100 Years of Aviation - Air Power Dev Centreairpower.airforce.gov.au/APDC/media/PDF-Files/Conference... · 2016-06-28 · 100 years of aviation : ... Di Guglielmo, for their highly

Aerospace Centre

The Proceedings of the 2003 RAAF History Conference

Held in Canberra 4–5 August 2003

Edited by Wing Commander Keith Brent, CSC

The Australian Military Experience

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© Commonwealth of Australia 2004 This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. Disclaimer The views expressed are those of the authors and conference participants, 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, or the official policy or position of the respective Armed Forces or Governments of the overseas participants. The Commonwealth of Australia will not be legally responsible in contract, tort or otherwise, for any statements made in this record of proceedings. Release This document is approved for public release. 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

RAAF History Conference (2003 : Canberra, A.C.T.). 100 years of aviation : the Australian military experience : the proceedings of the 2003 RAAF History Conference held in Canberra 4-5 August 2003. ISBN 0 642 26587 9. 1. Australia. Royal Australian Air Force - History - Congresses. 2. Aeronautics, Military - Australia - History - Congresses. 3. Air power - Australia - History - Congresses. I. Brent, Keith, 1944- . II. Australia. Royal Australian Air Force. Aerospace Centre. III. Title. IV. Title : One hundred years of aviation. V. Title : Hundred years of aviation. 358.400994

Cover design based on a painting by Jeff Isaacs. Published and distributed by:

Aerospace Centre Defence Establishment FAIRBAIRN ACT 2600 Australia Telephone: + 61 2 6287 6563 Facsimile: + 61 2 6287 6382 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.raaf.gov.au/airpower

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CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments

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Notes on Contributors

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Abbreviations xiii

OPENING ADDRESS 1Air Marshal Angus Houston, AO, AFC

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: AIR POWER AND THE DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA

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Doctor Alan Stephens

AIR POWER AND SENSIBILITY: SOME ASPECTS OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF AIR POWER 1903–2003

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Professor John McCarthy

PANEL DISCUSSION 25Doctor Alan Stephens / Professor John McCarthy

AIR WEAPONS: IMPACT ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF AIR POWER AND AIRCRAFT DESIGN

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Mr Sanu Kainikara

THE AUSTRALIAN AVIATION INDUSTRY: HISTORY AND ACHIEVEMENTS GUIDING DEFENCE AND AVIATION INDUSTRY POLICY

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Air Vice-Marshal Brian Weston, AM, FRAeS

PANEL DISCUSSION 75Mr Sanu Kainikara / Air Vice-Marshal Brian Weston, AM, FRAeS

KEY EVENTS IN RAAF HISTORY 79Air Commodore Mark Lax, CSM

PANEL DISCUSSION 95Air Commodore Mark Lax, CSM

MILITARY AVIATION IN AUSTRALIA 1911–2003 97Major Russell Parkin

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PANEL DISCUSSION 109Major Russell Parkin

THE RAF AND RAAF: A CLOSE ASSOCIATION IN WAR AND PEACE

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Mr Sebastian Cox

PANEL DISCUSSION 127Mr Sebastian Cox

CONFERENCE DINNER ADDRESS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AIR POWER – HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING?

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Doctor Richard Hallion

AUSTRALIA’S MARITIME STRATEGY AND AIR POWER 145Commodore Jack McCaffrie, RAN

RAAF MILITARY OPERATIONS OTHER THAN WAR 167Group Captain Ric Casagrande

PANEL DISCUSSION 181Commodore Jack McCaffrie, RAN / Group Captain Ric Casagrande

WORKSHOP SESSIONS 185Wing Commander Dave Thiele / Group Captain Garry Dunbar / Mr David Wilson

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AIR POWER – AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE

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Air Commodore Gary Waters (Ret’d)

PANEL DISCUSSION 209Air Commodore Gary Waters (Ret’d)

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONFERENCE 213Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn, AM

CLOSURE 219Air Marshal Angus Houston, AO, AFC

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Papers have been printed as provided by the authors, with only minor changes to achieve some consistency in layout, spelling and terminology. The transcripts of the panel discussions that followed the presentation of the papers have been edited for relevance, clarity and brevity. Copies of the edited papers and transcripts were sent to the authors for comment before publication. My thanks are due to my colleagues at the Aerospace Centre, in particular Mrs Sandra Di Guglielmo, for their highly professional editorial assistance. Keith Brent Aerospace Centre Canberra January 2004

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

AIR MARSHAL A.G. HOUSTON, AO, AFC

Air Marshal Angus Houston joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) as a cadet pilot in 1970 and spent the early part of his career flying Iroquois helicopters in various parts of Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. After graduation from Flying Instructors Course in 1975, Air Marshal Houston completed several instructional tours on Macchi, BAC Strikemaster and Iroquois aircraft. A posting to the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) from 1976–1978 was followed, by two years at No 9 Squadron at RAAF Base Amberley. In late 1979 Air Marshal Houston was posted to Hill Air Force Base, Utah USA for exchange flying duties with a United States Air Force helicopter unit. In 1980 he was awarded the Air Force Cross (AFC) for an open sea rescue in gale force winds the previous year. After a further posting to No 9 Squadron as the Executive Officer, and staff training at RAAF Staff College, Air Marshal Houston was posted to the Department of Air (Development Division) where he was involved in the Blackhawk Helicopter Project. In 1987, Air Marshal Houston assumed command of No 9 Squadron to introduce the Blackhawk helicopter, to relocate the unit from Amberley to Townsville, and to transfer the capability to the Australian Army. In 1989 he enjoyed one year as a Squadron Commander with the 5th Aviation Regiment. Air Marshal Houston was admitted as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1990 for his work in the transfer of responsibility for Blackhawk operations. Following graduation from Joint Services Staff College, Air Marshal Houston was posted to the Joint Operations staff at Headquarters Australian Defence Force and was involved in strategic planning during the Gulf crisis of 1990/91. On promotion to Group Captain in July 1992, he assumed the post of Director Air Force Policy and negotiated the establishment of the RSAF Flying School at RAAF Base Pearce. After completing a C-130H conversion in 1993, Air Marshal Houston commanded No 86 Wing from 1994–95. Air Marshal Houston attended the Royal College of Defence Studies in London in 1996. He was Chief of Staff, Headquarters Australian Theatre in 1997–99, Commander Integrated Air Defence System from 1999–2000 and Head Strategic Command from August 2000. Air Marshal Houston was appointed as Chief of Air Force on 20 June 2001, and in the 2003 Australia Day Honours, promoted to Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).

DOCTOR ALAN STEPHENS

Doctor Alan Stephens is now a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University. At the time of the History Conference, however, he was the Visiting Fellow at the School of History with the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. Prior to that, Doctor Stephens was the Deputy Director of the Aerospace Centre 1989–2000 and before that a principal research officer in the Australian Federal Parliament, specialising in foreign affairs and defence. He was also an RAAF pilot, where his postings included service

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in Vietnam and an appointment as the Commanding Officer of No 2 Squadron in 1980–81 flying Canberra aircraft. Dr Stephens is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on security, military history, doctrine and air power. He also has lectured extensively on these subjects throughout Australasia, South-East Asia, Europe and North America. He was one of the principal authors of the third edition of the RAAF Air Power Manual (1998). His published works include Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force 1946–1971, an official history of the RAAF from the end of World War II to the Service’s Golden Anniversary in 1971; and The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian Air Force, published as part of the Oxford Centenary of Australian Defence series.

PROFESSOR JOHN MCCARTHY

Professor John McCarthy has been a Teaching Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Resident Scholar at the Australian National University, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in History at the Faculty of Military Studies, and Associate Professor at the University College, University of New South Wales. His work includes the publication of such books as Australian and Imperial Defence 1918–1936, Australian War Strategy 1939–1945 and A Last Call of Empire, and numerous articles on defence and foreign policy. He was the foundation President of the Association of Historians of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy, and is a member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

MR SANU KAINIKARA

Mr Sanu Kainikara is a former fighter pilot of the Indian Air Force with 21 years of commissioned service and vast operational flying experience in a number of modern fighter aircraft. Currently he is a Deputy Director at the RAAF Aerospace Centre. Prior to this appointment he taught Aerospace Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University and was a consultant to the Air Operations Division of DSTO, Melbourne. He is a regular contributor to defence related magazines and has published prolifically on air power and defence issues in the Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, Fighter Tactics, Australian Defence Force Journal and The Leading Edge. He is also a contributing editor to the Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter. Mr Kainikara is a graduate of the National Defence Academy, Defence Services Staff College and the College of Air Warfare. He holds two Bachelors degrees and also a Master of Science in Defence and Strategic Studies from the University of Madras. He is currently in the final stages of completing a PhD with the University of Adelaide.

AIR VICE-MARSHAL BRIAN WESTON, AM, FRAES

Air Vice-Marshal Brian Weston retired from the Royal Australian Air Force after 34 years of commissioned service as Assistant Chief of Defence Force for operations. His Air Force career included five overseas postings and three major commands—No 75 Squadron, Base Support Wing RAAF Base Richmond and the Tactical Fighter Group.

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In 1998 following the Black Hawk midair collision, he conducted with John Faulkner (Deputy Chair of Air Services Australia) an Independent Review of ADF Airworthiness. Since his retirement, he has worked as a defence and industry consultant to large, medium and small companies. In 1998 he joined the major industry representative organisation—Australian Business—to set up the Australian Business Defence Industry Unit and acted as Executive Director Defence Industries. Over the same period, he held the appointment of Executive Director of the Association of Australian Aerospace Industries. He was the inaugural ‘Industry Deputy Chair’ of the Defence Capability Advisory Forum from 1999 to 2003, and was a member of the Defence and Industry Advisory Council chaired by the Minister for Defence. He is a graduate of the United States Air Force Air Warfare College (1983) and Royal College of Defence Studies, London (1994) and holds a Bachelor of Science, University of Melbourne and a Master of Business Administration, Auburn University. In October 2001, he joined the Board of National Air Support as a non-executive director and has also been appointed Chairman of the SAI Global Certification Board of Standards Australia.

AIR COMMODORE MARK LAX, CSM

Air Commodore Lax joined the Royal Australian Air Force Academy in January 1974 and graduated dux of his class. After navigator training, he had operational (C-130 and F-111), flight test and instructional tours before completing a staff position in Air Force Headquarters, working on F-111 projects. In 1991, he was appointed to command Base Squadron at RAAF East Sale in Victoria, during which time he was awarded the Conspicuous Service Medal. After two years, he was posted to the RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, producing air doctrine, examining aerospace trends and conducting long-term planning. It was during this time that he completed his Masters degree with first class honours. Following this, he was selected as Australia’s student to the USAF Air War College for the Class of 97, graduating with the Commandant’s Prize for Excellence. He was subsequently appointed Base Commander of RAAF Richmond. In the last few years, Air Commodore Lax was the Director of Doctrine and Development at Air Headquarters and later, the Director of Plans in the same organisation. Just prior to his promotion to Air Commodore, he was Director Military Strategy where he also served as Australia’s Senior National Representative at HQ US CENTCOM for the War on Terror. In December 2002, he was promoted and posted back to Air Force Headquarters as Director General Policy and Plans. Air Commodore Lax is a graduate of the RAAF Academy, RAF Aerosystems Course, RAAF Staff College, USAF Air War College and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

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MAJOR RUSSELL PARKIN

Major Parkin is a RAEME officer who has served in a variety of staff and instructional postings, including the Army Logistic Training Centre and the Directorate of Army Research and Analysis. In 2000, he attended the Army Command and Staff College at Fort Queenscliff and, on completion of the course, he was posted to the Land Warfare Studies Centre as a Research Fellow. In 2001, he was also a Fellow at the United States Military Academy’s annual seminar on Military History. Major Parkin holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree, a Master of Defence Studies and a PhD in military history. He has published numerous articles on Australian military history, including articles in the Australian War Memorial’s Wartime, the New Zealand Army Journal, the RAAF Air Power Studies Centre Papers and the Land Warfare Studies Centre Working Paper series. In addition, Major Parkin has represented Army at a number of international conferences, most recently at the US Army’s Centre for Military History Conference in 2002. In March of this year, he was posted to the Australian National Headquarters in Qatar as the leader of a tri-Service history team collecting material on Australia’s participation in the war in Iraq.

MR SEBASTIAN COX

Born 1956. 1977 Bachelor of Arts in History, University of Warwick. 1979 Master of Arts in War Studies, Kings College, London. 1981–1984 Curator of Documents, Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, London. 1984 Research Assistant, Air Historical Branch (RAF), Ministry of

Defence, London, 1989 Historian and Deputy Head of Air Historical Branch. 1996–present Head of Air Historical Branch and Chief Historian of the RAF. Mr Cox has written widely on air power history and related topics, and currently edits two book series on air power subjects—Frank Cass’s Studies in Air Power series and the Whitehall History Group’s Air Power Official Histories. He also sits on the editorial boards of the Royal Air Force Air Power Review and the Defence Studies Journal. He has lectured on many aspects of air power history to Staff Colleges and military and academic audiences in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, France, Norway and the Czech Republic. As Head of the Air Historical Branch (RAF) in the UK Ministry of Defence, he works directly for the UK Air Staff and is ultimately responsible to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff. As well as lecturing and publishing on all aspects of RAF history, the Air Historical Branch writes internal classified studies of recent RAF operations.

DOCTOR RICHARD HALLION

Dr Richard Hallion has been historian of the United States Air Force since December 1991. After obtaining a doctorate in the history of aerospace technology at the University of Maryland in 1975, he worked as a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and, between 1982 and 1990, he held

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chief historian appointments at Edwards, Wright-Patterson and Andrews Air Force Bases. He has also been Charles A. Lindbergh Professor of Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum and a visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. Dr Hallion is the author or editor of 15 books, including Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (1992), Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1911–1945 (1989), Test Pilots: The Frontiersmen of Flight (1988), The Wright Brothers: Heirs of Prometheus (1978), and Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity Through the First World War (2003).

COMMODORE JACK MCCAFFRIE, RAN

Commodore Jack McCaffrie is serving as the visiting fellow at the RAN Sea Power Centre Australia. As an aviator, most of his flying career was spent in Grumman Trackers, embarked and ashore. Most (far too much) of his later career was spent in a succession of jobs in Canberra. He retired earlier this year on returning from his final posting as Naval Attaché, Washington.

GROUP CAPTAIN RIC CASAGRANDE

Group Captain Ric Casagrande is a graduate of Macquarie University, Sydney in Arts and Law. After practising as a solicitor for four years he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1984. He has served at RAAF Base Wagga, RAAF Operations Command, Air Force Legal Office and at the Air Power Studies Centre. Group Captain Casagrande spent two years with the US Air Force JAG Department, working on the Air Staff in the Pentagon. From 2000 he was the ADF Director of Operations Law and International Law, and RAAF Director of Air Force Legal Services. In 2001, he served as a military and legal adviser to the President of the Conventional Weapons Convention Review Conference in Geneva. He has worked on secondment for the International Committee of the Red Cross Group. He has a Master of Defence Studies degree at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He is the author of the RAAF Operations Law Handbook for Commanders, AAP 1003 – Operations Law for RAAF Commanders, and has published a number of working papers, and is a graduate of the Australian Centre of Defence and Strategic Studies. Group Captain Casagrande is currently posted as the Director of the Aerospace Centre at Fairbairn.

AIR COMMODORE GARY WATERS (RET’D)

Air Commodore Gary Waters joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a cadet in 1969. He served in various logistics and computing posts at Townsville, Toowoomba and Canberra from 1974 to 1984. He completed his staff college training in the UK in 1985 and served on the Directing Staff at the RAAF Staff College. He was part of the

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original RAAF doctrine writing team in 1989 and was a visiting fellow to the Australian National University in 1990–91. He was Director of the Air Power Studies Centre from 1993 to 1995. Thereafter, he has been posted in Defence Headquarters in Canberra, was Head of the Defence Staff in London (on promotion to Air Commodore), Head of the Theatre Headquarters Project (Defence’s operational headquarters) and, finally, Director General Operation Safe Base (running a security operation post the ‘September 11’ attacks in the US). He left the Air Force and joined the Public Service as Assistant Secretary Knowledge Planning in Defence at the beginning of April 2002. In December 2002, Knowledge Systems Division amalgamated with the Office of the Chief Information Officer, and Air Commodore Waters was designated Assistant Secretary Information Strategy and Futures. During his career he has written nine books on doctrine, strategy and military history. He is a graduate of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, with majors in accounting and economics; the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force Staff College; the University of New South Wales, with a Master of Arts (Hons) in History; and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, of which he is now a Fellow.

AIR VICE-MARSHAL JOHN BLACKBURN, AM

Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn is currently Head of Policy Guidance and Analysis Division. The Policy Guidance and Analysis mission is to build the strategic framework for capability planners and warfighters. Air Vice-Marshal Blackburn joined the RAAF in 1975. After conversion to the Mirage aircraft he had postings to No 77 Squadron and No 3 Squadron in Butterworth, Malaysia. In 1980, Air Vice-Marshal Blackburn attended the Empire Test Pilots School in the UK before returning to Australia as a test pilot at Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU). He spent four years in the US on tactical fighter projects. As a result of his project work, he was admitted as a Member of the Order of Australia in the 1989 Australia Day Honours. Several years were spent back at No 77 Squadron on his return to Australia, culminating in a tour as Commanding Officer. His senior appointments have included Deputy Director Airspace Control in Headquarters Australian Defence Force, Officer Commanding No 41 Wing, Director General Policy and Planning – Air Force, and Director General Military Strategy. In July 2002, Air Vice-Marshal Blackburn was promoted and appointed Head Policy Guidance and Analysis Division. Air Vice-Marshal Blackburn has attended both the Joint Services Staff College and the Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies. He holds a Graduate Diploma of Defence and Strategic Studies, a Master of Defence Studies and a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies. He has accumulated over 3000 flying hours in over 20 aircraft types.

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ABBREVIATIONS

AAM Air-to-Air Missile AAP Australian Air Publication ADF Australian Defence Force ADDP Australian Defence Doctrine Publication AEW&C Airborne Early Warning and Control AFC Air Force Cross AFC Australian Flying Corps AIF Australian Imperial Force AM Member of the Order of Australia ANZUS Australia, New Zealand and United States AO Officer of the Order of Australia AOC Air Officer Commanding ARDU Aircraft Research and Development Unit ASRAAM Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missile ASW Anti-Submarine Warfare ATO Air Tasking Order AWACS Airborne Warning and Control System BCOF British Commonwealth Occupation Force BHP Broken Hill Proprietary BVR Beyond Visual Range CA Counter Air CAC Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation CAF Chief of Air Force CAOC Combined Air Operations Centre CAS Chief of the Air Staff CAS Close Air Support CENTAF Central Command Air Forces (US) CENTCOM Central Command CEP Circular Error Probable CGS Chief of the General Staff CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting CNS Chief of the Naval Staff DFC Distinguished Flying Cross DFDC Defence Force Development Committee DSO Distinguished Service order DSTO Defence Science and Technology Organisation EATS Empire Air Training Scheme ECM Electronic Countermeasures FEAF Far East Air Force FPDA Five Power Defence Arrangements FSCL Fire Support Coordination Line GAF Government Aircraft Factory GM General Motors GMH General Motors-Holden’s GPS Global Positioning System HMAS Her Majesty’s Australian Ship HMS Her Majesty’s Ship

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HMS Helmet-Mounted Sight IADS Integrated Air Defence System INTERFET International Force East Timor IRCCM Infra-Red Counter-Countermeasures JDAM Joint Direct Attack Munition JFACC Joint Force Air Component Commander JSF Joint Strike Fighter JSTARS Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System MAD Mutually Assured Destruction Medevac Medical Evacuation MOOTW Military Operations Other Than War NAA National Archives Australia OODA Observe, Orient, Decide, Act OOTW Operations Other Than War PGM Precision Guided Munitions POL Petrol, Oils and Lubricants RAAF Royal Australian Air Force RAAFSTT RAAF School of Technical Training RAEME Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers RAF Royal Air Force RAR Royal Australian Regiment RCAF Royal Canadian Air Force RFC Royal Flying Corps RMC Royal Military College RN Royal Navy RNAS Royal Naval Air Service RPV Remotely Piloted Vehicle RSAF Republic of Singapore Air Force RUSI Royal United Services Institute SAC School of Army Co-operation SAM Surface-to-Air Missile SASO Senior Air Staff Officer SEAD Suppression of Enemy Air Defences SEATO South-East Asia Treaty Organisation SLAW School of Land/Air Warfare SOF Special Operations Forces STOVL Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing SWPA South-West Pacific Area TST Time Sensitive Target/Targeting UAV Unmanned [or Uninhabited] Aerial Vehicle UCAV Unmanned [or Uninhabited] Combat Aerial Vehicle UN United Nations USAAC United States Army Air Corps USAAF United States Army Air Forces USAF United States Air Force USMC United States Marine Corps USN United States Navy WRE Weapons Research Establishment

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OPENING ADDRESS

AIR MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON, AO, AFC

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to this year’s Royal Australian Air Force History Conference. 2003 has particular significance for all of us in the aviation fraternity, since it celebrates 100 years of powered flight. In keeping with the occasion, this conference has been deliberately kept at a level that gives us a complete look at the military developments that have taken place in aviation and air activities. The theme for the conference is 100 Hundred Years of Aviation: The Australian Military Experience. Although air power is relatively young in comparison to other forms of military power, it has seen the fastest growth in inherent capabilities. From the low-powered aircraft that were available at the outbreak of war in 1914, air power has indeed come a long way. Today, air and space forces confidently dominate the third dimension and through it, the entire spectrum of warfare. Papers will be presented by a number of distinguished academics, both from within Australia and abroad. Each speaker will be introduced individually as we proceed but at the outset let me extend to all of you a very warm welcome, especially to the two distinguished historians Doctor Richard Hallion and Mr Sebastian Cox who have travelled a long way to be here with us today. I certainly hope that your visit will be both enjoyable and instructive. I trust that all the presentations, which cover a range of interesting topics, will not only be informative but will also promote some lively debate at the end of each session. I encourage all of you to participate. In a variation of our normal program, this year we have arranged for three concurrent workshops to be conducted on topics that are of lasting interest to all of us. These workshops will provide an appropriate forum for all the delegates to put forward and debate their views on air power and related matters. As we have done for all our previous history conferences, the papers and proceedings will be published to facilitate their becoming historical records for further study and research on issues of importance. Now to set the scene, a few words about Australian military aviation. In September 1909, Senator George Foster Pearce, the then Minister for Defence, offered a £5000 prize for the construction of a military aircraft in Australia. The winner, designed by John Duigan, flew at Spring Plains, Mia Mia, Victoria in July 1910. It was a humble beginning. Later, in 1911 a decision was made to create a flying school and seek the appointment of two competent mechanists and aviators. Henry Petre and Eric Harrison were selected as pilots, together with four mechanics, and appointed to the new Central Flying School. Henry Petre recommended that a site at Point Cook in Victoria be purchased and the School came into being in March 1913. The first flying training course at Point Cook commenced on 17 August 1914, coinciding with the outbreak of war. The four candidates on the course were Lieutenant Richard Williams, Captain Thomas White, Lieutenant George Merz and Lieutenant David Manwell.

2003 RAAF History Conference

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It is interesting to note what happened to these founding fathers. After commanding the Half Flight with distinction, Petre returned to England and went on to command a Home Defence Squadron at war’s end. Harrison remained in Australia throughout the war performing a vital training role, joined the Royal Australian Air Force and rose to the rank of Group Captain. Williams deployed with No 1 Squadron to the Middle East and served with great courage and professionalism. Today we know him as the ‘father of the Royal Australian Air Force’ and our first Chief. Merz, as a member of the Half Flight, was our first casualty, killed by tribesmen after he force-landed in the desert. White also went to Mesopotamia, was captured and made a prisoner of war. He later became a politician and High Commissioner to Britain. Manwell went to England and transferred to the Equipment Branch finishing his Service life as a Wing Commander. Each used their skills as best they could and to the Air Force’s advantage. They were the vanguard of the 3500 or so who were to serve in the Australian Flying Corps. The Great War also would be the springboard for aviation development, with Australia the only Commonwealth country to form an operational flying corps of its own. The Corps saw service in New Guinea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine and the Western Front. By war’s end, we had raised eight Australian squadrons for overseas—four operational and four training squadrons—plus we continued to train both officers and men here in Australia throughout. Importantly, these men would become the founders of Australian civil and military aviation. At government direction, the Australian Air Force was formed in 1921 as the world’s second oldest independent Air Force. It was the only time I might add that we had more aircraft than personnel—164 aircraft to 151 people. In the 1930s, it survived with several small composite squadrons. It was also a time of great pioneering flights; Goble and McIntyre’s trip around Australia in 1924, Williams’s trip into the Pacific Islands in 1926 and the Antarctic expeditions of the early 1930s. Within Australia, bushfire patrols, photo survey of the inland and the Great Barrier Reef, rescues and relief work were undertaken. During the lean years of the 1930s, the Royal Australian Air Force remained a small cadre force from which sprung the air power we needed to go to war. We are an adaptable nation and when World War II broke out the Air Force grew from just under 3500 personnel with 246 obsolete aircraft to a massive 185,000 personnel with over 5600 aircraft. Australia’s very survival depended on our people in uniform and a strong relationship with our British and American allies. Australian airmen and airwomen served in every theatre of war and at war’s end we had the fourth largest Air Force in the world. Quite staggering if you think about it for a nation at the time of just over eight million. This was due entirely to our people, their willingness to volunteer and the Australian culture of ANZAC tradition, mateship and a sense of service. I cite those involved in the Empire Air Training Scheme that produced the trained personnel, the nascent Australian aviation industry that produced the aircraft, and the home front that supported the fighting force so well. I would also like to pay tribute to these men and women who served Australia so well. They make up the majority of the almost 400,000 who served with the Royal Australian Air Force. They also provide the majority of the 14,000 who paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving. We who follow hold them in high respect, and regard them as a great Air Force generation. Post-World War II, the Royal Australian Air Force served in the Berlin Airlift, Japan, Korea, Malaya and Malta. Following last week’s 50th

Opening Address

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anniversary of the cease-fire which ended the Korean War, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of No 77 Squadron. I reviewed a parade at RAAF Base Williamtown ten days ago and discussed the casualty rate with several Squadron veterans. No 77 Squadron lost 59 Mustang and Meteor aircraft through three years of distinguished service and sacrifice, with about 25 per cent of the pilots killed or captured. The 1950s saw the establishment of the Fleet Air Arm and Army Aviation Corps, now very significant elements of ADF aviation. All three arms of ADF aviation were to be heavily involved with the Vietnam War. In the 1960s and 1970s we also supported global stability with Air Force deployments to the Middle East and South-East Asia. We maintained a large base at Butterworth in Malaysia and contributed to the Five Power Defence Arrangements, which continue stronger than ever—indeed, we have maintained a continuous presence at Butterworth for almost 50 years. The post-Cold War era did not bring about a new world order as some had predicted, but rather saw a general transition to peace operations and intercession in civil wars. After the 1991 Gulf War, you will recall ADF aviation’s contributions in Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda and ongoing operations across the Middle East. More recently, Timor, Bougainville, the Solomons and, of course, our major efforts in the War on Terror and the War in Iraq, which need little further elaboration at this conference. Our aviation industry has been rationalised, yet has accepted a larger slice of Defence aviation maintenance and support work. Our research and development organisations have focused on innovative solutions to aeronautical, materiel, training and systems problems facing the industry as a whole. Today, the Air Force is also changing with the times as we prepare and position ourselves for the future. We have recently examined our culture and have adopted a ‘values-based leadership’ culture that places our people first. The cultural realignment has wide acceptance across the Air Force. We have also released our vision, which encapsulates all we do now and where we want to go in the future. We want to be a balanced, expeditionary Air Force, capable of achieving government objectives through swift and decisive application of air and space power in joint operations or as part of a larger coalition force. We must retain flexibility and adaptability within our force structure to be able to meet the requirements of all strategic tasks. In other words, we must be able to contribute to the defence of Australia while having the necessary capability to operate in the neighbourhood as we did in Timor, or participate in coalitions in support of our wider interests as we did so successfully and continue to do so in Iraq and in the ongoing War against Terror. A balanced force with appropriate and suitable high end capabilities is also an imperative in a strategic environment with increasing uncertainty in the future. The centrepiece of our Air Force structure must, therefore, continue to be a viable and sustainable Air Combat Force. I point out that our culture, our vision, our balanced force and our expeditionary construct have deep historical roots. So what lies ahead for the Air Force? Firstly, we must work closely with the other Services, particularly in the aviation field. The future is all about being joint. Secondly, we will become fully networked, interconnected if you like. With airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), Jindalee over-the-horizon radar network, Vigilaire command and control and, eventually, Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) all coming along, we will have an incredible increase in our effectiveness and responsiveness.


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JSF alone will give us tremendous capability, both air-to-air and air-to-surface, while its ability to fuse and display information will be beyond anything available by links today. We must also connect with our surface and subsurface brethren through common systems and protocols. Thirdly, combat enablers will continue to be essential. Uninhabited aerial vehicles and the use of space will no doubt become reality for the ADF within the next 20 years, and tankers and more airlift will always be required. In this category I must specifically include Air Force’s Combat Support Squadrons, without which we could not mount any air operations from our mainland bare bases or overseas. And finally we will rationalise our aircraft types—F/A-18 and F-111, and the nine helicopter types are two examples—and we will re-examine our priorities that will focus on effects-based outcomes, not platform replacement strategies. We must seek value for money while continually improving capability. To do all this we will need good people. I want to leave you with Sir Fredrick Scherger’s parting comments from his farewell dining out night in 1961. These words, spoken by the Royal Australian Air Force’s first four-star officer, apply equally today as they did over 40 years ago. I quote, ‘Every member of the Royal Australian Air Force to some degree lives behind the result of their work and the imprint of their personality. From the newest recruit, we all have our parts to play in the system. And for good or evil, our efforts leave their mark, great or small, on the overall strength and importance of the Royal Australian Air Force.’ I might add, people are and will remain our greatest strength. Finally, we must learn from history; that is why these conferences are so important. I now have great pleasure in opening the 11th Royal Australian Air Force History Conference – 100 Hundred Years of Aviation: The Australian Military Experience.

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AIR POWER AND THE DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA

DOCTOR ALAN STEPHENS

On the morning of 22 September 1918, Lieutenant Ross Smith of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) was having breakfast at a camp in the Palestinian desert with Colonel T.E. Lawrence—the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Smith was one of a small number of AFC airmen who had recently been attached to a special air unit formed to protect Lawrence and his force of 30,000 Arab irregulars, who had been suffering rough treatment at the hands of German bombers. Lawrence and Smith had just sat down to eat when a roar of engines filled the sky and an Arab lookout shouted, ‘Tyeras! Tyeras!’ (‘Aeroplane! Aeroplane!’). Lawrence described the ensuing action in his history of the desert campaign:

Ross Smith with his observer leaped into [an aircraft] and climbed like a cat up the sky ... There were one enemy two-seater and two scouts. Ross Smith fastened on the big one, and after five minutes of sharp machine gun rattle, the German dived suddenly ... As it flashed below the low ridge, there broke out a pennon of smoke, and from its falling place a soft dark cloud. An ‘Ah!’ came from the Arabs about us. Five minutes later Ross Smith was back, and jumped gaily out of his machine ... Our sausages were still hot; we ate them, and drank tea ...1

Smith’s nonchalant bravery thrilled Lawrence, who described his pilot as ‘an Australian, of a race delighting in additional risks’. This is wonderful history: exotic, exciting, and featuring two men who in today’s sorry jargon would be described as celebrities. But the question might nevertheless be asked: what were Australian airmen doing protecting a force of Arab irregulars, led by a mysterious English soldier-scholar, on the other side of the world? What did Smith’s laconic heroics have to do with the defence of Australia? The answer is of course that there is a variety of ways through which national security goals can be pursued and, depending on circumstances, an indirect approach can be just as effective as direct action. Clearly, Australia was not at immediate risk when a Half Flight of the Australian Flying Corps was deployed to Mesopotamia in 1915, later to be followed by three squadrons to the Western Front in France and four training squadrons in England.2 Indeed, nor was Australia likely to have been at risk even if the Allies had been defeated in World War I. But the Government believed there were good reasons for sending those young men 20,000 kilometres from home to risk their lives in war. The rationale was twofold: first, to support the mother country, a conviction held by most Australians at the time; and, second, to make a deposit on service in kind should the remote, sparsely populated, and culturally isolated dominion in the South Pacific ever need military help itself.

1 T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Jonathon Cape, London, 1935, p 618. 2 The Half Flight arrived in Mesopotamia in May 1915 and by November had all but been wiped

out. It was succeeded by a full squadron, No 1 Squadron, which arrived in Egypt in April 1916. The squadrons in France were Nos 2, 3 and 4, all of which started fighting on the Western Front in late 1917. The training squadrons in England were Nos 5, 6, 7 and 8.


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The fact is that alliances have been used as a legitimate means of pursuing national security interests for thousands of years. And they have been joined for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from national survival, such as the partnership formed between the otherwise incompatible Athenians and Spartans during the Persian invasion of Greece in the early 5th Century BC; through to extreme political opportunism, such as the non-aggression pact concluded by the ideologically implacably opposed Soviet Union and Germany in August 1939. Australia has been party to numerous security alliances (none of which happily could be remotely compared to the second example cited above), two of which have been of superseding importance. Before World War II there was the relationship with the United Kingdom, based on ties of colonisation and immigration; and since 1951 there has been the formal security agreement with the United States known as the ANZUS Treaty.3 In each of those alliances, air power has frequently been used as a singularly useful means of paying a deposit on the insurance premiums for Australia’s security interests. Thus, while Ross Smith’s presence in Palestine to provide control of the air overhead Lawrence’s forces might have been justified in the first instance by the ties of Anglo-Australian kinship, it was also a prototype of the way in which Australian air power has often been used in an indirect sense in the pursuit of national security. The extent to which the same rationale can fully explain the involvement of the AFC’s successor from 1921 onwards, the Royal Australian Air Force, in other expeditionary wars might be debated. In particular, the reasons for Australia’s participation in a series of conflicts against communist insurgents in the Malayan Emergency (1948–60), Korea (1950–53) and Vietnam (1962–75) can be open to interpretation. On the one hand, there was a widely held view in the West at the time that communism was a monolithic international movement that threatened free will everywhere, and which had to be confronted and beaten on its home ground. It was therefore legitimate, so this reasoning continued, for Australia to deploy its air power, among other resources, to meet those dangers at their source. In other words, the threat was immediate and the RAAF’s contribution was, in effect, to the direct defence of the nation. An analogy might be drawn with the threat currently posed by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda: while their hostile activities thus far have been perpetrated overseas, they represent a direct danger to Australians and their values in a broad sense and, so this logic goes, must be confronted and defeated wherever they reside. An alternative point of view might argue that the loss of none of Malaya, South Korea or South Vietnam would have caused a direct threat to Australia, and that the political reasoning behind the Air Force’s involvement in all three wars was similar to that behind the Half Flight’s deployment to the Middle East in 1915. Thus, in Malaya the insurance premium was being paid to the United Kingdom, and in Korea and Vietnam to the United States. In other words, air power was making an indirect contribution to Australian security. No 77 (Fighter) Squadron’s experience in Korea provides the most instructive case study from those three anti-communist wars. The Squadron had been within days of 3 The Australia, New Zealand and United States (ANZUS) Treaty was signed in 1951. New

Zealand was effectively excluded from the agreement in 1986 when its Government formally adopted an anti-nuclear policy, which was regarded as unacceptable by the United States.

Air Power and the Defence of Australia

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returning to Australia after four years in Japan with the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces when on 25 June 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea. Quickly diverted to the United Nations-endorsed war against the communists, in the early months the Australian squadron made a contribution out of all proportion to its modest size, partly because of its pilots’ expertise in air-to-ground operations, and partly because its Mustang aircraft were initially more suited to the prevailing conditions than were the Americans’ predominantly jet fighter/ground-attack aircraft. United Nations (UN) ground forces came under intense pressure in the early weeks of the war as the North Koreans pushed aggressively southwards. By August, the UN army had fallen back almost to the southern tip of the Korean peninsula and had established its final defensive barrier behind the Naktong River, only 150 kilometres from the town of Pusan. One more successful thrust by the communists would have driven the UN out of Korea and changed the political face of North Asia. In the event the ‘Pusan perimeter’ held and became famous as the line where the communists were stopped. No 77 Squadron made a notable contribution to the victory. RAAF pilots maintained a punishing routine as the battle to hold the southern tip of the peninsula hung in the balance. Four flights each of four Mustangs would make a pre-dawn take-off from Iwakuni in Japan and then fly up to six combat missions in Korea. Refuelling and rearming between sorties was carried out at Taegu (known as ‘K2’ in the American code system), a forward airstrip just inside the Pusan perimeter. At the end of the day the squadron returned to Iwakuni, where it was not uncommon for ground staff to work all night repairing battle-damaged aircraft. The Australians’ skill in air-to-ground weapons application was crucial as they attacked enemy troop concentrations, armour, and motor vehicles with bombs, rockets, guns and napalm, on occasions rolling onto their targets almost as soon as they had taken-off from the short pierced-steel-planking runway at Taegu. But notwithstanding No 77 Squadron’s fine combat achievements in Korea, the RAAF’s greatest contribution to Australian security was political, and came during a meeting in the White House three months after the war started. Since the end of World War II, successive Australian Governments had been working assiduously to convince the United States to sign a ‘Pacific pact’, convinced that the proposed treaty was critical to national security. The American response, however, had been cautious, as Washington did not consider the matter a priority; furthermore, the pact clearly was aimed against Japan, a country the United States wanted to rebuild as a bulwark against communism. No 77 Squadron’s early success in Korea proved to be the key to overcoming American diffidence. Australian Minister for External Affairs, Sir Percy Spender, visited Washington in September 1950, where he was received by President Harry S. Truman. Only days before, United States Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk had expressed his ‘warmest thanks and admiration’ to Australian officials for ‘the work of the RAAF over Korea’, about which he was receiving ‘day after day most excellent reports’; while in addition to that official recognition, No 77 Squadron had made a favourable


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impression on American public opinion.4 According to Australia’s official historian for the Korean War, Robert O’Neill, ‘the high proficiency shown by No 77 Squadron’ was the main reason for the excellent reputation enjoyed by Australia in Washington. President Truman reflected that goodwill. Spender was supposed to make only a brief formal call but with the President’s encouragement took the opportunity to raise the subject of the proposed Pacific pact. O’Neill concluded that ‘there can be no doubt’ that the Truman/Spender meeting was the critical event leading to the ANZUS Treaty, which since 1951 has been and remains the centrepiece of Australian foreign and defence policy. In that context, there can be few if any more compelling examples of the potential of indirect influence on behalf of our national security posture than No 77 Squadron’s achievements in Korea. The pursuit of direct and/or indirect effects represents one of the major themes associated with the employment of air power in the defence of Australia. A second theme can be found in a dynamic that generates a constant tension in war, namely, the clash between the offence and the defence. It is axiomatic that a high quality air power will find the correct balance in that tension. In World War I the war in the air was primarily defensive, the daily struggle for control overhead the Western Front providing the classic example. Nevertheless, there was a number of stunning applications of offensive air action, none more so than the victory won in a single day by a handful of AFC pilots in Palestine in September 1918, as part of a campaign planned by the commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General Sir Edmund Allenby, to achieve the final overthrow of the Turks.5 Having first established air supremacy, Allied airmen attacked the enemy furiously, causing terrible destruction. During one engagement, 10 aircraft from the AFC’s No 1 Squadron slaughtered a trapped force of 3000 troops, 600 camels and 300 horses, repeatedly bombing and strafing terrified men and animals. The so-called ‘Battle of Armageddon’ ultimately resulted in the destruction of three Turkish armies and the capture of Damascus, events which precipitated an armistice on 31 October 1918. In the wake of the extraordinary series of conflicts fought in the Middle East and the Balkans between 1991 and 2003, and which at the theatre level could be broadly characterised as a clash between advanced Western aerospace power and legacy-system World War II-era armies, one of the more vigorous professional discussions has centred on the question of how, or even if, air power can kill an army.6 No 1 Squadron’s stunning victory 85 years ago would seem to have some contemporary resonance. The fundamental importance of striking the right balance between defending and attacking has never been more obvious than during World War II, which presented the greatest threat Australia has ever faced, and which unquestionably involved the

4 Robert O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War 1950–53, Volume 1, Strategy and Diplomacy,

Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1981, pp 111, 316, 403.

5 For a detailed account of the battle see John Mordike, ‘General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Joint Operations in Palestine, 1917–18’, in Keith Brent (ed), A Chapter of Endless Possibilities: The Birth of Australian Military Aviation, RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra, 2002.

6 See for example William F. Andrews, Airpower Against an Army, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, 1998.


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immediate and direct defence of the homeland. For the first and only time in our history, both the security of the Australian mainland and the future of our way of life were seriously at risk. The extreme nature of that risk was due in part to 20 years of culpable neglect by a series of governments which lacked the vision and the fortitude to build a powerful air force, which by the early 1930s clearly was the logical way to defend an island continent against air and sea strikes, and ultimately against invasion.7 Instead, those governments avoided responsibility by placing their hopes—and they were nothing more than that—in the ill-conceived Singapore strategy, under which, should Australia be threatened, the Royal Navy would materialise over the horizon and come to our rescue. When in 1941–42 that threat became reality, and the Royal Navy was understandably preoccupied with the war in Europe, Australia was left exposed and vulnerable. There is no need here to revisit in detail the best-known battles from the Pacific War, in which the RAAF fought alongside the Australian Army and Navy, and American and other Allied forces, to halt and eventually to defeat Japanese aggression. Actions such as those fought by No 75 Squadron at Port Moresby in March/April 1942; Nos 75, 76 and 32 Squadrons at Milne Bay in August/September 1942; and Nos 11, 22, 30 and 100 Squadrons at Bismarck Sea in March 1943 were all vital in halting Japan’s southwards charge, noting that the first two were won with little American involvement. But for the purposes of this paper, more can be learned about the nature of Australian air power by examining the way in which the RAAF evolved during the war, noting in particular the balance sought between the offence and the defence. When the war in Europe started the RAAF consisted of some 3500 men and 250 obsolescent aircraft, organised into a handful of squadrons whose composition revealed little about air power doctrine—that is, precisely what they were intended to do or were capable of doing was not entirely clear. By the end of the war the RAAF had grown to 53 flying squadrons in the South-West Pacific and 17 in Europe, and was operating the most advanced aircraft types. The force structure now revealed a great deal about intention and capability. Early wartime planning had envisaged a Home Defence Air Force—that is, an air force based in the Australian region, whose units would be additional to those formed to fight in England through the Empire Air Training Scheme—of 19 squadrons. The most noteworthy feature of the 19-squadron plan was its emphasis on flexibility, with general-purpose aircraft favoured over specialised types because of their alleged ability to perform several roles, especially reconnaissance, convoy escort and bombing. In June 1940, the plan was expanded to 32 squadrons, with priority again going to general-purpose aircraft. Key factors in the proposed structure were timing and the strategic outlook. The Battle of Britain, which was to convince even the most reactionary Generals and 7 Trials conducted by the Royal Navy from 1926 onwards demonstrated the effectiveness of aircraft

attacks on ships, with one exercise in 1935 concluding that ‘Aeroplanes are almost certain to find and locate a hostile fleet … [and] would probably inflict heavy losses’. Alan Stephens, Power plus Attitude: Ideas, Strategy and Doctrine in the Royal Australian Air Force 1921–1991, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1992, pp 35–6.


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Admirals of the importance of air defence, had yet to be fought. Furthermore, while developments in the Pacific were ominous, war did not seem imminent; and even if it did occur, the expectation was that the Royal Navy would save the day. An air force which would conduct support operations within that framework seemed reasonable. Should it become necessary for the RAAF to establish control of the air it would do so offensively by destroying the enemy’s air power on the ground, using its so-called general-purpose bombers. That was the theory, anyway. The unforgiving reality of war in Australia’s backyard shattered that ill-informed and complacent mindset. On 12 December 1941, only four days after the Japanese landing at Kota Bharu in north-east Malaya, the Australian War Cabinet approved the expansion of the RAAF to 60 squadrons, a figure which eight weeks later was again revised upwards, this time to 73.8 The second increase was based on the belief that Japan’s advance southwards would continue and would culminate in an attempt to invade Australia, a judgment which still prevailed at the end of 1942. The 73-squadron plan differed fundamentally from its predecessors for the compelling reason that it had become essential to transform the RAAF into an anti-invasion force. Three operational considerations underpinned the plan. First, the RAAF had to be capable of establishing a reconnaissance screen in the air-sea gap to Australia’s north. Second, that screen had to be backed up by strike forces, a proportion of which would be deployed forward in the islands and the remainder held back in reserve. Finally, each of the RAAF’s mainland area commands had to have its own balanced force, which would be capable of delaying any attempted invasion until reinforcements arrived. Translated into capabilities, that assessment saw priority given to air defence, strike, and surveillance and reconnaissance. The most noteworthy aspect of the new order of battle was the build-up of 24 specialist fighter squadrons, a feature which represented a marked turnaround from the prewar belief that control of the air would be won by bombers. Clearly, the lessons from the Battle of Britain, Malaya and Singapore had been learnt, in each instance the fight to control the air having been primarily defensive. The proposed 27 squadrons of bombers consisted mainly of light and medium general-purpose/reconnaissance aircraft, but also included four heavy squadrons which, it was envisaged, would assume an increasingly prominent role as the Allies moved onto the offensive. The plan to expand the RAAF in the South-West Pacific was qualified by its dependence on the availability of people, aircraft and ancillary equipment. In the event, in September 1943, staffing constraints forced the RAAF to lower its sights to 60 squadrons, to be in place by the end of 1944; later still, as the war moved further north and Japanese resistance began to crumble, the target was cut back to 53, which was the number in service in the theatre at the end of the war. The balance between the offence and the defence reflected in the 73-squadron plan was, however, retained.

8 War Cabinet Minutes 1579, 12-12-1941; and 1900, 18-2-1942, RAAF Historical Records Section,

Canberra.


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By the end of 1943, the RAAF had established air supremacy over the Australian continent in its own right. This was an exceptional achievement, built on an excellent training system, an extensive and highly effective air defence control and reporting organisation, and a robust logistics network of airfields, maintenance facilities, and other support services. Six months later, the RAAF and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) had won air supremacy from Japan’s Navy and Army air forces across the entire South-West Pacific Area. Losses to ground-based anti-aircraft fire could still be distressing but the Allies were to all intents and purposes unchallenged in the skies. Consequently, air interdiction of Japan’s lines of communications and base camps imposed an increasingly deadly grip on enemy soldiers’ ability to survive, let alone to fight. It was, however, a different story for the most overtly offensive air power role, strategic bombing. Until USAAF B-29 bombers came within range of the Japanese home islands at the end of 1944 and started their apocalyptic raids on the cities and factories, culminating in the atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, there were few strikes that could be categorised as strategic, not least because of the small number of suitable targets outside Japan. The contrast with the bombing campaign in Europe could not have been greater, for it was in that theatre that Australian air power made what remains today its single greatest contribution to national defence. Even before Japan launched the series of attacks on 7/8 December 1941 that precipitated the war in the Pacific and drew the United States into the broader conflict, American and British officials had secretly agreed that, in the event of such an occurrence, their grand strategy would be to beat Hitler first—the judgment being that the Nazis represented a greater threat to civilised states than did the Japanese.9 The assessment of the superseding significance of the bomber offensive against Germany is made within that context. For 5½ years some 13,000 RAAF aircrew, comprising about 10 per cent of all Royal Air Force Bomber Command crews, fought in the desperate battles in the night skies over Germany. Those men amounted to about two per cent of all Australians who enlisted in World War II but accounted for some 20 per cent of all deaths in combat. In terms of casualties, theirs was the most savage and most dangerous sustained campaign fought by any Australians during World War II. No single activity from World War II has been attended by more controversy and misinformation than the bomber offensive, yet no single activity undertaken by the Allies contributed more to Germany’s defeat. By 1945, the Allied airmen who won that epic campaign had delivered a decisive blow. It was the men of Bomber Command who alone opened a second front in Germany, four years before D-Day; and it was the men of Bomber Command who alone finally brought the German war economy to its knees.10 As the Nazis’ Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer, later

9 John Robertson, Australia at War 1939–1945, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1981, pp 64, 74. 10 For details of the bomber offensive’s effect on Germany, see Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won,

Jonathon Cape, London, 1995, pp 130–33.


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lamented, Bomber Command’s victory represented ‘the greatest lost battle on the German side’.11 Against that background, and within the context of the Allies’ grand strategy, it can reasonably be argued that Bomber Command’s RAAF airmen made the most significant contribution of any Australians to the defeat of Germany; and thus to ultimate victory and, therefore, to the direct defence of Australia. A final observation regarding the place of offensive capabilities within air power must be made. Speaking 10 years after the end of World War II, the RAAF’s then Chief of the Air Staff, the admirable RAF officer Sir Donald Hardman, stated that ‘An air force without bombers isn’t an air force’.12 Hardman was right in the context of World War II, he was right in relation to the RAAF at the time, and he remains right today. Hardman undoubtedly would have appreciated the contribution made to Australian security by the most significant weapons system in Australian air power history, the F-111 bomber. When the F-111 arrived in-country in 1973, it gave Australia for the first time a genuine, independent strategic strike capability. In the ensuing three decades, the F-111, more than any other weapons system, has underwritten the notion of defence self-reliance and the strategy of controlling the air-sea gap that surrounds our island continent.13 The deterrent effect it has generated is unrivalled in Australian military history. World War II changed the RAAF in every conceivable way: warfighting competence, quality, training, strategy, tactics, personnel management, logistics and doctrine. Precisely how the radically different postwar Air Force was perceived by the Government and, indeed, by its own hierarchy, was ultimately reflected in the force structure. In July 1947 a program known as Plan ‘D’ was formally endorsed as the blueprint for the development of postwar Australian air power. Plan ‘D’ was preceded by a foreword by Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal George Jones, which defined Australia’s strategic setting. It was the RAAF’s assessment, the CAS wrote, that notwithstanding the development of devastating weapons during World War II, any future conflict was likely to be a long, drawn out struggle in which all the resources of the nations involved would be used.14 Strategic circumstances indicated that if Australian forces became engaged, the most probable locations would be the mainland of Asia or the Middle East. The Australian armed services would not, however, be used in those or other theatres until national security against invasion or raids was assured, a role which would be the defence force’s prime responsibility. Jones discussed the size and composition of the RAAF in relation to the other two Services and suggested that Australia’s misfortunes in the early years of World War II were attributable primarily to the paucity of air power, arguing that in particular Allied army and navy commanders (including Australians) had been slow to appreciate that control of the air was now a prerequisite for victory in any form of warfare. Because of that failing, Allied forces had been unbalanced; and as a 11 Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Phoenix Press, London, 2000, pp 339–40. 12 Quoted in Stephens, Power plus Attitude, p 150. 13 See pp 16–17 below for further discussion on the air-sea gap. 14 Air Board Agendum 8091, 16-10-47, RAAF Historical Records Section.


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consequence, when manpower-intensive land and sea actions which lacked protection from air attack had been mounted in the early months of the war, a succession of defeats had followed. ‘It is universally accepted’, the CAS asserted, ‘that air superiority is the first requirement for success, and this is accepted by the other services’.15 Air Vice-Marshal Jones then emphasised some of the characteristics of air power, especially its potential to apply pressure directly against an enemy’s ‘vital centres’ such as production, infrastructure and morale. In future, he continued, it would be essential to use offensive air power against those kinds of targets before any land operations were started; indeed, under some circumstances, an air attack might be decisive and the army would only have to act as an occupation force. Those kinds of possibilities were likely to be reinforced by the further development of air-released weapons, including rockets. Research and development accordingly would be an integral component of any modern air force. All of those factors, Jones stated, had been taken into consideration during the development of Plan ‘D’.16 Five fundamental objectives for the RAAF’s development were listed.17 First and most important, a Permanent Air Force consisting of 16 operational squadrons trained in the techniques of modern warfare and capable of rapid expansion in an emergency was to be established and maintained. That operational force would be supported by training and maintenance organisations, including Citizen Force and Reserve personnel. The operational force, training organisation and maintenance services would all be dependent to some extent on a modern aircraft industry, which again had to be capable of quick growth. Finally, a system of air bases to enable strategic deployment and tactical operations was essential. An Air Force comprising four main components would meet those objectives.18 The main operational organisation was to be a Mobile Task Force, consisting of Permanent Air Force fighter, heavy bomber and transport wings, a tactical reconnaissance squadron, and supporting units. The Mobile Task Force was to be capable of rapid deployment to ‘any part of the British Commonwealth which may be threatened’, while RAAF planners also envisaged supporting the activities of the Security Council of the United Nations Organisation. In the event of a major defence emergency in Australia or its immediate region, the Task Force would be rapidly deployed from its home bases on the east coast.19 The concept of the Mobile Task Force exploited the inherent ability of an air force to move rapidly to trouble spots; and its similarity to the ‘expeditionary’ disposition of today’s RAAF is unmistakable. Underpinning the mobile force would be a Home Defence Force responsible for the air defence of Australia, and which would consist of Area and Command Headquarters, fighter and reconnaissance squadrons, and airfield construction, telecommunications, photographic and hospital units. The Mobile Task Force and the Home Defence Force were to be supported by a training organisation established to ‘the highest possible standards’ and a maintenance organisation. Plan ‘D’ also 15 ibid. 16 Air Board Agendum 8091, 10-10-47 to 10-11-50, RAAF Historical Records Section. 17 Air Board Agendum 8886, 5-5-49, RAAF Historical Records Section. 18 Air Board Agendum 7314, 5-9-46, RAAF Historical Records Section. 19 Air Board Agendum 6799, 16-10-45, RAAF Historical Records Section.


