she did not try to be the social leader. When we had to entertain, she had the help of my steward, Sergeant Jim Fuller, and he was very good: quiet, dependable, efficient, never got flustered, never seen to get excited. When I moved from CAS to CDFS that meant that the level on establishment for my steward went a rank higher too. Joan and I got talking, and she said, “What a shame we can’t still have Jim.” As a result, I got my Staff Officer to check with Air Force if they could stretch the bounds of friendship and allow us to hang onto Jim’s services. He duly came back with a grin on his face to tell me, “He’s way ahead of you sir, he’s already done it.” Whenever she needed it, like any time there was a big dinner at home, Joan could also call on the very able assistance of a lady named Mavis Riley. Joan, Mavis and Jim worked together perfectly, and they managed those occasions tremendously well so that we

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got through those. But it remained the case that Joan never really saw herself in this sort of position, notwithstanding that she was good at it. I suppose it was three or four months after I retired that I commented to her one day that she looked so different, so relaxed, as if she did not have any worries. She said, “I’m just so glad that I don’t have to wonder at night whether you’re coming for dinner or whether you’re going to come home later, and I don’t have to worry whether there’s going to be visiting VIPs on the horizon. It’s such a relief.” The irony of this was Joan never really understood that her ability to cope so well had been noted around Defence circles. Many years later we were invited up to Darwin to visit Joan’s ship (which she had launched in January 1983), the Fremantle-class patrol boat HMAS Cessnock, and we stayed in the little flat underneath the house of the Naval Officer-in-Charge (NOIC) up there. It just so happened that the Chief of the Naval Staff was coming back through Darwin after a visit to South-East Asia, and NOIC held a cocktail party at the house for CNS and his staff to which we were invited. At one point Joan was sitting on a sofa with CNS and he said to her, “You are very highly regarded in the Navy.” She misread what he was saying and responded, “Oh, Nev gets on really well with everybody.” But he said, “I’m not talking about Neville. I’m talking about you.” That was a very handsome compliment, because at that time senior Navy people were not all that willing to offer compliments to the Air Force; but I thought that was a tremendous thing for CNS to say to her. Often there is a need for people to be more aware and conscious of the environment in which they had to work, and the people with whom they had to work. I well remember a few people in the Defence Department who could have gone a bit further in their career, except

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they wanted to fight the system. They were usually convinced that those at the top of the Public Service were invariably wrong and had to be made to listen to reason by servicemen. I should emphasise that I do not hold grudges, not against anybody. That is the gospel truth. If anybody wants to claim that they are a practicing Christian, they cannot afford to have a grudge. If I were to be asked what enduring thoughts I have about the RAAF, I think I would want to repeat something I have already been quoted elsewhere as saying about the collective importance of all members of the Service. During my time as CAS and CDFS, I was always impressed by the professional manner in which our aircrews—in all elements of the force—went about fulfilling their roles and functions, but I was equally impressed by the professionalism and dedication displayed by those who maintained and supported the operational elements. My exact words were: “No man or woman in this Air Force should feel any less needed than other members of the team. The member of aircrew has the ultimate responsibility for the carriage of the weapon to the target but his effectiveness is contributed to as much by those who prepare his meals, as those who prepare the weapons systems.” I cannot imagine that anything will have occurred since I left the Air Force to change that fundamental truth.

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