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stressed the RAAF’s responsibilities to the Army and Navy, especially with regard to reconnaissance and air transport, and the need to support the local aircraft industry. Plan ‘D’s general strategic outlook and 16-squadron structure has informed the RAAF’s essential posture for the past 58 years. It presented a logical basis for the acquisition of capabilities that can be used to promote Australia’s interests both directly and indirectly; and it established a balance between the offence and the defence that has proven both appropriate and effective. For more than half a century now the RAAF’s force structure has provided the two central capabilities of an advanced air power and, increasingly, of the Western way of war; namely, the abilities to secure control of the air, and to mount punishing, long-range, stand-off precision strikes. Each of those capabilities has been derived from manned aircraft supported by technical, logistical, personnel, and research and development expertise. It is an achievement very few nations can match. The third and final thread in this paper concerns defence strategy, a subtitle for which might be ‘vision’. The issue is one of ideas, and of turning ideas into practice. Here, some of the RAAF’s work has been exceptional, if not always fully acknowledged. Two topics are especially instructive: airfields and national security policy. At the end of World War II the RAAF controlled 317 mainland and regional airfields, most of which had to be rapidly disposed of. While the handful of mainland bases that was retained became the focus of the RAAF’s peacetime activities, geography and history indicated that if the RAAF went to war again it would not be from them, but rather from a number of so-called strategic airfields in the north and overseas. The RAAF chose those strategic airfields because of their relationship to the two axes along which the Japanese advance on Australia had been made, the first via the Malay Peninsula and the second through New Guinea. Postwar planning assumed that any communist threat would follow the same paths. The longstanding British presence in Malaya and Singapore meant that facilities on the Malay Peninsula were generally good, but there was concern over access to South-East Asia from Australia. If for some reason the new state of Indonesia (which achieved independence in 1949) withdrew overflight rights, aircraft might be prevented from transiting to points north and west. The logical option was to develop the RAF airstrip on the Cocos Islands. Consequently, the RAAF’s No 2 Airfield Construction Squadron arrived at Cocos in December 1951 and by July the following year had completed a 2500 metre-long runway, taxiways, hardstanding, navigation aids, lighting and refuelling facilities. It was also No 2 Airfield Construction Squadron which in August 1955 started work on what was to be the RAAF’s biggest overseas engineering job, the redevelopment of the former RAF base at Butterworth on the north-west coast of Malaya. By the time Butterworth officially became an RAAF base three years later it could house three front-line squadrons and their supporting units, as well as substantial numbers of transient aircraft. Butterworth was to be a key link in Australia’s strategy of forward defence for three decades. Momote, Rabaul and Port Moresby were intended to be the main forward bastions along the second axis of approach to Australia, through New Guinea. In the event,


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while some work was completed at each site, their significance diminished following the cease-fire in Korea. Simultaneously, RAAF planners began to look seriously at northern Australia. Darwin was the obvious start point. During most of the RAAF’s peacetime years, there has not been a flying squadron stationed at Darwin—it has been as a transit and exercise post that the airfield has earned its keep. Yet Darwin, arguably, is the most important base for the air defence of Australia, its location at the northern gateway making it not only the first port of call but also the link between the mainland and overseas airfields. Its significance was never more apparent than on 19 February 1942 when Japanese air raids exposed Australia’s vulnerability. Immediately after the war, Darwin resumed its role as a transit post and a decade passed before work began to transform it into a genuine strategic facility. The impetus came from Air Marshal J.P.J. McCauley, who as CAS wanted Darwin to become the ‘main Australian base for war’, both for operations on the mainland and deployments to South-East Asia.20 Under a program, which took almost 10 years, No 5 Airfield Construction Squadron eventually completed a system of runways, taxiways, hardstanding, operational readiness platforms and arming areas that could accept the most advanced aircraft. New technical and domestic buildings allowed up to 1500 people to deploy to Darwin. Still that did not meet the RAAF’s definition of a strategic facility. Air Force commanders wanted the flexibility to divert forces and avoid overcrowding, two deficiencies which had contributed to the disaster of February 1942. Furthermore, in a major war, the capacity of a single airfield might not be adequate. Only a second airfield could provide the answer. McCauley was succeeded as CAS in March 1957 by Air Marshal F.R.W. Scherger. More than anyone else Scherger appreciated the need for a system of modern, flexible, robust bases in the north, for in February 1942, as a Group Captain, he had been in command at Darwin. The experience had been salutary in the extreme, and from then on Scherger was committed to establishing a second major base in the area. His appointment as CAS gave him the authority to pursue the cause, while his promotion in May 1961 to Air Chief Marshal and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee enabled him to sustain the pressure at the highest levels for an unusually long period. Scherger began lobbying for a second airfield in the Darwin area in 1959 and, even before receiving approval, instructed No 5 Airfield Construction Squadron to start stockpiling materials for the job.21 In May 1963 the former wartime airfield at Tindal was selected. Eleven kilometres south of Katherine and 300 kilometres from Darwin, Tindal was sufficiently far inland to make enemy incursions difficult and reduce the worst effects of the tropical cyclones, which often lashed the coast, while being sufficiently close to Darwin to establish a mutually reinforcing connection. 20 Transcript of interview with Air Marshal Sir John McCauley, Record No TRC 121/48, National

Library of Australia; Air Board Agendum 12902, 24-3-1961, RAAF Historical Records Section; and Works for RAAF Darwin, August 1961, CRS A4940, C3385, National Archives Australia.

21 Air Board Agenda 12814, 10-7-1959; 12930, 8-10-1962; and 12997, 27-5-1963, RAAF Historical Records Section.


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Scherger’s concept for Tindal was to establish an ‘Unmanned Operational Base’, later known as a ‘bare base’. Permanent facilities would be kept to a minimum and would consist of high quality movement surfaces, supported only by essential infrastructure such as electricity and water. There would be almost no buildings. In times of defence emergencies or exercises, all other facilities and services would arrive by air or truck. The concept was ideally suited to a small air force with a vast, largely under-populated and under-serviced continent to defend. Tindal was to provide the model for three more bare base airfields built across the north of Australia in the following 30 years: the first at Learmonth on the Exmouth Gulf, 1100 kilometres north of Perth; the second at Derby, about halfway between Learmonth and Darwin; and the third near Weipa on Cape York Peninsula. Learmonth was a particularly interesting case, as government support rested in part on the proposed base’s relative proximity to Indonesia. As the then CAS, Air Marshal Sir Valston Hancock, told Minister for Air David Fairbairn in 1969, Learmonth would be 720 kilometres closer than Darwin to Java. Once the F-111 bombers which were on order came into service, Hancock continued, Learmonth would assume great importance as a forward base ‘for mounting operations against Indonesia’s vital centres’.22 While improved relations with Indonesia and delays in the arrival of the F-111s saw the project suspended for some time, No 5 Airfield Construction Squadron eventually started heavy work in 1971 and had finished the job by 1973. The bare base near Derby was opened in June 1988 by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who named it Curtin after his World War II predecessor; while the last, on Cape York, was opened in August 1998 by Prime Minister John Howard. Conceived by the RAAF and sustained against occasional government and inter-Service opposition, the network of strategic airfields across Australia’s vast northern reaches represents one of the Air Force’s great post-World War II achievements. Clearly, the facilities are important in themselves but the real point here is the strategic vision they symbolise. It is difficult to imagine any plan for the conventional defence of Australia which would not rely fundamentally on one or all of those bases. It was fitting that the base on Cape York was named RAAF Scherger; should another ever be built, it would be equally fitting if it were named after McCauley. The national defence concept of operations is the second ‘visionary’ topic that warrants comment in relation to Australian air power. Again, it can be reasonably argued that, as was the case with strategic airfields, the RAAF was ahead of its time, in this instance some 80 years. In 1987, the Defence White Paper, The Defence of Australia 1987, for the first time in Australian history formally defined the imperative to control the air-sea gap that surrounds our island continent as the key to any national military strategy.23 As it happens, the RAAF had been promoting precisely that concept since 1925 when the first Chief of the Air Staff, then Air Commodore Richard Williams, had presented the 22 Development of Learmonth, 10-6-1969, CRS A7939/1, L1, National Archives Australia; and Air

Board Submission 11/66, 16-2-1966, RAAF Historical Records Section. 23 Department of Defence, Policy Information Paper, The Defence of Australia 1987, Australian

Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1987.


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Government with a detailed and visionary plan for national defence based on precisely that premise. There was possibly an element of parochialism in Williams’s plan, which by definition favoured the development of air capabilities, especially control of the air, reconnaissance and strike, at the expense of land and sea capabilities. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Williams’s judgment was validated by history. As Taranto, Pearl Harbor, the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, Coral Sea, Midway, Bismarck Sea, and scores of other actions in World War II were to demonstrate conclusively, by the 1930s ships without air cover had become dangerously vulnerable.24 Had Australian politicians listened to Williams in 1925 they might not have been so fearful of the threat of a Japanese invasion in 1942–43. For all that, it still took another 40 years after World War II for The Defence of Australia 1987 and its strategy of controlling the air-sea gap to emerge from the mixture of learned helplessness and self-interest which for too long characterised Australian strategic planning. Notwithstanding the high profile of the current international war against terrorism, official policy continues to identify the protection of sovereign territory as a principal defence task; and the execution of that task continues to be based on controlling the air and sea approaches that constitute Australia’s natural defensive barrier.25 Note the emphasis on control. Too many contemporary analysts interpret the concept of defending Australia simplistically by focusing on the extreme end of the threat spectrum, namely, an armed invasion, a possibility that today is so remote as to be almost incredible. Controlling or managing activities in the air-sea gap is, however, an entirely different proposition—one that implies knowing what is going on, retaining access to the gap, and being able to deal with a range of contingencies which might include people smuggling, piracy, peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, terrorism and, in the extreme, theatre-level war. Numerous capabilities are needed to implement the strategy but none is more important than control of the air and strike, with their associated deterrent effect. For over 60 years now—that is, since World War II—control of the air has underpinned Western military operations across the threat spectrum. Indeed, supremacy in the skies has been, and remains, the West’s greatest asymmetric

24 On 11 November 1940 obsolescent carrier-based Royal Navy torpedo-bombers sunk one Italian

battleship and badly damaged two others and two cruisers in the port of Taranto; on 7 December 1941 carrier-based Japanese aircraft devastated the USN fleet in Pearl Harbor; on 10 December 1941 land-based Japanese bombers sunk the British capital ships HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse; the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June 1942 saw aircraft carriers supplant battleships as the premier naval weapon; and in the Bismarck Sea in March 1943 a combined force of land-based RAAF/USAAF aircraft sunk 12 of 16 Japanese ships en route from Rabaul to Lae.

25 Department of Defence, Defence White Paper, Defence Review 2000: Our Future Defence Force, Defence Publishing Service, Canberra, 2000, p 30, states that ‘Australia’s most important long-term strategic objective is to be able to defend our territory from direct military attack’. Writing in an update to that policy, titled Australia’s National Security: A Defence Update 2003, Defence Minister Robert Hill stated that ‘the principles set out in the [2000] Defence White Paper remain sound’ (p 5).


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advantage. More than any other single capability, air dominance has been the mechanism that has enabled the West to exploit its immense technological superiority in all three environments. That superiority has been expressed as a powerful combination of mobility, speed and freedom of action, complemented when necessary by the precise application of lethal force and the ability to fight at a distance. Successful joint military operations, ranging from the rescue of hostages to the destruction of terrorists and to the overthrow of dictators, have all relied in the first instance on an unimpeded ability to exploit aerospace capabilities. The creation of a credible deterrent effect is a direct outcome of that approach to national security. The ADF’s contribution to the liberation of East Timor provides an informative case study. Despite the so-called ‘low intensity’ nature of the operation, there were periods, especially during the initial deployment of naval-borne forces, when the ADF was highly vulnerable to potentially catastrophic air-launched missile attacks had the Indonesian Defence Force succumbed to extremist elements. Precisely how the ADF secured control of the air in the area of operations has not been officially revealed, but the reported deployment of F-111s to Tindal and the placing of F/A-18s on high alert presumably generated a deterrent effect that did not go unnoticed. A neat coincidence of history allows this presentation to end where it began, geographically at least, in yesterday’s Mesopotamia and today’s Iraq. The deployment in early 2003 of a squadron of RAAF F/A-18s to conduct control of the air and precision strike operations against Saddam Hussein’s regime mirrored the experience of the AFC’s Half Flight in 1915. The passing of 88 years had of course brought fundamental changes to the way in which the historically-linked but technologically-separated groups were able to meet their responsibilities. Whereas the men of the AFC took months to get from one side of the world to the other and become operational, the men and women of today’s RAAF were controlling Australia’s air-sea gap one week and fighting terrorism in Iraq the next. Additionally, the flexibility of purpose needed to accommodate shifts in national security priorities, which was apparent in the recent deployment, suggests that the capabilities required both to defend Australia and to support expeditionary operations may not be as different as some commentators like to claim, at least in the case of air power. The Mesopotamia–Iraq linkage also again raises the matter of direct and indirect contributions to national security, and prompts the observation that perhaps in today’s global village the distinction has become blurred. Fighting terrorism in Iraq (or in Afghanistan or anywhere else) may be just as important to national security as preparing to defend Australia’s borders. In summary, through nine decades, two world wars, numerous theatre-level wars and many other conflicts and hazardous operations, air power has made a powerful and sophisticated contribution to the defence of Australia. It has brought exceptional success at the international political level, directly and indirectly; it has struck the proper balance between the offence and the defence, in both war and peace; and it has made a contribution to the determination of national defence policy that has been unique in its vision and readiness to accept responsibility. Presently, it best represents the capabilities that underwrite the Western way of war. The first century of Australian air power has been a remarkable story.

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AIR POWER AND SENSIBILITY: SOME ASPECTS OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF AIR POWER 1903–2003

PROFESSOR JOHN MCCARTHY

Following Alan Stephens is never easy. Even more so when the next speaker is supposed to comment on ‘Air Power Theory: Wright Brothers to Afghanistan’. In venues like this and in print, Alan has covered the important aspects of air power theory and practice in both the local and international context. So, perhaps it might be better to try and do something a little different. The difference in this paper involves asking the question: why has the exercise and the control of air power so often been an emotional and controversial issue? You could well argue that the theory and application of air power has led to more acrimony and controversy than any previous weapon system. The introduction of the crossbow, firing a shaft which could penetrate knightly armour, might run it second. There was an attempt to obtain a papal ban on the crossbow. Knights only fought knights—now knights could be killed on the battlefield by commoners. The whole social order was threatened. In turn, the introduction of air power theory threatened to upset the conventional mode of warfare and the conventional means of waging it. It still goes on. Consider the debate that is emerging concerning the ethics of attacking a target with stand-off weapons or from a height, which renders the attacker utterly safe from reprisal. There is debate concerning the ethics of what amounts to assassination of political opponents using air power coupled with state of the art positional technology. You might ask: what has that to do with the Australian military experience? Since 1885 until very recently though, the Australian military experience has been closely aligned with that of Britain. Now, of course, it is almost entirely aligned with that of the United States. Previously Point Cook trained pilots were offered short service commissions in the RAF. Don Bennett, an Air Vice-Marshal at 32 leading the Pathfinders, was one. Some 23 Australians fought in the Battle of Britain. The Empire Air Training Scheme provided 27,387 Australian aircrew, who were largely strung out through the RAF order of battle. Australia had no part in framing the theory or dictating the practice of Royal Air Force policy which employed them. Nearly 6000 died, mainly from Bomber Command in Europe alone. It is perhaps difficult, therefore, to isolate the Royal Australian Air Force from the emotion and controversy that the theoretical and practical application of air power can generate. Other speakers will elaborate on such issues, it is mentioned here only in passing. So, with due acknowledgement to the peerless Jane Austen, ‘Air Power and Sensibility: Some Aspects of the Theory and Practice of Air Power 1903–2003’. Before the Wright brothers made that historic Kitty Hawk flight, the possibility of war being conducted from the air already possessed an imbedded emotional and controversial component. In 1842, the English poet, Alfred Tennyson, published a strange poem, Locksley Hall. One stanza reads:


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For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be: Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.1

Perhaps, as Giulio Douhet argued, ‘poetry should be left to the poets’. By September 1941, however, the Luftwaffe had killed some 30,000 British civilians, many more than those Britons killed who wore uniform. One hundred years after Tennyson and in 1942 on the night of 30–31 May, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris the newly appointed Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Bomber Command despatched nearly a thousand aircraft to Cologne: 469 people were killed and 5027 injured, and 13,010 ‘dwelling units’, mainly flats or apartments, were destroyed. This civilian death toll inflicted from the air by Bomber Command was the highest for any attack to that date.2 More was to follow: the raid on Hamburg on the night of 27–28 July 1943 resulted in a firestorm, which burnt out an entire residential area and killed some 40,000 people; and the attack on Dresden on the night of 13–14 February 1945 created a similar firestorm during which perhaps more than 50,000 people were killed. And this was the European war. Perhaps not so easily recalled is General Curtis Le May’s campaign against Japanese cities in 1945. Fire raids on Tokyo in March 1945 killed 83,793 civilians, wounded 40,918 and made over a million homeless. The conventional bombing campaign against Japan accounted for a minimum figure of perhaps 250,000 deaths.3 There rained a ghastly dew indeed, even without the atomic attacks. The point being made here is that in the 19th Century, now long forgotten writers explored the theme of successful coercive air power. In part, predictions came to pass. In the 19th Century though, it often took only one fictional person in a fictional flying machine to bring about the capitulation of a large and powerful state. It was the beginning perhaps of the concept, still very much with us today, that air power was the decisive weapons system; that air power was not only necessary but sufficient for victory.4 H.G. Wells, in The War in the Air published in 1908, argued thus. Wells predicted a Western civilisation destroyed by fleets of aircraft against which there was no defence. For such science fiction writers, coercion by air power was a relatively simple matter. To be learnt was the vast difference which existed between theory and practice. To be comprehended by air power proponents was the reality of the Clausewitzian dictum: in war everything is very simple but the simplest thing is very difficult. Emotion? In 1909, the English Channel, a distance of some 21 miles between Dover and Calais, was crossed by the Frenchman Henri Bleriot in a French designed and 1 It might be recalled that Sir John Slessor recognised his debt to Tennyson when he titled his

memoirs The Central Blue: Recollections and Reflections, Cassell, London, 1956. 2 Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational

Reference Book, 1939–1945, Viking, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1985, p 272. 3 See Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987,

for a detailed analysis of these attacks. 4 Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain

1859–1917, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992.

Air Power and Sensibility: Some Aspects of the Theory and Practice of Air Power 1903–2003

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built monoplane. In the European strategic context, this was a startling event. Continental European security was built on fortified land frontiers, a conscripted army, a reserve, and plans for rapid mobilisation. An island by definition is isolated and secure as long as the island controls the seas around it. Now a British newspaper headline read: ‘England no Longer an Island’. Of some import to Australian military thinkers, particularly to those who thought Australian frontiers lay just off the coast of Dover. But it was an emotional response, surely. Of course, Britain, perhaps until the opening of the Channel Tunnel, did remain an island. In 1913, although threatened by the rise of German naval power in the North Sea, Britain adopting a two-power naval standard was still secure. Twenty-seven years later, from captured French air bases the Luftwaffe appeared to seriously threaten British territorial integrity. And, quite rightly, the epic of the Battle of Britain holds a secure place in the history of military aviation. Given one most influential air power theory, a successful defensive air battle was not possible. The aircrew, controllers and commanders of Fighter Command proved otherwise. Yet what did the Battle of Britain really mean? The sensibility of air power proponents might be challenged with the suggestion that a successful invasion of Britain was not possible, even with Luftwaffe control of the air over invasion beaches. It is doubtful if Hitler were even serious about invasion, Goebbels in his diary thought not. In 1940, as in 1913, Britain remained an island by virtue of British sea power. In short, in addition to winning the air battle there was also the need to defeat the Royal Navy. With the available German naval resources depleted by the Norwegian campaign and with few dedicated maritime attack aircraft, this was simply not possible. Air superiority was necessary but never sufficient. The Battle of Britain though remains an emotional issue and sections of the Royal Australian Air Force commemorate it each year. Did air power though first become a major emotional issue once it was realised through its application that civilians would be the objects of deliberate attack? Maybe, but for the military professionals there were other reasons for controversy. The 1917 Smuts Report on Air Organisation laid down some parameters for future conflict. Consider yourself army or navy when confronted with a Smuts’s conclusion on the future of air power:

As far as at present can be foreseen there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war use. And the day may not be far off when aerial operations ... may become the principal operations of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.

It followed that talk in the inter-war years of independent air operations, which threatened the interests of the Army and Navy, took place in a dread no-man’s-land where prudent officers trod softly. And why not? In America, one such senior officer, Brigadier General William Mitchell, with his demonstration which seemed to prove that capital ships could be sunk from the air, failed to do so and was court-martialled. In Australia, Richard Williams, basically Chief of the Air Staff from 1921 to 1938, was prudent and had to be to survive so long. In June 1926 Vice Admiral Hall-Thompson argued, ‘… there is no justification for a separate air force’. Instead he argued for the establishment of ‘... two separate and distinct Naval and Military Air


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Arms’. As late as 1932, the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Army were trying to abolish the RAAF and to take to themselves the control of air assets. In 1938, the RAN attempted to gain operational control of land-based RAAF maritime air power. Williams used the subterfuge of calling two proposed fighter squadrons, ‘Army Co-operation Squadrons’. It was the only way, he argued, that financial support would be forthcoming from the Army for an Air Force expansion.5 Major Russell Parkin may well have some comments to make on the sometimes less than cordial Army/RAAF relations.6 Thus, the control of air power itself was one point of controversy; the substitution of air power for other forms of combat power was another. The Army, for example, did not take kindly to the idea that aircraft could be substituted for coastal guns set in concrete. The suspected vulnerability of capital ships to air attack was another. The fate of Repulse and Prince of Wales is an example of what could go drastically wrong. Admiral Tom Phillips was convinced that the capital ship could defend itself unaided from air attack.7 What remains of Force Z can be seen on a clear day from the air, at the bottom of the South China Sea. These areas could easily fill a paper by themselves. But let us turn to the controversial issue of attack on a civilian population. The modern euphemism ‘collateral damage’ is part of it. In the most recent conflict involving Australia—the war with Iraq—it has been estimated there were over 9000 civilian deaths. For the bulk of Western public opinion, such a result is no longer acceptable. In the inter-war years, the language concerning air attack was most concerned with ‘collateral damage’ and was highly emotional. Listen to Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932:

I think it well for the man in the street to realise there is no power on earth that can protect him from bombing ... the bomber will always get through ... the only defence is offence which means you have to kill more women and children quicker than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.8

In these terms, war in the air would constitute a descent to barbarism; a barbarism foreshadowed by the avowed principle of ‘frightfulness’, which guided the German air attacks principally on London in 1916–1917. You might argue that, prior to the advent of air power any officer who argued a hospital or a school were interchangeable with a barracks or a fortified position as targets would have been regarded as insane and unfit to hold command.

5 For a discussion of these manoeuvres see John McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence

1918–39: A Study in Air and Sea Power, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1976; C.D. Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921–39, Allen & Unwin in association with the Royal Australian Air Force, Sydney, 1991; and David Wilson ‘The Eagle and the Albatross: Australian Aerial Maritime Operations’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2003.

6 Editor’s Note: See page 97 for Major Parkin’s paper, Military Aviation in Australia 1911–2003. 7 See Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney, Battleship: The Loss of Prince of Wales and

Repulse, Allen Lane, London, 1977. 8 See H. Montgomery Hyde, British Air Policy Between the Wars 1918–1939, Heinemann, London,

1976, pp 284–85, for discussion of this opinion.

Air Power and Sensibility: Some Aspects of the Theory and Practice of Air Power 1903–2003

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The British were not far behind in this policy of ‘frightfulness’. A bomber force was formed in 1917 with the intention of launching a major strategic offensive in 1919 with some 2000 heavy bombers against the German war economy and work force morale. Obviously the Armistice of November 1918 left the efficacy of such an air offensive untested. Some 20 years later it was, with results which remain most controversial. A legacy of such thinking was the idea of the ‘knockout blow’. This was the theory that air power applied through a bomber force could deliver an attack on so great a scale that a single blow or a series of consecutive blows would bring an enemy state to a condition where it would be forced to surrender. The fragility of civilian morale was regarded as the centre of gravity. As a theory, its main proponent was the Italian, Giulio Douhet, and in Britain, though to a lesser extent, Sir Hugh Trenchard. In America, Brigadier General William Mitchell differed to some extent, favouring more a series of attacks on crucial economic nodes. There was, of course, no empirical evidence to support any conclusions. As Sir Arthur Harris commented in 1942:

There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see.

True, the British had bombed difficult Arabs and Afghanistan tribesmen, the Italians used air power and gas against undefended targets in Ethiopia, the Germans destroyed the Spanish town of Guernica, and by the late 1930s the Japanese were bombing at will Chinese cities. There is a photograph of a mother screaming with grief over the body of her dead child. Nothing could be more emotional than that and with it our sensibilities are, I suggest, challenged. So the idea of the ‘knockout blow’ was entirely theoretical. The term itself is emotional, full of shock. It embraces the idea of modernity, the machine age and the efficiency of science. Although debatable, the ‘knockout blow’ was not realised until the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Maybe it is worth noting that the designers of the policy of ‘Shock and Awe’, which was expected to guide the recent campaign against Iraq, pointed to these atomic attacks as a prime example vindicating their proposed strategy. So to return to my previous argument: is it true to argue no other weapons system has bred so much emotional debate, acrimony and fear as air power? Take Stanley Baldwin again in November 1932 and his statement that any town in reach of an airfield can be bombed within the first five minutes of war. Take Neville Chamberlain and his capitulation to Hitler at Munich in September 1938. The thought that London would immediately be subjected to air bombardment was a large factor in his policy of appeasement. Fear again, but reason should have asked how many British cities were in reach of German aircraft in September 1938? Surely, it was only the fall of France, as already mentioned in June 1940, which allowed the Luftwaffe medium bombers to reach London with a reasonable bombload and return. The most limited range of the Messerschmitt Bf109 meant it could operate over southern England only in time measured by minutes and beyond London not at all. Neither can the fact be escaped that the strategic bombing offensive against Germany constitutes the most emotional controversial campaign of World War II. Regard the


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directive sent to Bomber Command on 14 February 1942 and which was there in place for Harris when he took over command on 22 February 1942:

It has been decided that the primary objective of your operations should now be focussed [sic] on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers.

There is nothing ambiguous here. Controversy surfaced again in 1991 when it was announced a statue would be erected in London of Sir Arthur Harris. There was massive protest. The London Times for example called the policy which Harris so strongly supported a serious blot on Britain’s war record. The Mayors of German cities which had been heavily bombed were most critical. To make matters no better, the official unveiling by the Queen Mother took place on 31 May 1992 to a background of physical protest. Let us recall that 31 May 1992 was the fiftieth anniversary of the first 1000-bomber raid launched against Cologne. I argue that air power remained post-1945 an emotional and controversial weapons system. The air war in Vietnam is an example. The United States dropped more than seven million tons of bombs on Indochina, or more than eighty times the amount the Luftwaffe dropped on Britain and three times the tonnage dropped on Germany. This was against an underdeveloped non-industrial nation of some 17,000,000. We professionals debate the use of air power in the Vietnam War, the failure of Rolling Thunder and the policy of gradualism compared to the seemingly decisive strikes of Linebacker II against Hanoi. And so we should. What remains in many people’s minds though is the image of the naked screaming little girl running away from a napalm attack. Air power, as demonstrated over the past 100 years, has proven to be a superb weapons system, but one which it has also been proven must be applied with both sense and sensibility. We are surely moving towards that sensibility; that capacity for feeling: the provisions of Protocol 1; the rules of engagement in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and as far as we know in Iraq. On the other hand we must consider the views of Michael Evans who is with us today. He regards Kosovo as a ‘dark victory’. To quote him:

In an extraordinary paradox, a war based on the notion of discriminate force using dazzling information-age high technology – B2 bombers, cruise missiles and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) – sacrificed the Albanian Kosovars to indiscriminate death at the hands of Serb forces using methods we associate with the Dark Ages. … In humanitarian terms, the air war in Kosovo has been an unmitigated disaster.9

Air power is very much a high-tech system and it may be difficult to forget that people exist. General Sherman once said, ‘War is cruelty, no more and no less and cannot be refined’. Douhet’s theory certainly entailed the concept of hurting the enemy as much as possible, and the last hundred years have shown that air power is capable of inflicting great hurt. We have to learn, and we are learning, to do better.

9 Michael Evans, ‘Dark Victory: The Use of Military Force in Kosovo’ in Australian Defence

Studies Centre, Working Paper No 54, Canberra, August 1999.

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PANEL DISCUSSION

DOCTOR ALAN STEPHENS PROFESSOR JOHN MCCARTHY

Ms Sonia Wu (Australian Command and Staff College): Dr Stephens would you please expand on your thoughts on the use or relevance of air power or air supremacy in the face of terrorism? Dr Stephens: My point about air power in the broader sense is that it provides a start point for the Western way of war, which for the last 60 years has been characterised by the exploitation of overwhelming technological superiority, translated increasingly into fighting with precision and at a distance. Now that is not always possible, but it is the preferred model. Everything within that model relies on an unimpeded access to aerospace-derived capabilities, ranging from the relatively simple, such as the use of GPS to enable precision for soldiers involved in perhaps street-to-street operations, through to, say, helicopter gunships carrying out precision assassination attacks from a distance. So it is the start point for what I am calling the Western way of war. It is not, by any means, necessarily the answer in every case. It is, certainly in my opinion, the preferred approach and the enabler for everything else. I should like to comment on Dr Evans’s important and, I think, worrying commentary on the early stages of Operation Allied Force in 1999. While I appreciate what he says, I also think it is important for armies to understand that, in that particular setting, the way in which the depraved actions of the Serbs were allowed to continue was as much due to NATO commanders being unwilling to risk the lives of the young men in their armies as it was any preference to try to use the technological advantage of air power to win the war. The political decision was made that it was more acceptable for Kosovar Albanians to be slaughtered than it was for NATO soldiers to suffer the same fate. So we are not talking here, I would suggest, about a preference in this case to use the West’s greatest asymmetric advantage, aerospace technology, but rather about an avoidance of fighting the enemy on terms that to date land forces have struggled to accommodate without risking excessive casualties. Group Captain Peter Layton (RAAF – Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies): Dr Stephens, from your interesting study there it seemed to be that the principal lens through which you were looking at the history of the RAAF over the last 100 years was how alliances have in fact shaped our Air Force. Would you agree that the principal factor that has shaped the Air Force over the last 100 years has been the needs of our alliance partners? You could argue, say in 1942 or the mid-1960s, that there might have been some variations from that, but even DOA 87 [The Defence of Australia 1987] seems to flow from the Nixon Doctrine. Dr Stephens: The answer is yes. The challenge in the 1950s was to determine how the RAAF would fit in with the Royal Air Force in the Middle East. In the 1950s, we still saw the Middle East as the key strategic area for RAAF deployments, which was one reason why a fighter wing was at Malta between 1952 and 1954. At the same


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time, I think the RAAF’s leaders have been keenly aware since World War II of the need to be able to defend our own continent. And I think the two competing tensions have been balanced fairly cleverly, which is why I wanted to stress the concept of the balance between the offence and the defence, both of which have been tied into this underlying question: namely, if we have to defend ourselves, as was the case in 1942, can we do it? Major Michael Leichsenring (Army – Ground Liaison Officer, No 2 Squadron): My question is for Dr Stephens. You identified how in the pre-World War II period Australia was looking at a general-purpose aircraft, but as a result of the war we looked at specialist aircraft—fighter, bomber, transport and reconnaissance— and that Plan ‘D’ emphasised that. I would be interested in whether you would be able to comment on our current view of looking at the F/A-18 and F-111, and their replacements. Has technology offered a solution to achieve a multi-role aircraft, or have we simply been deluded to resetting our clock back to a pre-World War II period of having a general-purpose aircraft? Dr Stephens: It is an interesting theme in air power history, the aircraft that is the answer to everything—Douhet’s ‘battleplane’ being one of the first examples. By and large, the general-purpose or multi-role aircraft has never worked. There have been a number of good general-purpose aircraft—the Mosquito from World War II and a couple of others like that—but, in the main, the specialist aircraft has been superior. At the risk of repeating the mistakes of history, I believe that the enabling systems that we are just starting to leverage today, in particular information, will make a fundamental difference to the coming generation of air combat aircraft. The physical characteristics—aerodynamics and engines etc—that turned a general-purpose aircraft into a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none, will not be so important; and the enabling systems, for the first time I believe, probably will enable us to reach a level that has not been possible in the past. The same observation applies to the next generation of weapons, which will be vastly more capable than their predecessors. But it is a good question and it is a recurring theme in air power history. Group Captain Doug Hurst (RAAF Ret’d): A question for Professor McCarthy. It is hard to argue with what you say with respect to the emotion of air power. How much impact do you think has September 11 and the Bali bombing had on people’s psyche to balance the ledger up a bit? Professor McCarthy: The impact of those two things has been enormous. Truth is the daughter of time. I cannot answer that question. It is all too recent and the shock is still there for me to say too much. I think what we have to be very careful of is that we do not act emotionally ourselves. That you take punitive action because you have worked out how you are going to do it, you have worked out an end result and you have worked out what you want. To quote Clausewitz again, ‘War is not an act of senseless passion’. That is all I can say.

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AIR WEAPONS: IMPACT ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF AIR POWER AND AIRCRAFT DESIGN

MR SANU KAINIKARA

INTRODUCTION

It would perhaps be correct to assume that in 1903, when the Wright brothers took to the air in a powered aircraft for the first time, the farthest thought in their minds would have been the employment of their invention as a weapon system. Nonetheless, in their own lifetime they witnessed the transformation of flight from a purely scientific innovation to a mode of transportation and to its use as a weapon of war. The transformation to warfighting capabilities was brought about by the carriage of weapons on board the aircraft for use against the enemy. There are very broad definitions of air power that include a myriad of competencies and roles that make up the disparate elements of a cohesive air power projection capable force. The use of air power as a fighting element almost always involves the use of weapons from aircraft, if the use of surface-based missiles and air defence elements are discounted. Air power is essentially the product of weapons and they in turn are the products of technology. In the past six decades, air power and its capabilities have moved to the vanguard of power projection capabilities. By the end of World War II, air power had already been accepted as a primary instrument in warfighting, rather than as a support system to surface operations. This was tacit acceptance of the ubiquity of air power and its inherent characteristics of lethality and versatility. There is an intrinsic relationship between technology and air warfare. Theorists have always acknowledged the need for strong and enduring commitment to the pursuit of advanced technology as a prime requirement for efficient development of air power. In order to have expanding horizons and be efficient, any practitioner must understand, nurture and apply technology to the employment of air power. The degree to which sophistication in weaponry will guarantee victory is the primary link between air power and technology. There are a number of factors that impinge on the direct relationship between technology and warfighting capability, but it is in the effective employment of air power that it is most amply demonstrated. Is it in fact true that superior technology guarantees success in combat either in large or small conflicts? The answer to that question has to be an emphatic no. History gives enough examples of technologically superior forces being defeated by technologically inferior troops fighting with almost primitive weaponry in comparison. Why then is technology so important to air power? The answer lies in the fact that air power is and will remain technology reliant to be effective, but becomes a war winning entity only when judiciously applied with other forms of force projection capabilities. The requirement from technology is for it to improve the ability of the air force to perform its tasks at an optimum price, both in terms of personnel and finances.


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This paper will be confined to examining the impact of air weapons and technology on the employment of air power over the years and how air power by itself has been revolutionised by these weapons during the last century. In doing so, it is inevitable that the impact of these weapon developments on the design of aircraft is also highlighted as the ongoing evolution of air power is traced.

AIR WEAPONS

There can be no doubt that the effective employment of air power involves the use of its capabilities in the strike role. Even a defensive air campaign at some stage would have to transform to an offensive stance if it is to be successful. All other competencies and characteristics are therefore attuned to being supportive of the employment of air power in its primary strike role. This has been the case from the first time that air power was offensively used and still holds true. It is from this perspective that air power theorists have always projected air power as an inherently offensive military capability. The concept of control of the air, which is doctrinally considered an absolute prerequisite for the success of all other operations, evolved from the need to protect one’s own offensive strike assets while denying the enemy the same capability. Since control of the air emanates from air power assets, and aircraft are the major contributors to air power projection capabilities, it is only natural that control of the air becomes the primary responsibility of the air force. From this broad but clear demarcation of air power roles, one of strike and the other of control of the air, air weapons can also be classically divided into two basic categories, air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons.

Air-to-Ground Weapons

The strike role of air power has undergone a great deal of refinement over the years, but the basics have not changed in any fundamental manner. The basic need is to be able to destroy enemy targets on the ground with maximum efficiency. In an effort to specify and understand the employment of air power, thereby increasing its effectiveness, the strike role has been historically divided into strategic and tactical, mainly dependent on the targets that are attacked. The differentiation is based on the impact the destruction of a particular target has on the war making capability of a nation measured in terms of the time factor. Essentially, the longer the impact takes to manifest itself in debilitating the war effort of the enemy, the more strategically oriented the target would be. If the destruction of a target has immediate effect on the outcome of a battle, it could be termed tactical in nature. This distinction has become somewhat blurred in the past decade, mainly because the level and acceptability of targeting itself has undergone radical changes. There is another kind of categorisation that is also done, which is broadly based on the intended effect in terms of whether the destruction of the target contributes to the air war or the land campaign. Air power theorists have tended to combine all operations aimed at achieving the neutralisation of enemy air power under the generic term of Counter Air (CA) operations. In this category, the division between strategic and tactical missions are clearer. Tactical missions would include both offensive and defensive counter air operations that are defined more in terms of near-time impact on

Air Weapons: Impact on the Employment of Air Power and Aircraft Design

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the progress of the campaign. At the strategic end of the spectrum would be attacks on aircraft production facilities that would have only long-term implications for the campaign. The common feature of all strike missions is their essentially offensive component. Strikes are intended to take the fight to the enemy and cannot be thought of as defensive measures. The chronological and doctrinal development of strike missions to their present state is easily identifiable with the evolution of air-to-ground weapons. Although a number of so-called bombing missions were conducted during World War I, the Zeppelin raids on London in 1915 were the true forerunners of the strategic bombing campaign. Some 51 raids were conducted during which 208 airships dropped 5800 bombs weighing 200 tonnes, killing 557 people and wounding 1358. The airships suffered 49 per cent attrition. The results were not spectacular even by the standards of the day and the loss rate was far higher than that suffered by the ground forces. The importance of the raids was in establishing the concept of strategic bombing as a way to fight future wars and in making war an affair of areas as opposed to the fronts that the world was used to until then. The drawback was that the actions of World War I provided minimal guidance for the future. The concept of aerial bombardment really took shape with Douhet’s vociferous advocacy of the supremacy of air power as a weapon of war in the early 1920s. While the theorists prophesied the great impact of aerial bombardment as a panacea to the appalling trench warfare, the technology of the day did not permit the validation of the concept. There were three major problems that technology would solve only sometime in the future. They were navigation, target identification and weapon accuracy. In addition, there was also the problem of weapon to target matching that had to be done to ensure optimum effect. Until the end of 1941, navigation, especially in bad weather conditions, was not accurate enough to ensure an acceptable probability of an aircraft being able to be in the right place at the right time. Target identification was even more difficult. Only six per cent of missions were able to identify the targets correctly in bad weather—a figure that improved to only 25 per cent even in good weather. Even with such a low navigational probability of finding the target, the factor that had the most detrimental impact on the effectiveness of aerial bombing was the lack of accuracy. As David MacIsaac of the USAAF remarked, ‘Identifying the target was one thing, but hitting them from the air was something else’. It was calculated that in order to hit a target 20 x 50 metres in dimensions with 90 per cent probability, 9000 bombs would have to be dropped. This equated to 1000 B-17 sorties that would put 10,000 aircrew at risk. World War II, however, cemented the concept of area bombing despite a number of moral and ethical questions being raised regarding the selection of non-military facilities as legitimate targets. It was also seen that adopting dive-bombing techniques increased the accuracy of attacks although it made the aircraft more vulnerable to air defences. These changes were actually more tactical in nature and did not affect the strategic concept. Post-World War II, accuracy in both navigation and weapon delivery, as well as weapon effectiveness, were the primary areas of research and development. The air-to-surface rocket and subsequently the missile were introduced and weapon-aiming aids in the aircraft became more sophisticated. Accuracy of weapon delivery improved greatly, but the improvements were still not revolutionary


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in nature. The bombs were larger and more effective, but were still what we today call ‘dumb bombs’ and the level of accuracy still lent itself to collateral damage. The continued overall inefficiency of aerial bombing and the increased awareness that collateral damage was unacceptable made aerial strike a double-edged sword. This role was therefore more often than not confined to tactical strikes in the interdiction and close air support roles. Even though the super powers had fleets of bomber aircraft, they were meant more as nuclear deterrents rather than for area bombing. The advent of nuclear weapons into the strategic arena further assisted the relegation of aerial bombing into an archaic concept. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the nuclear race and the acceptance of mutually assured destruction dominated strategic doctrinal thinking. Nuclear weapons provided the tactician with an overabundance of firepower that proved to be unusable without catastrophic repercussions. The quantum change in strike effectiveness, a revolution, was ushered in with the introduction of specialised weapons for runway denial, hardened shelter penetration and anti-personnel use. Technological developments in the air defence capabilities also necessitated changes in weapon delivery techniques that, in turn, were made possible by the introduction of highly accurate navigational aids. The introduction of inertial navigation and terrain following radar systems were also revolutionary in nature. It allowed the fighter-bomber to operate with almost complete impunity at very low levels and achieve more than 90 per cent assured probability of mission success. If the employment of air power in Vietnam is discounted as an aberration, aerial bombing had been confined to very limited use during the 1960s and 70s. The simultaneous development of highly effective anti-aircraft weapon systems was also a factor that weighed against the unabated use of offensive strike. The introduction of guided munitions and the advent of target designation capabilities, either from the air or from the ground, gave another impetus to the aerial strike role and brought it once again to prominence. Further, developments in missile technology permitted the introduction of anti-radiation missiles and led to the evolution of another dedicated strike role, the suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD). These technological innovations had long-term implications. Aerial strike once again became a distinct and credible choice with the chances of collateral damage or the probability of a high loss rate and their allied political repercussions being significantly reduced. By the time of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, precision strike capability was a reality and the accuracy was sufficient to avoid collateral damage almost completely. Although only nine per cent of the total weapon tonnage dropped by the US Air Force were precision guided munitions (PGM), they were credited with 75 per cent of the damage inflicted. Weapon effectiveness had also reached a point wherein the efficacy of aerial strikes became unquestioned. The demonstration of the effectiveness of air strikes during this campaign had salutary implications for air power. From being a military capability, air power moved into the higher realm of national security perceptions as a politically attractive tool. Air power could support or even take the lead in applying international pressure on recalcitrant states; it could bring about diplomatic solutions by being the coercive edge of negotiations and serve the national interest in all emerging situations.


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The PGM made air attacks an acceptable mode of warfighting in an era where even unintended civilian casualties could itself become self-defeating. In World War II, a ‘precision’ dive-bomber could ensure that 50 per cent of the bombs dropped would be within 1000 feet from the target. This meant a disproportionate amount of resource allocation to increase the probability of destruction of the target. For example, to ensure that two bombs hit a target measuring 400 x 500 feet with 96 per cent probability it was necessary to drop 648 bombs amounting to 108 B-17 aircraft over the target. In 1991, a single aircraft with two PGM could achieve the same effect. To quote Lieutenant Colonel Mark A. Bucknam USAF, ‘PGM can transform strategic bombing from a bludgeon to a rapier’. A comparison of bombing accuracy and bomb quantity graphically illustrates the effect of PGM on strike capability. The table at Figure 1 shows the effect of accuracy (CEP) on the quantity of 2000 pound bombs needed to achieve a 90 per cent probability of hit on a target measuring 60 x 100 feet.1

Conflict CEP (feet)

Quantity Bombs Needed

World War II (B-17) 3300 9070

Korea/South-East Asia (F-84/F-105) 400 176

Desert Storm (F-16)* 200 30

Desert Storm (F-117) <10 1

* The figures for the F-16s reflect the accuracy of unguided bombs, not PGM.

Figure 1 – Effect of Accuracy (CEP) on Quantity of Bombs Needed As a result, air power was the force of choice in Operation Allied Force. This was the classic case of coercive diplomacy and deterrent capability being applied to attain the declared aims of the campaign. There are three major advantages of employing air strikes in this fashion, facilitated by technology. First and foremost is that it avoids disproportionate damage to non-military targets and limits the disruption of civilian infrastructure, and therefore reduces postwar reconstruction problems. Secondly, precision strike has the ability to isolate the regime clearly from the population and therefore emphasises the deterrent capability of air power. The psychological shock effects are maximised in the case of air strikes and the general population will be wary of the repercussions of the loss of basic infrastructure. The third advantage is that the employment of air power in the strike role minimises the prospect of own casualties, which makes it politically a very attractive alternative to other force projection options. From a purely air power point of view, Operation Allied Force was an unqualified success, although air power detractors continue to insist that it was the threat of a ground invasion and the loss of Russian support leading to diplomatic isolation that finally tilted the balance and led to the surrender of the regime.

1 Colonel Edward C. Mann, III, USAF, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Air Power

Debates, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 1995, p 170.


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The success of the air campaign is attested by the fact that in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, it was once again air power that was at the cutting edge of battle from the very beginning. The campaign was a testimony to the versatility of air power and its ubiquitous nature. Air power is now capable of covering the entire spectrum of operations, from having immediate impact on the outcome of a particular battle, to temporary effects for a finite period of time and to the extreme of ensuring all-round long-term effects. Under these conditions target selection becomes a vital issue in terms of effective application of air power. For example, destruction of POL dumps would have an immediate impact on the mobility of the enemy military, while the destruction of the power grid of a city might be only a temporary set back and the wholesale destruction of the industrial infrastructure would have disastrous long-term implications for the economy. So what has been the impact of air-to-ground weapons on the application of air power, as we know it today? By and large, the necessity of close air support and even interdiction as tactical support functions to the surface campaign that has immediate impact on the outcome of a battle has been accepted. The political significance of the bomber campaign of World War II still impinges on the concept of aerial bombing attacks. The employment of air power in a larger bombing campaign undertaken in an attempt to break the will of the people or to neutralise the economy of the opponent is today unacceptable. Only greatly improved weapons technology has brought air power back to centre stage in strategic considerations. Political aversion to the large-scale attrition of World War I greatly influenced and facilitated the acceptance of the conceptual developments in air power in the inter-war years and also sanctioned the bomber offensive. It is once again the political necessity to avoid collateral damage and restrict casualties that propels air power competencies to being the force of choice for power projection in today’s context. The underlying fact is that weapons technology has been able to keep pace with the ever-changing face of warfighting and thereby provide viable options to the decision-makers over the years. High-end technology has bolstered the intrinsic air power strengths of balance, versatility and sustainability. This has been the success of air power, brought on by a combination of doctrinal and warrior thinkers, and technological innovations that permit the transformation of futuristic ideas to reality. Born of technology, air power continues to be nurtured by it and is the most technology-reliant of all forms of military power for its existence. The only way to retain cutting edge efficiency is to offer options in an evolving situation, rather than evolve a solution to an existing problem. Air weapons provide this vital strength to air power capabilities.

Air-to-Air Weapons

Even though the aircraft was first used offensively in war as a strike weapon, the quest for control of the air was a logical progression. The immediate aftermath was the evolution of air combat as a primary role for the fighter aircraft. The fundamental characteristics of air power that have become the foundation on which other competencies are built emerged in this contest for control of the air. Control of the air involved both strike missions in the counter air role as well as air control and denial missions involving air combat. The requirements of both these missions spurred the growth of technologically innovative solutions to emerging problems. This involved


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changes to the weapons by themselves and also to the platform or the fighter aircraft. In a never-ending cycle of cause and effect, air combat requirements drove the weapons designs that in turn impacted on tactics. Changes in tactics necessitated aircraft design changes that in turn impacted on air combat capabilities making the process come full circle. Air combat has been the central theme that continually produced significant improvements in aircraft design and performance. The fundamentals of air combat have not changed in the nearly hundred years of military aviation—to shoot down the enemy at the earliest opportunity with minimum loss to one’s own side. The history of the development of air combat capabilities is a parallel to the history of technological innovations that continually changed the offensive capabilities of aircraft. From carrying a passenger with a rifle to shoot at other aircraft while the primary objectives of observation and dropping of small bombs on enemy positions were being carried out, it did not take long to have aircraft dedicated to the role of shooting down other aircraft. The birth of the fighter was not so dramatic as pragmatic. The debate on whether technology drove tactics or vice versa is never ending. I would suggest that serious developments in air combat were facilitated by technology and driven by tactics acting in tandem. In the case of fighter aircraft, it is clear that the requirement to have certain performance characteristics to be able to optimise weapon performance and thereby enhance air combat capabilities has been one of the main factors that impact on aircraft design. Technology that contributed to the improvements in air combat capabilities can easily be divided into two separate time frame divisions, the first up to the end of World War II and the other the next 60 years. This division also approximately corresponds to the operational introduction of jet engine fighter aircraft to the air combat scenario. Technologically the introduction of jet fighters was a watershed moment. The basic limitation of the propeller-driven aircraft was that of restrictions in speed, which the jet fighters overcame easily. In order to understand the importance of this revolutionary step, it is necessary to look at the factors that determine air combat performance. These factors are maximum speed, acceleration, rate of turn both sustained and instantaneous, radius of turn, minimum speed maximum angle of attack combination, combat endurance, avionics and weapon performance. Pre-1950, guns or cannons were the only air combat weapons available to a fighter aircraft. The rate of fire, calibre of the weapon, mechanical reliability and spread were the technical factors that distinguished a superior aircraft cannon. The other contributory factor in the effectiveness of a cannon was its accuracy, which was completely dependent on the sophistication as well as the user-friendliness of the gunsight. During World War II, the gyro gunsight was improved from its rudimentary state and it became a standard fixture in all aircraft. Otherwise, the combat capabilities of an aircraft were almost completely dependent on speed, rate of climb and turn performance. These are in turn dependent on the thrust to weight ratio and the aerodynamic design of an aircraft. The cannons had an effective range of around 300 to 500 metres and obviously were forward firing. Sustained turning performance was the primary factor in deciding the outcome of air combat since the fighter had to gain positional advantage behind the target aircraft in


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order to shoot it down.2 This statement has been made by taking all other factors as equal and discounting the performance skill of the pilot. Post-1950, three technologically driven inputs completely transformed the air combat scenario. They were the jet engine, air intercept radar and air-to-air missiles (AAMs). While propulsion technology revolutionised pure aircraft performance characteristics, radar and missile technology revamped the tactical appreciation of air combat. A combination of these two factors changed the entire design considerations of the fighter aircraft. In actuality, this was a revolution in air combat and the application of air power.

Air Combat, AAMs and Aircraft Design

AAM development is one of the most critical driving factors in the ongoing development of air combat tactics and air superiority doctrine. Radar technology has kept pace with the improved performance of AAMs and has always facilitated the optimisation of missile employment.3 AAMs can be classified into four ‘generations’. The first-generation, such as the AIM-9B and AA-2 ‘Atoll’, had very limited capabilities. The only advantage that they gave the pilot was their extended range in comparison to the cannon. These missiles had a very narrow field of view and very slow tracking rates. The fighter had to be positioned in a 30-degree cone behind the target and even then it was comparatively easy for the target to break the lock of the missile. The second-generation missiles, such as the AIM-9 D/G/H and the Shafrir-2, were only marginally better in performance. The seekers were given a slightly improved field of view and an aspect angle of around 45 degrees. The tracking rate was still very slow and it still needed tail chase geometry for success. Both these generations of missiles had a very low kill probability against manoeuvring targets and also required positional advantage before launch. Positional advantage could only be achieved by prolonged and aggressive combat manoeuvring. During this era, air combat typically lasted six to eight minutes and even then culminated in the use of cannons in a majority of cases. Although the AAM by itself was not much of a success in actual combat situations, it had noteworthy impact on tactics and aircraft design. Tactically, the stepped up/down formations evolved and the viable numbers in a formation reduced, eventually stabilising at the basic element of four aircraft. Since the combat was prolonged and involved a great deal of manoeuvring, training and pilot proficiency became the combat winning factors. From a design perspective, since a successful firing solution eventuated only for the rear hemisphere, the need for sustained turning performance and high-energy manoeuvring became leading characteristics that could provide an earlier firing solution. The same characteristics also ensured adequate ability to dodge a missile threat.

2 In trying to bring the cannon to bear on the target, flying skill of the pilot was a very important

factor. In order to focus on the technological factors that affect the outcome of air combat, this intangible factor of pilot skill has been consciously avoided by equating the flying skill, training, morale, experience and all other extraneous factors.

3 The scope of this paper does not permit a lengthy discussion on air intercept radar technology, the history of its development, tactical impact of its usage and the changes that it has brought about in the air superiority campaign. It is sufficient to state that radar technology has not lagged behind AAM development and therefore has not been a detrimental factor in the development of air combat operations.


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At this stage, technology provided the tactician the ability to carry out beyond visual range (BVR) attacks. The entry of BVR missiles into air combat was heralded as the panacea to all the tactical and training problems associated with air combat. In a distinct shift from its tactical doctrinal roots, the USAF emphasised its reliance on BVR missiles to achieve air superiority. This led to the production of a generation of aircraft initially designed without even internal cannons. Tactically, there was insufficient development of within visual range combat capabilities. This trend however was short lived because BVR engagement requires positive identification of the target. The resource requirement to ensure foolproof identification is so great that it is almost impossible to achieve. It is worth mentioning here that identification continues to be a contentious issue even today. It therefore became apparent that BVR capabilities would not ensure that close combat would never take place. This resulted in a renewed and concerted move to improve further the close combat missile performance while continuing to enhance BVR – air intercept radar combined capabilities. The third-generation AAMs, such as the AIM-9L, R-60 and Python-3, were also referred to as all-aspect missiles because they could lock on from any target aspect. The improvement in capabilities was very discernible with the missile having an almost 30-degree off boresight engagement capability. These two technological breakthroughs meant that it was only necessary to point the nose of the fighter at the target to obtain launch conditions. Once again, weapon technology dictated paradigm shifts in both tactics and aircraft design. The formation to fly changed drastically and the entire concept of mutually supportive formation manoeuvring underwent a transformation. Further, the tactical advantage of the use of afterburner in combat, until then one of the basic rules of thumb of air combat, became questionable. Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) for self-protection became a vital ingredient in the weapon suite of a fighter. The need to be able to point the nose at the target at the earliest opportunity made instantaneous turn rate the most critical performance issue. In order to achieve this, the design of fighter aircraft incorporated extremely large horizontal tail planes, digital flight controls and lift producing fuselages. The doubt regarding the efficacy of the use of afterburner also led to an increase in thrust in the dry regime. Aircraft such as the MiG-29 are capable of instantaneous turn rates in excess of 20 degrees per second and their fuselages produce more than 30 per cent of the entire lift produced by the aircraft. With the operational induction of third-generation missiles air combat duration reduced to around three minutes. The changes in fighter design gave the platform extremely agile performance characteristics and led to the limitations of this generation of missiles being exposed. The missiles had lesser aerodynamic and seeker tracking rate than the fighter manoeuvrability. Combined with the limited off boresight capability and limitations in terms of missile motor burnout time, the performance of the missile and the aircraft were still mismatched, which led to further developments. The fourth-generation ‘agile’ missiles, like AIM-9X, R-73M, Python-4 and ASRAAM, are the latest AAMs to change the face of air combat. These missiles have off boresight acquisition capabilities in excess of 60 degrees, combined with very high tracking rates and tracking angles that even permit reciprocal tail chase geometry. They also have turning performances that match the high ‘G’ evasive manoeuvres of the fighters. This performance optimisation has been achieved by the use of Infra-Red Counter-Countermeasures (IRCCM) in the seekers to enhance range, by incorporating complex


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aerodynamic designs to improve turn performance and by power plants that have long-burn motors and tailored thrust profiles. The missile performance is revolutionary. Technology further gifted the air combat arena with the helmet-mounted sight (HMS) that slaves the missile seeker to the helmet of the pilot. This almost completely does away with the need to point the nose of the aircraft in order to get a firing solution, thereby drastically reducing the target acquisition timeframe. The age-old adage has indeed come true—looks can kill! The agile missile – HMS combination has completely revolutionised close combat concepts by the optimal integration of missile effectiveness with sophisticated avionics. Tactically, the missile performance makes it imperative to shoot first, which means that target acquisition and identification assume primary importance. In this scenario, any combat would lead to a solution and there will be no opportunity for get away or a stalemate situation. Aircraft with ‘super manoeuvrability’ were designed to ensure that the operating spectrum of the missile was completely within the aircraft manoeuvre envelope. Air combat time reduced to around 30 seconds. A consequence of the greatly enhanced performance of the super manoeuvrable aircraft and agile missile – HMS combination has been the changed requirements in pilot training that now tends to emphasise weapon system management and employment. In a span of little over 80 years, technology and tactical innovation have brought air combat from a slow biplane shooting small-calibre bullets at an opponent with less than five per cent kill probability, to a scientifically sophisticated art form with the assurance of victory or defeat to the participants.

CONCLUSION

In analysing the impact of air weapons on the employment of air power and the design of aircraft, a conscious attempt has been made to keep the balance between the two primary roles of air power, that of offensive strike and control of the air. Strike in its own way contributes to air superiority, whereas air combat is purposefully and aggressively aimed only at gaining control of the air. This is perhaps the underlying reason why air-to-air weapons have driven tactics and design much more than air-to-ground weapons. Strike operations often have strategic manifestations that are not directly apparent as in the case of air combat or even control of the air. In the current scenario, the importance of one or the other would be almost completely dependent on the aim, context, conditions and rules of engagement of the operation under consideration. Even though air power has become the force of choice in confrontational situations its optimal employment is becoming increasingly difficult given the high expectations of its capabilities and the very rigid operating environment. Air weapons have been the prime movers in bringing air power to its current position of primacy at the cutting edge of diplomacy, deterrence and warfighting. The changes in the concepts of employment of air power have been neither calmly regulated nor steadily progressed. On the other hand, they have not been unguided and meandering progressions either. Throughout its history, air power concepts have been dynamic and evolving and they remain so even today. It is the rapidity with which certain technological concepts emerge, are practically realised and are embraced by the


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tactical community that has made air power stand apart in its development. Truly, some of these conceptual changes have been revolutionary. Air weapons in the strike role have to be considered more as affecting the strategic employment of air power and not so much its tactical utilisation. The theory of strategic air power, although being debated and distilled for the past 60 years, is still incomplete. The changes in the concept of strategic strike stem from the changes that have taken place in the geopolitical environment and the advances in weapon technology. The performance characteristics of air weapons have now made offensive strategic strikes a politically acceptable military solution to a plethora of security related problems. Chances of diplomatic success are also enhanced by the implicit threat of surgical strikes. Developments in munitions and platform performance now deny potential adversaries the traditional sanctuaries of darkness, underground or hardened shelters, and bad weather. In the case of air combat, air weapons have played a direct role in determining the direction that the development of both tactics and aircraft design have taken over the years. The relationship between weapon development, tactical innovation and aircraft design is complex yet direct. One impinges on the other in an endless cycle of spiralling increase in overall performance of the system in pursuit of control of the air. Currently, there is an ongoing debate regarding the impact of unmanned aerial vehicles as an air combat platform that would negate the need for more expensive manned fighter aircraft. The efficacy of an unmanned combat platform is not in doubt, but the intangibles and options that evolve in an air combat scenario are still far too complex to be completely resolved without manned fighters, at least in the immediate future. Irrespective of the platform involved, air combat will continue to be affected by improvements in weapon performance. The level of success in achieving the immediate aim of air combat, that of destruction of the opposing platform, will ultimately depend on the weapon suite of an aircraft. In the ultimate analysis, weapons are the teeth that ensure the achievement of all that air power stands for, domination and optimum utilisation of the third dimension.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Shaun Clarke (ed), Testing the Limits: The Proceedings of a Conference held by the Royal Australian Air Force in Canberra March 1998, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1998. E.J. Feuchtwanger & R.A. Mason (eds), Air Power in the Next Generation, The Macmillan Press, London, 1979. Peter W. Gray (ed), British Air Power, The Stationary Office, London, 2003. Richard Hallion, Precision Guided Munitions and the New Era of Warfare, Royal Australian Air Force, Air Power Studies Centre Paper No 53, Canberra.


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Richard Hallion (ed), Air Power Confronts an Unstable World, Brassey’s, Washington, DC, 1997. Sanu Kainikara, Within Visual Range Missiles, Air Combat and Aircraft Design, Presentation to Weapons System Division, DSTO, Edinburgh, SA, 11 June 2001. Colonel Edward C. Mann III, USAF, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Air Power Debates, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 1995, p 170. Air Vice-Marshal R.A. Mason, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal, Brassey’s London, 1994. Michael O’Hanlon, Technological Change and the Future of Warfare, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2000. John Andreas Olsen (ed), A Second Aerospace Century: Choices for the Smaller Nations, The Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, 2001. Stuart Peach (ed), Perspectives on Air Power, The Stationary Office, London, 1998.

39

THE AUSTRALIAN AVIATION INDUSTRY: HISTORY AND ACHIEVEMENTS GUIDING

DEFENCE AND AVIATION INDUSTRY POLICY1

AIR VICE-MARSHAL BRIAN WESTON, AM, FRAES

INTRODUCTION

The development of aviation and the evolving use of air power as an instrument of national power mark the 20th Century as the ‘Aviation Century’. This paper will review the achievements of the Australian aviation industry and comment on the national policy that shaped the Australian aviation industry. In 1924 Lawrence Wackett designed, built and flew his first aircraft at the RAAF Experimental Station at Randwick. The Station had been established with the strong support of the Air Board and its Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Commodore Richard Williams. It was closed in 1929 on the recommendation of Air Marshal Sir John Salmond, RAF. The Australian Government had commissioned Salmond to report on the RAAF, although the genesis of his review had as much to do with being a political response to press criticism about the state of the RAAF as to a desire to develop a future plan for the RAAF.2 Wing Commander Wackett blamed the Society of British Aircraft Constructors (SBAC) for suggesting such a recommendation to Salmond and, disagreeing strongly with the decision, resigned from the RAAF.3 About this period there were a number of other aviation activities in Australia but the only enduring activity was the establishment by de Havilland of a subsidiary company in Melbourne in 1927. The de Havilland subsidiary was focused on the sale and support of de Havilland products in the recreational, sport and emerging air transport sectors. In 1934 the Seagull V was constructed in Britain by Vickers Supermarine to a detailed RAAF specification drawn up by Williams. The unusual metal-hulled amphibian aircraft provided Williams a valuable insight into military specifications, Australian unique requirements, aircraft manufacturing and project management. The aircraft was an operational success being ordered into RAF service as the Walrus.4

1 Editor’s Note: Air Vice-Marshal Weston’s paper also has been published as Aerospace Centre

Paper No 12, September 2003. Copies are available at www.raaf.gov.au/airpower or by contacting the Aerospace Centre on +61 2 6287 6563.

2 See Douglas Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1962, pp 30–34; and Sir Richard Williams, These are Facts: The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, pp 181–85.

3 See Sir Lawrence Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer: An Autobiography – Lawrence James Wackett, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1972, p 102; and Williams, These are Facts, pp 182, 197.

4 Williams, These are Facts, pp 209–11.


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This paper takes up the story in 1936 when the first moves towards an Australian aircraft manufacturing industry occurred. The paper examines the decisions and policy behind the founding of the industry and traces the rise of the industry through the history of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC), the Beaufort manufacturing project and other World War II developments. After World War II, the industry built to a peak with notable achievements such as the Avon Sabre, Canberra, Winjeel and Jindivik aircraft, but then it fell away not so much through a lack of capability but through an inability of both the Government and industry to reshape the industry to meet the changing demands of the post-World War II environment. However, in starting this historical review in 1936, the political, economic and geo-strategic circumstances that pertained to Australia in this period must be borne in mind. The Great Depression had hit Australia harder and longer than either Britain or the US. Australian Governments had great difficulty coping with the economic and public policy issues of the time. Inspiration was lacking and governments had difficulty discerning Australia’s national interests, let alone determining coherent policy solutions. Strategically, Australia had not thought for itself and had allowed itself to indulge in the self-delusion of ‘Imperial Defence’ and the ‘Singapore Strategy’. The threat from Japan was recognised by some but not acted upon by Australian Governments. This period is summed up by Paul Kelly in his book 100 Years as the low point of Australian national leadership.5 Not a good time to commence addressing issues of national interest, defence and defence industry.

THE AUSTRALIAN AVIATION INDUSTRY

The Establishment of CAC Industrialists Act while Government Doodles

In this environment, a small group of industrialists who were gravely concerned about the emerging threat from Japan and Australia’s lack of defence preparedness opined that as a matter of self-interest, Australia must develop an aircraft industry. The group was led by Essington Lewis, who in 1921 became the first Australian-born General Manager of the Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) Company Ltd. Lewis is Australia’s greatest industrialist.6 Lewis travelled widely and was perceptive, meticulous and factual in observing and researching industrial development. In 1934 he toured Europe, the US, Germany and Japan. From that tour he observed that Britain’s steel industry was on the wane, although the British seemed unaware of this. He doubted that Britain could defend Australia. He 5 Paul Kelly, 100 Years: The Australian Story, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2001, pp 218–24. 6 See Geoffrey Blainey, The Steel Master: A Life of Essington Lewis, Macmillan, South Melbourne,

Australia, 1971; and Clive Turnbull, Great Australians – Essington Lewis, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1963.

The Australian Aviation Industry

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was also uneasy with this concept of defence as he held the view that it was Australia’s responsibility to defend Australia, not someone else’s. He was particularly alarmed by the industrial strength of Japan and the menace evident in their aggressive outlook. He also concluded that aircraft would play a major role in any new conflict and when back in Australia, he expressed concern about Australia’s inadequate security preparations.7 In 1934, Lewis discussed his ideas for an Australian aircraft industry with Sir Harry McGowan of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)—a British corporation with growing interests in Australia.8 ICI had been sensitised to Australian security interests as they had already been prevailed upon by the Australian Government to establish an explosives industry in Australia as a basis for an Australian munitions industry. ICI had been reluctant to do so as they concluded it was more economical to ship explosives to Australia from Britain. But ultimately, they invested in explosives manufacture in Australia and in turn sought to protect and develop their business. Lewis found support in William Robinson, Joint Managing Director of the Zinc Corporation, which was part of the ‘Collins House’ group of companies, including Broken Hill Associated Smelters (BHAS).9 Lewis and Robinson both agreed the need for local production of aircraft and Lewis continued to push his ideas, particularly in his capacity as President of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Laurence Hartnett of General Motors-Holden’s (GMH) was soon drawn in.10 Hartnett had been pre-conditioned by an approach in 1934 by Richard Williams, the RAAF CAS regarding the DC-2 aircraft that in the 1934 England–Australia air race had so impressed Williams. At the time General Motors (GM) was a shareholder in Douglas Aircraft. Lewis realised that GMH, as the leading light engineering practitioner in Australia, would be a key element in building aircraft locally. In Hartnett he also had the services of another extremely able industrialist. Hartnett signed up for a 20 per cent stake of the new aircraft syndicate. Subsequently, Robert Menzies, the Federal Attorney General suggested that GMH reduce its stake to 10 per cent to lesson British sensitivities about the involvement of the American-owned company.

7 Blainey, The Steel Master, pp 120–25. 8 Brian Hill, Wirraway to Hornet: A History of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Pty Ltd,

Southern Cross Publications, Bulleen, VIC, 1998, p 4. 9 William Sydney Robinson was an eminent Australian financial broker and trusted adviser to the

Australian Government in both World Wars. In 1914, he was responsible for preventing the collapse of the Australian base metal mining and smelting industry following the loss of Australia’s European markets. He directed many of Australia’s mining companies and linked the industry to the capital markets in London. He was joint Managing Director of BHAS from 1915 and among many other initiatives, he founded the Western Mining Corporation in 1933. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Australian aluminium industry. He was an ‘international Australian’ constantly seeking to advance Australia’s interests. He was particularly concerned about how British financial policies could adversely impact Australia. In World War II, at the request of the Government, he travelled the world using his contacts and standing to facilitate the negotiation of Australian interests. He declined public honours and died in 1963. For further information see W.S. Robinson, If I Remember Rightly: The Memoirs of W.S. Robinson, edited by Geoffrey Blainey, Cheshire Publications, Melbourne, 1967.

10 GMH was formed in 1931 by the merger of General Motors Australia and Holden’s Motor Body Builders of Adelaide. L.J. Hartnett was an English engineer sent from Vauxhall Motors in 1934 to head GMH. He performed excellent service in the Department of Munitions under Essington Lewis during World War II and remained Managing Director of GMH until 1947.


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Robinson, worried that nothing positive about the initiative was coming from the Commonwealth Government, spoke with Prime Minister Joseph Lyons. Lyons informed Robinson that although he was very supportive of local production of aircraft, the British Government was strongly opposed. They believed that all of Australia’s aircraft requirements could be provided from Britain. Robinson notes that the emotive British reaction to the small GM interest in the Australian aircraft syndicate was farcical, and he states that the establishment of CAC was one of the most strenuous fights he was ever involved in.11 Months were lost before the Australian Government could give its support to the syndicate. Richard Williams records that BHP, BHAS, ICI and GMH each subscribed £10,000 to investigate further the local production of aircraft. Hartnett asked Williams who should manage the venture and without hesitation Williams recommended Wackett, the former RAAF Wing Commander who had headed the RAAF Experimental Station before it was closed down in 1929.12 After leaving the RAAF, Wackett moved to Tugan Aircraft (owned by W.R. Carpenter, later Burns Philp) and continued his ventures in aircraft design and construction. By the time he joined the BHP syndicate, Wackett had produced seven aircraft types. Williams provided an unqualified reference for Wackett. ‘Here was a man who could take a clean sheet of paper, design an aircraft, supervise its construction and test it in the air. I suggested that the number of people in the world who could do that could be counted on one’s fingers.’13 On 22 January 1936, the syndicate decided to send a mission overseas to study manufacturing techniques and select a suitable modern aircraft for production. Hartnett who had served in the Royal Naval Air Service in 1914–18 was planned to lead the mission but was unable to do so. After Hartnett’s discussion with Williams, Wackett was selected to represent the syndicate; in the interim, Hartnett negotiated the buy out of Tugan Aircraft from Sir Walter Carpenter for £15,000 thus securing the services of Wackett and his small team. After attending a full Board meeting of the syndicate to ensure that he understood his riding instructions and reporting requirements, Wackett led a three person team on a visit to the US, Britain, France, Holland, Germany and Czechoslovakia. This was an excellent opportunity for the enthusiastic and dynamic Wackett and from his account of the trip he did not waste it. Wackett was surprised by Britain’s lack of preparedness for war; interested by the innovation of the French; resistant to the sophisticated sale pressure from the Dutch; impressed by the small but advanced factory in Czechoslovakia; taken aback by the capabilities of Junkers and the German production methods copied from the United States; and amazed by the advances in US aviation and production technology.14 Before the team left, Williams states that he provided guidance on the sort of aircraft and engine required by the RAAF and added that it was the policy of the Government

11 Robinson, If I Remember Rightly, pp 174–75. 12 Williams, These are Facts, p 226. 13 ibid, p 227. 14 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 116.


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to use British equipment if available, but this was not binding.15 This discussion was the guidance Wackett received as to the RAAF ‘Operational Requirement’. It reflected more a general-purpose aircraft, and was consistent with Williams’s views on air power. For his part, Wackett was to blend in the requirement that Williams had articulated with some of the technical and engineering considerations that were pertinent to the manufacture of the aircraft in Australia. On his return, Wackett recommended to Williams the building of a modern monoplane with enclosed cockpit, stressed metal mainplane, and powered by a radial engine with a variable pitch propeller. Wackett recommended the North American Aviation (NAA) NA16, with the option of the retractable undercarriage version, the NA33. Williams marshalled his arguments and Minister Sir Archibald Parkhill took the matter to Cabinet, which rejected the recommendation on the basis that there was insufficient justification to countenance the purchase of an American aircraft in preference to a British product. A second submission was made and apart from matters as to the adequacy of the type, critical to the argument was that British manufacturers had failed to provide the team with adequate costing, licensing and royalty data, as well as not being able to assure the team about the availability of adequate drawings, jigs and machine tools. Although Williams had marshalled the arguments to convince the Government to order the NA16, Wackett believes that Parkhill deserves much credit for the decision—particularly in view of the strong political lobbying for a British solution.16 Subsequently it was ironic that Parkhill lost his parliamentary seat in November 1937 before the Wirraway was to fly. With the aircraft order in the offing, the syndicate agreed the establishment of a company and CAC was registered on 17 October 1936. Essington Lewis was Chairman of the company and Lawrence Wackett was appointed Manager. The authorised capital was £1,000,000 paid up to £600,000. The shareholders were:17 Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd £200,000 Broken Hill Associated Smelters Pty Ltd £150,000 Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia and New Zealand £90,000 General Motors-Holden’s Ltd £60,000 The Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australasia Pty Ltd £50,000 Orient Steam Navigation Company Ltd £50,000 The Government placed an order with CAC for 40 NA16 aircraft (later amended to the NA33) and 50 engines in January 1937. The decision was received with bad grace by the British Air Ministry. The British aircraft industry periodical The Aeroplane,

15 Williams, These are Facts, p 227. 16 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 132. 17 The key backers of the syndicate were BHP and the ‘Collins Group’, with BHAS and Electrolytic

Zinc both being part of that group headquartered at 360 Collins Street, Melbourne. See Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 13.


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which was linked to the SBAC, greeted both the announcement of the establishment of CAC and the order of the NA16 with editorials of scorn and sarcasm.18 An open sandy site at Fishermen’s Bend, Melbourne was selected for the CAC factory and in May 1937 a contract for sale of land finalised with the Victorian Government. Not one to be slowed by bureaucratic tardiness, Wackett had already commenced plant construction in April 1937. The plant initially comprised an aircraft factory, engine factory, light metal foundry and administration block. Observers might note that the Fishermen’s Bend plant showed some similarity to the NAA plant in California, even down to such matters as the art deco decoration on the masonry pillars. With time at a premium, Wackett had closely examined the layout of the NAA plant and assessed it as being well suited for CAC. He had already established a good working relationship with NAA and its Chairman, J.H. Kindleberger,19 and had been given access to all the NAA plant drawings; the dynamic Wackett put them to good use. Wackett also reviewed the operation of the Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engine plant at East Hartford, but it was designed for high rates of engine production on the basis of ‘one part, one machine tool’. Wackett invested much effort in developing a cheaper machine tool layout for the CAC engine plant, with an emphasis on machine tool flexibility—the layout facilitated efficiency at the lower Australian production rates and was a feature of the engine factory that was to serve CAC well over the years. In late 1937 NAA supplied a complete NA16 with fixed undercarriage (A20-1) and a NA33 with retractable undercarriage (A20-2). The first Australian manufactured P&W R-1430 Wasp engine was test run on 21 December 1938. The first Australian manufactured Wirraway (Aboriginal for ‘challenge’) flew on 27 March 1939—a most significant achievement for a nation which did not yet have an automobile manufacturing industry. The achievement reflected great credit on Wackett, especially the more difficult task of manufacturing the nine cylinder radial aircraft engine. CAC went on to produce 755 Wirraways and their single row Wasp engines. Having established an aircraft and engine factory from scratch, having gotten production of the first type underway, and bearing in mind the importance of planning and tooling lead times, one would have expected considerable planning effort by the Government and its advisers to determine what type of aircraft should be ordered into production to follow the Wirraway. In April 1939, with CAC only having some 10 months work outstanding, the CAC Board met with Government and was advised somewhat surprisingly, that the Government had no plans for the future production of aircraft from CAC.20

18 See Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 19; and Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 132. 19 Although not as well known as some other American aviation figures, such as Glenn Curtiss, John

Northrop, Donald Douglas etc, J.H. Kindleberger was a significant achiever of the US aviation industry; he was central to the success of North American Aviation Incorporated.

20 Wackett, Aviation Pioneer, p 149.


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Australian Military Aircraft Acquisition Policy – 1937 to 1941 A Process and Policy Failure

The January 1937 decision to order the manufacture of the NA16/33 in Australia had been preceded by an order for the Hawker Demon biplane fighter. Sir George Jones, Chief of the Air Staff (1942–1952), was to comment later that the Demon was a less than satisfactory recommendation by Williams as it was neither fighter nor bomber. He noted that Williams only seemed to consider that a fighter could be effective if it was fitted with rear armament—perhaps a reflection of Williams’s two-seat operational flying in Palestine. Williams had also expressed an interest in the Boulton and Paul Defiant, a two-seat monoplane fighter with a rear turret. Whatever the case, at a time when new monoplane fighters were potentially reshaping the balance of war in the air, the RAAF seemed to lack strong advocacy for fighter aircraft.21 In all roles, the NA33 was a far superior aircraft to the Demon, but it lacked the power, speed and armament of the latest fighter prototypes. The NA33 was envisaged to move to the training role once more advanced aircraft arrived. It should have been obvious to the Air Force, the defence bureaucrat and the parliamentarian that the rapid advance of aviation technology would soon require the selection of an advanced monoplane fighter which would follow the Wirraway down the CAC production line. Fighter aircraft technology was rapidly advancing. German technology and tactical air power had been used in the Spanish civil war and advanced Japanese fighters had been in action against the American Volunteer Group’s Curtis and Boeing fighters in China in 1937. Britain had been alarmed by German developments and with great urgency set about developing the Hurricane, Spitfire and others. Wackett was aware of these advances and had inspected the prototype Hurricane and Spitfire in 1936.22 But the Australian Government seemed oblivious to these developments. The importance of Empire Defence and of Australia’s reliance on the Royal Navy for security was reiterated in a parliamentary address by Minister for Defence Parkhill, following Australia’s participation in the 1937 Imperial Conference in London. Parkhill used the opportunity to attack suggestions that aircraft would be a better proposition than ships. But he provided no evidence that Australia had any guarantees that the Royal Navy could satisfactorily undertake the task of securing Australia, that it had forces appropriate to the task, and that they would be in the region when required. Australia only had assurances and there is nothing to suggest that the Government had critically evaluated the credibility of those assurances.23 Broadly, the detail of the defence policy of the Lyons Government had three legs: a contribution to the naval defence of the Empire, including Singapore; defence against light raids; and an expeditionary force of one division. The development of the RAAF was guided by the ‘Defence against Light Raids’ leg of the policy—this being interpreted as a Japanese cruiser with an embarked float plane that had bypassed the naval defences at Singapore. It was assumed that the float plane would pose little

21 Sir George Jones, From Private to Air Marshal: The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir George

Jones, Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, VIC, 1988, p 59. 22 Wackett was impressed with the Spitfire but ruled out its manufacture as being too complex a task

for CAC, which had yet to build a factory let alone an aircraft. 23 Parliamentary Speech by Sir Archdale Parkhill, Minister for Defence, 25 August 1937.


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threat to either the Wirraway or the twin-engine light bomber/reconnaissance aircraft so favoured in Australian thinking. In 1938, Williams and CAC briefly toyed with the development of a Wirraway powered by the 1200 hp P&W R-1830 twin row Wasp engine as the follow-on to the Wirraway. But notwithstanding intelligence reports about Japanese fighter aircraft developments, the defence establishment and the Australian Government seemed blind to the developments in military aviation. The standing of the RAAF and Williams in the eyes of the Government had also been eroded by a series of flying accidents, some involving Hawker Demon aircraft. The combative response to the Government from Williams, who had been CAS almost continuously since 1921, over this politically charged issue, lost him further credibility and in January 1939 on the direction of the Government, he left on posting overseas for two years ‘further experience’.24 Air Commodore Goble was appointed acting CAS with the temporary rank of Air Vice-Marshal. In this delusory policy environment, it must have been somewhat ironic for Williams—an independently minded Australian airman—when the Government nominated him as the official Australian representative to attend the opening of the Singapore naval dry dock on 14 February 1938.25 On 23 March 1939, following the failure of the ‘Peace in Our Time’ Anglo-German Munich Agreement and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Lyons addressed the nation and outlined the new three year defence plan. Lyons stated that the strength of the RAAF was now 132 front line aircraft—he did not note that most of these were obsolete Demon and Anson aircraft. He stated that the Wirraway was shortly to fly—he did not note that the Wirraway had been superseded by more modern combat aircraft. Apart from noting the imminence of the previously announced Beaufort project, the three year plan announced no decisions on future combat or fighter aircraft.26 The Australian Government continued to avoid the question of fighter aircraft for the RAAF. In June 1940, with Britain mounting a desperate defence against the Luftwaffe, Cabinet approved a 32-squadron structure for the RAAF Home Defence Air Force. This plan included provision for 54 long-range two-seat fighters,27 but by 7 December 1941 after 27 months of war in Europe, not only had no fighter aircraft been procured for the RAAF, but still no decision on the fighter aircraft type had even been made. Certainly in that period, the case for a follow-on to the Wirraway had lost impetus when the Government appointed the RAF officer Air Marshal Sir Charles Burnett as

24 See Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, pp 52–54; Williams, These are Facts,

pp 235–38; and Jones, From Private to Air Marshal, pp 76–77. 25 Of note, Williams flew the Wackett designed Gannet from Melbourne to Singapore and return. He

noted the satisfactory performance of the twin-engine monoplane light transport. See Williams, These are Facts, p 233.

26 Broadcast Address by Prime Minister J.A. Lyons, 23 March 1939. 27 Alan Stephens, Power plus Attitude: Ideas, Strategy and Doctrine in the Royal Australian Air

Force 1921–1991, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1992, pp 72–75.


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CAS of the RAAF on 11 February 1940. 28 On 21 December 1939, after only one year as CAS, Air Vice-Marshal Goble had been pressured into resigning; the Government generously promoting Burnett to the rank of Air Chief Marshal. The Menzies Government had now appointed British officers to head all three Australian Services.29 Burnett had no interests in the RAAF other than using it as a feeder service to the RAF through the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS).30 Although Burnett had selected the Bristol Beaufighter to satisfy the requirement for 54 long-range fighters in the Home Defence Air Force plan, none were secured. Under his direction the Air Board ignored issues vital to the RAAF and the Government denied itself an independent source of specialist military aviation advice through which to critique the advice it received from the British Air Ministry and the British High Commission. As a consequence, young under prepared Australians went to war in the Pacific in an outclassed, general-purpose Wirraway aircraft powered by a 600 hp engine.

The Decision to Manufacture the Beaufort Bomber in Australia Advice and Assurances, not a Rigorous Due Diligence

To satisfy its light raids policy requirement for a twin-engine light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, the Lyons Government selected in 1936 the Bristol Blenheim which had first flown in June that year. The Blenheim made it into RAF service but failed to arrive in Australia; Bristol then suggested the Bolingbroke (a Canadian licensed version of the Blenheim) but it also was not delivered. Finally Bristol suggested the new Beaufort. These decisions seem to have been made on advice from the Air Ministry and British representatives in Australia, rather than from the RAAF. As already noted, Williams the RAAF CAS, came under pressure in 1937 following a series of flying accidents. The Government saw fit to direct a review of the RAAF by Air Chief Marshal Sir Edward Ellington, a recent CAS of the RAF. Ellington tabled his review in July 1938;31 the report providing the opportunity for the Government to remove the forthright Williams from his post. In late 1938, after continuing embarrassment arising from the non-delivery of British aircraft to meet the Government approved RAAF plan of 18 squadrons, Lyons intervened personally with the British Prime Minister, but only received an offer of chartered Avro Anson aircraft.32 Ultimately, Lyons had to announce in November 1938 an order for 50 Lockheed Hudson aircraft as insurance against the non-delivery of the Beaufort. The Lyons announcement followed some embarrassment about 28 Burnett was an Inspector General, not an appointment usually occupied by up-and-coming, high

calibre officers. He was shortly to retire until nominated by the British Government for duty as RAAF CAS. See Gillison, Royal Australia Air Force 1939–1942, pp 76–78.

29 Admiral Sir Ragnar Colvin, RN was The First Naval Member; Lieutenant General Squires replaced the Australian officer, Lieutenant General Sir John Laverack, as Chief of General Staff. See Gillison, Royal Australia Air Force 1939–1942, p 74.

30 Air Vice-Marshal Joe Hewitt, Adversity in Success, Langate Publishing, South Yarra, VIC, 1980, p 2.

31 Gillison, Royal Australia Air Force 1939–1942, pp 48–57. 32 ibid, p 52.


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Bristol having licensed the production of Blenheim aircraft to Finland and Yugoslavia but refusing to enter into licence discussions with CAC, a hangover from the affront of Australia ordering the NA33 and having a US company as a 10 per cent shareholder in CAC. Delivery of the Beaufort was also held back by development problems—the prototype Beaufort only flew in October 1938 and it needed much development work, and as the RAF wanted it urgently Australia would have to wait. In 1938, Britain commenced the decentralisation of its armament and aircraft factories to Canada. This decision was taken to circumvent the US Neutrality Acts by exploiting the special relationship Canada had with the US. In this way a continuing flow of production and armaments from the US to Britain via the Canadian factories could be anticipated.33 The GMH General Manager and CAC Director, Hartnett, visited London in 1938 and met Australian High Commissioner Stanley Bruce. Bruce had been Prime Minister in 1929 and had accepted the Salmond Report’s recommendation to close down the RAAF Experimental Section at Randwick. He was not a supporter of the Australian aircraft industry. Hartnett explained to Bruce, who had also been cynically opposed to the NA33 decision, the circumstances leading to the establishment of CAC and to the order for the NA33. Hartnett informed Bruce that Britain had now ordered the NA33 in its guise as the Harvard. In a marked change of tack, Bruce now sought to involve Australia and CAC in the decentralisation of British aircraft production.34 Notwithstanding the differing geopolitical circumstances of Canada and Australia, Bruce envisaged that Australia and CAC could be the recipient of a large British order for the Beaufort bomber. Bruce did not perceive that there was little of attraction in his proposal for the British, only an added burden on the British aircraft industry to ship thousands of drawings, jigs and a training liability to the other side of the world. A British Air Mission consisting of Sir Donald Banks (Permanent Secretary of the Air Ministry), Sir Hardman Lever and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore, RAF visited Australia to recommend a way ahead.35 The Mission reported to the Australian Government on 24 March 1939, just 27 months after construction of the CAC factory at Fishermen’s Bend had commenced and three days before the first Australian manufactured Wirraway flew. The Mission saw an opportunity to counter the influence of the US aviation industry in Australia by recommending the assembly of the Beaufort in Australia but it ignored the new, well-equipped CAC aircraft production facility with its growing trained workforce. Instead, the Mission recommended that a new organisation based on the state railway workshops in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and South Australia be established to assemble the Beaufort.36 The Mission’s recommendation to set up a new manufacturing organisation when one had already been established two years previously, and with tacit government support, 33 Andrew Ross, Armed and Ready: The Industrial Development & Defence of Australia

1900–1945, Turton & Armstrong, Sydney, p 286. 34 ibid, p 286. 35 ibid, p 287. 36 ibid.


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was unsound and risky. It was not as if the Beaufort was a well-established aircraft; it was still developmental and the Australian manufacturer could expect problems, particularly as Bristol had defaulted on the delivery of the Blenheim and Bollingbroke. It also made no sense from an Australian aircraft industry perspective as CAC, apart from the Wackett Trainer and Wirraway, had no follow-on orders. The Mission somewhat patronisingly rationalised their recommendation on the basis that CAC had expertise in training aircraft and therefore should continue to concentrate on building training aircraft. At least CAC had aircraft and engine building experience; the railway workshops had none. Moreover, the railway workshops specialised in heavy and civil engineering activities, and were already earmarked for other armament activities. The production of the Beaufort in either the Ford or GMH assembly plants using their light engineering production expertise was not addressed, presumably because of their American ownership.37 The International Harvester factory at Geelong was also ignored; in short, the recommendation was without a rigorous basis. The Air Board seemed surprised, but with its recent leader Williams having been shipped overseas and with Goble temporarily in charge, the Air Board went to ground. The industrialists and CAC thought it made no sense at all and approached Government, only to be told in April 1939 that Government had no plans for the manufacture of aircraft at CAC.38 The Mission proposed a joint order by the Australian and British Governments of 180 Beauforts with no guarantee of follow-on orders. The project envisaged assembly from imported parts, rather than manufacture. The production timetable was optimistic with the first Beaufort to be produced in 1940, despite the aircraft and its sleeve valve Taurus engine experiencing developmental problems. The Taurus problems were well-known, for in January 1939 Wackett had already suggested that the Beaufort be re-engined with the P&W R-1830 twin row Wasp, a 20 per cent more powerful engine. The twin row Wasp could readily be manufactured by CAC and it was cheaper. The British Mission argued that the Beaufort already had sufficient power and that sleeve valve technology was the way of the future. The Lyons Government ignored all the technical advice and accepted the recommendations of the British Air Mission. The only qualification was that CAC be allowed to manufacture the twin row Wasp as assurance against failure of the Taurus. The British Mission was only interested in the re-establishment of British aircraft technology in Australia and they tapped into veins of similar thinking in the Australian Government and bureaucracy. The Mission played a hard game of self-interest by having nothing to do with CAC and Wackett in particular. Wackett was even made the subject of some discreet adverse comment.39 The British Mission not unnaturally recommended a solution that was advantageous to British interests, and the Australian Government and its advisers were foolish not to anticipate this. The Government had a responsibility at least to analyse the proposal from a perspective of Australia’s interests; it neglected this responsibility. 37 ibid. 38 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 149. 39 Ross, Armed and Ready, p 288.


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The Government decided to establish the Aircraft Construction Branch of the Department of Supply and Development to assemble the Beaufort. CAC, faced with being idle by mid-1940, sought orders for whole Beauforts. This was denied although CAC was offered the prospect of orders for sub-assemblies. The Menzies Government came to power following the death of Lyons in April 1939. One of its early tasks was to consider on 23 May a submission from the new Minister for Supply and Development, Richard Casey, for CAC to build only the twin row Wasp for the Beaufort. Casey, who had some insight into technical matters, accepted the logic that the 1200 hp twin row Wasp, which used 50 per cent of the parts from the single row Wasp already being built by CAC, was the best operational and engineering solution. The Menzies Government, apparently on the advice of the British High Commissioner, rejected the approach and determined that CAC was to build the 1000 hp sleeve valve Taurus. Casey was embarrassed, the Air Board again went to ground and CAC was put further out on a limb. At a CAC Board meeting on 17 June 1939, the Chairman of CAC, Harold Darling40 who had replaced Essington Lewis, pointed out to Casey that: ‘The Company had built up a technique which CAC considered was very desirable from the Australian point of view. All Australian materials were used except aluminium ingot. The whole engine can be built in Australia except magnetos… It took two and a half years to build up this technique and CAC now feels that all their efforts are now discounted. Gear cutting machines are useless for the manufacture of sleeve valve engines; fully 50 per cent of the engine plant will be useless.’41 The ironic situation facing CAC was that after production of the 130 Wirraways, its only order was for the Taurus engine—an engine that CAC did not presently have the capacity to build. The Air Board monitored the routine Air Ministry technical summaries, which continued to report the problems with the Taurus. But prior to re-approaching the Government, the Air Board astutely had the Air Ministry agree that it would be desirable to manufacture the twin row Wasp in Australia. The British soon advised that they could only supply 100 of the 250 Taurus engines promised. Prime Minister Menzies agreed the decision on 31 October 1939 to manufacture the twin row Wasp at CAC. Notwithstanding, some in the Aircraft Construction Branch still attempted a rearguard action to stick with the Taurus. In this ill-informed and incoherent way, the Australian Government arrived at the decision to embark on Australia’s largest and most difficult manufacturing project—the manufacture of the Beaufort bomber complete with its Pratt & Whitney twin row radial engines. It did not bode well for the success of the project.

40 Harold Darling was an Australian born industrialist who many considered to be the face of

Australian capitalism. He had been intimately involved in the development of the Australian steel industry, having been Chairman of BHP since 1923. He was a Director of many companies, including the National Bank of Australasia and ICI Australia and New Zealand.

41 See Ross, Armed and Ready, p 294; and Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 45.


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Aircraft Production in Australia – 1939 to 1941 Disorganisation and the Early Consequences of the Beaufort Decision

As previously noted, the Aircraft Construction Branch of the Department of Supply and Development was established in June 1939. The former Chief Commissioner of the Victorian Railways, Harold Clapp, was appointed General Manager. Ross states that Clapp was a friend of Prime Minister Menzies and had negotiated a salary 60 per cent more than the Departmental head, Daniel McVey.42 With this as a start, not surprisingly, Clapp soon fell out with McVey and refused to cooperate with other Departmental activities. Clapp duplicated the Contracts Board arrangement within the Department of Supply by establishing a contracting organisation through each state railways commission.43 Seven months later, in an attempt to rectify an unworkable situation, the Government established the Aircraft Production Commission (APC) with Clapp as its Chairman with the status of a departmental head. Commissioners O’Shea and Storey completed the three-person Commission. The APC had wide powers covering full control over aircraft production, repair and overhaul (excluding RAAF establishments), supply of materials and tools etc, and the development of the aircraft industry. But the APC still had little in the way of production resources. In June 1940, when all Bristol support for the Beaufort Project dried up, the APC attempted to buy CAC.44 This was an unusual proposal, which reflects the unsound nature of the initial advice to the Australian Government by the British Air Mission only 13 months previous. But the proposal begged the question, if the APC could not manage the Beaufort project how could the APC aspire to manage CAC competently. It was a desperate proposal, which offended the industrialist backers of CAC and all those involved with the company. A better option would have been to subcontract the production of the Beaufort to CAC but this would have shown up the inadequacy of the initial advice. In September 1939, Menzies appointed Essington Lewis as Director General of Munitions (Head of the Department of Munitions reporting direct to the Prime Minister, and with unprecedented powers). Lewis, who had relinquished his chairmanship of CAC, acted as a go-between and advised Menzies that CAC was not for sale. Menzies declined to acquire CAC compulsorily—it would have created a major political backlash from the industrialists at a time when Menzies was deeply indebted to the industrialists for their support of Australian mobilisation. For instance, Essington Lewis had co-opted Australia’s best industrialists into the Department of Munitions where under his leadership they mobilised Australia’s resources for war. Lewis even worked on an unpaid basis, using BHP aircraft, cars and his BHP personal staff in his role as Director General of Munitions.45 This did not end the matter. When the Curtin Labor Government took power in October 1941, Clapp had a new Minister for Aircraft Production, Senator Cameron— 42 Ross, Armed and Ready, p 296. 43 ibid, p 297. 44 Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 76. 45 Blainey, The Steel Master, pp 145–60.


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a prominent socialist who had some empathy with nationalised industries. On 12 December 1941, at a combined CAC Board meeting the APC again proposed to buy out CAC.46 The CAC Directors again declined and, subsequently, three CAC Directors—Harold Darling (who was also Chairman of BHP), Sir Colin Fraser (also Chairman of BHAS) and Wackett—called on Prime Minister Curtin.47 Curtin convened a meeting of the Advisory War Council on 18 December 1941 to resolve the matter. Curtin, who after assuming the prime ministership had retained Lewis as Director General of Munitions, invited Lewis and the APC to attend. The Advisory War Council acknowledged that the Beaufort project had suffered from continued failures of supply from both Britain and the US, but this was insufficient justification for the APC to takeover CAC. It was acknowledged that the APC was also hampered because it had no aircraft design and production expertise. Lewis observed that the APC was not a success as it attempted to be both a manufacturing body and an overriding industry controller—the two roles were in conflict.48 The outcome was that the APC was abolished. Curtin appointed Essington Lewis as Director General of Aircraft Production as well as Director General Munitions. Lewis who reported to two Ministers—Norman Makin, the Minister for Munitions and Senator Donald Cameron, the Minister for Aircraft Production—had unprecedented statutory powers under the war emergency legislation. An Aircraft Advisory Committee was established to assist Lewis coordinate the activities of the Australian aircraft industry, which now had three major manufacturing organisations: CAC, the Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production (DAP) and de Havilland Australia (DHA). The Aircraft Advisory Committee included the RAAF, CAC, the Beaufort Organisation, de Havilland Australia and, of course, Treasury. Wackett was appointed as the Technical Adviser to the Aircraft Advisory Committee.49 Finally in December 1941, some organisational order had been introduced into aircraft production. The question now was whether the RAAF still under the leadership of the British officer, Burnett, who had so foolishly advised the Australian Government that the Wirraway was a match for the best Japanese fighters,50 could articulate some clear, long-sighted aircraft operational requirements for Australia’s industry to build to.

Implementation of the Australian Beaufort Manufacturing Project A Manufacturing Phoenix from Strategic Ashes

The implementation of the largest aircraft production project in Australia was to be conducted by the Aircraft Construction Branch of the Department of Supply and Development—often referred to in its various organisational guises as the ‘Beaufort Organisation’. The Beaufort Organisation was entirely dependant on the Bristol 46 Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, pp 77–79. 47 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 157. 48 Ross, Armed and Ready, p 302. 49 See Ross, Blainey, Wackett and Hill. 50 Blainey, The Steel Master, p 163.


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Aeroplane Company for technical and training support, yet the Government had conducted no due diligence on Bristol to validate whether Bristol could meet its obligations. Under the agreement developed by the British Air Mission, which was essentially a ‘Government to Government’ agreement for the purchase of 90 aircraft each, the Air Ministry directed Bristol on 26 January 1939 to supply all technical data and drawings, and to ship to Australia some 33,000 jigs and tools etc. By 31 December 1939, Bristol was to supply 10 sets of fabricated parts and 10 sets of raw materials for the first 20 aircraft.51 The first Australian made Beaufort was planned for completion in October 1940, with production ramping to 20 aircraft per month by July 1941. The Air Ministry was to supply the first 250 Taurus engines for the project.52 Australian technical personnel went to Britain and Bristol specialists came to Australia. In October 1939, Bristol and the Air Ministry agreed to redesign the aircraft to take the twin row Wasp. The redesign was estimated at six months but took 12, with most of the work being done by the Australian specialists in Britain and the Bristol personnel in Australia. When the first batch of tools and data were found to be inaccurate, APC Commissioner O’Shea went to Britain in February 1940 to sort the problem. Largely through his efforts some 7000 tools/jigs were eventually shipped. Matters got worse when in May 1940, with the war in Europe now a threat to Britain’s survival, the Minister for Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook, prohibited the export of aircraft or aircraft parts from Britain. Finally in August 1940, Menzies announced that Australia would have to manufacture the outstanding 26,000 tools/jigs. Given that Bristol was making 30 Beauforts a month for the RAF, O’Shea had concluded that Bristol was not according any priority to the Australian project.53 Australia was being given a lesson in what happens when the national interests of close allies diverge. In an attempt to save the project from failure, the APC sought parts from the US but this was complicated by the different US engineering standards and material specifications. Had the full gravity of the situation been comprehended, the APC would likely have recommended termination of the project. Clapp, Chairman of the APC, had been shown to be an inappropriate appointment.54 The APC continued to struggle on and received considerable assistance from the new government CSIR aeronautical laboratories, overseas suppliers, BHP, CAC, Australian industry, and the Australian Aluminium Company, which had been established in late 1939. But relations between the APC and CAC were poor with ongoing disputes. A particularly disruptive dispute took place over the twin row Wasp engine. The APC, acting on advice from Bristol, placed orders with CAC for twin row Wasp engines 51 Ross, Armed and Ready, p 325. 52 ibid, p 326. 53 ibid, p 327. 54 ibid, p 328.


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with a 16:9 ‘bevel’ reduction gear. Bevel gears were difficult to cut and CAC recommended a 3:2 ‘spur’ reduction gear as used in the twin row Wasp fitted to the Lockheed Hudson. CAC argued that the better take-off, climb and cruise performance at the expense of top speed would be a good compromise. The APC stuck with the Bristol advice, CAC did not meet its engine quota for the year and engines had to be imported from Pratt & Whitney. Pratt later dropped the use of bevel reduction gears in the twin row Wasp.55 The Beaufort required many thousands of modifications, major and minor, including an increase in fin area by 15.5 per cent—a modification Bristol later incorporated on RAF Beauforts. The Australian prototype flew on 5 May 1941 and the first production aircraft in August 1941—amazingly, only 12 months late despite all the bad policy, naivety, disorganisation, and personal animosity. In service, the aircraft experienced a high initial accident rate. Many accidents resulted from inexperience in piloting the powerful Beaufort, although a major problem with the elevator trim caused a number of fatalities until it was resolved—the Beaufort finally maturing into a sturdy and reliable aircraft. By December 1942, 12 months after the abolition of the APC, the Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production (DAP) had produced 208 aircraft. John Storey, the former GMH executive initially appointed as a commissioner of the APC, had been retained as General Manager of the Beaufort Division. By August 1944, the DAP had delivered 705 Australian built Beauforts and CAC Lidcombe had built 870 R-1830 twin row Wasp engines for the program. Monthly deliveries peaked in September 1943 when 39 Beauforts were delivered. Major structures were built at NSW Railways Chullora, Victorian Railways Newport, SA Railways Islington, GMH Woodville with final assembly at DAP Fishermen’s Bend and DAP Mascot.56 Some criticise the program on the basis that the Beaufort was the wrong aircraft for the RAAF, but there was not much available in 1939—especially after disregarding the modern German twin-engine bombers. The stopgap Lockheed Hudson carried only 25 per cent of the Beaufort bombload. The USAAC design competition that would lead to the robust NAA B-25 Mitchell and the complex Martin B-26 Marauder was only announced in January 1939—but both these types warranted at least some examination. The most obvious oversight was not to consider the Douglas A-20 Boston light bomber, which first flew in December 1938. The Boston proved a fine aircraft well suited to the attack role; it was conveniently powered by the twin row Wasp and the Douglas Aircraft Company was at the forefront of aircraft design and production. It was in Australia’s national interest to examine these alternatives, or at least to benchmark the British Air Mission proposal against other options. Ironically, all three US types were good enough to be ordered into RAF service. As to the Boston, reputedly the aircrew of No 22 Squadron RAAF expressed much regret when their Bostons were replaced with DAP manufactured Beaufighters in 1944. 55 ibid, p 329. 56 Stewart Wilson, Beaufort, Beaufighter and Mosquito in Australian Service, Aerospace

Publications, Weston Creek, ACT, 1990, p 39.


55

The decision-making that led to the Beaufort program was not the result of a rigorous analytical process. There was no detailed examination of aircraft options against a requirement; it was the end of a long drawn out process starting with the Blenheim. There was no Australian mission sent overseas to investigate the aircraft available. There was no due diligence on candidate companies. The fact that the Beaufort was not an easy type to mass-produce and that Bristol was not well-placed to support Australian production was overlooked. Finally, the decision by Government to place an order for aircraft production in Australia with a new organisation without any aviation competence was laden with risk. The March 1939 order for 90 Australian Beaufort aircraft should have been placed with CAC, Australia’s only manufacturer of stressed metal aircraft. CAC had already established a network of subcontractors and manufacturing standards; it had a new world-class plant, which provided an excellent basis for expansion; it had management experienced in licensing and manufacture; and it had a training system for newly recruited workers. As a result, the already difficult task of manufacture of the Beaufort was made much more difficult. That post-1942, the Australian Beaufort manufacturing program under the guidance of the Department of Aircraft Production so turned around that it is rightly ranked as Australia’s greatest manufacturing achievement, is as outstanding as the original strategic decision-making was naive.

Post-1942 Developments – Boomerang, Beaufighter and Mosquito The Australian Aircraft Industry Gets Rolling

Prime Minister Menzies returned to Australia in June 1941 after spending four months in Britain. One outcome of his visit was that it brought home the pragmatic realisation that British defence priorities were, not unexpectedly, in places elsewhere than Australia. Political crisis followed and the Curtin Labor Government came to power in October. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and in this increasingly desperate environment, CAC management unilaterally made the decision on 21 December 1941 to go ahead and commence design of the Boomerang fighter.57 It seems a sensible, self-interested and well overdue decision, noting that Australia had already been at war for 27 months. It begs the question as to why Government and its advisers had done nothing regarding a Wirraway follow-on. CAC started work on the tail and rear fuselage of the Boomerang before receiving the order for 105 ‘Wirraway Interceptors’ on 2 March 1942.58 Post-Pearl Harbor, the Government was trawling the globe for fighter aircraft and the Boomerang was the fallback should the 250 Curtis Kittyhawk fighters ordered from the US be delayed. Although the Boomerang used some 65 per cent of the parts from the Wirraway, it was more than a shortened Wirraway. The addition of a twin row Wasp engine, two cannon and four machine guns produced a stubby, robust and manoeuvrable fighter. It handled well and, while RAAF tests showed it lacked the speed of the Kittyhawk and Bell Airacobra, it was more manoeuvrable than either of the US fighters. The Boomerang had a slight edge in rate of climb at lower altitudes, although the two US

57 Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 67. 58 ibid, p 68.


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fighters had greater diving speed; essentially it was a ‘stopgap’ fighter that later found a niche in army cooperation work.59 The Boomerang prototype first flew on 29 May 1942. It went into production with few modifications and ultimately 250 were built for the RAAF. Fortunately for Australia, the Kittyhawks arrived for the ‘seventy series’ squadrons with the Boomerangs generally going to the ‘eighty series’ squadrons. The Boomerang’s main design limitation was the thick wings inherited from the Wirraway. Had CAC received an order for a developmental fighter sometime in the 33 months between the first flight of the Wirraway and Pearl Harbor, it is likely that Wackett would have designed a lighter more aerodynamic wing. But even though it was derivative, the Boomerang and its short gestation period showed that CAC had matured into a most able aviation engineering organisation which had been underutilised in the critical period 1939 to 1942. Much time had been lost and the RAAF now needed to clarify quickly its thinking about requirements. Following Pearl Harbor, it had rushed through a requirement to arm the Beauforts with torpedoes; none was available and so local production was approved by the Curtin Government in December 1941. Essington Lewis quickly built and equipped the RAN Torpedo Factory on the site of the North Sydney Gasworks to meet this requirement.60 A new CAS was appointed in May 1942, Air Vice-Marshal George Jones (the rank of Air Vice-Marshal being two ranks lower than that given to his predecessor Air Chief Marshal Burnett). Jones advised that Beaufort production needed to be increased from 20 to 40 aircraft per month, but soon he countered this by advising that the Beaufort was not a good torpedo platform and the RAAF now wanted only 217 Beauforts.61 The DAP said ‘too late’; they were committed to a production run of 450 Beaufort aircraft and the RAAF needed to advise of plans for the production of a follow-on aircraft. This was typical of the dysfunctional nature of the Air Board under Burnett; the RAAF had been too focused on the EATS and had not been paying attention to the matter of combat aircraft.62 In the absence of any other plans, the industry had made long-term commitments to the Beaufort. The War Cabinet seemed to have little option but to approve in December 1942, the production of 705 Beauforts and 345 Beaufighters. Strategic decisions such as this were vital to allow industry to perform effectively—yet regrettably, the focus on the EATS meant they were made far too late. The Beaufighter proved an outstanding aircraft for the RAAF but its acquisition owes more to it using the wings, undercarriage, empennage and many other parts from the Beaufort and it being the easiest manufacturing follow-on for the DAP, rather than to RAAF operational requirements. The RAAF, like the RAF, had been attracted to the 59 Stewart Wilson, Wirraway, Boomerang and CA-15 in Australian Service, Aerospace Publications,

Weston Creek, ACT, 1991, p 144. 60 Blainey, The Steel Master, p 169. 61 Ross, Armed and Ready, p 334. 62 Jones, From Private to Air Marshal, p 84.


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Beaufighter as a general-purpose fighter as early as 1939, but the war in Europe had demonstrated that the Beaufighter could not survive air-to-air combat with German single-engine fighters. Fortunately, the innovative piece of improvisation that was the Beaufighter turned into an excellent tactical combat aircraft well suited to the South-West Pacific, where its high speed at low altitude enabled it to escape combat with the Japanese Zero fighter, which was not as fast as the German fighters. The RAAF initially operated British built Beaufighters, which had some adverse stability and handling characteristics—there were many accidents on take-off and landing. The Australian built aircraft included a steerable tail wheel, fully feathering DHA Australian made propellers, heavier armament, aerodynamic refinements and the 1725 hp Bristol Hercules engines. As insurance against the non-delivery of the Hercules, the DAP prototyped and flew a Beaufighter with Wright Cyclone engines; a contingency plan which ultimately was not needed.63 The first Australian built Beaufighter flew in May 1944, 14 months after receipt of the first drawings. The DAP now had its act together and 365 Australian built Beaufighters were finally delivered to the RAAF. Beaufighter manufacture was undertaken at Chullora NSW Railways, Newport Victorian Railways, Islington SA Railways, DAP Mascot and DAP Fishermen’s Bend.64 The Bristol Hercules engines were imported. Following the initial success of the Mosquito in RAF service, de Havilland proposed the building of the aircraft in Australia and Canada. The RAAF had expressed interest in the Mosquito as a substitute for the Beaufighter and in March 1942, de Havilland sent plans and a pattern aircraft to their subsidiary company DHA.65 Strong doubts were raised as to the durability of the wooden aircraft in tropical conditions; advice was received that the airworthiness of the aircraft depended on a high quality of manufacturing; and Wackett thought a single-engine fighter more appropriate. The whole plan hinged on the importation of Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12 liquid cooled engines from the US. On 2 September 1942, the War Cabinet formalised the process with an order for 150 Mosquito aircraft with provision for a further 120. In July 1943, the War Cabinet increased the order to 370 aircraft, which included the building of a new Commonwealth-owned plant at Bankstown. The first Australian built Mosquito flew on 23 July 1943, but the program experienced many teething problems. Although DHA had built more than 1000 Tiger Moths it had built no combat aircraft and the manufacture of the Mosquito, with its novel wooden laminated construction, was a step into the unknown. Australian metals, woods and glues were used and DHA employed extensive subcontracting around the Sydney area with the wings being made at GMH Pagewood. Final assembly took place at Bankstown. Glue problems, manufacturing standards, a lack of skilled woodworkers and subcontracting quality caused several fatal accidents, and achieving the required structural standards with the wings was a major difficulty. 63 Wilson, Beaufort, Beaufighter and Mosquito, p 88. 64 ibid, p 88. 65 ibid, p 157.


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Geoffrey de Havilland visited Australia to investigate the problems.66 DHA began a training program with subcontractors and brought more manufacture in-house. By August 1945, 104 Mosquitos had been delivered to the RAAF, with 212 aircraft delivered by program end in 1948. The RAAF gained an excellent combat aircraft, although the durability and longevity of the aircraft meant it would have a short operational life. It was a huge step forward for DHA, who had underestimated the complexities of the wooden laminated construction and of the difficulties of achieving the necessary quality control over the manufacturing processes.

The CAC CA4 Woomera Bomber A Contingency Plan or Unnecessary Diversion

CAC had been liaising with the RAAF about the medium bomber and reconnaissance requirement prior to being sidelined by the British Air Mission in March 1939. When the Beaufort project started attracting adverse comment in the Parliament following the arrival of incorrect drawings and the late delivery of parts, CAC proposed an Australian solution to the RAAF bomber requirement. The RAAF responded to the CAC approach in April 1940, with a Development Specification for a long-range aircraft capable of carrying out dive-bombing, torpedo-bombing, level bombing and reconnaissance.67 Dive-bombers had not previously been on the RAAF agenda. They had also been ignored by the RAF and the USAAC in the inter-war years and it was not until Germany, Japan and the US naval air arm developed dive-bombers that their utility and accuracy was apparent. Wackett would have known of the German Ju-87 and Ju-88 dive-bombers, having visited Junkers in 1936. He grasped the operational utility of the concept and matched it with the geographic demands of the Australian theatre to design a fast aircraft with two R-1830 twin row Wasp engines with a range and bomb load well superior to the Beaufort. The aircraft had heavy fixed forward firing armament, large dive-brakes, twin remotely operated gun turrets at the rear of the engine nacelles, and integral fuel tanks—the latter two features being ahead of their time and the source of much developmental difficulty.68 The APC saw the CA4 as a threat to the Beaufort and it immediately became a bone of contention between CAC and the APC. The APC questioned the claimed performance of the CA4 and attempted to exert a close control over the project. Wackett resisted any interference. The APC was still jousting vigorously with CAC over the CA4 when the APC was abolished in December 1941. Wackett quickly went to work and the prototype CA4 flew on 19 September 1941. Impressed with the initial promise of the aircraft and with the prototype Beaufort having only flown in May 1941, the RAAF ordered 105 production aircraft (the CA11). After company testing and development the CA4 was handed over to the RAAF for evaluation in February 1942.

66 ibid, p 164. 67 Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 59. 68 ibid, p 62.


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The project began to experience difficulty. CAC was both tooling up for production while rectifying development problems. Testing and modification was slow. While some development problems were overcome, Wackett was reluctant to employ simpler solutions to some of the aircraft’s innovations and complexities. He seems not to have realised that by persisting with complex solutions he risked missing the window of opportunity available to the CA4. At this critical stage of the project, it was vital that strong strategic oversight be given to the project. The only body that could give unambiguous direction to Wackett was the customer, the Air Board. But with the tour of duty of the undistinguished Burnett coming to an end, the Air Board was not functioning well. The problem was not immediately solved when on 5 May 1942, the junior substantive Group Captain acting Air Commodore George Jones was appointed CAS, and the experienced senior RAAF officers, Williams and Bostock, were posted off the Board. It took some time for Jones and others to adjust to these moves. With the Air Board otherwise occupied, it seems that the CA4 project was not under close scrutiny and it was allowed to drift at a crucial period. For instance, it was immediately apparent that the sealants and the integral fuel tanks were a serious problem, as was the remote nacelle-mounted rear turrets and their aiming system. The fitting of self-sealing bladders was the obvious solution to the fuel problem but at a cost of reduced fuel capacity. The RAAF would have accepted fuel bladders and would have happily discarded the remote turret system by substituting a normal turret.69 The fuel leakage problem remained with the aircraft and was the cause of the prototype exploding in midair in January 1943. The loss of the prototype saw the window of opportunity for the CA4 close. Vultee Vengeance dive-bombers arrived in large numbers in 1943, although the RAAF soon declared them obsolete and withdrew them from service. B-25 Mitchells and A-20 Bostons were coming into service with ultimately B-24 Liberators and Australian built Beaufighters and Mosquitos to follow. The CA4 production order was reduced to 20 aircraft, although cancellation of the aircraft and its more powerful CAC R-2000 engine was inevitable—coming in September 1944 to allow CAC to focus on the Mustang fighter project. The early promise of the project was lost by an inability to focus the development of the CA4 to meet RAAF needs in the window of opportunity available. A critical review of the project should have occurred in early 1942 to right the CA4 project, or have it cancelled. It is unclear as to how serious the RAAF was about the CA4 specification. Certainly in 1940, the manufacturing workload for CAC was tapering off. This lack of work was embarrassing. Perhaps one aim of the RAAF Development Specification was to keep Wackett and his new factory busy; the ease with which Wackett had his CA4 design concept accepted suggests that this may well have been so.

69 ibid, pp 62–64.


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The fact that the CA4 had many initial problems should not be held against it. The Martin B-26 Marauder was an aircraft with many similar problems. Among other things, it needed a bigger wing; but CAC did not have the resources of Martin to get the CA4 right. As to Wackett, there is no mention of the CA4 in his autobiography, which suggests that he ranks the CA4, project as a ‘bridge too far’; certainly his lack of progress with the CA4 is at odds with his success in the Wirraway, Boomerang and Wasp engine projects.

The CAC Engine Plant at Lidcombe From Radial to Merlin

As a consequence of the Beaufort decision, the Government agreed to construct two new factories in addition to those already existing at CAC. The APC was to manage the bomber plant, which was to be built adjacent to CAC at Fishermen’s Bend. CAC was assigned the responsibility for the Beaufort engine factory. Although CAC was building the single row Wasp at Fishermen’s Bend, the new engine factory was to be located in the Sydney area where a pool of skilled engineering labour was available. The plant was built and financed by the Government on 20 acres at Lidcombe.70 In November 1939, CAC was formally given the task of managing the plant and building the twin row Wasp. Wackett was to organise the plant, secure the licensing rights, procure the machine tools and manage the production of the engine. He recounts that initially he did much of this personally, using his good relationship with P&W executives to advantage.71 Wackett asked James Kirby, a successful Sydney businessman who was already subcontracting to CAC, to manage CAC Lidcombe. Kirby agreed and managed the plant for the duration of the war. As his personal contribution to the war effort, he did this on an unpaid basis. With the rapid expansion of the workforce, the plant experienced a number of labour disputes, followed by a range of technical problems. The labour problem was not untypical of the period and seems to have related to work practices and some friction with seconded P&W personnel. The plant was also hampered as castings were still made at Fishermen’s Bend until the Lidcombe foundry opened in late 1941. The factory was opened on 4 March 1941, with the first Australian assembled engine completed on 28 October 1941. CAC arranged for the purchase of 50 engines to precede Australian production. Ultimately, the plant manufactured 870 R-1830 engines and overhauled 700 R-1830 engines. In addition, the factory supported Allied forces by overhauling a total of 1071 R-1830 and R-2800 engines for the US forces.72 In November 1943, the decision to manufacture parts for the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was taken and in January 1945, the decision to fully manufacture the Merlin was taken. The Merlin program tapered off following the end of the war, although 108 Merlins were manufactured, albeit with some dependence on imported parts. The

70 ibid, p 46. 71 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 153. 72 Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 49.


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plant ran down gradually after the war, manufacturing tooling for CAC’s jet engine program, supplying tooling and components for the automobile industry, and manufacturing the FN rifle. When CAC consolidated all engine work at Fishermen’s Bend in 1958, the lease for the plant was transferred to DHA. The Lidcombe plant made a major contribution to the Australian war effort. It also was responsible for introducing a range of precision engineering skills, metallurgical expertise and production technologies into Australia. As with many other Australian World War II industrial ventures, the expertise of BHP was critical to resolving a range of metallurgy, quality and supply issues. BHP was the cornerstone of Australian World War II industrial capability; this capability having been established with the perception and foresight of Essington Lewis, the BHP General Manager from 1921 to 1939.73

The 1943 McVey Overseas Mission Setting a New Direction for the Aircraft Industry

In December 1942, a joint Cabinet submission by Jones and Lewis addressed the question of future aircraft production in Australia. Cabinet agreed that both a fighter and bomber type should be produced in Australia to meet the needs of the RAAF post-1944. The selected aircraft were to be proven ‘best of type’.74 In early 1943, the capable McVey, Secretary of the Department of Aircraft Production, led an overseas mission, including Wackett and RAAF representatives, to recommend the most suitable fighter and bomber for production in Australia. At last, the Government was to base its strategic decisions on a process of analysis and investigation, factoring in both RAAF requirements and key production issues. But it was not to be as simple as that. Wackett states that four members of the mission had already preselected the Spitfire as the fighter type before departing from Australia. After inspecting both Mustang and Spitfire, the mission was not agreed on a recommendation. Wackett favoured the Mustang on the grounds that the Merlin powered Mustang was a better fighter than the Spitfire; that the Mustang had much greater range, which was particularly relevant to the RAAF; that the Mustang had the ability to carry underwing stores and fuel tanks; and that the Mustang was easier to manufacture than the Spitfire. But it was not until the mission met with the Air Ministry in London and heard the recommendation of Air Marshal Sir Ralph Sorley, RAF who recommended against the British fighter, that the mission could unanimously recommend the Mustang for production by CAC.75 The mission recommended the Avro Lancaster (later the Lincoln) for manufacture by the Beaufort Division of the DAP. Both aircraft were powered by the Rolls-Royce V-12 liquid cooled Merlin, which was also recommended for manufacture by CAC at the Lidcombe plant. The Government agreed the recommendation of McVey and ordered 350 Mustangs. 73 D.P. Mellor, Australia in the War of 1939–1945: The Role of Science and Industry, Australian

War Memorial, Canberra, 1958, p 72. 74 Stephens, Power plus Attitude, p 77. 75 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 163.


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The Mustang project was a substantial challenge for CAC, whose manufacturing capacity had been underutilised after the Wirraway and Boomerang projects had run down. In the interim, much of the CAC engineering effort had been diverted onto the unproductive CA4 Woomera project. By August 1944, it was confirmed that CAC would assemble the first 80 Mustangs from largely imported parts and the remaining 270 aircraft from locally manufactured parts. The first Australian Mustang subsequently flew on 26 April 1945, with the manufacturing program being hampered by the delayed supply of machine tools and parts, and by an investigation into the project by the USAAC Headquarters in Australia. The lack of imported parts resulted in the first 80 Mustangs containing a much higher content of locally manufactured parts than initially envisaged. In addition to local production, 298 crated Mustangs were delivered to Australia, with the first arriving in 1945.76 At the close of the war, the order was reduced to 200 Mustangs. The wisdom of manufacturing the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in Australia was validated when many second-hand Merlins were landed in Australia for fitment to Australian aircraft. CAC Lidcombe had to undertake major refurbishment of these engines, something that could not be done without the skills and tools acquired from setting up for Merlin production.77 In November 1943, the Government approved the manufacture of 50 Lancasters (Lincolns) by the Beaufort Organisation. It made this decision in the knowledge that the program was not supported by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander South West Pacific—an indication that Australia was now making decisions on the basis of its perceived national interests, not what its allies were saying its interests were. The Lincoln with its Merlins was a substantial step forward for the Beaufort Organisation and the first Australian manufactured Lincoln emerged from the renamed Government Aircraft Factory (GAF) at Fishermen’s Bend for its first flight in March 1946. The McVey mission represented the high watermark in the strategic decision-making processes regarding RAAF aircraft requirements and the Australian aviation industry, but regrettably it occurred too late. Wackett had gone overseas in 1936 with a much narrower charter to McVey. The 1936 mission led to the Wirraway decision and the establishment of CAC. Something along the lines of the McVey mission should have taken place in 1939 and 1941 to assist the Government in making critical aircraft and industry decisions. Had this been done, and given what the Australian industry achieved on the back of some ill-conceived decision-making, one can only wonder what the industry might have achieved if the earlier strategic decisions had been more critically founded on the basis of Australia’s national interests.

76 See Hill, From Wirraway to Hornet, pp 94–97. 77 ibid, pp 94–97.


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The Australian Aircraft Industry – 1946 to 1958 – Sabre and Canberra A Technical Zenith under the Shadow of Industry Overcapacity

The decade 1936 to 1946 saw the Australian aircraft industry grow from nothing to close to world benchmark—with only the US, British, Russian and Canadian industries ahead. The challenge was how to keep these skills in an era where the capacity of the Australian industry far exceeded the requirements of Australia for both military and civil aircraft, and to prepare to withstand the inevitable competition as the European nations resurrected their war-damaged industries. In the aftermath of World War II, DHA commenced work on the Vampire, ultimately producing 190 Vampire fighter and trainer aircraft between 1949 and 1957. GAF had work for 73 Lincoln aircraft. CAC had established a strategic relationship with Rolls-Royce and moved into the manufacture of Merlin piston engines and Nene jet engines, with Wackett mischievously noting the Rolls-Royce relationship for the purposes of refuting earlier criticisms that he was anti-British.78 In 1948, Rolls-Royce enhanced this relationship by purchasing GMH’s 10 per cent foundation shareholding in CAC. At GAF, the Lincoln manufacturing program ran until 1951. In 1945, the Government decided to include the manufacture of 12 Avro Tudor aircraft in the Lincoln program, although the manufacture of the large four-engine transport aircraft was cancelled in 1948 when the Tudor ran into development troubles. The first five Lincolns were assembled from imported components in 1946, with the first wholly Australian manufactured Lincoln being handed to the RAAF in November 1946. As with the Beaufort, GAF used extensive subcontracting with only the final assembly being completed at Fishermen’s Bend. The aircraft production rate failed to meet early planning figures, peaking at 13 aircraft in 1948. Although productivity and efficiency issues were emerging as a factor in slow production, the main cause of the slow production rate was the need to implement the large number of modifications the RAAF required to suit local conditions and roles. The Australian Lincoln was a much different aircraft to the Avro Lancaster Mk 4, first envisaged for production in Australia. The various marks of GAF Lincoln were continually modified and subsequently, GAF remanufactured 12 of the aircraft into ‘long nose’ Lincoln Mk 31 maritime reconnaissance aircraft in 1953.79 The Lincoln also experienced problems with the Merlin 85 engine. These engine problems were wide-ranging and were not solved until the delivery of the Australian made Merlin 102 engine. CAC Lidcombe manufactured 108 Merlin 102 engines to meet the Lincoln specification and overcome the problems experienced with the imported Merlins.80 But despite the Mustang and Lincoln projects and the imminent programs for jet bombers and fighters, the industry was clearly heading into difficult times. However the Government, the Department of Defence, the Department of Supply, the 78 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 184. 79 Stewart Wilson, Lincoln, Canberra and F-111 in Australian Service, Aerospace Publications,

Weston Creek, ACT, 1989, p 29. 80 ibid, p 29.


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nationalised industry and the private companies all showed a reluctance to address the industry sustainability and structural issues. Perhaps the levels of work were sufficient for all entities to disregard the longer term issues and just muddle through. Certainly GAF had reasonable levels of work with Lincoln, Canberra and Jindivik; and prior to the Chifley Labor Government losing power in 1949, largely on an agenda of nationalising the banks, there was no strong advocacy to break up the cosy arrangements between the Department of Supply and the nationalised GAF. Nor was there any advocacy for Government to exit aircraft manufacturing despite what ultimately was exposed as a most inefficient arrangement. On the commercial side, DHA had ongoing work with the Vampire program and had the advantage of being a wholly owned subsidiary of de Havilland, a successful and innovative British aviation company. CAC was neither owned by the Government nor a foreign aerospace manufacturer; it was under the most pressure to make ends meet. Despite its strong hold on jet engines, the Sabre and the Winjeel, CAC was soon making ‘Comair’ buses, fibreglass boats, pressure cookers, vitreous coated bathtubs and other household items. CAC and DHA also benefited from some government funding which required them to maintain levels of ‘strategic capability’ as a basis for expansion. In short, the long-term structural problems were pushed aside; perhaps it was not the culture of the day to tackle ruthlessly what should have been obvious—gross industry overcapacity, with the expense and complexity of three organisational overheads. But technically, the industry was doing well. The two major programs of the day saw 111 Avon Sabre fighters and 48 Canberra bombers built by CAC and GAF, with CAC manufacturing the world’s most advanced jet engine, the Rolls-Royce Avon for both types. The selection of the Canberra bomber for the RAAF and its licensed production in Australia was relatively straightforward. The twin-engine jet bomber was designed by the English Electric Company at Warton to Air Ministry Specification B.3/45. Although a large industrial conglomerate, English Electric had little aviation heritage until it commenced manufacturing large numbers of Handley Page Hampdens and Halifax bombers and de Havilland Vampire fighters. English Electric augmented its acknowledged production expertise by recruiting capable personnel for a new design team, which promptly produced the world’s finest jet bomber.81 The prototype English Electric Canberra flew on 13 May 1949. The Canberra/Avon combination demonstrated a level of performance well in advance of any contemporary challengers and it soon received the ultimate accolade when the USAF ordered it into licence production as the Martin B-57. On a visit to Britain in 1949, the RAAF CAS, Air Marshal Jones, and his technical team selected the Canberra for the RAAF. It was an excellent choice although for some inexplicable reason the Australian specification failed to insist upon the procurement of the aircraft with any of the electronic warfare aids that had evolved

81 ibid, p 79.


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with the British bomber force during World War II. The purchase of an ‘all-weather’ jet bomber without the British H2S bombing radar seems odd.82 There was no airborne interception radar warning system, no air search radar warning system, no chaff dispenser, there was not even an electronic navigation system until the ‘Green Satin’ doppler navigation set was retrofitted to the aircraft. The lack of the electronic warfare aids so necessary to the role was a sign of the immaturity of the RAAF. The lack of electronic equipment for the Canberra held back the entry of both the RAAF and Australian industry into the avionics systems era by a decade or more—until the manufacture of the ‘all-weather’ Mirage 111O. The Canberra was manufactured in the new GAF factory at the Department of Supply airfield at Avalon. The Australian built Canberra included more powerful generators, internal cartridge jet engine starters, a two-crew cockpit instead of three, the addition of wingtip auxiliary tanks, and many other modifications. The GAF subcontracted construction of the Canberra extensively to both large and small firms. Major subcontractors included the NSW and SA Railway Workshops. Chrysler Australia in Adelaide, an established subcontractor to GAF, alone invested in 15,000 new tools and assembly jigs to construct major subassemblies for the fuselage, wings, tailplane and fuel tanks. Although some parts such as specialist forgings were imported, the Canberra was manufactured, not assembled. Most problems were overcome in an orderly way, and despite an ongoing shortage of skilled labour, the first Australian built Canberra flew on 29 May 1953, some three years after the Cabinet approval of the project—about six months late. Production peaked at 14 aircraft in 1955.83 The Canberra project advanced Australia’s aviation and metal technologies considerably and as a project it must be rated a notable success which amply demonstrated the new levels of technical competence that GAF had achieved. However, given the capabilities of the aircraft, the strategic situation, and the importance of the role it was to assume, the production run of 48 aircraft seems somewhat small; a larger production run with the addition of some of the important electronic warfare systems seems justified. Apart from the Lincoln and Canberra programs, GAF embarked on the unmanned Jindivik target aircraft, an unlikely project but one that built on the close links between GAF and the Defence Weapons Laboratories. Almost 600 Jindiviks were manufactured mostly for export to Britain, US and Sweden. GAF followed this with the Malkara anti-tank missile, the Ikara torpedo carrying guided missile and the Turana drone. Unlike the Canberra, the selection of a new jet fighter for the RAAF caused much controversy. Jones had initially selected the Hawker P1081 on his 1949 visit to Britain.84 He had not included any US fighters in his evaluation; the Government had directed him to exclude US aircraft on the grounds of a lack of US foreign exchange.85 82 Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force 1946–1971, Australian Government

Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p 363. 83 Wilson, Lincoln, Canberra and F-111, pp 91–94. 84 Stephens, Going Solo, p 346–47. 85 Jones, From Private to Air Marshal, p 143.


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The Hawker P1081 was a development of the straight winged Hawker/Armstrong Whitworth Sea Hawk fighter for the Royal Navy.86 The P1081 development featured a swept wing, a Rolls-Royce Tay engine replacing the Nene, and a single jet pipe replacing the bifurcated tailpipe of the Sea Hawk. At this juncture, Wackett was clearly unimpressed as neither he nor CAC, who were to build the aircraft, had been invited into the P1081 selection process. Why would the RAAF select an aircraft for licence production without any input from the prospective licensee? Was this due to tensions between the RAAF and CAC, or was it a way for Jones to try and keep the dynamic and strong-willed Wackett at a distance? Wackett may have put himself offside with Jones and the RAAF when much earlier he suggested that the Grumman Panther was a good candidate RAAF aircraft; it was a Nene powered US Navy fighter.87 While Wackett was clearly put out, he also knew that CAC desperately needed a contract for a fighter aircraft—he somewhat disdainfully records that he was indifferent to the fighter selection decision as long as the aircraft satisfied the RAAF.88 CAC and the Department of Supply commenced the contracting process for the P1081 but it was soon evident that Hawker could neither supply the required production drawings nor conclude a satisfactory licence agreement. Wackett and the experienced Victor Letcher from the Department of Supply went to Britain. Hawker agreed that the P1081 was not a licence proposition; indeed it seems that Hawker were already working on a successor fighter and were anticipating cancellation of the P1081 by the Air Ministry. Although there was an expectation that Australia would rollover their £30,000 deposit on the P1081 to the Hawker F3/48, Wackett foresaw a long development path in front of the F3. He also noted that the Avon engine proposed for the F3 was a later development from that in the Canberra; it would complicate the manufacturing and support arrangements for the Avon in Australia. Wackett unilaterally commenced discussions with NAA and Rolls-Royce about purchasing the Sabre with an Avon engine. Both Rolls-Royce and NAA were keen on this proposal, which sought to combine the generally acknowledged best fighter in the world with the best jet engine in the world.89 Wackett convinced Jones of the merits of the Avon Sabre and to put the proposal to Government, but the newly elected Menzies Government rejected the Cabinet submission. A second Cabinet submission was successful but only after Rolls-Royce was co-opted into lobbying the Government on behalf of both the RAAF and CAC.90 Although the F3 saw service as the Hawker Hunter—an acknowledged classic jet fighter—Wackett was correct in assessing that Australia could not afford to wait for Hawker to complete the development of the Hunter. Even the RAF was forced to order some 400 Canadair Ltd licence built F-86E Sabres for interim service in the 86 John Taylor, Combat Aircraft of the World, Putnam, New York, 1969, p 392. 87 Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, p 183. 88 ibid, p 186. 89 See Stephens, Going Solo, p 346; and Wackett, Aircraft Pioneer, pp 185–93. 90 Jones, From Private to Air Marshal, p 144.


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RAF fighter squadrons garrisoning Germany until the Hunter came on line. The only other fighter that might have merited examination was the Grumman Cougar, a swept wing development of the Panther, which was ordered by the US Navy on 2 March 1951 and first flew on 20 September 1951.91 The development of the Avon Sabre was a demanding exercise for CAC with some 60 per cent of the fuselage frames needing change. Different engine mountings and a relocation of the ‘field break’ in the rear fuselage of the aircraft were also necessary. The later RAAF requirement to substitute two 30 mm Aden cannons for the 50 calibre armament posed more difficulties. The Aden was a new and immature gun, which was still undergoing development while CAC was attempting to integrate it into the Sabre. CAC also later introduced the NAA F-86F wing leading edge extension to the Avon Sabre, which improved high speed handling and added fuel capacity. Cabinet approved the Sabre project in April 1951; the Avon Sabre first flew on 3 August 1953, three months after the GAF Canberra. CAC built 218 Avon jet engines for both Canberra and Sabre. The RAAF was in the ‘jet age’ with two outstanding aircraft and neither CAC nor GAF could be accused of undue dalliance. But aerospace was advancing rapidly; could both the RAAF and the industry keep pace with the new developments? Over this period, CAC also designed and built the Winjeel trainer for the RAAF. The prototype flew on 3 February 1951 and after resolving some problems relating to achieving an acceptable spinning regime appropriate for a basic trainer, the Winjeel entered production. It proved an exceptional trainer, which served the RAAF with distinction. The robust Winjeel could validly claim to be bettered by few other contemporary military basic trainers in the world. With the Sabre, Canberra, Jindivik and Winjeel programs in full swing, the Australian aircraft industry was at its zenith. While the industry could never aspire to the design and development of advanced combat aircraft, it did have the ability to grasp emerging designs at the leading edge of the advancing wave of aerospace technology and bring them into production, resolve initial development problems and produce aircraft complete with the extensive range of modifications specified by the RAAF. There was however a premium associated with local production. Some of this was attributed to the demands of the many Australian unique modifications that were always going to be a significant added expense, irrespective of whether the aircraft was built in Australia or overseas. But apart from the premium associated with small production runs and Australian unique modifications, a substantial component of the premium was due to the structural inefficiency and poor work practices in the post-World War II industry. The industry had not adapted to the postwar environment in 1946. By 1958, and in the face of criticisms over the final cost of the Canberra, Sabre and Winjeel programs, it now had to change or face demise.

91 Taylor, Combat Aircraft of the World, p 506.


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It was not just residual overcapacity in the industry. The nation could not afford the overheads associated with three aircraft manufacturers and their different cultures and methods. All needed to change their modus operandi to ensure that they were competitive and that the premium for local production was minimised. GAF in particular had to be weened off the continual drip of government subsidisation. Manufacturing in the world was changing rapidly and with the Sabre and Canberra programs running down, 1958 was the last window of opportunity to restructure the Australian aviation industry into a leaner, more focused and better organised industry.

Australian Aircraft Industry Contraction – 1958 to 1985 A Failure to Adapt and Restructure – The Slide Steepens

The industry did not restructure in 1958. The climate of its relationship with the RAAF had also changed. Previously it had generally operated with the support of the incumbent RAAF CAS; with Jones, Hardman and McCauley being supportive of the industry—although Wackett and Jones had their doubts about McCauley. But when Air Marshal Scherger became CAS, it seemed that the series of generally sympathetic RAAF chiefs had come to an end.92 Scherger became CAS in 1956, at a time when aerospace was still developing at a breathtaking pace. The life of a new military aircraft could be as short as a few years before it was superseded by a new and superior capability. This problem was not new—it had been with the RAAF since 1934—but now it was a more expensive and complex proposition. It is not clear what Scherger wanted of the industry; perhaps he was merely stating what with hindsight is clear—that the industry needed to change with the times and the industry needed to become more accountable for the premium that was always going to accompany local production. Scherger quickly moved on but the relationship between the industry and the RAAF was to enter a less harmonious era, particularly when taken in context with the retirement of Wackett in 1960. Industry and the Department of Supply made some minor changes; GAF was appointed prime contractor for the licence production of the Mirage, thus breaking the established convention that CAC was the fighter specialist and GAF the bomber specialist. DHA partnered with CAC to licence build the Macchi MB 326 trainer. But the industry was trending down. CAC remained unchanged, with jet engine work becoming its core activity. DHA became Hawker de Havilland (HdH) following the merger of its UK parent de Havilland with Hawker, Avro, Blackburn and others into the Hawker Siddeley Group. GAF remained a nationalised factory. Defence work, which would necessarily remain the mainstay of the industry, could not be spread economically across three industry entities. The major impediment to restructure was the nationalised GAF. While Government retained ownership of GAF, industry-wide restructure could not occur. The Government also showed no inclination to nationalise CAC or HdH, as was done in Britain. This would have succeeded in rationalising the industry but on what we know today about the performance of nationalised aircraft factories, it would not have been a productive solution. The Government would likely have done its investment.

92 Stephens, Going Solo, p 190.


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A continuing bone of contention was that, as a nationalised factory, GAF operated on a different financial basis to both CAC and HdH. The private companies believed that GAF was excessively subsidised. The private companies were also wary that GAF was too close to supportive bureaucrats in the Department of Supply, thus gaining advantages in workshare and costing. CAC and GAF were located either side of a wire fence at Fishermen’s Bend—a merger between the two seemed an obvious option despite the somewhat prickly relationship between the two entities. That poor relationship went back many years and reached a new low when the licence manufacture of the Mirage was awarded to GAF. CAC mounted a repechage and recouped some airframe involvement building the wings and fin in addition to the Atar engine; but with Wackett retiring, CAC had lost its influence. GAF and its oversighting department were in the ascendency, as illustrated again by GAF acquiring the lead workshare of the F/A-18 local production package. Despite the obvious dysfunctional structure of the industry—amply illustrated by the 18 major reviews, inquiries and reports into the industry between 1958 and 1985—its structure continued to remain unchanged.93 It gained a further injection of funds from the F/A-18 program, but it still remained unwilling to consolidate, reinvigorate and refocus. The RAAF Wamira trainer project was the last manufacturing opportunity for the industry, but industry’s organisational response was central to the further erosion of confidence that the RAAF and Government had in the industry. In 1981, the industry’s obsession with workshare saw the creation of a fourth Australian aircraft entity when all three companies contributed to partnership in the Wamira consortium. The consortium was an attempt to guarantee all three partners work, and survival. But the consortium entity had no corporate heritage, no corporate memory and no corporate culture. It had no organisational processes. Personnel from all three companies were seconded to the consortium, bringing with them their different cultures, loyalties and priorities. It was not a robust organisational model with which to tackle the focused and accountable task of building an aircraft. The better option was to select a prime contractor to project manage the Wamira and subcontract as required; a far more brutal, but effective business model. It probably would have generated a commercial response by the industry players which would have gone a long way towards industry rationalisation. Finally in 1985, in a bid to save the industry and the Wamira trainer project, HdH bought out CAC and renamed it Hawker de Havilland Victoria. At this juncture, the industry still collectively had the expertise to design, manufacture and test the Wamira trainer, particularly in view of the considerable investment in the industry made as part of the F/A-18 Hornet program. But this partial rationalisation had occurred too late to save the project. The RAAF was a significant contributor to the downfall of the project and had to suffer the irony of ending up with a lightweight tandem seat trainer instead of its

93 Hill, Wirraway to Hornet, p 266.


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uncompromising requirement for a ‘bulletproof’ trainer with side-by-side seating—a solution it had vigorously and inflexibly imposed on Australian industry throughout the project. The Wamira project was hardly a shining example of the new ‘Team Australia’ approach shortly to be articulated by Defence and Government as one of the new pillars of Australian defence industry policy. In 1987, the Government corporatised GAF and renamed it Aerospace Technologies of Australia (ASTA). Shortly after, the Government made the decision that should have been obvious for decades; it sold ASTA. The US aerospace company Rockwell bought ASTA for little more than a song, with Government retaining ASTA’s exposures to past liabilities.

OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Australian Government was challenged by a range of political, economic, financial and public policy issues which directly impacted on Australia’s national interests. By and large, the political leadership of the time responded to these challenges by making the judgement that what was good for Britain was good for Australia. Notwithstanding the closeness of the two countries, this approach failed to discriminate between the respective national interests of both Britain and Australia. While this may have been an easy way for Government to address the issues of the time, it was an approach that failed to do justice to Australian interests. Perhaps a more independently minded approach to the problems of the day was beyond the leadership of the time. Whatever the cause, it ensured that Australia struggled to throw off the influence of the Great Depression and was chronically under prepared to face the demanding challenges of World War II. As a contrast to the indecisive leadership of the Australian Government, it is quite remarkable that a group of industrialists who were perceptive and confident about Australia’s place in the world, concerned about its lack of defence preparedness, and who foresaw the future utility of aircraft in war, decided to develop an aircraft industry. Matters of national self-interest are normally decisions for Government. That the syndicate followed through by funding the development of an aircraft and engine plant, on the back of an order for a mere 40 aircraft, is testimony to the strength of their convictions. That the political leadership was generally so unsupportive of the initiative shows how badly the Australian political leadership of the time coped with the demanding issues of the period. A less critical view is that the Australian Governments of the time were simply naive. Their penchant to rely on assurances from Britain rather than think for themselves was amply illustrated by the uncritical acceptance by Government of the recommendations of the British Air Mission in March 1939. The recommendations regarding the Beaufort and its manufacture were accepted without technical analysis or due diligence. Even accepting that the Beaufort was the right aircraft type for the RAAF, the decision to accept the recommendation that the Beaufort be manufactured by a new


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organisation without any aviation expertise, personnel, or facilities, rather than by the recently established ‘state-of-the-art’ plant at CAC, was flawed. In those critical early days following the establishment of CAC, the Air Board, the principle adviser to the Government on matters of military aviation, did not make a strong contribution towards the future of the industry. After the demise of the independently minded Williams in 1938, the Air Board proved an ineffective advocate of Australian self-interest. It proved unable to look after Australia’s interests beyond the Empire Air Training Scheme; it failed to prudently appreciate the threat from Japan; it failed to grasp the evolving potency of fighter and tactical aircraft and the role they might play in the approaches to Australia; and it failed to marshal the arguments to secure the manufacture of a follow-on aircraft to the Wirraway. Perhaps these thoughts might have crossed Air Chief Marshal Burnett’s mind when he personally inspected the damage at Darwin following the first Japanese air raid on 19 February 1942. This was not a particularly inspiring period of leadership for the RAAF and while it might feel good to blame Burnett who was then Chairman of the Air Board, and those who appointed him, the failure includes wider aspects of Australian culture and national governance. Yet despite the unsteady foundation created by a sequence of inept founding higher policy decisions, the Australian aircraft industry eventually manufactured 755 Wirraways, 705 Beauforts, 250 Boomerangs, 365 Beaufighters, 104 Mosquitoes, 16 Mustangs and almost 2000 aircraft engines during the war years. It did this despite starting from well behind scratch, and in a climate of machine tool shortages where the Australian war industry had to manufacture locally seven out of ten machine tools, and with untrained labour where 80 per cent of the workforce had no previous factory employment. The role of Essington Lewis in achieving these results is less well-known today than it should be. As Director General of Munitions from 1939 to 1945 and Director General of Aircraft Production from 1942 to 1945, he orchestrated what proved to be essentially the industrialisation of Australia. What is also relatively unknown is the large degree to which this industrialisation was built on the foundation established by BHP under Lewis’s leadership from 1921 to 1939. For a nation whose industrial might in 1937 consisted of BHP, some munition factories, and a collection of infant auto body and farm machinery assemblers, this was a resounding achievement. One can only wonder at what might have been achieved had the early decisions about aircraft manufacture in Australia been better founded and the 27 months breathing space between war in Europe and the war in the Pacific not been frittered away. As to the contribution of CAC, so presciently established by the industrialists in 1936, it seems clear that the nation failed to exploit fully the potential of CAC by not adequately consolidating on the industrial base created by the Wirraway program.


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Post-World War II, the aircraft industry reached a technological zenith especially through its involvement in the Canberra and Avon Sabre programs. The technical achievements were world-class, and any criticism about timeliness of development is generally unfounded, particularly after taking into account the time taken by Government to decide on aircraft projects and the significant extra load caused by the need to integrate many ‘Australian unique’ modifications. But the industry consistently failed to adapt to the new economic and defence environment. Defence and defence industry policy was generally not helpful in achieving such adjustment, particularly as the Government continued to hold ownership of GAF thus effectively precluding industry rationalisation. It now seems absurd that Government stayed in the business of aircraft manufacture via its ownership of GAF for 45 years after the close of World War II, and in so doing oversighted a continual wasting of assets, capital and technical expertise. Central to this deterioration, industry, both nationalised and private, failed to reorganise its assets and capabilities and inculcate a new rigour of accountability. While the nation would always support a premium for the local production of aircraft, that premium would have to be contained by sound strategic decisions, which was a Government responsibility, and through efficiencies and accountability, which was an industry responsibility. Although the industry often had to cope with untimely decisions and a demanding military customer, the industry and its supportive bureaucrats were generally indifferent to the need to contain premiums to an acceptable level. That inability, when combined with the failure to grasp earlier opportunities to restructure and adapt, caused the book effectively to close on the Australian aircraft manufacturing industry in 1985. After traumatic commercial surgery, the vestiges of the aviation manufacturing industry that was DHA, CAC and GAF now reside in Hawker de Havilland. The Boeing-owned company now manufactures aerospace structural components for the world aerospace industry. It operates in a global market, competing for work in aerospace component manufacturing. It is the legacy company of a proud national heritage. It employs some 1500 people and exports more than 90 per cent of its product—one of many stark contrasts to its predecessors. As aircraft manufacture declined in Australia, a new industry of outsourced repair, maintenance and support for Australia’s military aviation capabilities has emerged. While essentially a product of the last decade of the 20th Century, with its emphasis on outsourcing of military aviation support to commercial contractors, this industry plays just as vital a role in the support of the nation’s military capabilities as did its predecessor industry half a century ago. Hopefully as a more mature nation, Australians might reasonably expect a far more informed defence industry policy to guide the development of the outsourced defence support industry than that which guided, and eventually contributed to the demise of the Australian aircraft manufacturing industry.


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ANNEX A

AUSTRALIAN AVIATION INDUSTRY – OWNERSHIP AND MERGERS

17 October 1936 – Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) registered as a company, with authorised capital of £1,000,000 paid up to £600,000, with Essington Lewis as Chairman and Lawrence Wackett as Manager. The shareholders were: Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd £200,000 Broken Hill Associated Smelters Pty Ltd £150,000 Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia and New Zealand £90,000 General Motors-Holden’s Ltd £60,000 The Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australasia Pty Ltd £50,000 Orient Steam Navigation Company Ltd £50,000 June 1939 – Aircraft Construction Branch of the Department of Supply and Development established, with the former Chief Commissioner of the Victorian Railways, Harold Clapp, as General Manager. February 1940 – The Aircraft Production Commission established with Commissioner Clapp as its Chairman, with the status of a departmental head. Commissioners O’Shea and Storey complete the three person commission. December 1941 – The Aircraft Production Commission is abolished. John Storey appointed General Manager of the Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production. 1948 – Rolls-Royce buys the GMH shareholding in CAC. 1960s – De Havilland Australia (DHA) renamed Hawker de Havilland; following the merger of their UK parent de Havilland, with Hawker and others, into Hawker Siddeley. 1985 – Hawker de Havilland buys out CAC and renames it Hawker de Havilland Victoria. The shareholders of CAC at the time of the sale were: Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd 33.34% North Broken Hill 12.5% Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia and New Zealand 15% Western Mining Corporation 12.5% Rolls-Royce 10% Electrolytic Zinc Company 8.33% P&O Australia Holdings 8.33% 1987 – Government Aircraft Factory (GAF) is corporatised and renamed Aerospace Technologies of Australia (ASTA). ASTA is sold to Rockwell. Boeing subsequently takes over Rockwell.


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1991 – In the UK, BTR Aerospace buys Hawker Siddeley and as a consequence owns Hawker de Havilland. 1998 – BTR sells the rump of Hawker de Havilland to Tenix after selling off many of the component parts of HdH over the period 1991 to 1998. 2000 – Boeing Holdings Australia buys the Tenix-owned Hawker de Havilland and merges with the Boeing-owned ASTA. Boeing-Hawker de Havilland now contains the heritage that once was DHA, CAC and GAF.

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PANEL DISCUSSION

MR SANU KAINIKARA AIR VICE-MARSHAL BRIAN WESTON, AM, FRAES

Air Commodore Norman Ashworth (RAAF Ret’d): A question for Air Vice-Marshal Weston. One of your ‘throwaway lines’ was a comment about the Empire Air Training Scheme causing some concern for the aircraft industry. I suggest to you that the majority of the Wirraways that were built were for the Empire Air Training Scheme. In addition, something like 1000 Tiger Moths were built, 200 Wackett Trainers and some 80 odd de Havilland Dragons—all were built for the Empire Air Training scheme. On top of that, the majority of the maintenance work for the aircraft from overseas—the Avro Ansons, the Oxfords and the [Fairey] Battles—was in fact carried out by the aircraft industry. So I suggest to you that the aircraft industry benefited greatly from the Empire Air Training Scheme. Air Vice-Marshal Weston: Thanks for that Norman. I also need to point out that most of the aircraft that found their way into service in the RAAF, the Royal Netherlands Air Force and the many United States Army Air Corps squadrons, were assembled from crates at Fisherman’s Bend, as you could see from those jetties projecting into the Yarra River. To your question, the context of my earlier comment was one of implementing strategic policy; specifically why was progress so slow on the 60-squadron Home Defence Air Force that the Government had approved in 1939. The effort with the EATS seemed to detract from the building of a Home Defence Air Force. One factor in this was that the Air Force had lost the strong leadership of Williams and the circumstances surrounding the appointment of his replacement, Air Commodore Goble, precluded Goble having any significant influence on the direction of the Air Force. When a British officer was appointed to command [Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett], it was not unexpected that Burnett would focus on the EATS, particularly considering what was happening in Britain, but in doing so the ‘eye was taken off the ball’ of a Home Defence Air Force. There was a requirement—a Cabinet-endorsed requirement—for a Home Defence Air Force, which was not followed through on. And I have commented that initiatives, such as the 1200 horsepower Wirraway that Williams and Wackett proposed as early as 1938, were not picked up on. And even the Boomerang construction was not started until well after Pearl Harbor. So I have concluded that the focus on EATS by the Government and Burnett came at the cost of a much under-prepared home defence capability. Wing Commander Bob Howe (RAAF Ret’d): I have a question for each of the speakers. First of all for Sanu Kainikara, you noted the need to balance up the loss of own casualties versus killing noncombatants in the air-to-ground role. You also mentioned in the statistics that one weapon could now kill one target. I guess I interpret that as a point target. When we talk about area targets, it’s a bit different. I understand that in Iraq the Australian Air Force and the US had different approaches to the use of cluster bombs. You mentioned before that technology is a great influence on this. I understand now that cluster bombs have reached a stage where they are almost biodegradable, in that they can be switched off as ‘killing weapons’ after a


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certain period of time. Do you think the RAAF should revisit its ban on cluster weapons? Mr Kainikara: No, I do not think so. Firstly, regarding the different approach that the USAF and the RAAF followed in the recent Iraq War, I would suggest that it was more because of the Rules of Engagement, rather than the capability spectrum of the Air Forces as such. Our F/A-18s are equally capable of carrying what the F/A-18s of the US Air Force or the US Navy carry, so it is primarily a question of Rules of Engagement. Regarding the second part of the question, I would sort of dovetail it to what I said in the sense that, if the RAAF has to revisit its offensive strategic strike capabilities, we would actually have to think in terms of what are the Rules of Engagement under which we are to operate and in what context would we use those capabilities. Wing Commander Howe (RAAF Ret’d): My second question is to Air Vice-Marshal Weston. I guess your last statement there in relation to the maritime industry raises the obvious question to me. In your paper, you drew the line at 1985. Of course, that was the time the Australian Submarine Corporation was establishing itself at the greenfield site to build a submarine of considerable technological complexity. It has been said by many air power observers that there is no way we could build a modern combat aircraft in Australia any more. I am afraid I cannot see that, having seen the submarine being built. Would you comment on whether Australia could do it, if given a future Kim Beasley and a future Wackett, and serendipity occurs? Air Vice-Marshal Weston: I don’t think the issue has changed Bob. In 1936, people said that you couldn’t build an aircraft in Australia. Stanley Bruce, a former Australian Prime Minister, was especially critical of the initiative to build an aircraft in Australia and an American design at that. Hartnett [an English engineer sent from Vauxhall Motors in 1934 to head GMH] eventually told him that this aeroplane was good enough be purchased by the RAF, where it was known as the Harvard, and Bruce became much less of a critic. History records that Australia, a nation of only seven million people with no aircraft industry, did a brilliant job in building the Wirraway and its engine in such a short period of time. How does this relate to today—we are now a nation of 20 million, living in a world largely dominated by the technological might of the US. I do not think that we are going to build too many aircraft in Australia, but I do believe that there are many niche capabilities where we can excel and so add value. This is particularly important so that we have a capacity to support the Air Force, and so that we are a more mature, more robust and a more self-reliant nation. Indeed, to always just buy something off the shelf tends to make us a fairly unintelligent customer. So I am a supporter of the Submarine Project as you probably know from comments I made on the project in my former industry advocacy role. Some people rank it as an industry equal to the Snowy Mountains Scheme and I find it interesting that BHP was a key player in the Australian Submarine Corporation capability, as it was in the aircraft industry in World War II. We could not have built those aircraft engines without the expertise of BHP, whose technological capabilities had been built up by Essington Lewis in the 18 years before the war. Now, to try to find future industrial areas that we should be involved in is always going to be difficult, but I think there are areas where we are good, and we have to be brave enough to go forward and hopefully, get more winners than losers.

Panel Discussion – Mr Kainikara / Air Vice-Marshal Weston

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Mr Alex Freeleagus (Honorary Greek Consul): I have two questions for Air Vice-Marshal Weston. The first one is, why was the Woomera with such promise sidelined by the RAAF? The second is, you have provided a very good picture of Wackett, in your judgement did he do more things right than he did wrong? Air Vice-Marshal Weston: Wackett was clearly a most interesting character although some records dwell a little on his negative aspects. He was difficult to work for, indeed he earned a reputation as a tyrant, but this did not stop people loyally working for him for 20 or more years, so he can’t have been all that bad. He certainly had a touch of genius. When in retirement, he fell off the roof of his Beaumaris house and became a paraplegic, he applied himself to inventing a range of devices aimed at making life easier for paraplegics. He succeeded in this and lived another nine or ten years and notwithstanding his limited wheelchair mobility, he continued to live an active life. I think you are also asking me to tell you the story about the CA4 which I did not dwell upon, my brief comments were meant to encourage you to read the paper. I believe the CA4 had promise. Some say that the specification Wackett drew up was too ambitious. But we need to remember that Wackett was most impressed by what he had seen on his visit to Germany. He had visited Junkers. Presumably he knew about the Ju88, a very flexible aeroplane that did most things pretty well. The CA4 was a long-range bomber, a dive-bomber and a torpedo-bomber, and we need to note that many air forces had not been prescient enough to appreciate the value of dive-bombing, the exceptions being the US Naval Air Force and the Japanese Naval Air Force. Torpedo-bombing was also something that some air forces had ignored. Wackett designed an aeroplane that had 50 per cent more payload and significantly more range than a Beaufort. He did that by incorporating many innovative ideas, some of which worked and some of which did not. But the design was slow to show mature promise and Wackett seems to have conducted his work on the CA4 with almost no supervision by higher authority. Certainly if Williams were still CAS, I cannot imagine that he would not have been closely oversighting Wackett and his progress with the CA4. My observation is that CAC was much underutilised in this period of the war and this was a potential cause for embarrassment. At one stage Senator Cameron visited the CAC works late one night to find out what was going on, but basically the problem was that CAC had not been given sufficient follow-on work to the Wirraway, especially in the design and engineering development side of the aircraft business. It was therefore very convenient in my view, to have Wackett fully engaged in the CA4 so as to keep him out of other people’s offices, particularly if you were an RAF officer who was head of the Air Board. So Wackett did his own thing with the CA4 with very little oversight from the customer—this was not a good way to deliver an operational aircraft to the RAAF. Eventually, when CAC resources were required to build the Mustang fighter, the CA4 was cancelled.


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79

KEY EVENTS IN RAAF HISTORY


Chief of Air Force, former Chiefs, distinguished guests, thank you for the opportunity to address you on key events in RAAF history.1 I hope to take you all on a brisk, but informative journey that will cover our 82-year history in a somewhat different fashion. To perhaps your great relief, I will focus on just 10 ‘events’ or perhaps more correctly ‘defining moments’. In so doing, I wish to draw your attention to their shaping of today’s Air Force; that is, their influence on why we are what we are, and show how they point us towards what I trust is a fairly certain future.

1 – FORMATION AND FIRST UNITS

Let me begin with our beginning, that is, with events leading to the RAAF’s formation in 1921 and the immediate post-formation period. Why? It set the scene for both our cultural and air power capability development, cords of which continue to this day. In the years before World War I, Australia alone of the Dominions followed the mother country’s lead and established a reasonably independent flying corps—as part of the Army—to exploit the new and exciting possibilities of military aviation. Shortly after the Wright Brothers amazing first manned flight in December 1903, many Australians attempted to replicate their feat. In September 1909, Senator George Foster Pearce, the then Minister for Defence, offered a £5000 prize for the construction of a military aircraft in Australia. The winning entry, designed by John Duigan, flew at Mia Mia, Victoria in July 1910. Late in 1911, a decision was made to create a military flying school and seek the appointment of ‘Two Competent Mechanists and Aviators’. Henry Petre and Eric Harrison were selected as pilots, together with four mechanics, and appointed to the new Central Flying School. Petre chose a site at Point Cook, later to be considered the Air Force’s ancestral home, because of its open space and proximity to Headquarters in Victoria Barracks, Melbourne. Melbourne was also the seat of Federal Government, so perhaps by coincidence, a tradition of basing around capital cities began—and a point upon which I will comment later. The first flying training course at Point Cook commenced on 17 August 1914, just a fortnight after the outbreak of war. The four candidates on the course were Lieutenant Richard Williams, Captain Thomas White, Lieutenant George Merz and Lieutenant David Manwell. They were the vanguard of the 3500 or so who were to serve in the Australian Flying Corps (AFC). The Corps saw service in New Guinea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine and the Western Front. By war’s end, we had raised eight Australian squadrons for overseas—four operational and four training squadrons—plus we continued to train

1 The major sources of information for this paper were the works of Dr Alan Stephens and Dr Chris

Coulthard-Clark.


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both officers and men here in Australia throughout. Importantly, these men would become the founders of both civil and military aviation, here and overseas. With war’s conclusion and the massive demobbing of the returning soldiers, it was not for a couple of years that the debate about an independent air force was rekindled. The RAF had combined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and Royal Naval Aviation Service (RNAS) on 1 April 1918, not as an April Fools’ Day joke as some have suggested, but because it was the first day of the new financial year, making budget appropriations much simpler. The debate in Australia to do likewise was also intensely political. Admirals and Generals saw great utility in the air medium and did not want to lose control. Nor did they want their budgets cut in a time of lean to support a third brother, and perhaps a spoiled brat at that. The very idea of control of the air and strategic strike, both well-established principles during the Great War, being best provided by an independent military service was anathema. Consequently, as in the UK experience, it took a political decision to create the Australian Air Force, not a military one. The Australian Air Force was officially formed on Thursday 31 March 1921, because as Williams later stated he didn’t want people referring to the Air Force as ‘April Fools’ either, although 1 April at the time was also Australia’s new financial year. The Commonwealth Gazette proclaimed the formation of ‘… Military Forces, to be called the Australian Air Force’ which would be comprised of ‘such Permanent and Citizen Forces as [deemed] necessary for the defence and protection of the Commonwealth’. Five months later, the prefix ‘Royal’ was added on 31 August after receiving Royal ascent. Williams was appointed our Air Force’s first chief, but he commanded just 151 officers and men and ruled over only a small plot of land at Point Cook, upon which was based the training school and a rudimentary aircraft depot. It was a humble beginning indeed. From such a small seed, a great tree would grow but I ask you to note the significance of what was there, not operational squadrons but a training and a logistic unit—important as we lose sight of their necessity at our peril, and for a period, we did lose sight of this. My first point for the Air Force of today is that training and logistics were our foundation, not flying squadrons. It should also be remembered that the Air Board—a predecessor of today’s Chief of Air Force Advisory Committee—administered the Air Force, so we have had committee oversight throughout our life. The Board was established in November 1920 and with it came the governance role. As an aside, its first Order, promulgated on 25 July 1921 did not contain any high or significant policy but that the Guiding Star Hotel at Braybrook was out-of-bounds to all Permanent Air Force personnel while on duty. Says a lot about Air Force culture, doesn’t it! While we formed as an independent Service in March 1921, it was not until 1925 that funding allowed more than a training unit to form. In July 1925 more money became available and Nos 1 and 3 Squadrons were raised—No 1 at Laverton, Victoria and No 3 at Richmond, NSW. While both were notionally Permanent Air Force squadrons manned by Permanent Air Force staff, it had always been the Government’s intention

Key Events in RAAF History

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to make these units one-third Permanent, two thirds Reserve—a cost saving measure in the meagre years of the late 1920s and the Depression. By the late 1920s, the pool of ex-World War I officers who had up till then filled the Reserve positions had all but dried up, so it became imperative to begin a recruitment and training program for new blood. Consequently, in mid-1929, eager young prospects saw an advertisement in the paper for trainee aircrew and applied. Eight hopefuls marched into Laverton on 9 December 1929 as members of the 1929 ‘B’ Cadet Course2 and were sworn in by Flight Lieutenant Loris Balderson, the acting Commanding Officer of No 1 Squadron. While the RAAF still had Central Flying School at nearby Point Cook, this unit at the time was specifically for pupils entering the Permanent Air Force and undertaking the 12-month long ‘A’ Course, which led to a Permanent Air Force appointment. The Citizen Air Force ‘B’ Course was intended to last four months, during which time cadets were exposed to the rigours of military drill, physical training, air force law, air pilotage, regimental duties, airmanship, gunnery, engines and rigging, and hygiene.3 As far as the flying was concerned, cadets first flew with an instructor in a DH-60 Moth ‘Training Machine’ and, after going solo and gaining more experience, then graduated onto the larger and more powerful Wapiti ‘Service Machine’. The role of the Citizen Air Force as a vital part of the Permanent Air Force set the stage for our long tradition of a volunteer force with strong connections to Australia’s citizenry. Our reliance on the Reserve elements was also a major reason why the locations of bases were close to the cities—not only for national population centre defence, but also for recruiting purposes. It should not be surprising then that today, we have a small, all volunteer force located at 11 bases, almost all of which are in or near capital city locations.

2 – EXPEDITIONS, RESCUES AND VENTURES

My second defining moment is really a series of events—the expeditions, rescues and adventures undertaken by airmen that literally sparked the imagination of the public to the world of aviation. Captains Ross and Keith Smith’s Vickers Vimy flight from England to Australia, arriving on 10 December 1919, made both national heroes and knights of the realm. No less a feat was Captain Henry Wrigley and Sergeant ‘Spud’ Murphy’s epic crossing of Australia from Melbourne to Darwin—a flight conducted to map the Smith’s final route and organise landing grounds and refuelling stops. The pair flew a flimsy, slow BE2e biplane across a sixth of the Smith’s route—yes, one sixth of the flight from England to Australia is over Australia! And there were other spectacular feats of endurance and fortitude too. In April 1924, two adventurers took off in a Fairey IIID seaplane from Point Cook to follow the Australian coastline in an anticlockwise direction. Forty-four days later, Wing Commander Stan Goble and Flight Lieutenant Ivor McIntyre landed by St Kilda Pier

2 The ‘A’ Course was the longer pilot’s course for those enlisting in the Permanent Air Force. The

‘B’ Course was shorter (3 months), enabling cadets to graduate with their ‘wings’ but requiring further supervision.

3 Citizen Air Force Cadets, Aircraft, February 1, 1926, pp 44–46.


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having safely covered the 13,520-kilometre distance. The purpose was to reconnoitre the east coast with a view to organise seagoing aircraft defence. According to Goble, he and McIntyre were constantly fatigued from the strain of their pre-flight and after-flight tasks, which generally took seven hours and included humping drums of petrol for refuelling, carrying out running repairs, bailing out floats and mooring the aircraft. Stress was increased by illness, in-flight emergencies, torrential rain, fuel leaks and, in one case, a precautionary landing in dangerous seas. A crowd of 10,000 welcomed them as they overflew Point Cook on 19 May that year and later they were honoured by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, who said it was ‘one of the most wonderful accomplishments in the history of aviation’. The pair won the Royal Aero Club Britannia Trophy for the year’s most meritorious flight. Not to be outdone, ‘Dicky’ Williams staged a similar endurance and distance feat two years later. Together with McIntyre and mechanic Flight Sergeant Les Trist, Williams flew a DH-50A from Australia to the Solomon Islands—Australia’s first international flight. This time, the expedition was a flag-waving exercise for Empire defence. Regardless of Williams’s motive, the flight goes down in the annals of Australian aviation as significant, the party visiting 23 overseas ports including Port Moresby, Rabaul and Tulagi. Throughout the 74 days and 16,000-kilometre trip, they faced hazards similar to those experienced by Goble. Another field of exploration even more dramatic and certainly almost unknown is the support the RAAF gave to the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition or BANZARE, led by the famous polar explorer Sir Douglas Mawson. While the stated purpose was the study of the Australian Antarctic Sector, Australian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce’s real aim was to claim formal possession of the area under agreed Imperial defence arrangements. Mawson decided to equip the expedition with two aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, but space aboard the ship Discovery allowed only one. After much deliberation, it was decided to embark a Cirrus Moth floatplane, a new type on order for the RAAF, and although it carried civil registration, its crew were entirely RAAF. There was only one applicant for the mission—Flying Officer Stuart Campbell, but Sergeant Eric Douglas also joined the expedition on Campbell’s recommendation. The Discovery sailed from Cape Town in October 1929 and after some initial troubles, the RAAF crew got the Moth serviceable and commenced reconnaissance from January 1930. One of the first aerial sightings was of MacRobertson Land—a previously uncharted area of the Southern Continent, which was named after Macpherson Robertson, the famous Australian confectioner and patron of the expedition. Damaged by weather and repaired several times, the Moth became indispensable, allowing Frank Hurley to take the now priceless images he brought back and to drop a British flag on the iceshelf, allowing some claim to the frozen territory. A second expedition a year later repeated the adventure of the year prior and in the final act, the pair raised a RAAF ensign during a proclamation ceremony at Cape Bruce. Campbell and Douglas had a cape and a mountain named after them and each were the first recipients of the rare Polar Medal. In the opinion of Sir Douglas, the aeroplane proved a most important factor in the success of the geographical operations. ‘That so much use was made of the machine, operating under difficult conditions, is owing to the determination and skill of the


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aviators, Campbell and Douglas, whose capacity and ability is of the highest order.’ Sightings made from the air later formed a vital element of Australia’s territorial claim. Back in Australia, there are numerous examples of airmen conducting daring rescues and long searches for lost people and I will offer you but one example before I move on. Flight Lieutenant Charles Eaton’s association with the Northern Territory began in April 1929 when he was ordered to command the search for the lost aircraft Kookaburra. Flying in obsolete World War I DH-9As, the search was marred by serious mechanical failures, resulting in the loss of three of the five aircraft involved, but none of the crews was hurt. His own aircraft, A1-1 the first registered plane in the RAAF, caught fire in the air and crashed at Tennant Creek but, luckily, Eaton escaped without injury. Following the finding of the Kookaburra in the Tanami desert, Eaton led a ground party under appalling conditions to bury the two airmen, Anderson and Hitchcock, as they had perished of thirst. Indeed, the ground party itself was fortunate to survive the return journey to Wave Hill. Due to his cross-country flying and navigation abilities, Eaton again was appointed to lead the RAAF’s search for another missing aircraft, the Golden Quest, lost west of Alice Springs when flying on the Lassiter expedition of 1930. After what the press described as a miracle, the plane was sighted and the lost airmen, Pittendrigh and Hamre, found alive. In 1937, also in the vicinity of Alice Springs, Eaton supported Pilot Officer Bill Hely in his search for mineral prospector Sir Herbert Gepp, later found safe. The media of the time called Eaton the ‘Knight Errant’ of the desert skies and Lake Eaton, north-west of Haasts Bluff, was named in his honour. Today, we might think of Eaton perhaps as the pioneer of our contribution to assistance to the civil community—a tradition that continues today. Perhaps I might jog your memory to a more recent series of rescues no less hazardous for all concerned—the amazing location of missing yachtsmen Thierry Dubois, Isabelle Autissier and Tony Bullimore by our P-3s that guided the Navy to their eventual rescue. My observation is that such activities remain vital for our relevance in that we must remain connected, supportive and responsive to the wants and needs the Australian community.

3 – SALMOND, ELLINGTON AND EXPANSION

So you think that Defence reviews are something of a new fad, eh? Well think again. Perhaps the most damming reviews in the Air Force’s history occurred before World War II. They were independently conducted by two very senior retired RAF officers—neither of whom had any knowledge of Australia, its conditions nor likely cared about its strategic environment. Called after their authors the Salmond and Ellington Reviews, both were to shake the very essence of what the RAAF did and how it would conduct its business. For the first 10 years of its existence, the Air Force never got more than nine per cent of the Defence Budget. Consequently, all that could be done was consolidate a very tenuous position. If survival was the RAAF’s first imperative, training was its second. Because of budget stringency, there was little in terms of a Defence Capability Plan as we know it today. Williams as Chief and the Air Board in general were looking for


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some form of respected authority that might change things for the better. The official support they were seeking came first in 1927–28 when Prime Minister Stanley Bruce invited the RAF to send a suitable senior officer to report on air defence. Williams, by now an Air Commodore, figured that any RAF officer would be certain to recommend greatly increased spending for the RAAF. While Williams wanted his mentor, Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, the founder of the RAF, British authorities offered Air Marshal Sir John Salmond, brother of Williams’s commander from World War I. Sir John made his report but, in what some might say was typical, Williams found out about it from the news media. The report provided the expected endorsement for air power and developments of the RAAF to date, but was less complimentary with regard to professionalism. Salmond concluded that training and particularly discipline were inadequate, and laid partial blame on the Government’s reliance on Reserves, who could not undertake full-time training to bolster skills. Officer qualities and training standards too were criticised, the RAAF for instance having to rely upon RMC graduates to fill the ranks of its future leaders. It would take another 30 years before the RAAF had a cadet college of its own. Salmond also recommended an immediate increase in the number of flying squadrons, which at the time were still just two composite units, and one flight and a flying training school. The increase would have added a bomber-reconnaissance unit, a fighter unit, a maritime patrol unit, and an army cooperation unit. Furthermore, dispersal around the country was necessary, especially to Brisbane, Perth and Darwin. Salmond was looking at a balanced air force and the RAAF was found wanting. The review should have come as no surprise, as Williams and other RAAF officers had been saying as much for years. Likewise, the aviation media of the day opined these same sentiments. While the Government accepted Salmond’s report, little was done, partially because of the Depression and partially because of an immutable belief in naval strength protecting ‘Fortress Australia’. There seemed little vision in the policy advisors of the day. Ten years would pass before the RAAF again would come under serious scrutiny. In 1938, the Lyons Government in a move similar to that of Bruce, invited another senior RAF officer to review the preparedness of the RAAF for a war that even the man in the street could see was coming. Again, Williams found out about it from the press. Marshal of the RAF, Sir Edward Ellington, was selected, a man described as ‘a misanthrope and the worst CAS the RAF has ever had’. If that alone was not cause for alarm, specific amongst his terms of reference was a requirement to examine the RAAF’s accident rate, which even Williams had to admit, was nothing short of appalling at the time. Ellington set about his task as Dr Alan Stephens has said ‘in a boorish and patronising manner’ and at no time did he seek Williams’s counsel. He showed no interest in Australian industry developments and when offered to observe a demonstration of the new CAC Wirraway, he refused saying the RAAF should just wait for superior British types to become available. It was not surprising then, with that sort of attitude, that the report would be unfavourable. Ellington specifically criticised the RAAF’s lack of modern aircraft and accident rate (which, by the way, was no worse than that of the RAF at the time), which he attributed to unsound leadership, inadequate training and poor policies. Nevertheless, the Ellington Report shocked the Government and in


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December 1938, it announced that Air Force expenditure for 1938–39 would be increased from £12½ million to over £16 million. The front-line potential of the force would be raised to 18 squadrons with over 200 aircraft. But the fallout also had more drastic repercussions. Under intense pressure from the media, the public and the opposition, the Government sacked or rather banished Williams off to the RAF for two years, at a time when his leadership would be crucial. Yes, Williams found out about it from the media. His departure created a leadership vacuum which although Goble stepped in for a period, the Government saw fit to fill with another RAF senior officer—Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett—a fellow commander from Williams’s time in Palestine, but then very much Williams’s junior. Nevertheless, many felt it was time for a change. Williams had effectively been chief for 14 years, but having an RAF officer in charge of Australia’s Air Force at the beginning of a war would also have far-reaching effects. The immediate fallout was that Burnett saw the RAAF as a ready source of manpower for the war in Europe and ignored the warning signs in the Pacific. That we survived and went on to fight a war on several fronts is another story. So as you can see, reviews are not new. In the depths of peace, organisations tend to look to renew themselves over and over—a modern curse if you like and certainly one which touches each of us today. The lesson of history is, perhaps, that in times of peace, we should expect examination of our business practices, our operational activities and our capability in the hope that the outcome will make us better at delivering air power.

4 – WORLD WAR II, EATS AND ARTICLE XV

Next, I mention the war. During the lean years of the 1930s, the Air Force remained a small, cadre force from which sprung the force we needed to go to war. Australia’s very survival depended on our people in uniform and a strong relationship with Allies—both European and American. The declaration of war by Britain on 3 September 1939 and Australia’s rush to follow suit a day later caught both country’s defences sadly lacking and ill-prepared for the coming conflict. For all Services, this meant mobilising from a peacetime cadre to rapidly building both defensive and offensive forces. Four days later, the British Government declared that the main weakness of the Allies vis-à-vis Germany was in air strength—and this included any contribution from the young and struggling Royal Australian Air Force. By 1939, the RAAF still only had a total strength of 3489.4 To meet the demands of conflict, the RAAF had 246 aircraft, of which only 164 were operational machines. The Permanent Air Force contained 310 officers and just over 3000 airmen. At that time, the RAAF had three squadrons in Melbourne, four squadrons in Sydney and two at Perth. Darwin and Brisbane had a squadron apiece.

4 Douglas Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra,

1962, p 58.


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By late 1939, the RAAF had built 12 squadrons, yet only 17 days after the declaration of war, Australia generously offered six of these squadrons for service with Britain. Initially, this proposal was left in abeyance and apart from the men of No 10 Squadron already in England, another 450 Australians were serving with the RAF as part of a prewar training arrangement. No 10 Squadron had been sent to England in 1939 to take delivery of Short Sunderland flying boats then on order. Australia offered the Squadron’s services and No 10 Squadron remained in Britain for the remainder of the war. It was just the beginning. Other RAAF squadrons were to follow. By 1940, No 3 Squadron had been despatched to the Middle East and No 1 Squadron to Malaya. The remarkable decision to remain engaged in Europe while events in the Pacific and Asia deteriorated must now be seen as strong faith and careful risk management by a Government under extreme pressure. Despite the dark days of early 1942, the Australian Government held to its promise to the UK. However, the bombing of Broome, Darwin and other coastal towns across the north of Australia must have finally brought the war home to all Australians. Nevertheless, impressions that the RAAF ‘ran away’ still linger. Stories of airmen posted to Darwin turning up in Melbourne two days after the bombing are anecdotal and may have occurred, but impressions of mass desertion are just not true. In addition, many airmen in the Western Desert and Europe received white feathers from those at home, despite their attempts to return to Australia and their daily exposure to the dangers of war. Such was the fear and sense of helplessness at home. There can be little doubt that the RAAF came of age as a fighting force during World War II. Although arguably the world’s second oldest air force, it was little more than a flying club until then. At the height of that war, the Service had expanded to a strength of 20,000 officers, 144,000 airmen and 18,000 airwomen. It had 50 squadrons in the Pacific and 17 in Europe.5 It had over 3000 operational aircraft and nearly 3000 trainers—a remarkable achievement. RAAF members served in every theatre of operations and by war’s end, the RAAF was considered the fourth largest air force in the world. To achieve these amazing statistics from a country, whose wartime population was around eight million, required sound organisation and willing volunteers. Consequently, Australia like Canada, New Zealand and Rhodesia contributed men to a new scheme—the Empire Air Training Scheme or EATS—a massive training organisation set up to provide Britain with the men it badly needed to fly and fight. The EATS is a remarkable story. Under the scheme, the RAAF promised 18 fighting squadrons, known as Article XV Squadrons from the respective Article in the EATS Charter. These units saw service in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. The EATS was designed to train 50,000 aircrew a year and create Allied air forces of overwhelming strength. Over 900 aircrew graduated from the RAAF training schools every four weeks, with the first graduates arriving in the European theatre in December 1940. The EATS was originally planned to end in March 1943 but was extended and ultimately closed in mid-1944. 5 This does not include Nos 452 and 457 Squadrons, which transferred from Europe to the Pacific

under the First Tactical Air Force. The 17 squadrons in Europe were the 15 Article XV Squadrons remaining, plus Nos 3 and 10 Squadrons.


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In Australia alone, 25 flying training schools of various grades, five air navigation and observer schools, and three wireless operator/air gunner schools were established to cope with the high levels of training. Bases such as East Sale, Wagga, Mallala and Mount Gambier were established in record time. In summary, I believe the EATS scheme, its organisation, administration and results make it our most remarkable feat.

5 – POSTWAR ACTIVITIES

My fifth defining moment is more of a string of events—our postwar operational activities—which foreshadowed our engagement strategy with Asia and the Pacific. As well as fighting in the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency and Vietnam, the RAAF was immediately engaged in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan and the Berlin Airlift. Soon after came the Malta Garrison, and Butterworth with the Commonwealth Strategic Reserve and SEATO. Why is this significant? The Cold War was upon us, and the world split into three; the East, the West and a nascent, but not insignificant, non-aligned group over which and through which the other two would fight. For the RAAF, it set the seeds of our expeditionary air force construct, which continues and is being reiterated today. For example, although tactically insignificant, the 1962–68 Ubon deployment of Sabres contributed to the stability of Thailand and Laos, and our presence in Butterworth and Singapore paved the way for the development of the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) in 1971.

6 – THE JET, MISSILE AND NUCLEAR AGE

In his biography on Scherger, journalist Harry Rayner called him a ‘Chief of Air Staff with Ideas’6—a dangerous prospect as far as the staff were concerned—but a good summation no less. Scherger was CAS from March 1957 to May 1961 after which time he became Chairman of the Chief of Staffs Committee—a forerunner of the position of Chief of the Defence Force—until May 1966. He was in these key roles at a turning point in RAAF history—Australia’s entry into the missile and space age. To Scherger fell the difficult job of convincing the other Services and Government to adopt the next generation of technology. While the jet age had arrived with the RAAF orders for the Sabre and Canberra, the missile age would be heralded at the entry of the supersonic era with the Mirage and F-111, an era which Scherger oversaw. This same era led to the expansion of the role of ARDU and the predecessor of DSTO—the very secret Weapons Research Establishment (WRE). While WRE has morphed into the DSTO divisions we know today, it was through WRESAT (Weapons Research Establishment Satellite), a simple research satellite, that Australia became the third nation into space in 1967. Only now are we rediscovering the importance of space to Australia’s defence and power projection capability. The Bloodhound and AIM-9 (which came in with the Sabre) are also significant here as they, together with jet aircraft, altered the mindset within the RAAF. It was the start of a real love affair with 6 Harry Rayner, Scherger: A Biography of Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger, Australian

War Memorial, Canberra, 1984, p 118.


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technology and led to a growing perception of the RAAF as a Service of technocrats that had turned their attention away from people, a perception which has haunted us ever since. Under our refocus on people and values, I know we are correcting these impressions, yet air power and technology remain inextricably linked. Air power demands high-tech solutions to deliver its promise of speed, precision and lethality, and significantly for the RAAF, the Air Board during the Scherger era of the late 1950s and early 1960s had the foresight to recognise this. For us, a new age approaches—that of unmanned aerial vehicles and network-centricity—does our generation have the foresight to recognise its dawning? With the onset of the Cold War also came another revision in strategic defence thinking—we had also entered the nuclear age and with its arrival, the terrible possibility of the annihilation of humankind. Concepts such as deterrence and MAD entered the lexicon, but in the 1950s it was still new thinking. The British Government had already decided on a nuclear path, and delivery of the weapon would be by a strategic air offensive. Australia consequently participated in a number of long-range trials using Lincoln bombers fitted with the latest navigation, photographic and instrumentation systems. Under Operation Cumulative, the bombers flew trans-Australia ‘navexes’ (navigation exercises) designed to simulate the trip from England to deep into the Soviet Union and return—a trip of 3300 kilometres. Flown entirely at night, 10 bombers would take off from Amberley and fly to either Kalgoorlie or Darwin and return to their base. Simulated nuclear weapons drops were made ‘blind’ using a modernised H2S radar system and upon return missions were subjected to intense operational analysis. Such sorties provided the British with data subsequently used in the V-bomber design and at the same time whetted the appetite for some in Australia to seek to pursue a nuclear solution. By the late 1950s, fears of Communist Chinese or Soviet far-eastern aggression were uppermost. Among those proposing the atomic option were Minister for Air, Athol Townley, and Scherger. Both argued that the small bombload carried by the Canberra bomber would mean a high number of conventional bombing sorties required in a protracted war in South-East Asia. Tactical atomic bombs they said would not only act as a deterrent but could even be fitted to Sabres, thus giving Australia considerable flexibility. Unbeknownst to either the Government or the RAAF, the reality was that at that time the smallest nuclear weapon weighed in excess of 1500 kilograms and was over four metres long—neither the Canberra nor Sabre could carry one. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the nuclear supporters, a dirty yet quick war would result and if it was away from Australia, all the better. The problem then was twofold—one, how to get the bomb and two, how to use it. In seeking solutions to both questions, Scherger made contact with both his US and UK counterparts to explore possibilities. After a rebuff by the US, he turned to the British. In a letter to the then RAF chief, Sir Dermot Boyle, Scherger sought access to ‘purchase some atomic bombs in the kiloton range’. As a carrot, he offered a RAAF contribution to a small force of 12–16 nuclear-armed Vulcans as a deterrent force in South-East Asia, and indicated that the RAAF might also purchase the new V-bombers as well. But Cabinet was sceptical and concerns over cost and public opinion soon put the issue to bed and the matter was dropped.


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The media, however, reignited the debate some time after plans to purchase the F-111 were announced in 1964. The so-called TFX design was to be fitted to carry nuclear weapons and, indeed, several US versions did just that. But it was not until aircraft delivery in 1968, when the media climbed into the cockpit and noticed the presence of a nuclear weapons panel fitted to the navigator station, that the issue arose again. It was the middle of the Vietnam War and the armchair strategists had been warning the Government of the communist ‘domino effect’, while there was a rising tide of opposition to the war at home. A nuclear option might have brought the war to a conclusion, but the fact that America had not deployed the weapon seems to have been lost. Conspiracy theories abounded yet however startling for the headlines, the reality was that the nuclear weapons panel was never connected and it was later removed during the Pave Tack and reconnaissance modifications. The decision not to go nuclear was very significant for the nation and consequently meant our force development would forever be through conventional means—the decision hinged mainly on cost, possible electoral backlash and on safeguards, rather than the RAAF’s ability to acquire, train with and manage the responsibility.

7 – BASING DECISIONS

The RAAF expansion program prewar had led to the development of a string of coastal bases that could be used for national defence, and many of these are now civilian airports. The concept of capital city protection and bare bases came out of the thinking of the 1930s and 1940s and is not new, but remains critically important for RAAF force disposition—considerations pertinent today. By 1940, the RAAF had stations in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin, and Perth. By war’s end we had added others at Townsville, Wagga, and Newcastle plus a string of smaller fields across the country totalling 317. With the pressure on northern Australia, 44 airstrips were built down the Darwin–Alice Springs Highway, and what is now Tindal was but one of them. Postwar, many airfields were disposed of and the RAAF selected just 11 as ‘strategic airfields’. Most will sound familiar—Butterworth, Cocos Islands, Momote, Darwin, Learmonth, Williamtown, Townsville, Pearce, East Sale, Richmond and Amberley. In addition, airfields at Port Moresby, Canberra, Laverton and Schofields were earmarked for further development. Edinburgh, a later addition in 1968, ensured a RAAF presence in each State. But with the changing strategic circumstances, it became clear that the RAAF would be called on to mount operations from the northern approaches and, hopefully, from offshore as far away from the mainland as possible. That meant forward operations and the need for forward airfields. Consequently, in response to fears that the new state of Indonesia could withdraw transit and landing rights, the Government authorised the construction of the first of these, the Cocos Islands strip in 1951. Later, with the development of the Commonwealth Strategic Reserve forces, Butterworth was added in 1955, then Learmonth in 1957. Tindal came next from 1963 (although a complete rebuild was instigated in 1983), Curtin in 1988 and finally Scherger in 1998 completed the bare base ring around our north. The bare base concept was first proposed by Sir Frederick Scherger in 1958 as what he termed ‘unmanned operational bases’, and so that is why our latest is named after him.


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For the record, the RAAF presently operates nine airfield bases, two non-airfield bases (Wagga and Laverton) and three bare bases, plus a small detachment at Butterworth. In the last 15 years we have closed seven bases (Butterworth, Tottenham, Regent’s Park, Toowoomba, Dubbo, Woomera and Fairbairn) and another, Point Cook, is earmarked to go. Time will tell which other bases come under pressure, but one thing is certain, the idea of Scherger’s bare basing in the north was before its time and will continue to be part of our concept for operations for many years to come.

8 – EDUCATION AND TRAINING SYSTEM

There can be no doubt that the education and training system is one of Australia’s hidden gems, yet it goes about its business almost unrecognised. I add it here as a significant activity for reasons that hopefully will become apparent. I said before a Flying School was our first flying unit—the Central Flying School. Since its inception, the RAAF has been one of Australia’s great training institutions—graduating more students than any university or college—and continues to do so. In the 1920s, the ‘father of the RAF’, Lord Trenchard, put in place the essential building blocks of a viable air force: • a central flying school to set and maintain standards, • research and development units for the technological edge, • a staff college to grow leaders from the operational and tactical to the strategic

level, • a cadet college to educate the future leaders, and • an apprentice scheme to train the technical trades. Axiomatic to air power’s success is the requirement for highly skilled and well-trained people. While most would recognise that an air force’s fundamental training responsibility is to produce high-quality aircrew, by the late 1950s, the RAAF had the first three building blocks in place, but entry into the new technological age meant something had to be done about the latter pair. There came a growing realisation that other specialisations were essential too. Engineering and equipment training had been neglected, the RAAF simply taking university graduates off the street when needed. There was limited technical trade training, apart from the residual courses run during the war and the skill sets of these were based upon mass-produced piston-engined aircraft, not the new technology of the jet and missile age. To prepare the RAAF for the future, the Air Board considered a College, an Engineering School and a Technical Trade School. It was Air Vice-Marshal Hewitt, the first postwar Air Member for Personnel, who in 1947 argued strongly for the establishment of a RAAF College, much like RMC Duntroon and the Naval College at HMAS Creswell. Hewitt felt that the future of the air force lay with those who understood technology, and a simple training course would no longer suffice,


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although as Dr Alan Stephens has observed, given the choice of technical subjects over arts, history and ideas, the RAAF was now identifying itself as a narrow technocracy.7 No 1 RAAF College Course marched into Point Cook in February 1948 and courses commenced. But by 1957, Scherger conducted a full review of the College with a view to give all cadets a university education in technical disciplines. The result was the RAAF Academy, which began in 1961. Although the Academy has been criticised in some circles, it did achieve its aim and was the foundation of today’s Australian Defence Force Academy. It generated 38 courses of well-educated officers who populated not only the General Duties and Engineering streams, but had representation across all officer categories. Perhaps even more significant for the RAAF was the Apprentice Scheme for airmen, also introduced in 1948. With the modernisation of the RAAF, a higher standard of training was required if the RAAF was to keep pace with developments across all disciplines—engines, airframes, instruments, radio, armament and electrical. The scheme involved three years of trade training at Wagga with the RAAF School of Technical Training (RAAFSTT), after which graduates had a 12-year return of service obligation. With around 200 entrants per annum, the mature scheme was expected to fill around 60 per cent of vacancies. RAAFSTT has of course expanded its remit into non-technical training as well. At the same time, RAAF engineering management was adversely affected in the early 1950s by a serious shortage of tertiary qualified technical officers. The answer was not so much more university graduates, as officers who had a sound knowledge of engineering and mechanics. Air Vice-Marshal Ellis Wackett, Air Member for Engineering and Maintenance and brother of the aircraft industry pioneer, Sir Lawrence, felt that a diploma course would initially suffice. Finally, in 1962, the Diploma Cadet Squadron opened its doors at Frognall, a stately home in Melbourne’s leafy suburb of Mont Albert. It was the last building block of Trenchard’s list. In 1976, the unit was renamed the Engineer Cadet Squadron reflecting the degree program cadets now undertook, but with the opening of the Defence Force Academy in 1986, it too disappeared. While we recognise the education and training requirements for a modern air force are vital, we must also recognise the tremendous contribution the RAAF made to the collective education standard of the nation.

9 – MODERN WARS AND PLUG ‘N’ PLAY

Post-Vietnam, the RAAF developed into a modern, technologically advanced, regional air force, able to prosecute air operations professionally and in its own right. The full range of air power roles were developed, primarily for the defence of Australia, but also allowing the RAAF to contribute to regional stability, peacekeeping, wider defence exercises and support for the Australian community.

7 Alan Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian

Air Force, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001, p 188.


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The period would be characterised by peacekeeping, training and national support, and is significant because it has set the standard and direction for what Government wants of us, I believe for at least the next 10 years. While we struggled with the implications of the collapse of the Soviet Union, we also sought to establish a technological edge, which we felt would last about 10 years. In the event it lasted longer, but the expected benign ‘new world order’ did not occur. Of the overseas commitments, several stand out. One is the most significant defence pact ever to be signed in the Asia-Pacific region, and it came into being in November 1971. The Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) between Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Great Britain and New Zealand established a unique security arrangement that has lasted to the present day, despite the political and economic upheavals of the ensuing years. Under FPDA auspices, the RAAF was allowed permanent stationing in the region, a significant advantage for Australian regional engagement. Significant to this permission was the establishment of the Integrated Air Defence System (IADS), to which Australia remains a major contributor. Headquartered in Butterworth, Malaysia, the IADS is always commanded by an Australian Air Vice-Marshal and the RAAF regularly sends fighter and strike aircraft there for multinational exercises. From 1971 to 1988, the RAAF had two Mirage fighter squadrons (Nos 3 and 75) on permanent deployment at Butterworth, as well as a Transport Support Flight. Six Mirages were also deployed to Tengah Air Base in Singapore on a regular rotation. From 1988, the presence has been much smaller with a P-3C Orion detachment and IADS, and other exercises now the norm. Butterworth will continue to be important. Arguably, the following deployments began what is loosely termed the Plug ‘n’ Play concept, and set the scene for post-Cold War operations. They include: • the United Nations Military Observer Group in India-Pakistan (UNMOGIP)

during the period 1975–79; • the Iroquois helicopters deployed as part of Australia’s commitment to the

United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) in the Sinai Peninsula, monitoring the cease-fire between Egypt and Israel from 1975 to 1979 and, later, the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) during the period 1982–1986;

• operations in Cambodia, including UNTAC, in 1975, 1980, 1991 and 1997; and • Middle East operations for the 1991 Gulf War. Post-Gulf War operations continued a growing trend with Somalia 1992–1993, Rwanda 1994–1995 and Papua New Guinea on and off since 1975. I specifically cite PNG Independence in 1975, the Rabaul volcano in 1994, the devastating tidal wave in north-west PNG of 1998, and Operation Bel Isi in Bougainville since 1998. In 2003, we can add Operation Anode, our commitment to the Solomon Islands.


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10 – SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE FUTURE

My final sequence of significant events has been the development of an intellectual base for the understanding of air power and its application. There are numerous related activities associated with this sequence that collectively have had a significant impact on Air Force development. Of these, I want to acknowledge first the great foresight Air Marshal Funnell had when he formed the Air Power Studies Centre (now the Aerospace Centre) and directed that small group of officers to write the first Air Power Manual. That it took 70 years to produce and communicate our doctrine must be seen at best as poor judgement and at worst, intellectual arrogance. With the Air Power Studies Centre came a renewal of serious consideration of what we as an Air Force are about, at a time when the world’s military forces were asking the same question. In the post-Cold War environment, governments and treasuries were asking that too.

CONCLUSION

By the turn of the century, the ADF, and the RAAF in particular, had begun to re-invent itself. By 1999, the RAAF had again become the smallest of the three Services. We deployed as an expeditionary force to East Timor, and to the Middle East for both the War on Terror and the War with Iraq. Now of course, we add the Solomon Islands peacekeeping effort. As we look forward, the expeditionary air force construct continues to mature and we now talk of Plug ‘n’ Play niche contributions to coalition operations, particularly those led by the US. As we go on to develop these ideas through experimentation and the real thing, our next great challenge may well be adapting from a ‘Just in Case’ force to one of ‘Just in Time’. Regardless, the lessons of the past still apply and in reviewing those lessons, I hope it has become a little clearer why I chose the events of RAAF history and why we have now adopted a vision that builds on these foundations of the past, which is strengthened by the pillars of the present to give us direction for the future.


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PANEL DISCUSSION


Air Marshal Les Fisher (RAAF Ret’d): I was very interested in your comments about Scherger and the introduction of technology and, of course, he was the start of a vast expansion of the Air Force during the 1960s. But in my view, it wasn’t the expansion of the Air Force in the 1960s or even the technology that had the biggest impact on the Service. What I’m talking about is an impact that in my career of 38 years was certainly vast and most significant, and it was that in the 1960s we bought a number of new aeroplanes and, in the process of buying those aeroplanes, we went through training regimes and accepted documentation that took the Royal Australian Air Force, in my view, from very much an aero club to a professional force. I don’t know how others feel about that, but I would just like to hear your comments on it. Air Commodore Lax: There are a number of views on this. One of the slides I had in my mind, but I didn’t present, was the number of operations and deployments over the years, and of course this was pretty static from the end of the war, with quite a few spikes, Korea, Malaya etc. So, while some people say that we did not have too many people overseas, I would counter that by saying we actually had a lot of people overseas and have done from the end of World War II. As far as the training regime is concerned, I guess we had gone from piston engines and subsonic flight, almost instantaneously to the missile, nuclear and supersonic age. And, of course, it created a lot of trouble with the training courses that were in place, which is I think why Hewitt, the Air Board at the time, Scherger and Wackett realised that we had to improve our education, not only just officer education but the airmen trades as well. And there are a lot of areas that I did not cover—I did not talk about the School of Radio. All those things came about in that period to meet the demands of all the new technology. Does that cover the point you were making? Air Marshal Fisher: No, what I was referring to was that we actually bought a whole heap of American aeroplanes and we got into the American training systems, which were properly structured and which we took away, and we actually had flight manuals for our aeroplanes. It is almost unbelievable I know but, prior to that time, there were very few squadrons running around with flight manuals, or any sort of training systems. The technical notes that people had on squadrons before then were in error, or at least a lot of them were. The whole operational arrangements changed as a result of our exposure to the American training system; that is the point I am making. Air Commodore Lax: Yes, I would have to agree with you. Air Commodore Norman Ashworth (RAAF Ret’d): You mentioned education and training, which I think is a very good turning point, but I think the area you missed out was failing to mention World War II. There was a huge amount of training—100,000 man-years of training were conducted during World War II—compared to the amount of training done before the war, which was virtually nothing. So, a great deal of the training systems and organisation was in fact developed during World War II.


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Air Commodore Lax: Yes, that was my point on the EATS [refer pp 86–87]. I think the two sides to that were not only the operational squadrons but the fantastic amount of training. I think that was the greatest feat we achieved. For a country of less than eight million people to generate so many aircrews, particularly at the time, has to be remarkable. We sent them to Canada and Rhodesia, we sent them to England, and we sent them to America as well, and the fact that we could generate that in the space of about 18 months is phenomenal. Air Marshal Ray Funnell (RAAF Ret’d): I would like to follow on from Air Marshal Les Fisher’s point concerning Scherger. I graduated just about the time that Fred Scherger became CAS. From my point of view, perhaps the most significant thing he did in his first couple of years as CAS was that he closed down more bases than any other Chief in our history. We had little penny-packets and depots spread far and wide right across this country, most of them legacies of World War II. He saw—perhaps he had seen it before—that we were having our operational funds ‘chewed up’ in maintaining all these little small bases right around the country and with considerable opposition as you can imagine, politically and from local communities, he shut down a host of them. Air Commodore Lax: Yes, that is true. I have nothing further to add.

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MILITARY AVIATION IN AUSTRALIA 1911–2003


INTRODUCTION – ‘NOT SUITED TO LARGE BODIES AND SLOW MINDS’

At the beginning of World War I, the ability to prosecute war in a third dimension presented armed forces with challenges that were both technical and philosophical. By the end of the war, many of the technical challenges confronting the development of air power had largely been overcome. Most of the missions familiar today—reconnaissance, artillery observation, supply drops, air superiority, air-to-air combat and close air support, battlefield interdiction and strategic bombing—had been established as viable tasks for the new air arm. Ongoing technical developments would continue to improve such factors as range, speed, payloads, armament, navigation and communication. However, unlike these technical factors, the philosophical challenges posed by air power have proven more resistant to resolution. From the very beginning of powered flight there was debate over the potential of the new capability. In 1910, Mr R.W.A. Brewer published a book with the lyrical title The Art of Aviation. Soldiers, being less inclined to the pursuit of the arts, were by then already giving serious consideration to the consequences of air power on the conduct of warfare. In a prize-winning essay presented to the United Service Institute of India in January 1911, Major C.D. Field wrote:

The nation that is strong and ready in the air will commence war by establishing a command over strategic localities, and will obtain at the outset an ascendancy which will allow the other side no chance of making up for deficits of preparation.1

World War I would demonstrate that this was a capability well beyond the technical limitations of the available aircraft, but the idea remained a potent one, especially in the light of the strategic stalemate on the Western Front. For much of the remainder of the 20th Century, ideas such as those expressed by Field have fuelled a spirited debate that centres on the application of air power. To trace the evolution of military air power during the 20th Century is also to record the development of aerospace technology. However, the development of military aviation is vastly more complicated, in that it is also an intensely human story, involving vision, obstinacy and arrogance. With these thoughts in mind, this paper presents a survey of the development of military aviation in Australia from 1911 to recent times. It provides a brief account of the evolution of the relationship between land and air forces in the Australian context. The paper will chart the progress of the relationship through two distinct phases—independence and interdependence—before suggesting that the conditions of modern warfare are now pushing the relationship towards a third phase—integration. Rapid changes in technology and the more 1 C.D. Field, ‘Aviation – Wireless Telegraphy – Telephony: What effect will they have on a

modern battle field, and a suitable role for their organisation and use’, reprinted in Commonwealth Military Journal, May 1911, p 157.


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inflexible characteristics of human nature have always made the evolution and the military significance of air power difficult to grasp. Writing in 1912, at a time when aviation was still in its infancy, The Times military correspondent, Colonel Thomas à Court Repington, suggested that new technologies required military organisations to cultivate an ability to adapt both physically and intellectually. With some prescience Repington observed, ‘The service of aeroplanes, like that of quickfiring artillery, is not well suited to large bodies and slow minds’.2

INDEPENDENT AIR POWER – ‘BEYOND THE SIGHT OF OUR OWN TROOPS’

The beginnings of military aviation in Australia can be traced to an article entitled ‘Aviation in Relation to Australian Defence’, which was published in the Commonwealth Military Journal in August 1911.3 Written by Captain J.W. Niesigh, the article was a report of the author’s experience as a passenger on a 45-minute flight between the Sydney suburbs of Botany and Liverpool. The article is not remarkable because of the author’s strategic insights but, rather to the contrary, because he largely confined himself to making very practical comments on the basis of this brief flight. For example, he discussed the difficulties involved in observation while flying at speed over heavily wooded terrain and concluded that, as many as two observers might be required for this important task, one to use the binoculars and the other to make notes. The Commonwealth Military Journal continued to chart the development of military aviation in Australia. In April 1914, Lieutenant Eric Harrison, from the staff of the Central Flying School at Point Cook, published an article entitled ‘Military Tuition in Aviation’.4 Harrison, who had gained his pilot’s licence in England in September 1911, was one of two officers appointed to run the school, which had been established in Victoria the previous year. In August 1914, the first Australian Flying Corps (AFC) aircraft was deployed on operational service. A BE2c was packed up to accompany the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) when it sailed against the German colonies in New Guinea. However, the BE2c was never unpacked because the Germans surrendered after one skirmish and a few salvos of naval gunfire. April 1915 saw four Australian pilots and their support staff leave Australia for service in the Mesopotamia Campaign. Known as the Mesopotamian Half Flight, it was the first AFC unit to fly in combat. Eighty-eight years later the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) would fly in the same theatre of operations, enjoying far more success than their forebears. Between May and November the Half Flight suffered heavy casualties (two dead and six captured), a reflection of the difficult climatic conditions in the region and the pioneering nature of military aviation during the early years of World War I. 2 Cited by Captain H.R.M. Brooke-Popham, ‘Military Aviation’, in Army Review, Vol 2, No 1,

January 1912, pp 87–102. 3 J. W. Niesigh, ‘Aviation in Relation to Australian Defence’, in Commonwealth Military Journal,

August 1911, pp 403–10. 4 E. Harrison, ‘Military Tuition in Aviation’, in Commonwealth Military Journal, April 1914,

pp 292–294.

Military Aviation in Australia 1911–2003

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From this difficult beginning, the AFC went on to operate with great efficiency in the Middle East, over the Western Front and during the occupation of Germany. As the war progressed, both the aircraft and the methods of their employment became more sophisticated. Very early in the war it was noticed that, when used in the ground attack role, aircraft had a conspicuous effect upon the morale of troops. A British report in 1916 recorded how the appearance of hostile aircraft over the front inspired ‘those on the ground with exaggerated foreboding’.5 Many soldiers reported feeling that enemy aircraft were attacking them personally.6 Other support roles were highly innovative. In 1918, at the Battle of Hamel, General John Monash used aircraft to resupply advancing troops with small arms ammunition.7 However, for soldiers on the ground it was frequently difficult to understand the ways in which the new arm was being used. It became necessary to educate them about the employment of aircraft and lectures informed troops:

It is the policy of GHQ to use the RFC [Royal Flying Corps] for Offensive purposes. This entails aeroplane activity far in the enemy’s territory beyond the sight of our own troops, and explains why our own men in the front line frequently think our aeroplanes are doing nothing, when in reality they are engaged in the most venturesome and dangerous work.8

Perhaps the ‘most venturesome and dangerous work’ for the new arm was strategic bombing. Early advocates of strategic air power were quick to recognise that, while allowing armed forces to wage war in the third dimension, it also increased significantly the ability to assail the morale of an enemy. The Germans had been the first to grasp the psychological, as well as the material, effects of aerial bombardment. In November 1914, Admiral Tirpitz had argued:

Single bombs from flying machines are wrong; they are odious when they hit and kill an old woman ... if [however] one could set fire to London in thirty places, then what in a small way is odious would retire before something fine and powerful. All that flies and creeps should be concentrated on that city.9

The potential for air power to bring war to the enemy’s homeland—attacking not only a nation’s capacity to fight, but also its will—was a powerful impetus for the creation of an independent air force. The formation of the independent Royal Air Force (RAF) probably had as much to do with understanding the offensive potential of air power as it did with the feeling of ‘exaggerated foreboding’ experienced during the war by hundreds of thousands of civilians whose cities had been bombarded from the air.

5 ‘Future Policy in the Air’, cited in H.A. Jones, The War in the Air, Clarendon Press, London,

1926, Vol II, p 473. 6 See L. Kennett ‘Developments to 1939’, in Close Air Support, USAF Office of History,

Washington, DC, 1990, p 20. 7 J. Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Hutchison, London, 1920, p 59. Another

innovative use of aircraft included their use as ‘noise camouflage’ to mask the movement of tanks. See Monash, op cit, p 105.

8 Cited by G. Sheffield, Forgotten Victory – The First World War: Myths and Realities, Headline Books, London, 2001, p 144.

9 A. Von Tirpitz, My Memoirs, Vol II, Hurst & Blackett, London, 1919, pp 171–72.


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In Australia, the British model of an independent air force was adopted, not because of its strategic potential, by rather because, as one Australian Chief of the Army’s General Staff (CGS) explained to a RUSI lecture in London:

The system and standard of training throughout the R.A.A.F. is based on those of the Royal Air Force. Just as in the Army we try to keep as close as we can to the method of training organisation practised in England, so we do the same in the Air Force, the object being that, should necessity arise, we can work alongside each other without difficulty.10

This Imperial connection meant that for the RAAF (and the other Services) British strategy and doctrine were the dominant factors in their development during the inter-war period. Unfortunately, as the historian of the RAAF’s early years explains, this situation also resulted in the Australian Services becoming embroiled in an imported quarrel. The internecine struggle between the British Services over the control of air power spilled over into the attitudes of their Australian counterparts.11 Another complicating factor in this struggle was the extreme parsimony of Australian defence spending during the inter-war years. This factor alone was responsible for setting the three Services against each other in competition for scarce financial resources. In 1924, Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, who was CGS, said he was:

... not at all sure that in a Force of our size it is entirely suitable to have the Air Force a separate service entirely from the Army, and it is worth serious consideration whether economy and efficiency might not be served if it were brought under control of the Army, for administration at all events.12

Ironically, similar arguments about size and economy would later be used by the RAAF in an attempt to stop the Army developing its own air component. For the first decade of its existence, the RAAF faced almost constant hostility and interference from the older Services. From the very first, the Navy and Army had great influence on the force structure of the RAAF. Ambiguity over the nature of the contribution which ‘air fighting’ could make to the defence of Australia was apparent in the Army’s request for 21 squadrons, only six of which would be used in the reconnaissance and Army cooperation roles. As Alan Stephens points out, there was an ‘implicit recognition of independent air power’ in the Army’s recommended establishment, which requested eight fighter squadrons and six squadrons of bombers.13 Nevertheless, the air force created by Australia in 1921 was largely intended to act as an auxiliary to the Navy and Army. Senior Australian airmen, such as Wing Commander Richard Williams, invoked the British case to argue that one reason for a separate air force:

10 J. Bruche, ‘The Land and Air Defence Forces of Australia’, in The Journal of the Royal United

Services Institution, Vol LXXVI, 1931, p 766. 11 C.D. Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921–39, Allen &

Unwin in association with the Royal Australian Air Force, Sydney, 1991, pp 59, 63ff. 12 From a letter by Chauvel to T. Blamey dated 14 July 1924, quoted in A. Hill, Chauvel of the Light

Horse, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978, p 209. 13 A. Stephens, Power plus Attitude: Ideas, Strategy and Doctrine in the Royal Australian Air Force

1921–1991, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1992, p 17.


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… was to prevent the development of aeronautical science and skill being controlled by authorities principally concerned in the development of the older services, and who were therefore inclined to consider aeronautical development purely as an auxiliary to those older services.14

While maintaining the need for the Air Force to preserve the integrity of its intellectual development, Williams rejected any suggestion that the RAAF saw itself acting independently of the Army and Navy in war. Eventually, interference from the two older Services subsided and the Air Force showed itself remarkably willing to cooperate with both the Navy and the Army. Designated RAAF squadrons regularly performed reconnaissance and cooperation roles with Army units. An Army Co-operation Squadron based in Canberra provided air power demonstrations and lectures to cadets of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. The raising of this unit in 1928 was a key recommendation of a review of the RAAF’s organisation, administration and training by the RAF’s Air Marshal Sir John Salmond. Sir John was particularly keen on the idea of this unit being located in Canberra because it had ‘the very great advantage’ of allowing Army cadets ‘to become acquainted with Air Force work at the outset of their career’.15 During the 1920s and 1930s, No 3 Army Co-operation Squadron, based at Richmond, New South Wales, participated in the annual field exercises of the 1st Division.16 There is no evidence to suggest that these exercises were any more innovative than their counterparts on Salisbury Plain in England. Year after year, the Army and the Air Force methodically worked through two weeks of set piece drills in reconnaissance, artillery cooperation and close support. In December 1937, a minor innovation in instructional methods occurred, when an Air Force team travelled to country Victoria showing an RAF training film on Army cooperation to three militia battalions.17 Some serious consideration of the problems of cooperation between the Army and the Air Force can be found in the notebooks kept by Squadron Leader (later Air Vice-Marshal) Henry Wrigley. In Precis of a Lecture on the Development of Co-operation with the Army During the War of 1914–1918, Wrigley comments on the importance of joint training and illustrates his point by reference to incidents from World War I.18 14 National Archives Australia, A705, Item 4/1/35. 15 Public Records Office, United Kingdom, PRO AIR 5/533, The Organization, Administration,

Training and General Policy of Development of the Royal Australian Air Force, Part I, Melbourne, 1928, p 15.

16 National Archives Australia, A705/1, Item 208/3/433, Army Co-operation. 17 National Archives Australia, A705/1, Item 208/3/401, Army Co-operation Policy 1937/38. 18 See A. Stephens and B. O’Loghlin (eds), The Decisive Factor: Air Power Doctrine by Air

Vice-Marshal H.N. Wrigley, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1990, pp 87–110. In 1935, Wrigley also wrote a book entitled The Battle Below: Being the History of No 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps, which was in many respects a textbook of land-air cooperation tactics in World War I. In Precis of a Lecture on the Development of Co-operation with the Army (see The Decisive Factor, p 105), Wrigley wrote, ‘This was important when we were two branches of the same service. It is still more so now we are separate services. Of course this is a platitude, but it is so self evident that people are inclined to forget its importance. The failure of close tactical co-operation at Festubert was due to lack of training and put back progress for 12 months. Contrast this with the successful co-operation between aeroplanes and tanks in 1918, due to the training which had been carried out in the previous few weeks.’ This was a reference to the Battle of Hamel, one of the outstanding combined arms operations of World War I.


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INTERDEPENDENCE – THE QUESTION OF AIR SUPPORT FOR THE ARMY

Unfortunately, the cooperation exercises of the 1920s and 1930s were poor preparation for the type of combined arms conflict that was the main feature of combat in World War II. One of the great inter-Service controversies of World War II and beyond was the question of air support for the Army. For Australians the problem was given added significance in the early stages of the war because of the rough handling that the 2nd Australian Imperial Force (AIF) received from the Luftwaffe during operations in the Libyan Desert, Greece and Crete. Reacting to reports of these campaigns, Senator C.H. Brand of Victoria was critical of the lack of coordination between the RAF and the Army in the Mediterranean. After noting that the war had demonstrated the importance of close cooperation between land and air forces, the Senator went on to say:

Perfect co-ordination and co-operation between this air artillery and land troops must be practised in our militia camps. Should there be any objections on the part of the Royal Australian Air Force, the officials standing in the way must be removed.19

Brand failed to acknowledge or understand that the RAF in the Mediterranean theatre was a small, ill-equipped force attempting to do battle with an enemy who had considerable experience in air-ground coordination. At the beginning of the Pacific War, the RAAF was also a small, ill-equipped force. Ultimately, the answer to the air support question was not to copy the German system of land-air cooperation, but to find a solution that worked for the Australian and American land, air and naval forces fighting the Japanese in the South-West Pacific Area (SWPA). The urgency of war created the conditions under which a spirit of compromise gave birth to a solution. At stake for the Air Force were legitimate concerns over the Army’s interference in matters of air power doctrine. The Army’s preferred solution to the question of air support would have subordinated air power to the ground campaign and resulted in a ‘penny packeting’ of air assets, something that very rightly was an anathema to airmen. In the end, by employing the principle of control of the air, the Allied Air Forces were able to gain air supremacy in the SWPA and thereafter they provided the ground forces with the type of highly responsive and accurate air support they had demanded. The first step in this process was the creation of the School of Army Co-operation (SAC) at Canberra in the spring of 1941. Interestingly, the suggestion to start a school along similar lines to the RAF’s School of Army Co-operation at Old Sarum in Wiltshire came from the Army. The CGS, Lieutenant General Sturdee, felt:

The necessity for close co-operation between the Army and Air Force in the field is daily becoming more marked and as yet very little has been done in Australia to train personnel in this important aspect of operations.20

19 Parliamentary Debates, Vol 169, Senate, 13 November 1941, Canberra, 1941, p 362. 20 National Archives Australia, A705/1, Item 208/3/493, letter from CGS to CAS dated

22 September 1941.


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Sturdee wanted the school to study all aspects of cooperation and instruct personnel from both Services in all phases of reconnaissance and in bomber support. He was ‘particularly anxious that not only Staff Officers and Air Intelligence Liaison Officers [AILO, later ALO or Air Liaison Officers] but also Commanders of combatant formations and units should attend the course’.21 The Air Force’s reaction to the proposal was positive. During the war, the school performed an important role by training Air Liaison Officers. ALOs were Army captains and majors posted to squadrons of the Allied Air Forces to provide the valuable service of explaining the respective requirements and limitations of air and land forces to commanders and units at all levels. The doctrine for close support operations in the SWPA was a compromise solution imposed upon the air and ground forces by the coalition leadership. At the inspiration of US Army Air Forces General George Kenney, Australian and American Army and Air Force officers devised a set of procedures for close support, which were published in a manual, Standing Operating Procedure for Attack Aviation in Close Support, SWPA, in early 1943.22 The procedures were so flexible that Australian air units could, and did, regularly support American ground formations, while American squadrons also supported Australian ground units with equal ease. Towards the end of the war, an American evaluation report, discussing the types of targets selected during tactical air operations, noted that air strikes had occasionally been employed when there was sufficient artillery or naval gunfire support available. The report went on to conclude that the employment of air power in this manner was:

… theoretically wrong but, when no other tactical targets exist and airplanes are available, there is no law against hitting your opponent with the kitchen sink.23

This conclusion indicates how far cooperation between the Services had progressed since the beginning of the war. For almost the first three years of hostilities, both ground and air force officers had engaged in sometimes bitter inter-Service battles, during which they each expressed deeply parochial opinions about the ‘proper’ roles of air power. However, by 1945 close air support had developed into a highly effective form of fire support for the ground forces, who, for the most part, had come to appreciate, if not entirely share, the airman’s perspective of battle. In the immediate postwar period, the operational focus for Australia’s armed forces remained offshore. In early 1946, the Australian Chiefs of Staff drew up an appreciation of the nation’s strategic circumstances in the aftermath of World War II. By their assessment, the choices open to Australia were isolation or cooperation. The Chiefs rejected what they called the fallacy of isolation because, as ‘an island continent with a small population and limited resources, [Australia] is unable to

21 ibid. 22 See R. Parkin, ‘The Problems of a Lesser Partner: Developing Joint Doctrine in a Coalition

Setting’, in New Zealand Army Journal, No 23, July 2000, Military Studies Institute, Massey University, Palmerston North.

23 USAF Office of Air Force History, 3859.61B, AAF Evaluation Board: The Pacific Ocean Area, Report No 6, dated 15 February 1945, p 40. The report also discussed the frequently debated point about the effect of air support upon the morale of ground forces. On this point it concluded: ‘The probable effect of a display of air power over the battlefield lies in a bolstered morale of the friendly soldier which is proportionately far above the true demoralizing effect on his opponent’.


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defend herself unaided against a major power’.24 They concluded that the national security policy ‘must be built on co-operation with other nations’.25 It followed that the nation’s preparations for war ‘must be such that her forces can co-operate with those of other nations’.26 Within three years, Australian naval, land and air forces were involved in the international coalition fighting the Korean War. The postwar defence policy ensured a continuing impetus for maintaining a keen interest in the skills of inter-Service cooperation that had been developed only after much trial and error during World War II. In early 1947, the School of Land/Air Warfare (SLAW) was opened at RAAF Base Laverton in Victoria. The following year the School, which was the successor to the wartime SAC in Canberra, was relocated to RAAF Base Williamtown in New South Wales. In a Joint Planning Committee report, Colonel J.G. Wilton had stated: ‘In the recent war close co-operation and understanding was developed between the Services and agreed systems of procedure adopted in relation to air support. It is most important that this co-operation be retained in peace. Unless a school such as that under consideration is established on a permanent basis, much of this experience and co-operation will be lost.’27 He also believed that the School would be the best way for officers from the three Services to keep current with new technical developments from abroad and provide the Australian forces with a medium for training personnel in the techniques of joint warfare. The School taught two courses, one for senior and one for junior officers. The senior course taught general principles of employment, while the more detailed junior course taught air-ground cooperation procedures, reconnaissance, air photograph interpretation and artillery fire support direction. In addition, from December 1950 onwards, the School published the Land-Air Warfare Liaison Letter. The Liaison Letter was a unique publication. Issued under the authority of the Naval, Military and Air Boards, the first edition contained a foreword with messages of endorsement by all three Service Chiefs. Subsequent editions of the Liaison Letter were an important medium for disseminating reports of operations in Korea and Malaya, and discussing new doctrinal and technical developments. In Korea, at a time when the US Army and Air Force were experiencing considerable difficulties with coordination of land air operations, units from the RAN, Army and RAAF were able to provide coalition forces with accurate close air support. Unfortunately, under pressure from cuts to the defence budget, from late 1953 onwards the activities of the School were scaled back until, finally in 1957, its operation was suspended. Coincidentally, from the mid-1950s pressure mounted for the Army to possess organic aviation assets. From 1950 onwards, the RAAF’s No 3 Fighter Reconnaissance Squadron had been training Army artillery officers to fly light observation aircraft at RAAF Base Fairbairn. During the Korean War, Army artillery officer pilots had served with the British Commonwealth Division performing reconnaissance and directing artillery fire. In late 1956, the Minister for Air, Athol Townley, objected to the Army’s push for control of light observation aircraft.

24 National Archives Australia, A5954/69, Item 1645/9, ‘An Appreciation by the Chiefs of Staff on

the Strategical Position of Australia’, February 1946, Part 1, Introduction, paragraph 6. 25 ibid. 26 ibid. 27 National Archives Australia, A5954/69, Item 1509/16, Minutes of a Joint Planning Committee

Meeting, 9 November 1946.


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Townley questioned the nation’s need for a ‘third air force’, stating, ‘The RAAF is the air arm and should not agree to any – even the smallest part, going from its control’.28 In mid-1957, the Army circulated a paper entitled ‘Light Aircraft Support for the Army’, which actually made the case for the Army to be given full responsibility for tactical air support.29 As the RAAF had modelled its arguments for independence on the existence of the RAF, so the Army now chose to argue its case for organic aviation on the model of the US Army. Indeed, the paper made clear that the Army wanted to procure, operate and maintain both fixed and rotary wing aircraft.30 In October 1957, the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Frederick Scherger, signed a recommendation for the Army to obtain 18 light aircraft. Despite this concession, Scherger was adamant that the Army should not also get rotary wing aircraft because:

In view of the small numbers of aircraft it would not be in the interests of national economy for the Australian Army to set up its own aviation organisation which could, in many respects, duplicate existing RAAF facilities.31

Arguments about the economy of maintaining separate air forces had now come full circle, after first being mooted by the Army and Navy in the 1920s to prevent the development of an independent RAAF. Moreover, the formation of an RAN Fleet Air Arm in 1948 also gave increased impetus to the Army’s ambition to control its own air assets. From the late 1950s, the Army gained control over a growing range of organic aviation assets and the organisational structures for Army aviation grew accordingly. In 1960 the 16th Army Light Aircraft Squadron was formed, initially under command of an RAAF officer. An important limitation was placed on the Army’s ambitions by the Defence Committee, which stipulated that it could only operate aircraft up to 1820 kilograms gross weight. However, in 1964 the unit was redesignated the 1st Army Aviation Corps and command passed to an Army officer. By July 1968, Army aviation gained the status of a separate corps. In Vietnam, RAAF Iroquois helicopters flown by No 9 Squadron supported the Australian Task Force with fire support, trooplift, aerial spraying to suppress mosquitoes and other combat support roles. Despite some initial friction with the Army, No 9 Squadron maintained its machines at high levels of availability and did valuable cooperation work with both the infantry and special forces.32 Perhaps the most dramatic example of the high level of RAAF support for the Task Force was when two No 9 Squadron Iroquois took off in poor weather and failing light to resupply Delta Company, 6 RAR with small arms ammunition during the Battle of Long Tan.33 Meanwhile, the Army also deployed its own fixed and rotary wing aircraft to support the Task Force in Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. No 161 Reconnaissance Flight flew Cessnas and Sioux helicopters in a range of tactical

28 Cited in H. Rayner, Scherger: A Biography of Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger,

Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1984, p 165. 29 National Archives Australia, A7942/1, Item A199, Air Support for the Army. 30 ibid. 31 Rayner, Scherger. 32 See C.D. Coulthard-Clark, The RAAF in Vietnam: Australian Air Involvement in the Vietnam War

1962–1975, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, St Leonards, NSW, 1995, p 144. As this incident shows, the Army was only too willing to interfere in technical and doctrinal matters best left to airmen.

33 ibid, p 145.


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support roles, including air observation posts (AOP), electronic intelligence operations and liaison tasks. In 1970, the Cessnas were replaced by the Swiss-made Pilatus Porter, which were the mainstay of the Army’s fixed-wing capability until they were retired in late 1992.34 During the Vietnam War, both RAAF and Army aviation assets did an excellent job in providing the Australian Task Force with the type of tactical support missions the Army had always desired from air power. In May 1986, the decision by the then Minister for Defence, Kim Beazley, to transfer control of all battlefield helicopters from the RAAF to the Army was the source of renewed inter-Service animosity that lasted for at least a decade.35 It has become the conventional wisdom in some quarters that the RAAF’s failure to meet the Army’s tactical support requirements in Vietnam provided the justification for this action. However, the facts do not support such a conclusion.36 Rather, the Army’s successful bid to control rotary wing aviation should be seen as the culmination of a concerted campaign conducted over three decades. While the issue of the transfer was not handled well within the Department of Defence at the time, Alan Stephens has also pointed out in Going Solo:

Regrettably, between 1946 and 1971, senior RAAF officers consistently treated the Army’s needs [for air support] with indifference or arrogance, or both; and in doing so demonstrated only political ineptitude.37

In the end, it was the Army’s belief that its requirements for tactical air support were not a high priority with the Air Force that led to the push for control of its own organic aviation assets. What the Army gained with the transfer of the Blackhawks was an organic tactical lift capability, which was later considerably enhanced by the acquisition of CH-47 Chinook medium-lift helicopters. A decade after the transfer of the Blackhawks, the Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General John Sanderson, told a largely Air Force audience, ‘Much of our fire power must come from the air, and it must come on time and precisely where it is required’.38 This was not merely echoing the long-term concerns of ground commanders about air support because from the end of World War II, in conventional operations such as Korea and Iraq or counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaya and Vietnam, the RAAF and the Army have worked very closely together. Instead, General Sanderson’s statement was recognition that, despite the largely economic and organisational (but sometimes intellectual) factors responsible for creating deep inter-Service rivalries in peacetime, warfare is a joint undertaking in which the Services are interdependent.

34 The GAF Nomad remained in service until it was withdrawn in 1995 due to a range of design and

safety problems. Since then Army’s requirement for a fixed-wing capability has been fulfilled by a range of aircraft, including Beechcraft Super King Airs and de Havilland Canada Twin Otters.

35 To gauge the extent of the emotion generated by this issue see D. Evans, A Fatal Rivalry: Australia’s Defence at Risk, MacMillan, Melbourne 1990, especially Chapter 9, ‘A Nasty Taste in the Mouth’.

36 See Coulthard-Clark, The RAAF in Vietnam, p 144 on this issue; and also A. Stephens, Power plus Attitude, pp 124, 128ff.

37 A. Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force, 1946–1971, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p 313.

38 J. Sanderson, ‘Army Beyond 2000’ in A. Stephens (ed), New Era Security: The RAAF in the Next Twenty-Five Years, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1996, p 101.


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INTEGRATED AIR POWER

Recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have confirmed General Sanderson’s belief that much of the Army’s firepower must come from the air. The liberation of Iraq differed greatly from the 1991 Gulf War, perhaps most importantly because there was no preliminary air campaign on the scale of the First Gulf War. This accorded with the limited aim of the coalition—regime change rather than the destruction of Iraq’s already weakened national infrastructure. Despite widespread media criticism of the ‘shock and awe’ campaign, the air and ground attacks on Iraq were closely integrated in order to achieve the coalition’s limited aims. The close integration of the air and land campaigns allowed the ground forces to advance at speeds two and a half times greater than in 1991. This was a remarkable achievement, especially as they were moving through populated areas of the Euphrates and Tigris River Valleys, and not the open desert of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. One reason for this rapid progress was the close coordination of air support with the advance of ground manoeuvre elements. Air support was provided using a system of fire support coordination measures that were common across the whole force, covering artillery, Army and Marine attack aviation and coalition air force components. A fire support coordination line (FSCL) defined the area in which air strikes could be employed against ground targets under the direction of land and air commanders assisted by USAF forward air controller (FAC) teams. Forward of the FSCL the air force was able to attack targets following the procedures set out in their rules of engagement (ROE). Engagement zones or ‘kill boxes’ were established over concentrations of enemy forces. The FSCL moved throughout the day and ‘kill boxes’ could be ‘opened’ or ‘closed’ on a minute by minute basis as the ground forces approached them or artillery fired through them. To control this dynamic process, the US air and ground forces used a new ‘digital battlefield internet’ technology. This embryonic network-centric warfare system, called Blue Force Tracker, used commercial off-the-shelf global positioning system (GPS) technology to create a common battlefield picture for ground and air commanders that allowed them to plan and coordinate fire control measures. The ability to see the movement of every friendly vehicle on the battlefield gave planners great flexibility in providing support to the ground forces. The system was not perfect and fratricidal incidents still occurred, involving United Kingdom, Kurdish and US forces. However, on the whole, the system represents a significant advance on previous methods of fire support coordination and a glimpse of what future technological developments might be able to provide. As a staff officer from the 3rd Marine Air Wing noted:

We overcame [the enemy] with tactics; if something was not working for the grunts on the ground, something else would have a go at the problem. We gave commanders multiple choices of ground-air firepower.39

The ability of technology to provide the capacity for greater cooperation between land and air forces had already been seen in Afghanistan. Commenting on the high degree

39 See T. Ripley ‘Closing the G-A-P’, in Jane’s Defence Weekly, Vol 39, 2 July 2003, Issue No 26,

p 27.


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of integration between coalition forces in the Battle for Mazar-e Sharif in 2001, the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, observed:

Coalition forces took existing capabilities – from the most advanced (such as laser-guided weapons) to the antique (40 year-old B52s updated with modern electronics) to the most rudimentary (a man on a horse with a weapon) – and used them together in unprecedented ways, with devastating effect on enemy positions, enemy morale …40

CONCLUSION – ‘WE MUST HANG TOGETHER’

The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius reminds us, ‘by nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart.’41 This brief survey of military aviation in Australia has charted the changing relationship between the nation’s air and land forces over a period of almost a century. During that time the relationship has experienced many changes, but essentially it has passed through two distinct phases and is about to enter a third. In the first phase of the relationship, it was necessary for airmen to assert the independence of their Service for sound technical, organisational and doctrinal reasons. However, while the practice of independent air power drew land and air forces far apart during the period between the two world wars, the changing nature of warfare forced them to converge again during World War II. While bitter inter-Service animosities sometimes arose in the period following World War II, the reality was that warfare had become a joint undertaking in which air and land power were both coequal and interdependent. Close cooperation between the Army and the RAAF was a feature of Australian operations in Korea, Malaya and Vietnam. Friction between the Services occurred most frequently when the operational tempo was slow and under the influence of financial stringency, when foreign models of organisation or doctrine could be used by strong personalities to promote single Service agendas. The rivalry stirred up by such issues has, in the past, frequently complicated the relationship between the Services. However, the increased use of information technology in warfare is now moving the Services even closer together as the battlefield becomes the battlespace and the capabilities of both Services must now be closely integrated as never before. Although they have disagreed about the methods, experienced airmen and soldiers have long recognised that there is no viable option to the closest cooperation between land and air forces in warfare. At the end of World War II, Tedder and Montgomery, as the heads of their respective Services, were working to devise a new joint doctrine for land-air warfare. Both men wanted to take advantage of the hard won experience of inter-Service cooperation during the war. Recognising the full importance of what they were doing, Tedder wrote to his counterpart, ‘I entirely agree we must hang together – if we don’t we’ll hang separately’.42

40 D. Chipman, ‘Air Power and the Battle for Mazar-e Sharif’ in Air Power History, Vol 50, No 1,

Spring 2003, p 34. 41 Confucius, The Analects, (Trans), Lionel Giles, Easton Press, New York, 1976, p 95. 42 Public Records Office, United Kingdom, PRO AIR 8/985, Tedder to Montgomery dated 6 June

1946.

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PANEL DISCUSSION


Mr Alex Freeleagus (Honorary Greek Consul): Your reference to the feeling—the anti-Air Force feeling—that was generated in the Greek and Crete campaign came through even 60 years later, when two years ago we went with 15 veterans on a visit to the battlefields. One of the Army people quoted a digger poet of 60 years before who penned these words, ‘If in Greece the Air Force be, where the bloody hell are we!’ Happily, in the group there was an Australian airman, one of the four who were in the RAF, the short service commission people we talked of. This man had both the Greek and the British DFC. He had six victories and he spoke of ‘Ape’ Cullen who had about 16, I think.1 Major Parkin: Yes, the ground forces had an unfortunate use for the acronym RAF in those days, and it started out ‘rare as ——’. Mind you, it was a very small force and with the available aircraft that they had in Greece they were trying to battle the Luftwaffe and not be involved in the ground campaign. They just did not have the ability to be involved in both. Group Captain Allan Crowe (RAAF – Aerospace Centre): Russell, I notice in your curriculum vitae that you were involved in looking at the Iraq conflict and some of the operations that took place. Obviously, a lot of that material is very sensitive at the moment, but it seems to me as an outsider looking at what happened that there must have been some very interesting activities involved in army-air cooperation. Would you be able to comment at all on how successful such operations were, or any of the issues that came out of that? Major Parkin: The reason that I put that bit in about what the Americans had been doing with the Blue Force Tracker was because we talk a lot in Australia about network-centric warfare, but I do not think that too many people have a clear idea of what it is. The ability to see on a large screen in front of you all of the friendly force vehicles—where they actually were on the ground—was an extremely valuable tool for the planners. It was most informative to go across to the Headquarters at CENTCOM and talk to people there. This was a brand new technology that they had fielded, and they are working on other things that are going to come out that they say are even better. The way they dealt with it for us also was interesting. You understand, of course, that there were different levels of security and they could not give us direct access to their systems. However, they overcame that problem by giving us Liaison Officers, and you could interrogate the Liaison Officer and he would basically tell you everything that he could get from the system. So it was a very, very useful planning tool for us as well in the [Australian National] Headquarters, because 1 Editor’s Note: Flight Lieutenant Richard Nigel (‘Ape’) Cullen, RAF was born in NSW but lived

in England prewar, racing motorbikes at Brooklands amongst other things. He also fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and was wounded in the stomach. He joined the RAF on the outbreak of war and was sent to the Middle East. He scored 15 destroyed, two probables, one damaged, and one Cant seaplane destroyed on the water. He was shot down and killed on 4 March 1941.


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we were coordinating the activities of our Special Forces out in the west of Iraq, often using air support because they were calling in air strikes. Quite a fascinating thing to see—to be stuck in Qatar and watching all of this going on 500 to 1500 kilometres ahead of you. It just shows that these capabilities will be able to be developed because with very simple, as I said off-the-shelf, technology the Americans were able to do something that was extremely useful and saved I would imagine a number of lives. When you think about the dusty conditions, it was ripe for fratricide incidents. Wing Commander Peter McLennan (RAAF – Aerospace Centre): You focused on services that air forces provide to ground forces in a large part of your presentation, and I realise that was your topic. However, I think it would be desirable for the assembled audience to hear of some of the services provided the other way. I am thinking of things like base defence, targeting which you are increasingly providing for the Air Force, and things like that. So are you able to progress that side of the equation? Major Parkin: I can talk a little about the way that targeting was done in Qatar because that provided a fascinating insight into the way the coalition worked. Obviously the Air Force had its view and the US Air Force at times were, shall we say, enthusiastic about what they were doing—there would have been a few less bridges on the way to Baghdad had they had their way. The way that the Air Tasking Order was developed was that it was made up at the Air Component Headquarters and then circulated, and all of the coalition partners got to look at it. Now, we were one per cent of the fighting force but 33 per cent of the coalition, so that gave us the ability to go in there and argue for things that reflected the Australian view, the Australian Rules of Engagement or the Australian view of what should be happening in Phase 4. A number of times it was useful just sitting back watching. It was useful to see the Australian Commander make a point and there would much shaking of heads, but later on the Americans would change their position. Then other American officers, who were not in a position to change the opinions of their senior officers, would come up and say, ‘We appreciate you doing that, because we didn’t need those sorts of targets destroyed at that particular time’. Right towards the end, there were some targets up in Tikrit that were, if you like, ‘regime targets’—they were the houses of various regime figures—and the Americans wanted to bomb those. The British and the Australians felt that there was not a good case for that. So using if you like that viewpoint of the Army saying, ‘OK, this is all very well but you fellows are going to fly off in a while and you’ll be gone. You will have done all these wonderful things, dropped your bombs and you do your job extremely efficiently, but you need to consider these aspects. What happens after?’ And I have got to tell you they were mad keen to drop the MOAB [Massive Ordnance Air Blast, also known as the ‘mother of all bombs’], and how anything that is launched out the back of a C-130 can be a precision weapon, I have yet to see but I will take them on their word. As far as ground defence is concerned, the RAAF in fact were doing a wonderful job down in the United Arab Emirates with their own ground defence.

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THE RAF AND RAAF: A CLOSE ASSOCIATION IN WAR AND PEACE

MR SEBASTIAN COX

Air Marshal Houston, ladies and gentlemen, it is a very great honour for me to have been asked to lecture to you here today. I have long enjoyed sparring with my many friends amongst the Australian air power and historical communities. I am very conscious of the fact that this audience contains respected historians who know far more of the history of the RAAF and of the Commonwealth of Australia than I do. I am further conscious that the paper I have been asked to give you is necessarily based only on the sources available to me in England, because sadly, for reasons which I find difficult to comprehend, neither Government would pay for a separate research trip for me to delve into the Australian archives. What follows is, therefore, an Anglo-centric view of the relationship. The subject is itself far wider than can be satisfactorily covered in a single presentation and again you may think that I have skated over or omitted areas which you feel were deserving of more attention, and that it is unbalanced in the attention it pays to the prewar era: constraints on time were the main determinant here. The relationship between the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force goes back to the shared combat experience of World War I. In the case of the RAAF, its own origins lie in the work of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) in the Middle East and France. The relationship has changed over the years from one roughly akin to a parent and favoured offspring, to that of two brothers, one slightly bigger and older. In the latter case, like most such sibling relationships, there is enormous mutual respect and admiration, spiced with occasional exasperation and sharp disagreement, but importantly also a tendency to unite and support each other against outsiders. The modern relationship is now one of great maturity, in which the shared bonds of airmen in two relatively small but highly professional Air Forces are combined with a similar world view and a coincidence of wider interests and cultural perspectives, and a perception that both need to develop and maintain a relationship with the bigger, richer and occasionally, from our point of view, wayward and awkward guy called ‘Uncle Sam’ who lives between us. However, let us return to where it all began. It is surely no exaggeration to say that the RAAF owes both its formation and its early survival to the RAF. In April 1918, with World War I still raging and victory apparently far from sight, a perspicacious Australian soldier, Major General J.G. Legge, pressed his Government to establish an air service and to do so without delay.1 Legge’s air service was essentially an Australian Flying Corps writ large. It drew its inspiration from the Anglo-Australian experience in the current war and, whilst it is difficult to believe that it was not influenced by the creation that very month of the Royal Air Force, it was nevertheless

1 Douglas Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra,

1962, pp 1–2. Although devoted to the RAAF in the early part of World War II, the first three chapters of the book contain a very concise and useful exposition on the formation and early years of the Service.


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essentially a ‘home-grown’ Australian schema. If this Army underpinning for the early intellectual structure of the RAAF was Australian, the same is not true on the naval side. Almost at the same time as Legge’s proposal went forward, a suggestion was also made for the creation of an Australian Naval Air Service. This latter proposal, however, was largely the work of an RAF officer, Wing Commander H.A. Maguire, ex-Royal Naval Air Service, who was Air Service Adviser to the Australian Naval Board.2 When the two proposals were subsequently submitted for consideration by a Committee of the Defence Council, Maguire was appointed to serve on it, and produced a further ambitious programme for the Naval Air Service, and when subsequently the question was referred to a sub-committee to consider the costings and how the £3 million allocated by the Government was to be spent, Maguire was appointed to the sub-committee in turn. It should come as no surprise that it was at that point in the story that the Army and Navy officers began to squabble over the respective Service allocations. In addition to Maguire, the sub-committee had a senior naval officer, Rear Admiral Creswell, Major General Legge, Major L.Y.K. Murray of the Central Flying School (and like Maguire, an RAF officer), and a civilian chairman, Mr George Swinburne. It was Maguire, possibly supported by Murray, who first proposed to the sub-committee the formation of a separate air service. Legge, at least in the short term, opposed it. To cut a long story short, Legge’s plan for an Army aviation arm, which included the purchase of 200 aircraft from overseas, was approved by the Military Board and then referred to yet another sub-committee for a report on possible coordination with the naval scheme. The members of this sub-committee were Maguire, Murray and another Australian Flying Corps officer, Major Sheldon. That is to say two RAF officers and one AFC officer. Again, it is no surprise that this body concluded that a unified air service, with a separate staff and minister, was the only feasible proposition for Australia. This proposal went back to Swinburne’s Committee which, with Legge dissenting, agreed it and recommended it to the Australian Defence Council, which in January 1919 concurred in turn, and authorised the creation of the Air Service Committee with authority to spend up to £500,000 on the new Service.3 What we may conclude from this rather convoluted story of ‘midwifery by Committee’, is that Maguire, an RAF officer, was the key player agitating effectively for the creation of the RAAF from an early stage. As the Air Adviser to the RAN, he was in a unique position not only to advance the cause of a separate air force, but also simultaneously to ensure that there was no concerted naval opposition to it. As the Naval Board neither endorsed nor rejected his proposals, he seems to have decided that as their Air Adviser he could devise policy himself in the absence of direct guidance.4 Once he had won over Swinburne to the idea, which he did presumably on the grounds of cost and efficiency, Legge’s opposition proved immaterial. Without Maguire, with a little assistance from Murray, it seems unlikely that the separate RAAF would have got off the ground. Maguire was then, if not the father of the RAAF, certainly the midwife. 2 ibid, pp 2–3. 3 ibid, pp 3–6. On the early manoeuvrings involving Legge and Maguire see also C.D. Coulthard-

Clark, The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921–39, Allen & Unwin in association with the Royal Australian Air Force, Sydney, 1991, pp 1–3.

4 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p 3.

The RAF and RAAF: A Close Association in War and Peace

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Maguire was clearly an enthusiast for aviation, but he left no papers, and shortly after returning to the UK in 1919 he retired from the RAF. It is therefore difficult to divine his thinking, but it would, one suspects, have been along the lines that there was simply no scope for two air services within Australia at the time, and that if Legge’s scheme, totalling some 7500 personnel and 400 aircraft, had been adopted then Maguire’s plan for an additional naval air arm of some 2000 personnel, 56 aircraft, six airships and a number of kite balloons, would have been unaffordable. It was therefore better from Maguire’s viewpoint to establish a service similar to the RAF, jointly charged with providing air power to both Services and which might thus ensure a stronger naval element, rather than see the lion’s share of aviation funding go to the Army. Hence Maguire fought hard, though unsuccessfully, to ensure that the administration of the air service should be free from control by either the Military or Naval Boards. This was perhaps the one area in which Maguire failed to get what he wanted. Otherwise he seems consistently to have outmanoeuvred the more senior Legge on the various committees which considered Australian aviation, either by combining with RAF or AFC officers on the committees, or by persuading the civilian Swinburne of the force of his argument. There is, of course, a delicious irony here, since the RAN was in due course to regret the formation of a separate Service and within a few years was to do its level best to create a separate Australian Fleet Air Arm, which would effectively have killed the infant RAAF. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Had the plan as it emerged from the various deliberative bodies been carried forward, there might indeed have been a more substantial naval air element to it. The Defence Council had set up the Air Service Committee, which consisted of Swinburne, Legge and Maguire, authorised expenditure of £500,000 on infrastructure, and instructed it to consider aircraft manufacture and purchase. It is at this point, however, that an Imperial, as opposed to an RAF, influence begins to come into play. First, General Birdwood, then in London as an adviser to the AIF, cabled suggesting the formation of four squadrons, each utilising a different type of British aircraft. None of these, however, could be said to be specifically maritime aircraft, and when Birdwood’s proposal was approved to the extent of purchasing 15 of each type, the military element of the new force would clearly have been preponderant. Presumably in order to produce a more balanced air service, the Governor-General requested that the RAF consider loaning the new Service seaplanes, flying boats and a dozen officers to man them.5 None of these proposals was to come to fruition because the Empire undermined them with a gift of singular generosity. In June 1919, Australia was offered 100 modern aircraft as gift by the British Government, a proposal subsequently increased to 128 to reciprocate Australian wartime gift aircraft. I want to spend a little time analysing the ‘Imperial Gift’, as it can rightly be identified as a crucial element in the formation and survival of the RAAF.6 The Gift had several effects, some better than others. In the first place it insulated the nascent RAAF against economic reality. There is of course an unavoidable link between economic strength and military capability. Even as the Gift was being 5 Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, pp 6–7. 6 For further details on the gift see John Bennett, The Imperial Gift, Banner Books, Maryborough,

QLD, 1996.


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prepared for despatch, the economic reality in Australia at the time was biting deep into the pioneer airmen’s plans. The Air Service Committee was told by Swinburne on 16 September 1919 that all plans for the new air service had been suspended and that only very limited provision for the Central Flying School had been preserved. The Committee telegraphed London with the downbeat message that the Gift aircraft could be ‘shipped when convenient to Air Ministry and stored here’.7 Had the Commonwealth of Australia had to proceed with its tentative plans to buy aircraft at the time, the independent air force would surely have faced insurmountable problems in getting off the ground. As it was, Maguire, who was by this time in London as Air Adviser, was forced to defer plans to purchase additional aircraft. The Gift itself did not comprise simply the aircraft. It consisted in reality of an entire self-contained air force, including not a little of the infrastructure to support it. In addition to the aircraft, as John Bennett has pointed out, there were 285 motor vehicles, spare aircraft engines, radios, machine tools, photographic equipment, workshop plant, instruments and test apparatus, and flying clothing, together with armament, including 3000 bombs, and 13 Bessoneau hangars and other aerodrome equipment, as well as spares sufficient for six months’ wastage, presumably at wartime rates, since no peacetime rate would have been established by then.8 London also accepted responsibility for the costs of packing and shipping, and since the Gift was shipped in 19,000 packing cases we should not underestimate the latter.9 Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams later claimed that a conversation in London between himself and Wing Commander Gossage of the Air Ministry resulted in the terms of the Gift being extended to include spares and ancillary equipment.10 Given the scale and costs involved, and the fact that it was not limited to Australia, we might legitimately doubt whether the influence of two Wing Commanders was as great as he thought. The total value of the Gift to Australia has been estimated at some £1 million at 1920 prices,11 or the equivalent of the entire air service budget for one year of the three year provision made by the Melbourne Government at the height of the war in August 1918. Sir Lawrence Wackett subsequently declared: ‘The gift was gladly accepted and became the basic equipment to organise two flying stations and a stores depot, in addition to the original flying school’.12 On the formation of the RAAF on 31 March 1921, the Service had 151 aircraft on charge; the vast majority, numbering 124, being Gift aircraft and the remainder the survivors from purchases for the AFC.13 The Gift was indeed a generous recompense for Australia’s loyalty during a bloody and destructive conflict. It was also, of course, a shrewd and self-interested attempt to achieve exactly the purpose it did achieve; that is the establishment of a Dominion-based air force able to take on some responsibility for defence in a distant part of the British Empire. Without it, it must be legitimate to doubt that there would have been an independent RAAF, and thus a much less sure foundation for the expansion of the latter in the second great conflict two decades later, one in which Australia’s airmen were to come of age. There were, however, some downsides to the Gift. The first, and 7 Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, p 10. 8 Bennett, The Imperial Gift, p 19. 9 ibid, p 13. 10 Sir Richard Williams, These Are Facts: The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams

KBE, CB, DSO, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, pp 118–119.

11 Bennett, The Imperial Gift, p 19. 12 ibid, p 13. 13 ibid, p 20.


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most obvious, was that it was limited to certain types of aircraft, some already obsolescent. Australia was given the opportunity to bid for seven types, but these were all essentially bomber, fighter or trainer aircraft. Of course the RAAF needed all three types, but, especially in the context of Australia’s strategic position, it also needed maritime aircraft. We have already seen that the Governor-General had initially requested such aircraft, together with some crews to fly them. We have also seen that initial plans for purchasing aircraft to equip the Service ran into funding problems. Through the Gift’s imposition of limitations on the types of aircraft it acquired, the infant RAAF was unbalanced from the start, and this retarding influence on maritime aviation must have played its part in fostering the RAN’s increasingly hostile attitude in the early years. The second limitation of the Gift stemmed from its very generosity. By providing in essence a ready-made small-scale air force, with spare aircraft, engines and parts in relative abundance for its size, it allowed the Government to indulge in a modicum of benign neglect and budgetary frugality. The relatively small RAAF did not have a sufficiently powerful voice to bring pressure to bear on the Government and was, like its sister Service on the other side of the globe, frequently too busy defending its very existence. It was not until the Salmond Report at the end of the decade, of which more anon, that this problem was brought into the open. All in all, however, there can be little doubt that the Imperial Gift gave the RAAF a fair wind at a time when economic storms might have capsized it at the start of its voyage. Let us just briefly return to the Governor-General’s telegram of 1 April 1919, because it addresses another problem for the RAAF in its early years; namely its ability to provide a senior staff to run the Service. In addition to asking for aircraft and pilots, the telegram had also included a request for more senior officers to act as Director General, and Director of Equipment in the new air service. Air Marshal Williams wrote that he and other AFC officers at the time considered this request a ‘slap in the eye’. Williams, according to his own account, was instrumental in instigating a certain amount of high-level political questioning of this suggestion by the Prime Minister, W.M. Hughes, and others, which culminated in Senator R.F. Pearce, the Defence Minister, sending a telegram from London pressing the case for Australians to be given every opportunity to fill the posts on offer.14 It is perhaps reckless for an Englishman to express an opinion on this, but there is a case for thinking Williams was overreacting to this proposal. The Governor-General had specifically stated that ‘first preference be given to members of the Australian forces and that every effort be made to secure them’ and went on to say that British officers would only be needed if suitable Australians could not be found.15 Indeed, in one sense it could be said that Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson’s original telegram was designed precisely to identify Australians in Europe, either with the AIF or in the RAF, who were qualified. It may be that Williams was conscious of his own self-interest here. If so, it was an astute move, because the slightly artificial heat generated between Melbourne and London resulted in Pearce writing to Sir Hugh Trenchard. It has not proved possible to trace the letter or reply in Trenchard’s papers at the RAF Museum, but Williams quotes Trenchard in response as recommending that the Australians keep a separate air service and promoting his case as a suitable Director of the Air Service.16 As Pearce 14 Williams, These Are Facts, pp 116–117. 15 Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, p 7. 16 Williams, These Are Facts, p 117.


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was a powerful figure, this recommendation bore fruit. Williams, at the time a 28-year old Lieutenant Colonel, was soon to become the Director Air Services and subsequently First Air Member of the Air Board. In those positions he initially held the rank of Wing Commander. It is a moot point whether it might not have been better for the RAAF if the original proposal had gone forward and an RAF officer of the rank of Brigadier General been seconded for two years. We should note here that at the time one-star officers were a comparative rarity, even in the RAF, and that it is likely that any such officer would have been of high quality. Had there been an RAF one-star in the post of Director at this stage it would have had two effects. Firstly, it would have established a precedent that the senior airman was at least a one-star, thus establishing a greater degree of equality of status alongside the RAAF’s legally established independence. And secondly, it might have avoided some of the problems that the first temporary Air Board created for the RAAF. These stemmed from the Board’s findings, first that the problem of administrative control of the air service was insoluble, which was patently a nonsensical piece of collusion on the part of the Army and Navy, and second that it should not have an independent officer as head of the service with direct access to Ministers.17 It also stated that the Air Force would have ‘no independent military function’. According to Williams, the report had been drafted by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, the then Brigadier General Thomas Blamey, with little consultation with his fellow members, and Williams as a relatively junior Army officer at the time, had felt compelled to sign it.18 Had there been a one-star Director, able to argue the case on equal terms with Blamey, then many of the problems of divided control and inequality stored up for the future RAAF might have been avoided. Of course, the RAAF would then have had to put up with a ‘Pom’ of doubtless irritatingly superior demeanour for two years, but from the Service’s point of view the price might been have been worth it once he had gone. Williams himself, in writing to Trenchard in December 1927, stated that:

At the rate we are going we will never get the necessary proportion of Air Force units and I find youth and junior rank against me when I try to impress these facts.19

Williams may have been conscious of the debt he owed to Trenchard for his own appointment. He undoubtedly looked to the iconic British Air Marshal for advice and support from the very beginning of his tenure. He wrote to Trenchard in January 1921 thanking him for the advice that had already been provided by the RAF and requesting his mentor’s views on the recently approved memorandum outlining the future lines of development for the Australian Service. Trenchard instructed the Air Staff in London to examine the memorandum closely and draft a response.20 Which brings us to the RAF/RAAF relationship during the crucial period of the 1920s and 1930s. Thus far, as we have seen, the RAF had made intellectual and material

17 ibid, p 127; and Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, p 12. 18 Williams, These Are Facts, p 128. 19 Letter Williams to Trenchard, 31 December 1927, Trenchard Papers, RAF Museum Hendon,

MFC76/1/266. 20 Letter Williams to Trenchard, 14 January 1921 and undated [1 March 1921?] draft reply,

PRO AIR2/213.


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contributions to the birth of the RAAF crucial to its independent, or perhaps more accurately semi-independent, status. In the decades leading up to World War II, the philosophical and intellectual input remained very high. Because Australian security policy throughout the period was faced with the problem of defining its defence in an Imperial context, at a time when British resources were thinly stretched, and the Dominion economic base was insufficient to sustain an independent defence posture, all the Services would attempt to draw moral and physical support from the Imperial structure. In the case of the RAAF, which faced not only the hostility of the financiers, but that of its fellow Services, the RAF provided the most tangible justification for its continued existence. Without an RAF to point to as being the Imperial model, the Service may well not have survived. In October 1923 the Committee of Imperial Defence provided the RAAF with a framework for future development within an Imperial context, first in the form of an Air Staff Memorandum on The Development of Dominion Air Forces,21 and then more specifically in a further memorandum, Number 208C, on the Air Requirements of the Dominions – Australia prepared for the Imperial Conference of 1923.22 The proposals in the paper, although modest enough in calling for four squadrons of bomber-reconnaissance aircraft and fighters, and four flights of maritime aircraft, were not to be achieved for more than a decade, but they nevertheless provided the RAAF with an independent, by which in this context we mean non-Australian, strategic framework and program. Though in practice this differed little from the Air Board’s own 1923 plan of a five-squadron, two-flight Air Force within five years. At meetings with Trenchard and other RAF officers in late 1923, Blamey, Admiral Hall Thompson, and Williams agreed to the proposals in CID 208C as the basis on which the RAAF would plan.23 Thus, from the very start the RAAF took a model prepared by the RAF as the basis for its future planning. Throughout the decade of the 1920s the RAAF also made considerable use of the periodic Imperial Conferences to draw moral, intellectual and physical sustenance from the RAF. Thus, the 1923 Conference and the follow up meetings with Trenchard mentioned above opened up several avenues for the infant Australian Service, including provision for short service commissions in the RAF, the attachment of RAAF officers to the RAF, and the provision of specialist training in RAF schools.24 It is interesting to note, however, that the Australian Prime Minister would not permit the results of these ‘Air’ discussions to be included either in the formal minutes of the Imperial Conference itself, or as an appendix to them. Instead, they were forwarded to Australia separately for consideration by the Air Council and the Minister of Defence.25 In this way both the politicians and the other two Services went some way towards limiting the extent to which Williams could use the RAF as a surrogate for RAAF ambitions. Nevertheless, Trenchard and Williams exchanged regular letters and the latter was able to use the former as a conduit to pass or reinforce ideas and suggestions to Australian Ministers that his own rank or constitutional position made difficult.26 By the 1930s, after Trenchard’s retirement these exchanges began to take

21 PRO CAB 5/5 CID Paper 206-C, ‘The Development of Dominion Air Forces’. 22 ibid, and also in PRO AIR2/1453. 23 PRO AIR2/1453, Minutes of Conference and correspondence between Trenchard and Blamey,

November 1923. 24 ibid, for detailed exchanges between 1923 and 1932. 25 ibid, letter Blamey to Trenchard, 23 November 1923. 26 For examples, see the exchanges contained in the Trenchard papers, RAFM MFC76/1/266.


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on a more formal tone and structure, with exchanges between the two CAS’s being given the formal title of ‘Air Liaison Letters’.27 Whether these were as useful to Williams as his less formal correspondence with Trenchard is difficult to judge. They are certainly somewhat less deferential in tone, which may have stemmed from the fact that Williams himself was now more experienced and had also attained air rank, and felt himself to be more of an equal with men such as Ellington, who had been his contemporaries in World War I. In the early years it undoubtedly made economic and practical sense for a force, which on its formation numbered 151 personnel all told and which struggled to reach a thousand permanent personnel through its first decade, to draw on the far greater resources of the RAF. The RAAF therefore not only adopted RAF training syllabuses, but adhered to RAF publications, practices and standards wherever possible.28 In terms of higher staff training and specialist training in areas such as photography, navigation and weapons training, the RAAF relied almost entirely on the RAF. The details of the short service commission scheme put forward at the 1923 conference were agreed in early 1924, with the details being thrashed out in the meetings in London involving Blamey, Williams and various RAF officers and Air Ministry officials. Both Air Forces benefited greatly from the short service scheme. In essence, the RAAF was able to develop its Flying Training organisation, specifically No 1 Flying Training School, on a viable scale large enough to justify the number of instructors required to keep it in being, by providing the first year’s training of the short service officers going to the UK. It also benefited when the successful candidates returned to Australia on completion of their UK service and entered the RAAF Reserve, or were available for permanent commissions. The RAF credited the RAAF with the costs of the training in a UK account, which was then utilised to offset the costs of more advanced training in the UK for RAAF officers, and even to provide for some equipment purchases. It also meant that the RAAF used up the flying hours on its trainer aircraft more rapidly, which meant that they could be replaced by more modern types thus helping to keep the Service more technically up to date. During times of economic difficulty, the benefit of the London credits was considerable, though it did not prevent the Air Board decision in 1931 to send only one, rather than the normal two, RAAF officers to the RAF Staff College. The RAF clearly benefited from the provision of mostly high quality, short service candidates, and from the provision of Reserves who would potentially be available to fight alongside it in time of war. Although the senior air service did voice some mild criticisms of the initial training provided to the first seven Australian candidates granted short service commissions in 1927, these largely reflected the poor technical position of the RAAF. The flying training of the Australians was found to be of an equal or higher standard to that of the RAF, but the technical and supporting training was not, which given the lack of resources was hardly surprising.29 Apart from these symbiotic training links, the greatest support provided by the RAF in the inter-war period came from its position as an alternative locus of informed advice, both for the RAAF itself and, perhaps more importantly, for the Australian 27 See PRO AIR2/1608 and 1609 for examples of Air Liaison Letters. 28 For example, see the list of books for the training of Citizen Air Force day bombing/

reconnaissance pilots in the Salmond Report, Appendix I(2), Attachment C, PRO AIR 20/5994. 29 Official Letter from the Air Council to The Under Secretary of State for the Dominions, [?] June

1927, PRO AIR2/1453.


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Government. Thus, as we have already commented, the other two Services were persistently hostile, with senior Generals publicly stating that it was more junior and ‘was an arm and not a separate service’.30 The Navy meanwhile, started a prolonged agitation for the formation of a separate Fleet Air Arm. The RAN’s methods were not always direct, but neither were they necessarily subtle. Williams has written that he read in the press of the RAN’s decision to build a seaplane carrier, and when he asked his Minister who was to provide the aircraft and aviation personnel he was told, ‘You will’.31 As the cost of the ship was greater than the entire RAAF budget for the previous three years, Williams was understandably unimpressed and in the circumstances one cannot help thinking it was unwise of the RAN to name the ship HMAS Albatross. When in 1926 the Naval Board attempted to renege on a previously agreed policy regarding naval air agreements, Williams again drew on Imperial policy to bolster the RAAF’s position. He also wrote to Trenchard enclosing his own paper to the Minister on the subject and asked the RAF to back the RAAF’s case in the forthcoming Imperial Conference.32 Trenchard also gave backing to Williams’s attempts to abolish the Air Board and establish instead an Australian equivalent to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which would simultaneously have reduced the excessive Army and Navy influence in RAAF, and established it on a footing coequal with its sister Services. In 1932, when a new incoming Australian Government raised the spectre of abolition once more, Williams again used back channels to enlist the RAF in defending the RAAF. When the Minister for External Affairs, John Latham, visited London in May and spoke to the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Londonderry, the latter was swiftly provided with a draft letter by the Air Staff rebutting the view that abolition would provide economies and, unsurprisingly, stressing its detrimental effect on Imperial defence. The CAS, Sir John Salmond, had already been briefed in a letter from Williams, and sent the latter a copy of the briefing note provided for Londonderry. Notwithstanding Londonderry’s letter to Latham, Williams was still sufficiently concerned to send a cipher telegram to Salmond telling the British CAS that the proposal to put the Air Force under the Army Board was still being discussed and ending with a none too subtle plea: ‘Would appreciate your interest and advice to Mr Latham’.33 The proposal was duly rejected by the Government and the RAAF lived on. Apart from these indirect methods of using RAF and Imperial influence to advantage, the RAAF also resorted to more open and formal methods of utilising its parent Service’s greater clout. This came principally in the form of the two inspection tours and reports written on the RAAF by senior RAF officers, one at the end of each decade. Williams welcomed such visits, beforehand at least, and agitated for them behind the scenes. In 1927, before the first such tour by Sir John Salmond, Williams wrote frankly to Trenchard in the letter quoted earlier, setting out his thinking.

30 Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force, 1946–1971, Australian Government

Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p 2. 31 Williams, These Are Facts, p 176. 32 Williams to Trenchard, 3 September 1926, Trenchard Papers RAFM MFC/76/1/266. 33 Williams to Salmond, 1 April 1932; and Salmond to Williams, 28 April 1932, PRO AIR9/56.

Lord Londonderry to Latham, 3 May 1932; and cipher telegram Williams to Salmond, 23 May 1932, PRO AIR 2/648.


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Williams wrote:

In view of all the circumstances I think more than ever that it would be a good thing if we could have a senior RAF officer to come out here to report on what we are trying to do and to give the Government and the people an authoritative and informed opinion in regard to what is being done in the RAAF. You will remember our previous discussions and correspondence on this subject. I have felt for some time too that such a visit might do a very great deal towards helping us get our Air Defences more in proportion to our Sea and Land Defences.34

Williams told Trenchard that he had suggested that the Government request a senior RAF officer to report on the RAAF, although Williams wanted his old Air Officer Commanding (AOC) from the Palestine campaign, Sir Geoffrey Salmond, rather than the latter’s brother John. Williams clearly felt that a report by a senior RAF airman on his force’s deficiencies, which he was only to keen to expose, would be difficult for the Government to ignore. Sir John Salmond’s report was predictably highly critical of much of the RAAF, though its introduction exonerated the RAAF hierarchy of much of the blame. It exposed the obsolete or worn-out nature of much RAAF equipment, poor conditions of service, and low quality training. Salmond explicitly stated that the 25 hours annual training for Citizen Air Force personnel could not be expected to make them thoroughly competent in a modern Air Force.35 Although Williams suffered a little from the backlash which ensued, he was able to utilise the Salmond Report to try to force the Government’s hand on a number of matters, though the severe economic conditions which soon followed meant that material improvements in equipment were a long time coming. Although the Government endorsed the Salmond Report it was therefore not acted upon until much later, when it served as the basis for the RAAF’s expansion scheme.36 Williams was not entirely happy with the Salmond report, and criticised it privately.37 His unhappiness may have stemmed not only from the criticism directed at him personally as a result, but also from disgruntlement that Salmond did not apparently seek his counsel on many aspects of the report.38 He would have been even less happy had he known that Salmond had had discussions with Prime Minister Stanley Bruce on the subject of his replacement by an RAF officer. Salmond believed, not without some justification, that Williams lacked practical experience of command, and also apparently felt that the RAAF was in danger of stagnating.39 To be fair, whatever his personal shortcomings, it is difficult to see what Williams could have done to prevent the latter, given the situation he found himself in, and the fact that the Australian Government accepted Salmond’s report but failed to implement it for a decade clearly illustrates the problem he faced. Equally, it was probably precisely the underlying political and economic difficulties which ensured that Williams survived and was not replaced, temporarily or otherwise, by an RAF officer on secondment. However, as these circumstances and the international scene gradually changed so the question of Williams resurfaced, and it was to be the next report by another senior 34 See footnote 19 above. 35 Copies of the Salmond Report may be found at PRO AIR 5/553 and AIR 20/5994. 36 Stephens, Going Solo, p 3 37 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p 102. 38 Williams, These Are Facts, pp 182–184. 39 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p 102.


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RAF officer, Sir Edward Ellington, a decade after Salmond, which was to result in Williams’s removal. Indeed, the period covering the lead-up to war and the early years of conflict proved less happy ones all round for RAF/RAAF relations. There is evidence to suggest that Australia’s politicians had taken a leaf out of Williams’s book, and began to use some of his own techniques against him. Thus, they used the inspection by Ellington, which produced some pointed criticisms of flight safety, as a vehicle to unseat their own Chief of Air Staff after 17 years in the job, a period during which he had risen from Wing Commander to Air Vice-Marshal. A subsequent Australian CAS, who was at the time at RAAF Headquarters, believed that Ellington’s visit was arranged by the Australian Government with the intention of placing Williams, and not the RAAF, under scrutiny ‘and to recommend his removal … if necessary’.40 It is a matter of opinion whether Williams should have been removed, but the manner of it certainly suggests a less than straightforward approach, but Williams himself was not averse to backstairs politicking, and he mounted a vigorous effort behind the scenes to refute the damaging aspects of Ellington’s report. In this he failed, and one respected Australian historian has commented that he may well have made matters worse.41 As we have seen, Williams had also used the ‘Imperial’ route to pressurise the Government, and he who lives by the sword may expect to die by the sword. Williams’s position had been further undermined when Goble, the next most senior RAAF member of the Air Board, wrote to the Minister distancing himself from responsibility for the flight safety problems. The lack of solidarity between the two most senior officers in the Service cannot have escaped ministerial attention, and must surely have contributed to the increasing suspicion that all was not well at the top. Other aspects of Ellington’s approach left soured memories: he was an aloof and introverted character and it might well have been better for RAF/RAAF relations had an officer with a more human touch been sent in his stead. Williams was sent on exchange to England where he took up the post of Air Officer Administration in Coastal Command, but the unfortunate aspects of the affair from an RAF/RAAF point of view did not end there. The RAF officer sent from Britain on the exchange was Air Commodore John Russell, who became Air Member for Personnel for the RAAF, whilst Air Vice-Marshal Sam Goble moved into the slot vacated by Williams. Unfortunately, Russell and Goble proved incapable of cooperating, and the latter demanded the former’s recall to England, but unwisely backed it by proffering his own resignation. Although Goble was probably right in many of his criticisms of Russell, he had unwittingly provided an Australian Government increasingly convinced that the top strata of the RAAF, which had been in post for much of the Service’s existence, were simply not up to the job, with the perfect method of removing him without the sort of fuss generated by Williams’s departure. Thus, whilst Russell was indeed sent back to London, Goble’s resignation was also accepted, and the Menzies Government requested a replacement from the UK. It seems that the Government had already decided to replace Goble with an RAF officer prior to the contretemps with Russell.42 Their reasons for doing so remain unclear, but may have

40 Air Marshal Sir George Jones, quoted in Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p 115. 41 ibid, p 116. The Australian Official Historian also felt that Williams’s actions in encouraging a

friendly politician to question the Government’s actions in the House of Representatives opened up the question of his own leadership of the Service, Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force 1939–1942, p 51.

42 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, pp 460–463.


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been a combination of distrust of the RAAF hierarchy in the aftermath of the Ellington Report, and a concomitant conviction that the large-scale expansion of the Service could be better handled by a man with more experience of a larger Air Force. The man selected, largely it seems on a personal whim by the Australian Minister for Air, was a passed over Air Marshal, Sir Charles Burnett.43 Goble meanwhile was despatched to Canada to help run the Empire Air Training Scheme there, which is ironic given that one of the underlying reasons behind his resignation was his view that the RAAF should be more than simply ‘a training resource for the RAF’.44 By the start of the war therefore, the RAAF was in a situation where much of its prewar hierarchy had been dispatched to other parts of the British Empire, into administrative rather than command appointments, and had in part been replaced by not particularly impressive RAF officers. This cannot have helped the RAAF to resist the Menzies Government’s predilections, which one historian has characterised as ‘the plundering of Australia’s air defence resources for the benefit of Britain’s war effort in Europe’.45 It is true, of course, that one of the first policies adopted was to institute the Empire Air Training Scheme in Australia, which provided 27,387 aircrew, of whom 15,476 went to the RAF, as opposed to the 11,641 allocated to the RAAF.46 The contribution these men made in practically every fighting role undertaken by the RAF is quite simply inestimable. Their dispersion, however, over several theatres, in differing roles, and in squadrons which even when nominally Australian, often contained a high percentage of non-Australians, had severe effects. It meant that the Commonwealth Government effectively lost control of its own Air Force personnel. The RAAF was never in the same position as even the Australian Army in the Middle East under Blamey, who sought and achieved a fair degree of control over the fate of the forces under his command. By ceding control to Burnett, an officer who had no great breadth of vision, the Australian Government compounded the problem. An RAF officer of greater wit and understanding might have taken a wider perspective view of his role and attempted to advise the Government that their own long-term interests, and especially those of their Air Force, would have been better served by providing something less than a blank cheque. As it was, the dispersion of RAAF forces meant that few senior RAAF officers achieved the levels of command which the size of the overall force might have justified. The chickens that came home to roost in December 1941 when Force Z slid beneath the waves of the Malayan peninsula nevertheless should not disguise the fact that the re-focusing of defence policy nearer to home, and the newly important American alliance also meant that the importance of the RAAF’s place in Australian defence could no longer be denied. We should also surely not be too critical of the inter-war leadership of the RAAF, which overall played a weak hand with some success. They managed to preserve their Service when the odds, in terms of budgetary provision, obsolete equipment, and hostility from the other Services, were stacked against them. It was their foundation which allowed the fifty-fold expansion during World War II. They had little choice but to fit into an Imperial framework, and they used it shrewdly to their own advantage. Having done so, however, they proved vulnerable to the inherent contradictions that this framework held. That said, it is interesting to 43 ibid, p 463. 44 ibid, p 460. 45 ibid, p 464. 46 Stephens, Going Solo, p 4.


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speculate on whether an RAAF which had retained its operational autonomy to a greater degree would have proved as effective in the overall Allied war effort. Whilst it might just have provided a more effective early resistance to the Japanese onslaught, it might also have weakened the Allied effort in Europe, in particular that of Bomber Command, which by the later stages of the war had become one of the most effective instruments of Allied power in overcoming the Third Reich. It is surely too simplistic to assume that the policy of supporting the British struggle against the Third Reich was not in Australia’s best interests in 1939. A German victory over the UK early in the war would clearly have done nothing to limit, and everything to encourage, Japanese designs against Malaya and other British Imperial possessions in the Far East with serious implications for Australian security. In a sense Australia and the RAAF faced the same problem as Britain, that of balancing the resources devoted to a war that was already a reality, against those devoted to a threat which might become a reality. The difference was that for Britain the immediate threat was potentially fatal, and the possible threat, though dangerous and growing, only potentially wounding. For Australia the reverse applied, the German war was potentially very wounding, whereas the Japanese threat was potentially fatal. Britain’s choices were limited and stark, but therefore probably easier; for Australia to balance the advantage of defeating the Nazi threat with the disadvantage of weakening her defences against the Japanese was far less easy. Furthermore, it is surely far from certain that a policy more firmly concentrated on defending Australia would have produced any better results against the early Japanese onslaught. Whilst there might have been more pilots in the Pacific theatre, they would surely have had less combat experience than those who came back from Europe. The real problem the RAAF faced was poor equipment and this would not necessarily have been solved by a defence policy and posture more closely focused on Australia at an earlier stage. These were difficult judgements for Australian policy-makers. The criticisms which historians have made of Australian policy in the prewar and early war period seem to me to have echoes in the criticisms which contemporary commentators make of British and Australian policy towards the United States in the contemporary world. To what degree can or does a policy detached or semi-independent of the United States best serve our national interests? We are all aware of how difficult it is to reach a sure and easy answer to that question, and we should remember that when we look back at the efforts of Richard Williams, Sam Goble and Hugh Trenchard. What happened to the RAAF in the immediate postwar era seems to be more deserving of criticism. To some extent the Service regressed, partly under the influence of postwar retrenchment, but partly because of a lack of self-confidence and infighting in the RAAF establishment. Thus postwar, we again see an RAF officer appointed as Australian CAS. Admittedly, Sir Donald Hardman was an officer of immensely superior intellect when compared to Burnett, but he was an RAF officer, and thus brought with him the RAF’s postwar intellectual baggage. He did recognise that Australia’s problems were different from the UK’s, but the thrust of his thinking was still that Australian air power should develop in partnership with the UK’s, rather than forge a doctrine and policy of its own. As Alan Stephens has pointed out, the major failure of the RAAF in the postwar decades was that it did not succeed in


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developing its own air doctrine.47 Instead it relied on importing RAF doctrine ready-made in the form of the RAF War Manual, AP 1300. Nevertheless, the changes wrought in RAAF thinking by changes in political thinking did have the effect of focusing the Service on its own strategic priorities. Cold War politics drew the Service into making contributions to the Berlin Airlift, a much underestimated triumph for air power, where flying with the RAF the single Australian squadron lifted some 7000 tons, and to the somewhat eccentric deployment of No 78 Wing to Malta in the early 1950s.48 Both commitments were of the nature of token gestures, important for their political impact, rather than of themselves. From the point of view of this paper they are important in representing the RAAF’s final cooperative efforts with the RAF in Europe and the Mediterranean, and represent the ‘swan song’ for all those Australian airmen who fought and died in those areas. There is no doubt, however, that the two most important areas of RAF/RAAF cooperation post-1945 were in Korea and Malaya. The Korean War experience of the two Air Forces is a curious combination in which we see the last vestiges of the outmoded Imperial relationship and thinking, combining with perhaps the first indications of a more balanced and mature relationship. The process of change is completed in Malaya, where we move from a position where the British wish to involve the RAAF at the beginning, to one where the Australians are seeking to keep the RAF involved at the end.49 In Korea, as we heard this morning, No 77 Squadron was deployed as part of the policy of meeting communist aggression head on wherever it occurred. The Squadron originally flew the Mustang, but once Chinese MiG-15s appeared on the scene, the RAAF and the Government quickly concluded that a jet fighter was needed. The US Sabre was unavailable, and the home produced Vampires seriously outclassed. By a process of elimination, the RAAF was forced to turn to the RAF and ask for Meteors, whose performance bettered that of the Vampires, though not the MiGs. In a curious throwback to the prewar era, the RAAF therefore found itself flying an inferior British aircraft against a better equipped enemy in South-East Asia. In an even more curious reversal of wartime practice, RAF pilots were posted to No 77 Squadron and found themselves flying in combat with Australians thousands of miles from home in a conflict which apparently could not affect their home country directly, but which their Government, not without reason, had concluded required some political participation. From the RAF’s point of view it provided valuable combat experience in jet combat in an RAF frontline type against exactly the aircraft they were most likely to meet on the Central Front. Thirty-two RAF pilots fought with No 77 Squadron, and five of them died in helping to establish the Squadron’s reputation as an effective and tough combat unit.50 They thus exactly mirrored the reputation established by Australians in RAF units early in World War II. 47 ibid, pp 36–37. 48 ibid, Chapter 10. 49 For example, the initial deployment of six Lincolns from No 1 Squadron (RAAF) in 1950 came in

response to an appeal from FEAF to Melbourne; see Malcolm Postgatge, Operation Firedog: Air Support in the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1992, p 44. On Australia’s wish to keep the RAF involved in South-East Asia see Stephens, Going Solo, p 258.

50 David Wilson, Lion over Korea: 77 Fighter Squadron, RAAF, 1950–53, Banner Books, Belconnen, ACT, 1994, Appendices 5 and 6.


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In Malaya the conflict was far less dangerous, but the increasing concentration on establishing control of the northern approach routes to Australia, as outlined by Alan Stephens this morning, led to renewed interest in Singapore. The RAAF squadrons integrated into the command and control structure of the RAF’s Far East Air Force (FEAF), though with better delineated political limitations on their possible use than had been the case with their World War II brethren. They were eventually to form part of the British Commonwealth Strategic Reserve mooted by UK Defence Minister, Lord Alexander. By now the formal doctrine as laid down in Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy had shifted the emphasis to exactly this area. With the return of units from Malta and Korea in 1954, the Australian Government became keen to deploy them to Butterworth, in part because, as we have seen, the Australians were now anxious to keep the British and particularly the RAF involved in the region. It is a reflection of the greater maturity of the relationship between the two Air Forces that the RAF ceded the post of AOC Malaya to the RAAF in 1953 and thereafter agreed to share the two two-star posts in FEAF (AOC Malaya and SASO FEAF).51 By 1958 the RAF effectively acknowledged the RAAF’s equality of status when it handed over control of Butterworth.52 As the Malayan Emergency wound down, the two Forces remained in the region and operational attention became increasingly focused on countering Indonesian President Sukarno’s policy of Confrontation, which required all the qualities of political sensitivity and carefully applied military force which both the RAF and RAAF had learned over many years of operations in the area. Like Malaya, Confrontation was eventually to prove an unspectacular but important success. When the RAF finally withdrew from East of Suez with the last Lightning fighter squadron departing Tengah in 1971, it was the RAAF, at the invitation of the Singaporean Government, which replaced them with Mirages.53 It is symptomatic of the changed relationship of the two Air Forces that an RAAF squadron flying modern French aircraft should be replacing an RAF squadron flying aircraft which were probably less capable. Arguably the decades of the 1970s and 1980s were probably the least productive in terms of the RAF/RAAF relationship, because in the post-Imperial post-Suez world the UK was no longer a significant player in the Australian half of the globe, and the RAF was heavily focused on the massive threat posed by the modernisation of Soviet Air Forces and the preponderance of Soviet conventional power on the Central Front. In addition the RAAF no longer flew predominantly British aircraft and the relationship with the Americans had taken on ever greater importance. The strong links of kinship and common heritage did not entirely die, however, and in the post-Cold War phase we are now moving into a new era when the two Air Forces are operating in the same parts of the globe against a common threat, and when shared perceptions open up new areas for close cooperation. In this regard the post-9/11 confluence of UK and Australian Government policy is important. Of course, governments change, and with them policies, but I believe that with shared involvement with procurement in projects such as JSF, now on a much more equal basis than those outlined by Air Vice-Marshal Weston, and with a common operating philosophy and common problems related to size and the difficulties inherent in integrating operations with a USAF whose wealth and power is in danger of 51 Stephens, Going Solo, p 254. 52 ibid, pp 258–259. 53 ibid, pp 270–271.


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outstripping any others nation’s capacity to keep up, the intellectual challenges faced by both Air Forces are remarkably similar. I think that the RAF now has much to learn from the RAAF, and that the Aerospace Centre itself is indicative of all the benefits that can accrue to the UK in that relationship. I am well aware from my own work with successive directors of the Centre how close and valuable the intellectual exchanges between the two Air Forces have become. We can draw, on the basis of equality, a great deal of inspiration, energy and focus from each other. Lastly, we might fruitfully ponder whether, without attempting to create an artificial consensus, both Air Forces acting together where they share perceptions can act as a beneficial influence on USAF policy.

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PANEL DISCUSSION

MR SEBASTIAN COX

Air Commodore Norman Ashworth (RAAF Ret’d): From my point of view looking at the history of the RAAF, the most important relationship with the Royal Air Force has certainly been the Empire Air Training Scheme. It was a huge interrelationship between the two Services and to my mind that is in all sorts of aspects at the core of that relationship. One particular point of view that is put forward, and I think you hinted at it and others have done so, is that by agreeing to the Empire Air Training Scheme somehow or other Australia put itself in a position of inferiority in relation to its ability to meet the threat that eventually arose from Japan. My point of view is different. I believe, in fact, that the Empire Air Training Scheme added to our ability to meet the threat of Japan. Our biggest failing at that particular time was a lack of aeroplanes, lack of operational aeroplanes, not of aircrew and the Empire Air Training Scheme was merely a personnel matter. So the Empire Air Training Scheme and the effort we put into it did not detract in any way from our operational ability to meet the Japanese, the main problem was that we could not get operational aeroplanes from the RAF. Mr Sebastian Cox: I don’t necessarily disagree with you. As I outlined in the paper—I did not develop it as there was not time—I think the problem with the Empire Air Training Scheme was not that it did not do its job; it did produce extremely high quality personnel who were fed into the two Air Forces. The problem was that the RAAF lost control of those personnel when they went to Europe. And I agree with you, it did create a pool of very highly trained personnel who were available to man the aircraft when they became available later in the war. But the problem was that you lost control of those who went to Europe. I am with Alan Stephens on this. I actually think it was a wise, if difficult, decision on the part of the Government to stay with the RAAF in Europe and in Bomber Command. But I think you could have retained better control over those personnel and still had them going to Europe to fight that war, which I believe was actually in your interests, and that is the point. What Australia did was to surrender control over large numbers of its own airmen in Europe because it placed them, in the terminology of the time, at ‘Air Ministry posting disposal’. In other words the British Air Ministry, and not the RAAF, decided which unit they would go to. I know this because part of my job is to run the RAF’s casualty archive for World War II, and it contains all RAAF casualties in Europe and the Far East, except those in the South-West Pacific, because the latter were posted directly to their units from RAAF Headquarters. That is where you lost control of your own airmen, and that had deleterious effects from Australia’s point of view, particularly in the longer term, as I outlined in the paper. From an entirely neutral perspective of whether it was better for winning the air war as quickly and expeditiously as possible, then yes it was. It made it much easier for the British Commonwealth forces to win the war to be able to deploy these high quality aircrew with a greater degree of flexibility. The RAF actually had a bit of a problem with the Canadians who insisted on retaining more control, which actually made them operationally less effective, and that was a problem for the RAF. No 6 RCAF Group


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was operationally less effective because the Canadian Government insisted on greater control. So, militarily, you the Australians were extremely effective but the downside was on your own abilities, particularly postwar abilities, to utilise what you had done. But don’t get me wrong, the contribution of the EATS personnel was, as I said, inestimable. Air Commodore Tom Trinder (RAAF Ret’d): I cannot let Norm Ashworth get away with all of the questions. I would like to make an observation really. I was on the staff of the Australian Joint Anti-Submarine School at Nowra in the mid-1960s. At that stage of the game, I think the RAF and the RN had a very strong influence on certainly the maritime element of the RAAF. The Chief Instructor was an RAF Officer and two or three of the Lieutenant Commanders on staff were RN exchange officers, although we had a Director RAN and a Director RAAF who were Australians. The doctrine and the teachings were all strongly UK variants of what was going on. I think, in the main, it was because the United States Navy at the time never really had the concepts of a Maritime Headquarters and control of maritime operations—dare I say it, I do not think they were in charge of anything. So we leant to the British version and we sent our people there, and I think a lot of our maritime senior officers were trained in England at the Squadron Leader and even Wing Commander level and, therefore, they brought back your doctrine. And just really to put the history of it in perspective, the RAF still had a very strong presence and influence in the maritime element of the RAAF, certainly up until the 1970s. Mr Sebastian Cox: Yes, I would not disagree with that. I think that is absolutely right, and it is probably the area in which that was most sensible. Other parts of RAF doctrine, for example what we were going to do fighting on the Central Front, were not as applicable to the Australian situation as maritime air doctrine, which is roughly applicable wherever you are because of its nature.

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ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AIR POWER – HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING?

DOCTOR RICHARD P. HALLION

(Transcript of address given at the 2003 RAAF History Conference Dinner) Air Marshal Houston, distinguished guests, honoured veterans, fellow students of air power history, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. It is a pleasure to be here with you, celebrating the centenary of powered, winged, and controlled flight. I know I speak for all of us in the United States Air Force and, indeed, in all our Services, when I say that we Americans treasure the close and imperishable bond that has been forged between our two nations. It has been tested in too many wars and crises where both our peoples have fought those who would endanger freedom and the common good. And it has, needless to say, grown ever stronger, even in the face of shared loss and suffering. Indeed, as I speak, the men and women of the Australian and American military Services are engaged in global operations in the War on Terror. I know that all of you join me in praying for their ultimate success, their safety from all harm, and their swift homecoming to their loved ones and their native lands. And now, to the matter at hand. The answer to the above question is at once both obvious and obscure. It is obvious because we clearly have learned some very basic truths about air power and its employment. But I would argue that it is also obscure because the lessons learned have not been uniformly recognised, accepted, or even, so to speak, ‘catalogued’ in the international treasure of military wisdom that should, in an ideal world, govern future military doctrine and operations. Perhaps a better subtitle might have been, ‘Have we learned more than we have ignored, rejected, or forgotten?’. I have no intention of using this opportunity to present a ‘defence’ of air power, for it needs no defenders, least of all statements by airmen. Anyone questioning its worth need only examine the statements of our foes who have been savaged by it in various wars, or by our allies, who were assisted by it. Likewise, this is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive survey of the history of military aviation. Rather, the following thoughts are offered as food for subsequent discussion and commentary over the next few days, and, I would caution, represent strictly my own views and opinions formed over many years; views and opinions not necessarily held by the United States Air Force or the US Department of Defense. We may begin by noting that air power is consistent with, and embodies, the three great drives evident in all military history, but to an extraordinary degree. These are the quest for height, reach, and speed. Height gives us view, view gives us awareness, and awareness gives us the ability to undertake some sort of informed decision-making. Wellington famously remarked that he had spent all of his life wondering what was behind the next hill. Height gives the answer. Reach is innate in military affairs. David did not grapple with Goliath; it was not a ‘manhood issue’ for him. Rather, he hit him with an aerospace weapon—a rock—that is, a missile. The English


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bowmen at Crecy did not let the French knights ride them down. Rather, they relied on the JFACC—the Joint Force Arrow Component Commander—and struck from a distance. As for speed, at the dawn of structured warfare, Sun Tzu noted that rapidity is the essence of war. So it is today. Rates of mobility have changed dramatically over the last 200 years, and may change even more dramatically in the future. We moved at 6 mph, the speed of a horse-drawn vehicle, at the beginning of the 19th Century. We moved at 60 mph, the speed of a steam locomotive, at the beginning of the 20th. We move at 600 mph, the speed of an intercontinental jet transport today, at the beginning of the 21st. Might we not, at least in some form, move at 6000 mph, the speed of a transatmospheric hypersonic vehicle, at the beginning of the 22nd? Now, air power has clearly transformed war, fulfilling admirably Major General J.F.C. Fuller’s dictum of 1945 that the weapon of the greatest reach must necessarily serve as the ‘fulcrum of combined tactics’. (I might add Fuller believed, in the air power era, that weapon had to be the long-range airplane.) Air power, in its combination of vista, global reach, and high speed, captures the essential characteristic change of the 20th Century: the century of mechanisation, the century in which military affairs became truly three-dimensional. But beyond this, as Colonel John Warden and others (including then Lieutenant Colonel David Deptula) enunciated a decade ago, air power has also given us a new era of warfare—an era in which simultaneity has replaced sequentiality, in which parallel operational strategies have supplanted linear thinking, and in which nodal effects-based targeting has replaced summary target list thinking. It was the Gulf War of 1991 that first dramatically highlighted this transformation of war to the public at large, a transformation caught in President George H.W. Bush’s oft-quoted recognition that ‘Gulf Lesson One is the value of air power’. But the roots and shoots of this performance had been growing for a very long time indeed. We can note several aspects of air power and how it has transformed war. It is inherently manoeuvre warfare. How else can one describe a form of military power that can, in just a few seconds, dramatically reorient and re-position itself, and, in a very few minutes, transit an area that has taken the better part of several days or even a week or so for a surface force to traverse? I was somewhat amused in the early 1990s by the enthusiastic embrace of manoeuvre by some military reformers, as if they had newly discovered the ‘Holy Grail’. Air power has been a manoeuvre force ever since the advent of the military airplane and, as well, it is inherently expeditionary. In fact, the first ‘air expeditionary force’ employed in warfare was sent by Italy to Tripoli in 1911, a mere three years after invention of the military airplane, and not even a decade after the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk. The flexibility and manoeuvrability—indeed, military agility—of air power forces stands in contrast to that of traditional surface warfare forces. Ironically, for all the changes in 20th Century mechanisation capabilities of surface forces, their rates of manoeuvre really remain largely unchanged from their capabilities of decades ago. Ships reached the 30-knot point (analogous in some ways to the sound barrier in aeronautics) about 1901, and the vast majority of them remain firmly below this figure today, over a century later. Land warfare forces today move no faster than their counterparts in 1945. These two examples reflect the physical conditions of moving across the surface of a pitching and heaving sea, or convoluted terrain—only the air environment offers essentially unimpeded access global distances. The relative speed

One Hundred Years of Air Power – Have We Learned Anything?

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disparity between opposing air and surface forces can be truly remarkable, and effectively constitutes (as I pointed out in an earlier RAAF conference in 1994) four-dimensional, not just three-dimensional, warfare. An aircraft can have as much as a 10 or 12:1 velocity advantage over a surface vehicle, and a missile system an even higher 60 or even 80:1 advantage. Against fielded troops, the airplane can have as much as a 200:1 advantage. Clearly, these rates of traverse and engagement pose the greatest of challenges for opponents, who often, if at all possible, simply seek to ‘go to ground,’ thus removing themselves from the fight. In addition, as Colonel Phillip Meilinger noted several years ago, air power has redefined ‘mass’ in warfare. I would elaborate on this and note that classic Clausewitzian mass as the primary determinant of success in the closure (the clash of arms, what fighter pilots would call the merge) is a thing of the past, except for the most primitive of armies fighting foes like themselves. Put another way, in the air power era, mass is a liability, not an asset. Indeed, its major value for an advanced military may be as a threat, used to intimidate a foe less cognisant of the changes that have taken place in warfare. For example, as even a confirmed ground-centric warrior as retired US Army Major General Robert Scales has noted, the major function of land warfare forces today is primarily to ‘herd’ an enemy force to the point where it masses and then can be destroyed by the fires of aircraft and surface artillery systems. In short, air power (and the submarine) has negated the surface environment as the primary arena of decisive war. And it achieved this not merely over the last decade, but, actually, by the middle of World War II. During that war, 48 per cent of Japanese ships were sunk by submarines, and 45 per cent by airplanes—clearly, classic ‘surface-vs-surface’ action was a minority, an overturning of thousands of years of naval tradition, from Salamis onwards. By 1943, German medical authorities had discovered that the greatest cause of combat casualties—combat casualties from the fighting fronts and war at sea, I might add, not casualties on the home front—was allied air attack. And, indeed, this casualty disparity grew in 1944 and 1945. Not surprisingly, to German military leaders, the achievements of allied air power struck them as revolutionary. After D-Day, for example, Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge, Rommel’s naval aide, remarked that Allied air power was the new way of turning a flank—not from the side, but from above. In the years after World War II, air power shifted the model of war to one increasingly emphasising precise engagement at a distance, coupled with special operations on the surface, and all informed by the architecture of air-and-space-based intelligence, warning, cueing, weather, navigation, communication, etc. In this new era of warfare, traditional land warfare services have evolved from having to fight at great cost and loss for the ‘right’ to enter enemy territory to being, primarily, forces for occupation and enforcement that are brought intact to the enemy heartland largely as a result of the beneficent relationship between air and Special Operations Forces (SOF) action. The contrast, for example, between the fighting from D-Day to Berlin, and fighting in Desert Storm and, more recently, Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, is striking. The former was ‘classic’ Clausewitzian, mass-driven, sequential, linear war. The latter was post-Clausewitzian, precision-driven, simultaneous, parallel war. Now I hasten to add that this does not, in any sense, imply a downgrading or denigration of their significance. The challenges of occupation and enforcement are


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extreme, as the experience of coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq has clearly shown. The requisite skill, courage, dedication and tenacity necessary to prevail in such warfare are no less today than that possessed by their predecessors in fighting from the Solomons and New Guinea through the Western Desert and Western Europe over a half-century ago. Given the discussion we had this morning, I would also hasten to add that air power is far more than ‘strategic bombing’. Many critics argue that air forces are about nothing other—indeed, are interested in nothing other—than this, a form of argument that is actually an attempt to simplistically pigeonhole what air forces do, so that the critic can then turn to advocating that they do something else virtually exclusively—usually ‘close air support’. There are many other aspects that must be considered regarding air power. For example, in my opinion, view is the most critical capability that air power possesses, for view produces (thanks to height, as mentioned earlier) knowledge. That is a lesson evident from the earliest rickety balloon raised at Fleurus in 1794 in the French revolutionary war, through the use of airplanes at Tannenberg and the Marne in 1914, and on to the use of reconnaissance aircraft and systems during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. We have all heard the statement that ‘knowledge is power’. True enough, but knowledge is meaningless without physical power. Otherwise, one simply has a perfect awareness of why one is losing, as with Britain in Greece in 1941. Thanks to intelligence, British forces had a clear idea of what would happen to them, but no ability to change the equation working against them. Conversely, power without knowledge is useless. When, on the opening night of the Gulf War in 1991, selective attacks by F-117s blinded the Iraqi integrated air defence system and destroyed the Iraqi Air Force Headquarters, the combined strength of that air defence system was shattered, and all the MiGs, SAMs, triple-A, radars, etc meant virtually nothing. By dawn the next day, Iraq was on the road to ruin. And that example brings us to the issue of air dominance. The most critical goal of an air force is the achievement of air dominance. History has taught, from World War I onwards, that failure to secure control of the air dooms a nation to lose. Only in the rarest of cases is this not the case. Before World War I, French General Ferdinand Foch replied, ‘c’est zero’, when asked the value of the airplane for the French Army. By the middle of the war, combat experience had made him a believer, and he was penning in his own hand cautionary notes that dominance of the air was critical to ensuring the security of artillery control aircraft that helped shape and determine the outcome of the land battle. The most compelling example is, of course, the Battle of Britain in 1940—a battle, that, unfortunately, all too few study. Indeed, I have never seen it listed among the ‘decisive turning points’ of World War II—usually limited just to El Alamein, Midway and Stalingrad—but it certainly should be. At a time when the British Army was powerless to defend England, a time when the Home Guard was training with wooden rifles and pikes, a time when the Royal Navy was still licking its wounds from the Norwegian campaign and recognising the terrible vulnerability of its ships to air attack, the RAF, in the skies over England and the coastline of Western Europe, was securing a victory that would result in Britain being an impregnable aircraft carrier that would, for nearly the next four years, serve as the base of an aerial second front against the Third Reich.


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This was by no means Germany’s first experience at what the loss of air superiority meant. Germany’s inability to secure control of the air over its fighting fronts led, in World War I, to the utter ruin of its military as Allied reconnaissance and artillery cooperation aircraft ranged largely unmolested across the front. In World War II, it led to Germany being besieged by the combined bomber offensive that forced a radical reshaping of German procurement and acquisition away from offensive to defensive systems, and the redistribution of large numbers of military forces in the Reich and Western Europe instead of where they were most needed, in Russia. Ultimately, the Wehrmacht was utterly unable to prevent the invasion of Europe, a situation captured so well in General Dwight Eisenhower’s statement to his son John that ‘If I didn’t have air supremacy, I wouldn’t be here’. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel bitterly complained in both the Western Desert and at Normandy about the effects of allied air superiority, noting ‘There’s simply no answer to it’. But my favourite has to be Joseph Goebbels, who in 1945, shortly before joining der Führer in squalid suicide, wrote in his diary that he had met with Adolf Hitler and both of these odious creatures were agreed that the cause of all their problems was overwhelming allied air superiority. That remarkable, if ignored, statement (I have never seen it cited in any military history)—made as the death knell of the ‘Thousand Year Reich’ was already sounding—should come as quite a compliment to any of the men or women who participated in the European air war, and, particularly, as a comfort to those families who lost loved ones in air operations against the Third Reich. (I might add, further, that Goebbels’ diary is filled with invective against the ineptness of Hermann Göring and the powerlessness of the Luftwaffe, and, as well, with venomous bitterness—if nevertheless a measure of grudging respect—towards the de Havilland Mosquito; perhaps not surprising as both his home and propaganda ministry were reduced to rubble by the RAF’s elegant ‘Wooden Wonder’.) In short, the ‘bottom line’ is that air dominance is so critical that an air force unable to secure the sky over its forces and homeland is unworthy of the name. Air mobility is a key attribute of modern military affairs. Typically today, for combat or military operations other than war, the first essential mission is ensuring the security of a mobility bridge (the ‘tanker-transport bridge’) into a crisis region. A list of mobility operations that dramatically influenced a conflict, crisis or even global affairs would include: the Spanish Civil War, the Hump (the German failure at Stalingrad offers a lesson on the problems when one does not have an adequate air mobility system), Berlin, the Yom Kippur War, and the Desert Shield/Desert Storm build-up in 1990–1991. Now and in the future, the tanker-transport bridge is one of the most critical capabilities a nation can possess. Thus, a true air force must possess balanced capabilities, reflected by an appropriate command, control, communication, mission area, logistical, maintenance, training, research, and acquisition structure, covering the essential air power missions. These include (but are not limited to) air dominance, strike, reconnaissance, maritime patrol, airlift, SOF etc. This is why, in many ways, our opponents over the years have failed to prevail against us. (The Luftwaffe, for example, was hardly a ‘real’ balanced air force in the sense of the RAF, RAAF, or even the nominally ‘under the Army’ USAAF.) In the broadest sense, air power, like all forms of military power, is really a symphony of effects. To play Beethoven, so to speak, you need the full range of an ‘orchestra’. In the case of air power, only air forces are full service air power


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providers (‘orchestras’). Service air components are like ‘bands’. Aside from the range of mission areas they perform, the difference is most noticeable in their deployment mobility rates. By and large, air forces deploy at the speed of the air weapon—say, Mach 0.75 plus cruise. Naval aviation elements deploy at the speed of a ship, say 25–30 knots. Army aviation elements deploy at the speed of a mechanised infantry force (as the experience of Task Force Hawk in Kosovo in 1999 clearly showed). In short, an air force is free to deploy its forces at the speed of their innate capability. Surface warfare air components generally hold their air elements ‘hostage’ to the speed of their primary mechanisation system—the ship, or the truck or tank. Again, this is not a criticism, but is a definition of one of the more important distinctions between ‘air forces’ and ‘air services’. It is not one without operational impact. Understandably, the airman serving in a surface warfare force must fulfil the larger purposes of that force; for example, defending the fleet or task force from air, surface and subsurface attack, or supporting the objectives of a corps or divisional commander. Typically, strategic, theatre-wide issues are not a concern, but they are of vital importance to the air force, which has, necessarily, a much broader sense of responsibility and influence. Not surprisingly, such differences have often served to trigger tensions between the two communities when it is carried into the field of theatre command and control. Over 60 years ago, the great Australian-New Zealand airman Air Vice-Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, working for Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, prepared a doctrinal and operational guide issued over ‘Monty’s’ hand that stated, in part, that the solider must neither desire nor exert command over air power forces. This pamphlet had far-reaching influence, for it subsequently served as the basis of FM-100-20, issued in 1943 by US Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, which was the doctrinal underpinning of much of the successful air-land campaign that followed in the war in Europe. Yet all too often today, despite the obvious success of conflicts such as Desert Storm, despite the obvious value of concepts such as the JFACC and the Air Tasking Order, we still see suggestions in professional literature and discussion at war colleges and elsewhere about placing air, and even maritime forces, under the command of the land component commander, rather than having the air, land and maritime commanders working, as they should, towards fulfilment of the theatre commander’s campaign vision. This makes as much sense, as Major General David Deptula noted several years ago, as returning to an earth-centric Ptolemaic cosmology rather than the helio-centric cosmology of Copernicus. The sensitivity of surface warfare forces to air power issues is understandable, given the tremendous destruction and psychological impact of air attack. Surely, a surface warfare force that ignores or is not capable of confronting an enemy air force does so at its extreme peril, as the experience of the evacuation of Crete, the loss of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, or more recently the experience of the Falklands clearly indicates. Air attack generates profound psychological effects, as mentioned by Professor John McCarthy this morning, in his recollection of an FW-190 attack against his school. The psychological effects of air attack have been thoroughly explored in a Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies Whitehall paper of 1994 vintage by Air Commodore Andrew P.N. Lambert, RAF that I would commend to you. To select just a very few examples, these effects can be seen in:


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• the reaction of Turkish troops (as reported by General Liman von Sanders) at the Wadi el Far’a in 1918;

• the reaction of French forces exposed to Stuka attack at Sedan; • US Army reaction to German air attacks at Kasserine; • the German exposure to Allied air attack in 1944–45 (overwhelming air power

was uniformly considered by German veterans the most striking aspect of overall Allied superiority);

• the reaction of Iraqis to coalition air attacks in 1991 (triggering suicides and

abandonment of positions, as well as murderous thoughts towards their commanders);

• the reaction of the Taliban to GPS-guided close air support from B-52s at

30,000 feet; or even • the reaction of witnesses to the ‘9-11’ attacks (of which I was one). The experience changes one completely. Perhaps not surprisingly, exposure to air attack triggers greater calls for protection by land warfare commanders, particularly calls that the airmen be placed under the control of the corps commander, so that air assets can be marshalled and concentrated above the corps. At Normandy, for example, Rommel and Ruge commiserated with each other about how the Luftwaffe was too independent (this a force whose doctrine was built largely around fulfilling the Heer’s needs!) and that, in the postwar world, the ties between the Heer and the Luftwaffe would have to be even tighter and more restrictive! Ironically, of course, the Allies were successful precisely because this was not the way the RAF, the de facto independent USAAF, etc related to their own armies, despite, thankfully, the desires of many in the American and British Armies who might have wanted them to do so. This idea of concentration reflects, at heart, a great internal contradiction: an army, exposed to wide-ranging and effective air attacks by an enemy air force typically then seeks to constrain the operations of its own air force—in other words, preventing its own air force colleagues from doing to the enemy what has been done to them. It is, essentially, the desire to have the friendly airplane close at hand for comfort and reassurance: air power as a corps-level security blanket, not as a decisive theatre-ranging force. Worse, it leads to an attitude that can be perhaps best (if sorrowfully) described as fearing an enemy air force more than respecting one’s own. In reality, and far too little appreciated, air power has often proven the critical ‘saving force’ when land warfare forces are under assault—and not simply by being used in the close air support (CAS) role. The experience of Milne Bay, the Battle of the Bulge, Korea in 1950 (twice), Linebacker I, and more recently events in Afghanistan typified by Operation Anaconda, demonstrate when land warfare forces are unable or incapable of securing victory on their own, or when they run into unanticipated resistance and difficulty, it is then most often that they turn to employing wide-ranging air power, and typically with decisive result.


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This illustrates a critically important point: air forces and airmen must be involved in all aspects of the planning and execution cycle to ensure the maximum effectiveness of air power application in air-land warfare. This is the ‘bottom line,’ from the Western Desert in World War II to Afghanistan and Iraq today. Failure to do so will both limit the effectiveness of any subsequent air operations, degrading the probability of success of the land warfare force. In particular, the arbitrary establishment by land force commanders of fire support coordination lines (FSCL) and boundaries far in advance of their forces, without coordinating such demarcations with the joint force air component commander (JFACC), may actually furnish an enemy with a welcome ‘sanctuary space’ of relative immunity from air attack—in short, preserving and enhancing the enemy’s ability to strike at friendly ground forces, the exact opposite effect of what is actually desired. (This actually happened in the closing stages of Desert Storm, and played a key role in allowing significant portions of Saddam Hussein’s forces to withdraw safely into Iraq, to fight another day against the marsh Shia and the Kurds; forces we later had to fight over a decade later, in 2003.) Finally, there is a grave risk of dangerous misunderstandings when all air support of land warfare forces is hastily or casually mischaracterised as ‘close air support’ (CAS). Not surprisingly, perhaps, land warfare forces of virtually all nations tend to overemphasise the value and necessity of at-hand, on-call CAS at the expense of all other mission areas in which air forces engage. CAS is a critical mission, with very specific characteristics and planning and integration needs, and air forces must be trained and ready to undertake it if called upon to do so. The proud history of our air forces shows we are, and have been, committed to it, and the numerous graves of airmen in our various nations who have paid the ultimate price furnishing such support to their comrades on the ground testifies to the depth and sincerity of that commitment. However, CAS is but a single mission area, like others such as interdiction and direct attack of fielded forces. To mischaracterise all ground support as inherently ‘CAS’ and to hold this as a model of air power application is a profound mistake. CAS, by its very nature, is ‘in extremis’ non-routine air support, and a land war commander who continually demands CAS support to his forces to get the job done is doing something seriously wrong. By analogy, CAS support is akin to throwing down towels to sop up an overflowing bathtub. It may be necessary on occasion, but it is far better to reach back and turn off the taps. An air force that has to apply CAS at the expense of the other mission areas it fulfils is an air force that, ironically, is not helping its surface warfare comrades anywhere near as well as they might think, despite the comforting sight of friendly ‘on-call’ aircraft overhead. Worse, since CAS often places the air attacker well inside an enemy’s air defences, it may result in attrition so high that air power forces are simply unavailable over the remaining length of a conflict to prosecute the kind of fielded force attacks and interdiction missions that history teaches are so much more productive and beneficial to friendly ground manoeuvre warfare. There are some caveats we must consider when regarding air power. To our critics, air forces are ‘platform-centric’ (like navies), and thus we (both) are often accused of being too interested in high technology solutions. As Sanu Kainikara pointed out this morning, technology and air power are inextricably linked, but technology on its own


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cannot guarantee success. Technology is no substitute for leadership, strategy, training and thought. Germany certainly learned this in both world wars, and if Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara could have called upon a force of F-117s, B-2s, the F-22, AWACS, JSTARS and, for that matter, the Abrams tank, and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, they still would have lost Rolling Thunder and made a muddle of the war in both North and South Vietnam. I would add that our experience with wars in the 1990s and through the most recent experience in Iraq highlights—actually reaffirms—how dependent air power application is upon the successful integration of all the elements that compose national power. Today, for too many of our nations, we are still living with ‘legacy’ bureaucratic structures that reflect an organisational structure dating back to World War II. Interagency coordination and planning is at best awkward and cumbersome prior to the onset of a crisis, even though, once conflict erupts, this interchange improves dramatically. Such ‘organisational culture’ issues, if then matched by adaptation of older linear and sequential strategies, ignoring the effects-based capabilities of modern air power forces, or politically constraining the freedom of campaign planners to fully exploit the air weapon can go a great distance to limiting air power’s overall effectiveness, as the opening stages of Operation Allied Force in 1999 clearly demonstrated. Having offered this caveat about technology, however, an air force must invest in the highest level of technological sophistication that it can afford, appropriate to the larger needs of the state. If it cannot, it had better have powerful friends! Another caveat is that size does matter. I am not referring to classic mass, but, rather, to the range of capabilities and packaging those joint and coalition air power forces going to war bring to the fight, particularly when confronting a regional actor. The classic example here, perhaps, is the Falklands War, which Britain came perilously close to losing. The task force sent to retake the islands had deficiencies in equipment, warning and power projection capabilities, and soon found itself in an attrition ‘slugfest’ against a powerful regional opponent who would in all likelihood have won, except for a series of strategic and tactical blunders (not least of which was not improving the runways on the Falklands and basing fast jet strike aircraft on the islands), and faulty fusing of Argentine bombs. Fortunately, British forces were able to hang on until victory was secured, but, as RAAF Air Marshal Ray Funnell noted in an essay of several years ago (paraphrasing the ‘Iron Duke’), ‘It was a bit of a close call’. Indeed so—the price of failure included a potential change in government in Great Britain, a vastly changed US–UK–NATO–Soviet Union relationship, major changes in Latin and South American politics, and a vastly more unstable world. The Falklands experience emphasises that nations or coalitions of nations going to war against opponents have to ensure absolutely that they have the right mix of forces to get the job done, and quickly and overwhelmingly. I would also offer that our enemies, over many years, have come to appreciate to a degree more than we have, just how valuable, unique, and ‘asymmetric’ our joint Service and coalition air power projection capabilities are. Accordingly, another caveat from history that I would urge you to take to heart is the vulnerability, in this day of reduced and expensive force structures, of aircraft and aviation systems to SOF, terrorist, or other unconventional attackers. (This has been admirably


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documented in work by RAND’s Alan Vick.) Certainly, the lessons of Allied SOF operations against German and Italian airfields in the Western Desert, the success of Vietcong sappers and attackers against American and South Vietnamese bases during the Vietnam War, and more recent examples of Afghani attacks on Soviet bases in the Afghan War, and terrorist attacks against other aviation-related facilities and aircraft (including commercial airliners) highlights just how very serious this threat is. Typically, force structure removed from a contemporary conflict will not be reconstituted in time to play a further role in the conflict, something of grave implication in an era of wars that last fewer than three months. Again, this is an area where the changes in the nature of warfare and the role of land warfare forces may play a part—by shifting more land warfare forces, particularly guard and reserve forces, to securing domestic bases and using larger proportions of land warfare forces to protect in-theatre bases and facilities. Alternatively, depending on the air force and nation involved, security force authorisations for an air force could be considerably increased, together with the allocation of appropriate weapons and systems for the purpose of ‘guarding the nest’. It is, of course, perhaps more widely recognised that, in the missile era, an air force is vulnerable to the increasing sophistication of surface-based air defence threats. The elaboration, profusion, and growing capabilities of these systems is understandably a concern; it is now almost 45 years since the first aircraft was downed by an SA-2, and we have passed, successively, through the SA-2, SA-6, and now into the SA-10/12 era. The ability to conduct successful air warfare in this environment demands sophistication, sensor-fusion, stealth and speed, and any air force that cannot operate at least at the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) level in confronting such threats in the future will quickly find itself as merely a ‘legacy’ or ‘niche’ force relegated to ‘support only’ out-of-harm’s-way operations. I would now like to address what I consider some ‘popular culture’ issues involving air power and air warfare. Air power, curiously, is, as Professor McCarthy noted earlier, a form of military power that generates extreme emotional reactions. I have found this to be particularly true when referencing its critics. I would also add that it is also a form of power that is not well understood. For example, in the build-up to the Gulf War in 1991, I was astonished to see that most news commentators really had no more advanced vision of air power than the strategic bombing campaign of World War II. They literally thought—and many of the experts invited onto shows concurred—that the coalition would be willy-nilly carpet-bombing Baghdad, with potentially tens of thousands of civilian casualties. Other experts argued that the greatest problem in the war would be large ‘friendly fire’ casualties caused by careless airmen bombing and strafing anything they saw on the ground. Neither, of course, actually took place. Baghdad was subject to F-117-delivered laser-guided bombs and ship and air-launched cruise missiles that flew down streets and turned corners on their way to their targets. Ground-to-ground friendly fire proved a far more prevalent and serious problem than air-to-ground friendly fire. But had either of these erroneous perceptions affected the minds of select key decision-makers during the planning phase—say, a Colin Powell, or a Dick Cheney, or a George H.W. Bush, or a John Major—the whole nature of Desert Storm might have been far different. Although the actual wartime experience, and experience since that time, have convinced most rational people that air power in the modern era is precise and


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focused, it is disturbing to see the degree to which many, particularly in the media, seemingly accept the notion that modern air power is necessarily imprecise and inherently ‘brutal’. These sentiments, most often encountered in discussions of collateral damage, reflect serious ignorance we must work to overcome, for some of the claimants essentially see no difference between the level of friendly casualties today and those of, say, World War II. Those who think collateral damage from modern air attack is widespread should see the kind of damage left after large mechanised forces have engaged in direct fire amidst urban areas. In the Gulf War of 1991 for example, peace activists who travelled to Iraq were surprised by the lack of collateral damage inflicted despite intensive coalition air attacks in urban and built-up areas. On the other hand, they were rightly appalled by the level of collateral destruction evident from fighting between Iraqi forces and Shia rebels in the southern marshes after using tanks, cannon, helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades. Fighting in the Balkans throughout the 1990s offered even grimmer scenes of such non-air-power-inflicted desolation. Yet even today, as seen most recently in reporting of bombing in and around Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the most extreme claims for casualties and brutality are still accepted seemingly without question by air power’s critics and all too many in the media. If the attributes of precise modern air power have not made war ‘blood-free’, they have at least made it ‘less bloody’. Yet, ironically, for many critics this is still not enough; the fact that we can strike with precision—down to less than 3 metres with a laser-guided weapon—is grotesquely turned on its head. This level of precision is actually held against us: we are seen as Olympian, dispassionately and unfeelingly dealing death from the heights to those who are helpless to defend themselves. This is but the most recent update of an old argument; historian John Mordike has unearthed a wonderful quote from a senior airman who was called a ‘butcher’ by a British Army General because of the unsporting efficacy of Australian Flying Corps air attacks against Turkish forces in Palestine in 1918. Unfortunately, then, precision air attacks from medium and high altitude have triggered what might be called the ‘manly man’ argument, one offered by some critics. At its heart, the argument goes something like this: ‘real’ warriors do not operate outside another warrior’s power-projection abilities. To do so is essentially ‘cowardly’. Such is the nature of air warfare; therefore, air warfare is craven and not ‘real war’—or, at least, not ‘respectable war’. Now, if thought through, this simply makes no sense: it is a negation of military history since the time of David and Goliath onwards. The Chieftain or Abrams crew engaging a T-72 or T-55 from outside its range are hardly acting any differently than a B-2 dropping a JDAM from 40,000 feet or, say, HMS Conqueror sinking the Belgrano off the Falklands. What are they to do in the interest of ‘fairness’? Close with the ‘inferior’ enemy tank and give it the first shot? Blow tanks and engage the cruiser on the surface? Again, warfare is neither a sporting match nor a duel; it is best settled, for all parties, quickly and decisively, by focused and overwhelming use of force. The idea that there is something morally right about deliberately engaging in the close fight—essentially stripping our young people of their technological advantage and placing them, rifle in hand, on a level playing field with opponents who, equally equipped, have waited all their lives to die for a cause—is absurd. Further, it is, as my distinguished colleague Alan Stephens recently noted, ‘puerile’. After all, since when


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are ‘friendly’ casualties a ‘good thing’? Since when is it desirable to risk all in the close fight? In fact, it is disturbing to me how surface warfare forces often see casualties as what might be termed ‘the price of doing business’, or the ‘price of success’. During the most recent Iraqi conflict, I found myself lecturing to a class of prospective officers at a major American military academy. The class instructor, a noted retired General, informed his students that someday, if they found themselves in battle, and one of their subordinates relayed that his unit had accomplished something great and good, they should ask him how many casualties he had experienced, for if he had experienced few casualties, then what he had accomplished could not be very significant. That kind of thinking may be at home at Waterloo, Verdun, or Gallipoli, but certainly not now, when confronting 21st Century high technology war of the kind that we—and many others, increasingly—practice. Another notion that has gained popular currency is that air warfare is somehow inherently risk-free. Certainly no-one in this room tonight will accept that, but again, this is a matter for some serious education. I well remember an article in a major American defence journal written shortly after the Kosovo conflict that questioned the entire philosophy of air operations, arguing that the attackers had not shown the willingness to face risk exemplified in earlier wars by mercenaries. At the same time, in the same journal, was an article by two airmen who detailed their nightly dicing with SAMs and anti-aircraft fire, and who wrote that on some nights they felt ‘lucky just to get back alive’. (Several weeks later, at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in the UK, I had the opportunity to discuss the campaign with an RAF pilot who had his own memories of this ‘safe’ air war: seeing three SA-6s blasting upwards at his aircraft at the same time one night near Belgrade, and jinking violently to get out of their way, all while thinking ‘this is it’!) Indeed, a study of wounded versus death loss rates for air attackers in the modern era reflects an essential reversal of the ‘classic’ 3 or 4:1 wounded to dead ratio of land warfare to a 3 or 4 dead for every one wounded for air attackers that are injured or killed by enemy fire. So much for the ‘benign’ environment seen by our critics. As an aside, it is interesting to note the themes one sees about military affairs and operations evident in military art. Typically, air force (and to a lesser extent navy) art is ‘platform’ art, showing airmen and aircraft off doing something—accomplishing some feat, achieving some goal. Land warfare art, interestingly, often concentrates on the individual. In discussions I have had, many have suggested that this means that armies concentrate more on the individual, more on the person, while air forces and navies are more concerned about unfeeling technology. But I think there is more to it than this. Whatever the nation, soldiers are typically shown enduring, sacrificing and suffering loss, rarely experiencing triumph or success. It may well reflect this innate view, mentioned earlier, of loss as being the ‘price of doing business’. In fact, I would argue that the emotional bonds between airmen and aircraft, or seamen and ships, are something that must be considered in evaluating such art. For airmen, the airplane is often seen as an extension of themselves. It reacts to their movements (particularly, say, a jet fighter). The art reflects the perspective—exuberant, buoyant, expansive—of the enhanced man-machine as it uses its extraordinary vantage and capabilities to achieve some effect. This notion that, somehow, air warfare isn’t ‘real war’, that is, that it isn’t ‘Saving Private Ryan’-type war, that it isn’t meeting the needs of sister Services, that airmen


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must recognise they only operate ‘in support of’ other Services, has led to an interesting and paradoxical situation. Air power advocates, through the years, have had to fight repeatedly, in virtually every decade and after every war, to reassert the value of air power despite how well—indeed how overwhelmingly well—it has actually done. Depending on the nation and air force, this has included repeated attempts in various roles and missions debates, defence commissions, and defence studies, to reorganise air power forces, rearrange pre-existing doctrines for command and control, and realign air power priorities. We will, undoubtedly, see this into the future as well. All warfare is necessarily joint warfare, and all Service components have to recognise that they function and fight as part of the joint team. There are no ‘solo’ acts. Nevertheless, some of the examples of attempts to minimise the role of air power are truly remarkable. We saw this in a silly way after Desert Storm when there was an effort by some to prevent using the word ‘air campaign’ in the Title V report to the American Congress on the conduct of the war; fortunately it was rejected. We have seen it since that time in some of the public utterances and media commentary assessing operations from Desert Storm of a decade ago, through the Balkans, and on to Afghanistan and returning to Iraq. Nowhere is there more confusion than over the relative impact of air attack versus armoured assault. In fact, in a true joint sense, together with other forms of military power, both are significant to military success, but it is difficult to argue that the primary means of attaining victory in war now and in the future is likely to be by something so crude and costly as punishing tank-vs-tank battles like El Alamein and Kursk. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, for example, Israeli tank commanders already questioned the future of ‘classic’ tank-vs-tank warfare, and, indeed, the Gulf War of 1991 witnessed a very different pattern of armoured force movement and conflict than had been seen in any previous war. (There was, for example, no ‘culminating point’ where one could plant a flag or monument and say, ‘on this spot, on this day, Iraq lost the war’.) Indeed, the published recollections of veterans of various wars through the 1990s emphasise driving past the burnt-out hulks of tanks and APCs destroyed by joint and coalition air attack. Yet, despite this, the voice of the ‘turtle’ is repeatedly heard in the defence academies of various land(s) proclaiming the enduring primacy—nay indispensability—of the tank, and arguing for expansion, not contraction, of resource-and-manpower-intensive armoured forces. I think I have offered enough food (or fodder, as one might see it!) for thought and discussion this evening. History, as Air Marshal Houston noted this morning, can teach us a great deal. Certainly, I believe that we ignore it at our peril. That is particularly true if we do not challenge those who continue to minimise or ignore the vital role air power has played over the last century—and the role it is certain to play in the future. For that reason, education is the most critical thing we can do: educating ourselves, our colleagues in sister Services (particularly by building strong bridges and opening dialogue with our fellow airmen in those Services), our political leadership and, most importantly, the public at large whose servants and protectors we are. That is the greatest challenge of all. Thank you all very much.


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SUGGESTED READINGS

AAP 1000 – Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power, RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra, 2002. Christopher Bowie, Fred Frostic, Kevin Lewis, John Lund, David Ochmanek, and Philip Propper, The New Calculus: Analyzing Airpower’s Changing Role in Joint Theater Campaigns, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 1993. Sebastian Cox and Peter W. Gray (eds), Air Power History: Turning Points from Kitty Hawk to Kosovo, a volume in the Studies in Air Power series, Frank Cass Ltd, London, 2002. Wing Commander Alistair Dally and Ms Rosalind Bourke (eds), Conflict, the State, and Aerospace Power: The Proceedings of a Conference Held in Canberra by the Royal Australian Air Force 28–29 May 2002, RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra, 2003. Directorate of Air Staff, Ministry of Defence, AP 3000 – British Air Power Doctrine, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1999. David A. Deptula, Firing for Effect: Change in the Nature of Warfare, Aerospace Education Foundation, Arlington, VA, 1995. Eugene M. Emme (ed), The Impact of Air Power, Van Nostrand, Princeton, NJ, 1959. Peter W. Gray (ed), Air Power 21: Challenges for the New Century, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 2000. Peter W. Gray and Sebastian Cox (eds), Airpower Leadership: Theory and Practice, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 2002. Richard P. Hallion, Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1911–1945, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1989. Richard P. Hallion, Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1992. Richard P. Hallion (ed), Air Power Confronts an Unstable World, Brassey’s, London, 1997. Andrew P. N. Lambert, The Psychology of Air Power, a volume in the Whitehall Paper series, Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, London, 1994. Andrew P.N. Lambert and Arthur C. Williamson (eds), The Dynamics of Air Power, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London 1996. Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2000.


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Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2001. R.A. Mason, War in the Third Dimension: Essays in Contemporary Air Power, Brassey’s, London, 1986. R.A. Mason, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal, Brassey’s, London, 1994. R.A. Mason, The Aerospace Revolution: Role Revision and Technology: An Overview, Brassey’s, London, 2003. John Andreas Olsen (ed), From Manoeuvre Warfare to Kosovo?, No 2 in the Militaerteoretisk skriftserie, The Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, Trondheim, 2001. John Andreas Olsen (ed), A Second Aerospace Century, No 3 in the Militaerteoretisk skriftserie, The Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, Trondheim, 2001. R.J. Overy, The Air War, 1939–1945, Macmillan, London, 1980. Service Historique de l’Armée de l’Air, Aviation Militaire: Survol d’un Siècle, École Militaire, Paris, 1999. Alan Stephens (ed), The War in the Air 1914–1994, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1994. Andrew G.B. Vallance, The Air Weapon: Doctrines of Air Power Strategy and Operational Art, Macmillan, London, 1996. Gary Waters, Gulf Lesson One – The Value of Air Power: Doctrinal Lessons for Australia, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1992. John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, Pergamon, Washington, DC, 1989.


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AUSTRALIA’S MARITIME STRATEGY AND AIR POWER

COMMODORE JACK MCCAFFRIE

INTRODUCTION

The three main themes of this paper began to emerge prior to Federation and have remained evident ever since. This paper will argue, firstly, that Australia’s military strategy has rarely if ever been unambiguously maritime.1 Since before Federation, there have been tensions between proponents of continental and maritime views of national military strategy. The tensions have influenced force structure debates and the extent to which and the form in which aviation has contributed to the maritime aspects of military strategy. Secondly, the paper will argue that the contribution of air power to the maritime element of strategy has also been influenced by limitations in defence spending. These were understandably evident early in the 20th Century and have dogged the Services ever since. Finally, the paper will show that Service rivalries have also played a part in the development of air power in the maritime element of our strategy. These rivalries emerged in the pre-Federation days, well before the Army and the Navy even had an Air Force to fight over.

THE EARLY YEARS: A MARITIME STRATEGY?

Prior to Federation, defence became an issue usually in response to perceived threats. These included reactions to an 1882 visit to the colonies by a modestly armed Russian naval squadron,2 moves in the 1880s by Germany to annex New Guinea3 and other late 19th Century expansionist activity on the part of France, Japan and even the USA.4 The nature of the potential threat was generally agreed. A British Royal Commission, reporting in 1882, emphasised the importance of trade protection,5 and the susceptibility of what was already strongly growing maritime trade was also acknowledged within the Australian colonies.6 Beyond that, the potential for attacks against the mainland, either as raids or all-out invasion, was also recognised. A submission from Minister for Defence Forrest to Prime Minister Barton, early in 1 John Hattendorf describes a maritime strategy as one ‘that touches on the whole range of a

nation’s activities and interests at sea. It is the direction of all aspects of national power that relate to a nation’s interests at sea.’ John Hattendorf, ‘What is a Maritime Strategy?’, in David Stevens (ed), In Search of A Maritime Strategy: The maritime element in Australian defence planning since 1901, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1997, p 6.

2 Bob Nicholls, Statesmen and Sailors: A History of Australian Maritime Defence 1870–1920, Standard Publishing House, Rozelle, NSW, 1995, p 8.

3 ibid, p 6. 4 David Stevens, ‘1901–1913: The Genesis of the Australian Navy’, in David Stevens (ed), The

Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001, p 5.

5 Nicholls, Statesmen and Sailors, p 5. 6 ibid, p 6.


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1902, noted that trade protection and defence against coastal raids were the main concerns.7 Agreement went little further than this. On one hand, there was acceptance that defence of trade, or sea communications, in the broadest sense remained the responsibility of the Royal Navy (RN).8 The issue of local defence was always more controversial. Captain William Creswell, writing under a pseudonym, argued that any invading force would best be intercepted and engaged at sea and not on land.9 Similarly, in 1905, Minister for Defence McCay suggested that the most likely threats were attacks against shipping or against coastal commercial centres.10 Disagreement emerged in responses to the perceived threats. There were those whose response to inherently maritime threats was the creation of a federation of military forces—land forces only11—or the establishment of massive coastal fortifications, with naval forces being seen only as adjuncts to them.12 On the other hand, military officers, like Colonel Lyster, could suggest in February 1900 that ‘… if we only do our duty in establishing the supremacy of the sea, a large standing army in Australia would be unnecessary’.13 While such different approaches may be understandable in their own right, they may also have been encouraged by the different approaches taken by the War Office and the Admiralty in London. The War Office encouraged the development of military forces within the Australian colonies, while the Admiralty was at best indifferent.14 The Admiralty approach was very likely influenced by the judgment that any money spent by the colonies, and subsequently the nation, on their own naval forces would be money not available through contribution to the RN for Imperial defence.15 This tension was to impact on Australian strategy and force structure for many years. The allocation of resources to maritime security was dominated by three factors. Firstly, the cost to Britain of maintaining global naval supremacy continued to rise with rapid technological developments. Consequently, distant as it was from ‘home waters’ the Australian squadron suffered neglect.16 This occurred despite the fact that the colonies did contribute financially to its prime costs. Secondly, the colonies, and subsequently the Federal Government, became increasingly concerned to ensure that if their contributions to Imperial defence rose, their influence on the spending of the

7 G.L. Macandie, The Genesis of the Royal Australian Navy, Government Printer, Sydney, 1949,

p 99. 8 ibid, p 82. 9 Nicholls, Statesmen and Sailors, p 25. 10 Macandie, The Genesis of the Royal Australian Navy, p 117. 11 Nicholls, Statesmen and Sailors, p 26. 12 ibid, p 13. 13 ibid, p 36. 14 ibid, p 32. 15 The Admiralty also feared that the colonial navies would be more a source of weakness and

potential embarrassment than of strength. Nicholas Lambert, ‘Sir John Fisher, and the fleet unit concept, and the creation of the Royal Australian Navy’, in David Stevens and John Reeve (eds), Southern Trident: Strategy, History and the Rise of Australian Naval Power, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2001, p 215.

16 Stevens, ‘1901–1913: The Genesis of the Australian Navy’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 7.

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money would also rise.17 Thirdly, political leadership in the new nation accepted quickly that it could not fully provide for the naval defence of Australia. Such a naval force could be acquired only with the agreement and help of the Imperial Government.18 Rivalry between the colonial naval forces and military forces, and subsequently between the Navy and Army, stemmed both from the already canvassed differences in approach to security issues and from the competition for scarce resources. The rivalry existed in Victoria in 1890, as Commander Collins reminded politicians of General Scratchley’s 1885 assessment that 5000 men under arms would be enough in that colony, and that additional funds would be better spent on external naval defence.19 After Federation, it surfaced in Captain Creswell’s memorandum to Minister for Defence Playford of 22 September 1905. In it, Creswell pointed out that the problem was not so much a lack of funds as that the funds were being allocated to the Army and the Navy in a ratio of 15:1. He complained that the funds were being allocated to a force that would not even see action until the Empire was crushed at sea, while the force that would be called immediately war broke out, languished.20

FROM FEDERATION TO 1918: SHORT TAKE-OFF

Because Australia’s sovereignty was protected by the Royal Navy, defence was not a high priority for the first Federal Governments, and the revenue arrangements for the first 10 years meant that little significant funding was available to support it. Nevertheless, the importance of maritime affairs and their impact on security were acknowledged. Between 1900 and 1906, the value of Australia’s overseas trade almost doubled to ₤100 million. Prime Minister Deakin said in 1906, ‘Nowhere are maritime communications more important than to Australia, seeing that our dependence on sea carriage is certain to increase rather than diminish as population and production advance’.21 Of necessity, Australians had an economic and strategic interest in maritime affairs and many believed that the Indian and Pacific Oceans would be scenes of future struggles.22 The Admiralty response was that naval defence would be best managed by a single Imperial Navy under a unified control and capable of destroying enemy ships wherever they could be found.23 But as the first decade of the 20th Century advanced, doubts as to the value of this Imperial approach became more strongly voiced. The visit of the Great White Fleet in 1908 emphasised the concern, by showing in stark relief the inadequacy of the RN ships assigned to what was known as the ‘Society Station’.24 The visit also served to encourage local naval sentiment.

17 Macandie, The Genesis of the Royal Australian Navy, p 62. 18 ibid, p 100. 19 ibid, p 53. 20 ibid, p 137. 21 Stevens, ‘1901–1913: The Genesis of the Australian Navy’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian

Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 6. 22 ibid. 23 ibid, p 12. 24 ibid, p 14. This was the title used by the RN officers for the Australia Station and reflected its lack

of importance and the little work done there.


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To be fair, the Admiralty, under Fisher, was beginning to acknowledge the need for greater contributions by the Dominions to Imperial defence. In relation to the Pacific, he enthused that ‘We manage the job in Europe. They’ll manage it against the Yankees, Japs and Chinese as occasion requires out there.’25 He also argued strongly that any Australian contribution should be in the form of a self-contained fleet unit including submarines. This had partially occurred by the time of World War I, during which RAN ships, including cruisers and submarines, served in all major theatres. The RAN also became an early adherent of the use of aviation at sea. That said, the initial interest was very much driven by the potential for aircraft to cooperate in fleet operations rather than to operate independently. For example, HMAS Brisbane operated a Sopwith Pup in the Indian Ocean early in 1917, in a fruitless search for a German raider.26 Several other Australian major combatants also operated aircraft during the latter stages of that war. Most notably, HMAS Sydney under Captain John Dumaresq, RN, on 1 June 1918 had its Camel aircraft intercept and chase a German bomber formation for some 60 miles, before claiming an unconfirmed ‘kill’. As an aside, the conditions under which these first naval aviators operated are worth recalling. According to Captain Dumaresq, ‘The flying deck was 16 feet from the wheels to the leading edge of the deck – and average length of take-off was 14 feet’.27 Lieutenant Sharwood’s account of the landing process is equally illuminating: ‘… the Camel was brought down to about four or five feet above the wave tops and held off until it stalled. Then the fun began. The safety belt had been released and when the wheels … struck the water perhaps at 40 or 45 knots the tail went up like greased lightning and the nose … plunged down into the sea … the pilot was flicked out as the tail went up…and he went into the water head first with a (lifejacket) inflated and a leather coat on, about 20 yards ahead of the Camel.’28 On a more serious note, the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board (ACNB) responded very favourably to a suggestion that the RAN should consider the use of aircraft on the Australia Station. The Board asked the Admiralty to quote for four aircraft, but was discouraged from taking the matter further by the negative response.29 Especially in the early years leading up to World War I, attempts to build the fledgling RAN were hampered by a lack of funds. Indeed, Creswell, when he became head of the Service in 1904, acknowledged that it was near collapse. The issue was not so much the lack of funding as the priority for their allocation. He had to contend with a Minister for Defence who believed that naval development should await the completion of efforts to provide a land force.30 Even when funds were allocated there 25 ibid, p 20. 26 David Stevens, ‘1914–1918: World War I’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 49. 27 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations: A Story of

Australian Naval Aviation, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1998, p 11. 28 ibid. 29 ibid, p 6. 30 Stevens, ‘1901–1913: The Genesis of the Australian Navy’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian

Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 15.


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was disagreement as to how they should be spent. At the time Fisher was advocating a battlecruiser for Australia, Creswell wanted to use the funds to provide a decent infrastructure for the future Navy.31 Nevertheless, funds did become more freely available as the prospect of an independent Australian Navy generated political support.

BETWEEN THE WARS: AIR APPARENT

After World War I, the Dominions gained equality of status within the Commonwealth. This brought a recognition that Dominion parliaments would determine the response to security threats and consequently had an impact on Australian naval policy.32 Naval policy also stood to be influenced by the view emerging after the war, that air power might solve Australia’s security problem and make the proposition of ‘fortress Australia’ feasible.33 This was air power in the US mould, which according to proponents like Mitchell would one day make sea power obsolete.34 Meanwhile, Admiral Jellicoe came to Australia in 1919 to provide advice to the Government on the strategic problems facing Australia, future RAN fleet composition and associated infrastructure. His report nominated Japan as a future threat, noted the potential for concurrent European and Asian conflict, and made some ambitious and ultimately impractical force structure recommendations.35 He also emphasised the need for Australia to concentrate on Imperial trade protection rather than on local defence against cruiser raids. For supporters of a maritime strategy, Prime Minister Hughes, in 1920, provided some confusing guidance. He announced that Australia and its lines of communications faced no existing or potential specific sources of strategic pressure or direct military threat.36 On the other hand, he noted the need for the nation to be able to defend itself and acknowledged the primacy of the Navy in this. He said that ‘… it will be a bad day for us if we have to defend Australia within Australia’.37 How the small RAN was to defend Australia was unclear to the Navy’s leaders, and the Prime Minister had to accept ongoing and virtually complete reliance on the Royal Navy. Furthermore, any long-term planning and guidance for the Navy was delayed

31 ibid, p 21. 32 G. Hermon Gill, Australia in the War of 1939–1945: Volume 1, Royal Australian Navy,

1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1957, p 1. 33 John McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence 1918–39: A Study in Air and Sea Power,

University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1976, p 4. 34 ibid, p 5. 35 ibid, pp 8–9. These included a combined Far Eastern fleet including eight battleships and eight

battlecruisers, with the costs to be shared by Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Australia’s contribution to the fleet was to include one aircraft carrier and two battlecruisers; see Jason Sears, ‘1919–1929: An Imperial Service’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 61.

36 Anthony Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions: The Acquisition of HMA Ships Albatross, Sydney and Melbourne, Maritime Studies Program, Department of Defence (Navy), Canberra, 1998, p 5.

37 ibid.


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by several events, including the 1921 Imperial Conference, the Washington Naval Conference and the birth of the Royal Australian Air Force in March 1921.38 In response to the contribution aviation had made in World War I, and mindful of its potential to contribute to naval operations in the future, the RAN proposed the formation of its own air service in 1918. Associated plans for the loan of an RN seaplane carrier and formation of an aviation branch of 2000 people were mired in inter-Service disputes and, not least, Government reluctance to spend on defence.39 These plans failed to survive; as eventually did those developed in 1923. In the latter case, a concerted and lengthy campaign by Wing Commander R.C. Williams eventually succeeded in having the Navy case quashed in 1928.40 Meanwhile, however, the Navy had included reference to an aircraft carrier in its 1924–25 estimates. In this instance also, nothing eventuated, except that the program put to Parliament in July 1924 did include provision for establishment of a land-based reconnaissance, patrol and gunnery-spotting capability, to be equipped with RAAF-operated floatplanes.41 Through the latter part of the 1920s and into the 1930s there was still no clear indication as to whether Australia should continue to rely on the Imperial (maritime) strategy, or concentrate more on local defence. In the debates surrounding the issue, the Singapore naval base and the RN Fleet which would be sent to it in time of emergency, remained central to supporters of the Imperial approach. Even so, Prime Minister Bruce acknowledged that neither of those two items was a substitute for an independent defence force.42 A paper produced by the Service Chiefs of Staff in 1928 accepted that Australia’s ultimate security lay in RN supremacy, which would be able to deal with any Japanese threat. For this, the RAN was to remain part of the Imperial Service, not one concentrating on local defence.43 A subsequent Army and RAAF report on the paper (the Navy dissented) argued that the RN would not be able to send a fleet to Singapore, that the RAN would be overwhelmed and that invasion was a possibility. Both argued for mobile ground and air forces.44 One reason the Imperial or maritime approach remained in favour so long was that by entrusting Australian security to the RN, the Government was able to avoid increases in its own defence spending. This appeared to be the case as late as 1930, but not long afterwards events in both Asia and in Europe began to change attitudes. Thus in 1933, HMAS Albatross, the seaplane carrier, was paid off to free up money and manpower for other ships. This did not materially affect maritime aviation capacity, as the RAAF

38 Sears, ‘1919–1929: An Imperial Service’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 63. 39 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 14. 40 ibid, p 16. 41 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 34. 42 Sears, ‘1919–1929: An Imperial Service’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 72. 43 ibid, p 78. 44 Jason Sears, ‘1929–1939: Depression and Rearmament’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian

Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 85.


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had previously reduced her flight from six to four aircraft as an economy measure.45 By then also, cruisers were expected to carry their own seaplane flights. By 1936, Curtin, as Leader of the Opposition, was calling for more spending on local defence and, importantly, the British Government had begun to place emphasis on air power rather than sea power for its own local defence. The Australian Government was also having misgivings, as the reliance on Singapore and the arrival of the RN, supported by the RAN was looking increasingly misplaced.46 But even as the pendulum swung away from reliance on the Singapore strategy and arrival of the RN fleet, the RAAF was not in an especially strong position to take on the responsibility for national defence. Geography and the then modest range of existing aircraft combined to make bombing of the likely enemy’s homeland by land-based aircraft impracticable. On the other hand, even with those limits, local air power could contribute to the defence of coastal sea communications. Alan Stephens goes further, arguing that air power could have provided the key to Australia’s security by controlling the sea lines of communication.47 Prior to World War II, however, the RAAF had not developed doctrine or operational capabilities which could have made this possible. Strategic issues apart, the inter-war years were also marked by severe defence funding limitations. Even as the Navy tried to get to grips with aviation and with its overall defence responsibilities, these limitations had a significant impact. In April 1921, Prime Minister Hughes noted that Australia had spent more on naval defence than the other Dominions combined but that her Navy was ‘ludicrously inadequate’ to defend the country.48 Coming a mere few months after he had asked whether the nation was spending too little on its Navy rather than too much, this highlights the problem of applying enough resources to the defence problems of a large island landmass with a small population and significant development needs. It was an issue which continued to bedevil the Services, but especially the Navy. The early 1920s also saw a general reduction in defence spending, which resulted in cuts to the Army and the Navy as well as postponement in the expansion of the RAAF. Indeed there were some 83 separate cuts made to naval expenditure between the end of the war and 1923; sometimes without warning. In the wake of these cuts, and with the prospect of more to come, the RAN indicated to the Government that it might be better to abandon the fleet concept altogether and reduce to a coastal defence force.49 Still, the RAN continued to acknowledge the importance of maritime aviation but in light of the resource problems decided not to engage at that point in conflict with the RAAF.50 Vice Admiral Everett, RN as First Naval Member (1921–23), also felt the RAN would be well-advised to learn from RN experience.

45 ibid, p 94. 46 McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence 1918–39, p 62. 47 Alan Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian

Air Force, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001, p 44. 48 Gill, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, p 8. 49 Sears, ‘1919–1929: An Imperial Service’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 65. 50 ibid, p 66.


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While the RAN was having difficulty developing rational plans and finding a place for aviation within its structure, the Government at least determined what kind of navy it did not want. Between 1919–20 and 1923–24, naval expenditure dropped from ₤5.63 million to ₤2.28 million. The other Services were similarly affected. Nevertheless, it meant that development of a capable navy with any kind of aviation component was out of the question. Clearly, too, it placed strict limits on RAAF development—whether in the maritime or any other field. John McCarthy argues that in the mid to late 1920s the RAAF received the smallest share of defence funding, for four reasons. Firstly, governments had been committed to the ‘blue water’ or maritime school of strategy. Secondly, the defence planning structure was not helpful. Thirdly, limited aircraft performance made claims for air power hard to sustain and, finally, the other Services were hostile.51 Additionally, RAAF force structure ambitions were of a similar kind to those to which the Navy had often aspired. Williams in the late 1920s sought an air force of 30 squadrons with 324 aircraft. This would have cost some ₤2.5 million at a time when the annual allocation was ₤450,000. This may have been seen as too ambitious but, as with the Navy claims, it may also have simply reflected the demands of providing defence for a very large island continent. Such claims served to fuel rivalries. Whatever rivalries had existed between the Army and the Navy paled against the three-way fights that followed arrival of ‘the third brother’. From the beginning, neither the Army nor the Navy had been against the development of air power—far from it. But their support was contingent on them retaining control over it. Commodore Hyde, RAN, argued, for example, that future fleet actions would be won by the fleet possessing the best air force.52 Furthermore, as Alan Stephens has pointed out, one of the reasons for Army and Navy determination to retain control over aviation was their fear that if they lost it, the aircraft would not appear overhead when they were needed.53 This has proved to be an enduring theme. The Navy also feared that air power proponents would almost certainly ignore maritime aviation, in favour of an independent offensive role.54 As early as 1925, however, the RAAF had claimed that air power alone could control Australian sea communications and that regular patrols would provide adequate protection for coastal traffic. It appeared not to consider more distant threats to trade or other interests.55 Related debates in the Defence Committee and elsewhere were very divisive. In short, the RAAF was pushing hard to assume the RAN’s role as the first line of the nation’s defence. Apparently, the RAAF argued that the Australian Navy had nothing to commend it as a national institution and that it would be more efficient to employ the RN Squadron.56 Interestingly, General Chauvel is said to have had a similar view. Another Army point of view at the time was that only it and the

51 McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence 1918–39, p 22. 52 ibid, p 34. 53 Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian Air

Force, p 25. 54 Sears, ‘1919–1929: An Imperial Service’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 63. 55 Sears, ‘1929-1939: Depression and Rearmament’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary

History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 85. 56 ibid.


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Air Force could be decisive in war and that they should be seen as a single strategic entity.57 As late as 1934, Sir Maurice Hankey, in Australia to report on its defence needs, advised Minister for Defence Pearce that differences of opinion among the Services had become acute. He observed that the Army wanted to prepare against full-scale invasion; the Air Force wanted to repel such an invasion with air power; while the Navy argued that there was no need to prepare against invasion at all.58

WORLD WAR II: MISSING IN ACTION

Regardless of the retrospective rights or wrongs of defence funding allocations in the inter-war years, the reality at the outbreak of World War II was that none of the Australian Services was well positioned to play a part either in Imperial defence or in the defence of Australia. The RAN was considered to be just capable of protecting sea communications against the German threat—which was for the most part a distant one.59 The RAAF, according to one source, was a ‘ramshackle collection of 164 largely obsolete types’.60 Completing the picture, Jeffrey Grey noted that on paper the Army numbered more than 70,000 men in September 1939, but ‘it was an ill-equipped and undertrained force’.61 Despite the inter-war arguments over maritime strategy and local defence, each of the Services was initially dispatched far and wide in the cause of Imperial defence. In the early years of the war, the RAN, like the Army, was very active in the Mediterranean and Middle East campaigns. RAAF squadrons were also sent to the European theatre, even as preparations were made for the establishment of the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS).62 Japan’s entry into the war led very quickly to a much stronger focus on local defence of Australia and, with it, a growing acceptance that the anticipated Imperial reinforcements might not arrive in expected numbers. It also became clear that, even with Japan in the war, the European theatre would retain pre-eminence.63 These factors and the arrival of John Curtin as Prime Minister led to a significant reordering of Australian defence priorities. Curtin had for some years espoused the primacy of local defence and, under him, the War Cabinet gave the RAN the lowest priority for recruiting and thus for expansion.64 The Navy’s position was exacerbated, again, by

57 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 52. 58 McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence 1918–39, p 58. 59 James Goldrick, ‘1939–1941: World War II: The War against Germany and Italy’, in Stevens

(ed), The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 103.

60 John McCarthy, ‘Air Power as the First Line of Australian Defence, 1911–1954?’, in Stevens (ed), In Search of a Maritime Strategy, p 93.

61 Jeffrey Grey, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume I, The Australian Army, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001, p 105.

62 Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian Air Force, p 75.

63 Gill, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, pp 636–37. 64 James Goldrick, ‘1941–1945: World War II: The War against Japan’, in Stevens (ed), The

Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 132.


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the relatively high cost and extended building times of individual fighting units and associated Government reluctance to make such major investments.65 The RAN’s three main tasks, in the face of Japanese conquests, were local defence and the defence of the vital coastal trade, defence of international communications and defence of New Guinea and the South Pacific against efforts to sever communications links with the USA. But, there were simply too few ships for them to be a capable and independent navy, and too many tasks for them to do.66 Additionally, several influential figures were antipathetic, if not antagonistic, towards the Navy and its place in the war effort. These included MacArthur, who had the ears of Curtin and Shedden (Secretary of the Department of Defence), as well as Shedden himself and Blamey.67 By contrast, the RAAF prospered, although not without significant difficulties in the early stages. Although it may have been a small ramshackle collection of aircraft at the beginning of the war, the War Cabinet in the wake of the Japanese thrust against Malaya, determined that it should expand to 73 squadrons.68 It was to become an anti-invasion force—although with a somewhat lesser strength than that proposed. Apart from providing thousands of aircrew to the Imperial air power effort through the EATS, the RAAF also undertook maritime patrol work around the Australian coast and became heavily involved with anti-shipping strikes and maritime reconnaissance in the South Pacific theatre. Later in the war, the RAAF received heavy bombers from the USA, but for reasons associated with inter-Air Force rivalry was prevented from using them in raids against Japan. They became very much a garrison force.69 Through the RAAF, then, air power did contribute measurably to the allied maritime strategy in the Pacific. With the RAN, unfortunately, the same could not be said. Although many individual RAN aviators operated in a variety of theatres, both with the RN and indeed the RAAF, institutionally there was no RAN air power contribution. Each cruiser did carry its Seagull flight, but with the loss of several of the cruisers and of their aircraft, the contribution was not significant. As in World War I, the RAN did not ignore the potential for air power to contribute to maritime strategy and operations. The arrival in July 1941 of Admiral Sir Guy Royle, RN as CNS, was a major driving force in this. He came to the RAN with a strong background in naval aviation and had been intimately involved in the RN regaining control of British naval aviation in the 1930s.70 There is no doubt that he favoured the RAN acquiring its own air power. The first attempt to bring this about may have occurred in 1942, when Minister for External Affairs Evatt made a request for some kind of naval air capability during a

65 ibid. 66 ibid, p 128. 67 ibid, p 142. 68 Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian Air

Force, p 152. 69 ibid, p 151. 70 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 29.


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visit to London.71 There is also a suggestion that the RN would not agree to the transfer of any capability to the RAN at that stage of the war. The first documented and ultimately unsuccessful effort began as part of the process of ensuring that Australia was represented in the Pacific victory and preparing for the postwar Navy. Royle’s background and wartime experiences convinced him that the RAN should be capable of operating independently in the region and so, be built around at least two light fleet carriers.72 Such an approach would see a return to a form of the prewar maritime strategy, with the important difference that Australia would not be so reliant on allies for its defence capability. Further, as an end to the war began to approach and to affect defence planning, he was quite concerned as to the future of the RAN. Royle’s effort came on 21 March 1944, when he put the proposal for an aircraft carrier to the Advisory War Council—verbally and without prior notice.73 The overall plan was to man up to nine RN ships, including the carrier, all of which would be commissioned into the RAN. He argued on the basis of the essentially naval nature of the Pacific War and of the comparative speed with which his plan could be enacted. He also made it appear that the ships in question would be transferred at no cost.74 Subsequently, Royle claimed that the Prime Minister had endorsed his approach and had given ‘in principle’ agreement to investigate it further. The Council secretariat had other views and Shedden wrote to Curtin advising that he make no early decision on the matter. Shedden also noted the improper nature of Royle’s approach and accused him of trying to steal a march on the other Services.75 Nevertheless, Curtin did raise the matter in London in April 1944 and British authorities were keen to assist, so long as Australia could provide the manpower for the ships.76 But Curtin had his own concerns about manpower and deferred consideration until all aspects of the war effort could be included. Royle was undeterred and continued to find ways, acceptable and otherwise, to push his case. He attempted to achieve increases in RAN numbers at the expense of the other Services and, given the relative extents to which they had expanded, it may not have seemed unreasonable to him to do so.77 Early in 1945, Curtin eventually agreed to approach Churchill, seeking the transfer of a carrier and two cruisers, on a no cost basis. The British response indicated that reimbursement would be necessary and that, in any event, the cruisers could not be made available before late 1946.78 Chifley, by then acting for the terminally ill Prime Minister Curtin, put the British off by suggesting that Australia could not man the

71 ibid. 72 James Goldrick, ‘1941–1945: World War II: The War against Japan’, in Stevens (ed), The

Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 145. 73 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 69. 74 ibid, p 70. 75 ibid, p72. 76 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 33. 77 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 96. By September 1944 the Army had grown ninefold

since 1939, the RAAF nearly forty-fold and the RAN a mere fourfold. 78 ibid, p 104.


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carrier until after the war. The British suspicion was that it was money and not manpower that was the issue.79 Despite the fact that the proposal had come so close to succeeding, there had in fact been many hurdles before the final one. The very influential Shedden was one. Apart from resenting the way in which Royle had introduced the matter, he was far from convinced that the idea was sound. In advice to Curtin, he noted that ‘the best service we can render to the future of Australia is to build up the RAAF to the maximum degree of our capacity’.80 Yet he had also argued in a paper completed in May 1944 that the experience of the war demonstrated that sea power was still the fundamental basis of Empire and Australian defence. The rub was that he believed that Australia could not afford a navy large enough to provide the necessary protection and would therefore continue to rely on some form of collective defence. Shedden saw the Air Force playing a major role in local defence because of his assessment that air power could ‘command adjacent waters’ and concentrate great striking power in small numbers.81 The Navy would continue to provide trade protection in local waters and contribute to oceanic trade protection. All of this suggested that the tension between continental (local) and maritime approaches to national security would continue after the war. Although this attempt to ensure the future of the RAN and to give it genuine air power failed for several reasons, resource limitations were among the most significant. The fact that an initial expectation of a ‘gift’ of the ships was not met was not in itself the main problem. Far more significant was the pressure felt by Curtin to ensure a sensible allocation of the very limited workforce. While the Services were still calling for more manpower, he was dealing with the need to provide additional resources to industry, both for the war effort and for the beginnings of postwar reconstruction.82 Predictably, too, Service rivalries were involved. One of the reasons for Royle adopting the irregular approach noted earlier may well have been his fears for the future of the RAN. The Service had suffered significant losses of its major warships and may not have been especially satisfied with Shedden’s assessment that it had been more than compensated for with smaller ships83—presumably the corvettes. Royle could not have been happy, either, with Shedden’s view that the US and soon British naval preponderance in the Pacific eliminated the need for increases in RAN strength. Royle summed up the position, and his misreading of Shedden, with the following comment in a letter to Shedden on the 4 October 1944, ‘… We haven’t got much further with our additions to the Royal Australian Navy… On the other hand, the Air Force seems to get what they want… From the discussions I listen to at the War Council there appears to be very little recognition of the naval side of the war.’84

79 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 35. 80 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 73. 81 ibid, p 76. 82 ibid, p 92. 83 ibid, p 98. 84 ibid, p 93.


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1945 TO 1972: MARITIME STRATEGY AND AIR POWER

A Defence Committee report produced in 1945 presented some lessons derived from the war. They included a realisation that British possessions in South-East Asia and the Pacific could in future be threatened once again; that enemies could establish bases within striking range of northern Australia; that assistance from allies might not be timely and that the presence of allied bases in the region would not relieve Australia of responsibility for local defence.85 The report went on to imply that the most likely future threats would include interruption of ocean and coastal traffic, sporadic raids and invasion. In a sense, the assessment was very much in line with many made in previous years. There was still the question, however, as to how Australia would respond strategically to the assessment. Would it concentrate on local defence or opt, as it had done at times in the past, for a maritime strategy? Shedden indicated to Prime Minister Chifley that Australian efforts could be more usefully applied at some distance from the mainland, than by concentrating entirely on homeland defence.86 Further, the Defence Committee determined that the basic ingredient of Australian defence planning was to be Imperial cooperation, as the total defence need was far beyond the nation’s capacity. The Committee assumed that forces suitable for the larger task could adapt to local defence needs.87 Ultimately, each of the Services was expected to deploy expeditionary forces and national existence still depended on the integrity of the sea lanes, which could be interrupted many miles from home. Accordingly, operational planning at first focused on Commonwealth activities in the Middle East but later switched to a more regional focus and the desire for regional security through forward defence in Asia.88 By the mid-1950s, ANZAM and the Far Eastern Strategic Reserve enabled Australia to demonstrate a stronger commitment to Malaya and Singapore within the forward defence posture. The formation of SEATO also played a part in this.89 At about that time too, Indonesia gained attention through her interest in West Papua. With that came indications that the US would not respond through ANZUS to any Australian requests for help on that matter.90 Subsequently, the Strategic Basis 1959 (SB 59) Defence Department assessment, which was not accepted by the Government, argued that in some circumstances Australia could have to rely on its own defence and economic capacity for an indeterminate time. It therefore argued for a balanced force structure designed to act independently of allies.91 85 ibid, p 122. 86 ibid, p 131. 87 ibid, p 141. 88 Alastair Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary

History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 162. 89 Peter Edwards with Gregory Pemberton, Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of

Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948–1965, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, North Sydney, 1992, p 142.

90 Alastair Cooper, ‘1955–1972: The Era of Forward Defence’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 186.

91 ibid.


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The focus on South-East Asia was only to grow in the following years, not least because of the Confrontation with Indonesia and the Vietnam War. Alliance commitments and those two conflicts ensured that Australian military forces were very active in the region until the decision was made to withdraw Australian forces from Vietnam in 1971. Despite the way in which postwar strategy evolved, the RAN did not approach the period with optimism. It had become aware that its message was not being heard and launched some initiatives to ensure its future. These included a paper suggesting the need for a fleet comprising three aircraft carriers, a battleship, six cruisers, 27 destroyers, 12 submarines and sundry escort vessels.92 While the totality of this ‘shopping list’ was never likely to materialise, there was some support for the inclusion of carriers as part of a balanced naval task force.93 And, despite the longstanding emphasis on trade protection, the Naval Board was clear that it wanted the carrier and its air power because it now represented the primary offensive naval unit.94 It also recognised that without an aviation capability, the RAN ‘would virtually cease to exist as a first-line naval force’.95 Further, the Defence Committee in 1946 recommended three major roles for the RAN. They included provision of a balanced task force and the maintenance of assault shipping. In the end and despite opposition, there was enough support, for a brief period, for the RAN to generate a naval aviation force and garner (again some would say) the major portion of the defence budget.96 At the same time, initial RAAF postwar plans were just as ambitious and financially unrealistic as were those of the RAN. They proposed some 34 squadrons of about 1000 combat aircraft.97 Significantly, the only overtly maritime component of this force was to be 56 Catalina patrol aircraft. But, it was also to include 384 Liberators and Mosquitos; all capable of providing offensive air power. For the RAN, the postwar plan 1947–1952 provided for a navy of two carriers, two cruisers, six destroyers and three frigates, with 37 vessels in reserve.98 But, even as early as 1949, the emergence of the Soviet submarine force began to switch the focus of naval aviation from offensive operations to anti-submarine warfare. Nevertheless, HMAS Sydney conducted two tours of duty in the Korean War, in which offensive operations were very much to the fore.99

92 Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 161. 93 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 120. 94 Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 162. 95 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 133. 96 Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 162. 97 Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force, 1946–1971, Australian Government

Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p 29. 98 Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 162. 99 ibid, pp 177–78.


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After Korea, defence policy placed greater emphasis on air defence, at the expense of Army and Navy funding, and with firm Ministerial guidance to the Navy that the Fleet Air Arm should not try to maintain an independent strike capability.100 Nevertheless, Vice Admiral Sir Roy Dowling, as CNS, was convinced that the Navy needed a carrier capability with real offensive punch. In a personal and highly classified letter to the First Sea Lord he admitted that the Fleet Air Arm lacked an offensive punch and that his Air Force opponents knew it.101 He did consider the prospect of the Sea Venom, or some other fighter type, carrying a nuclear weapon. But even as the Navy was seeking ways to generate a greater offensive contribution from the Fleet Air Arm, other events were conspiring against it. Failure to modernise HMAS Sydney, the apparently limited lives of the second-generation aircraft (Gannets and Sea Venoms) and the small size of the HMAS Melbourne all placed questions against the viability of the Fleet Air Arm. Still, despite efforts to develop politically acceptable plans for the future, the Navy could not convince Government to fund the cost of a successor carrier and air group. The result was an announcement on 26 November 1959, by Defence Minister Townley, that all fixed-wing naval aviation would be disbanded in 1963.102 Townley’s view was that ‘… It is therefore extremely doubtful if it is possible for a small navy such as the RAN to keep pace with modern developments in this field, without prejudicing other defence activities, not only from the joint Service aspect but from within the Navy itself’.103 One might well ask if it is possible for a small navy (or air force) to keep pace with developments in any relevant major aspect of warfare. The decision was eventually reversed, with Government views becoming increasingly influenced by developments within South-East Asia—especially Malaysia and Indonesia.104 Consequently, in the mid-1960s the Fleet Air Arm entered what was perhaps its ‘golden era’.105 Even so, the need for a more capable carrier to replace the Melbourne was never far from naval minds. There were rumours of USN offers of an Essex Class carrier and while the Chiefs of Staff Committee in June 1964 did not support such a prospect, it did acknowledge the need to reassess the acquisition of a strike carrier if the strategic situation changed fundamentally.106 The Committee also noted that lack of carrier-borne strike remained the RAN’s greatest deficiency. Even in the glow of the ‘golden era’ however, there remained questions as to the future. Studies in the early 1970s were only lukewarm in their endorsement of naval aviation and the higher reaches of the Department of Defence and the Government were becoming increasingly jaundiced and critical in their views. Equally important, there was a lack of unanimity within the Navy, with some senior officers fearing the impact on other sections of the Navy of increased spending on the Fleet Air Arm.

100 ibid, p 179. 101 Letter from Vice Admiral Dowling to First Sea Lord Mountbatten dated March 1956,

ADM 205/110 XC 191574 (Copy held by Directorate of Naval Historical Studies). 102 Cooper, ‘1955–1972: The Era of Forward Defence’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary

History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 187. 103 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 145. 104 ibid, p 157. 105 ibid, p 178. 106 ibid, p 165.


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Indeed, from the very beginning of the Fleet Air Arm funding had been a concern. The Department opposed the proposal which led to the formation of the Fleet Air Arm in 1948 and even from the very beginning, constant technological change and its associated cost, bedevilled Navy plans.107 From the outset, Navy planning was fragile and optimistic. Success was contingent on an attractive financial offer from the UK, together with the offer of RN loan personnel.108 Nevertheless, cost increases emerged very quickly. Sailaway costs for the first carriers increased by 10 per cent and ship modifications associated with operation of newer aircraft added 43 per cent to the costs.109 Such increases led Prime Minister Chifley to feel that the Naval Board had misled him and led to the modifications being delayed beyond the initial five year program. Additional increases had the CNS pointing out to the RN that the whole program was being jeopardised.110 The situation improved little, if at all, during the 1950s. In the wake of the Korean War, CNS Dowling noted that the ₤47 million future estimates for naval aviation would make it extremely difficult to maintain two carriers and thus the RAN’s place as a genuine independent maritime actor in the Pacific.111 The departmental process also questioned the need for ‘two air forces’ early in 1954. The Navy was unable to mount sufficiently compelling arguments in support of the Fleet Air Arm, in the face of better RAAF staff officer preparation and education, and a lack of numbers precipitated by both small College entries and significant losses in World War II.112 Prior to the 1959 decision to cease fixed-wing flying, the RN First Sea Lord during a visit to Australia in late 1958 had assessed the situation pretty well: ‘… the RAN are at their most crucial point in their history. They have concentrated in postwar years on building up a Fleet Air Arm and they now have to decide whether they should continue into the next generation of naval air or content themselves with helicopter carriers and fighter aircraft no more advanced than the Sea Venom.’113 The 1959 decision was made essentially on funding grounds and although it was reversed some time later, it represented an extraordinary policy reversal; a mere three and a half years after the Melbourne had been commissioned. Additionally, the 1959 decision led to an exodus of people, aircrew especially, from which the organisation may never have fully recovered. Neither did it ever really escape the effects of continuing funding constraint, even in the ‘golden era’ of the late 1960s and 1970s. Funding constraint was also of course one of the causes of the RAN/RAAF rivalry that continued after World War II. It was by no means the only cause and deep-seated philosophical issues were at least as significant. As soon as the RAN began pressing for a carrier force, the CAS, Air Marshal Jones, argued strongly for the unified control of shipboard and land-based aircraft, so that air superiority could be guaranteed. He 107 Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 165. 108 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 41. 109 ibid, p 47. 110 ibid, p 55. 111 ibid, p 112. 112 Cooper, ‘1955–1972: The Era of Forward Defence’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary

History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, pp 181–82. 113 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 142.


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stressed the similarity in equipment, roles and training, and pointed to the economies of staying with RAAF control.114 Both Services prepared appreciations of the issue, with predictable outcomes. In the end, despite unwavering opposition on the part of the CAS, the Government seemed to be swayed by a report prepared in the UK and which concluded that postwar return of the RN Fleet Air Arm to the RAF would be calamitous.115 Naval aviation remained a strong catalyst for Air Force and Navy rivalry through succeeding years. As an example, in 1954, the then retiring and aptly named CAS, Air Marshal Sir Donald Hardman, in a playful moment, said that the Navy had ceased to have a role, leaving the Air Force as the only Service worthy of development for either defence or offence.116 Such criticism came also from the RAF, in the form of a letter to Secretary Shedden from then retired Marshal of the RAF, Sir Philip Slessor. He argued that the capability represented by the RAN Fleet Air Arm had nothing to do with air power. He went on to say that it should either get into bigger and more capable carriers or be maintained on a much reduced basis.117 Local criticism remained less accommodating; with any suggestion that the Fleet Air Arm should develop strike capability resisted strongly. Subsequent to the 1959 decision to cease Fleet Air Arm fixed-wing flying, the 1964 move to re-equip the Fleet Air Arm with Tracker and Skyhawk aircraft also attracted RAAF criticism. This time, the Skyhawk purchase was opposed, ostensibly because the aircraft were subsonic.118 Equally important, perhaps, was the possibility that the aircraft might have competed for funds which the RAAF wanted for the F-111 purchase.119 It must be said, too, that pressure for funds also meant that there were often voices within the Navy which at least questioned the allocations to naval aviation.

1973 AND ONWARDS: CONTINENTALISM AND AIR POWER

This last period under review began with the election of the first Labor Government since 1949. The new Labor Government was not inclined to support forward defence and sought a greater degree of defence self-reliance supported by a core-force concept.120 This was a concept that did not sit easily with the Navy—a Service which normally needed years to bring new capabilities into service. The return of a Coalition Government in 1975 was accompanied by changes in strategic circumstances. Apart from the revolution in Iran and the war between China and Vietnam, there was evidence of Soviet expansionism in the Indian Ocean, Vietnam and Afghanistan.121 Still, 1983 brought back a Labor Government which, in 114 ibid, p 40. 115 ibid, p 43. 116 Cooper, ‘1945–1954: The Korean War Era’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 166. 117 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 121. 118 On the other hand, the fact that the aircraft would be with the Fleet and not required to respond

from shore bases, reduced the impact of this criticism. 119 Cooper, ‘1955–1972: The Era of Forward Defence’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary

History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 193. 120 Peter Jones, ‘1972–1983: Towards Self-Reliance’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary

History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 218. 121 ibid, p 226


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1985, commissioned the Dibb Review. This report introduced the strategy of ‘denial’ and a renewed focus on the approaches to Australia.122 It focused on the Air Force and the Navy and their need to deny any adversary the freedom to operate in our approaches. It limited the Army to a continental defence role.123 Even with these relatively unsettled strategic circumstances, the Navy maintained its concentration on renewing its capacity to generate offensive air power at sea. It pressed a case in 1973 for two small carriers (seaborne aircraft platforms) but once again failed to mount the case well enough. There was too much assumed common ground and not enough sound argument to counter what was contentious to the sceptics.124 For example, while the Navy saw carrier air power as offering a flexible offensive capability, the RAAF saw it simply as needless duplication.125 Despite such setbacks the Navy continued to press and in June 1977 the Defence Force Development Committee (DFDC) approved a design study for a STOVL and helicopter carrier. A conventional carrier was deliberately ruled out because of cost.126 Three contenders emerged; a Gibbs and Cox Sea Control Ship, a modified Iwo Jima Class and a variant of the Giuseppi Garibaldi Class. Subsequently, in October 1980, the Government announced that a new carrier would be purchased, and that it would carry ASW helicopters, with a decision on STOVL yet to be made. While the Navy felt it had to concentrate on acquiring the ship, breaking the link with the strike and air defence capability acted to reduce the justification for the ship in the eyes of some.127 The situation was both complicated and made very simple by the British Government offer of HMS Invincible in July 1981. The ship was offered for $285 million, with delivery promised in 1983. Despite being less attractive in operational terms than the options being developed by the RAN, the price and delivery date were too good to ignore. So, in February 1982 Minister Killen announced that the Invincible would be bought. HMAS Melbourne was placed in contingency reserve and all other carrier project activity ceased.128 Then, a mere four months later, and in light of British commitments to the Falklands War, Prime Minister Fraser offered to withdraw from the purchase of Invincible if the RN needed her after all. They did, and the rest, as they say, is history. Further efforts were made to find suitable second-hand ships but in December 1982 the DFDC recommended against any procurement. This decision was underlined when immediately after Labor’s win in the March 1983 Federal election, Minister for Defence Scholes, announced, without any reference to the Navy, that the days of aircraft carriers were over, at least for the RAN.129 At the end, as at the beginning, funding of naval aviation remained a major problem for the Navy. The options being developed before Invincible appeared were suggesting a project cost of $1 billion and were attracting scrutiny as a result—both 122 Peter Jones, ‘1983–1991: A Period of Change and Uncertainty’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian

Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 240–41. 123 ibid. 124 Jones, ‘1972–1983: Towards Self-Reliance’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 216. 125 ibid, p 217. 126 ibid, p 225. 127 ibid, p 226. 128 ibid, p 227. 129 ibid, p 228.


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within and outside the RAN. Defence studies during the 1970s had also suggested that carrier air power, in Australian terms anyway, was not a cost-effective solution to Australian defence problems. This assessment seemed to be founded on there being no need to project power or support forces overseas.130 Labor’s approach prior to the 1983 election is best summed up by comments from Mr Bill Hayden on 25 February 1982, when as Leader of the Opposition he said:

What this boils down to is an extravagant $2000m plus status symbol for the gold braid at the top of the Navy. They do not even comprehend the developments that have been undertaken in recent years in weapons technology at sea. If they did, they would never have fought to obtain this piece of naval equipment. Only a badly managed rich country with no real defence threat could be so blimpishly self-indulgent as to make this decision. It proves that war and defence are too important to be left in the hands of Admirals … the INVINCIBLE does not project sea-air power.131

That the RAN came so close to replacing the Melbourne may be a surprise. Strategic postures in the 1970s and early 1980s were not always supportive of maritime power projection and the cost of naval aviation was always a consideration for those within and outside the Navy who were competing for inevitably scarce funds. Inevitably too, Service rivalry played its part. As early as 1974, during DFDC discussions on the Defence Program, the CAS, Air Marshal Read recommended that the Melbourne should be paid off early to save money.132 And as the carrier project gathered some momentum, the RAAF continued to argue that land-based aircraft could do the fleet air defence task and argued against the Sea Harrier on the basis of its limited capacity as an interceptor.133 Ultimately, when the DFDC considered the carrier in November 1982, only the RAAF opposed the decision to go ahead. In the end, several factors combined to defeat the RAN’s efforts to keep seaborne air power alive. They did include Service rivalries, but they also included cost factors and bureaucratic and political opposition. The latter, of course, culminated in the rush of the newly elected Labor Government in March 1983 to tell the Admirals to forget about their carrier. This decision ended the RAN’s long struggle to project air power at sea in support of a maritime strategy. Consequently, it also introduced the RAN to much greater reliance on the RAAF for defensive and offensive air power at sea.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

There has always been agreement that external threats to Australia’s security have a maritime dimension. Equally, there have always been differences as to how those threats should be met. Views have alternated between a concentration on local coastal

130 The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers, Flying Stations, p 249. 131 Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions, p 171. 132 Jones, ‘1972–1983: Towards Self-Reliance’, in Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of

Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, p 217. 133 ibid, p 226.


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and land-based defence, and on a more expansive maritime approach involving defence of distant sea lines of communication. For most of the first half of the 20th Century, adherence to the maritime strategic approach included adherence to Imperial defence and allowed the Australian Government to spend less on defence than it might have otherwise felt necessary. For most of this period also, air power played only a minor role in the maritime strategy. The RAN’s interest in aviation was limited initially to fleet support roles and limited by funding constraint and the birth of the Air Force. The Air Force itself also suffered from funding limitations, the limited capability of early aircraft and possibly no inherent interest in air power applied specifically in the maritime domain. Since the end of World War II, Australia has employed both maritime and continentalist approaches to strategy. The experience of the war in the Pacific played a major part in the RAN being able to introduce carrier-based air power in support of the maritime element and engagement in South-East Asia. And even though the RAN never really achieved the two carrier force to which it aspired, carrier aviation, while it lasted, was a significant contributor to the maritime strategy. The limited availability of funds has bedevilled Service planning ever since Federation. It has affected the Navy in particular because of the high unit cost of sea power. This effect was magnified in the efforts to support a viable carrier force and its impact on the other Services and indeed on other elements of the Navy itself. Inadequate or overly optimistic planning also contributed to some of the financial problems and eventually to growth of disenchantment with naval aviation within the Department and the Government. The very evident Service rivalries also impacted on the provision of air power in support of Australia’s maritime strategy. While both the Army and Navy fought against the establishment of the Air Force, subsequently, the Air Force fought equally hard to ensure that all of Australia’s air power came under its control. Costs were an issue here to the extent that funds provided to another Service for its aviation needs were funds which would not go to the Air Force. But philosophy was an equally significant issue. In line with the theories which supported air power, the RAAF argued long and hard for the indivisibility of air power and for the control of all air power in Australia. An unavoidable conclusion of the paper is that the long-term combination of changes of approach in military strategy, inadequate funding and sometimes related Service rivalries have prevented a full expression of both maritime strategy and the part which air power should play in it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vice Admiral Sir Henry Burrell, Mermaids Do Exist: The Autobiography of Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Burrell, Royal Australian Navy (Retired), Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1986.


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Hector Donohue, From Empire Defence to the Long Haul: Post-War Defence Policy and its Impact on Naval Force Structure Planning 1945–1955, Maritime Studies Program, Department of Defence (Navy), Canberra, 1996. Peter Edwards with Gregory Pemberton, Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948–1965, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, North Sydney, 1992. G. Hermon Gill, Australia in the War of 1939–1945: Volume 1, Royal Australian Navy, 1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1957. Jeffrey Grey, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume I, The Australian Army, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001. A.W. Jose, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918: Volume IX, The Royal Australian Navy, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, QLD, 1987 (rpt 1993). G.L. Macandie, The Genesis of the Royal Australian Navy, Government Printer, Sydney, 1949. John McCarthy, Australia and Imperial Defence 1918–39: A Study in Air and Sea Power, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, QLD, 1976. Bob Nicholls, Statesmen and Sailors: Australian Maritime Defence 1870–1920, Standard Publishing House, Rozelle, NSW, 1995. Alan Stephens, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume II, The Royal Australian Air Force, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001. Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force 1946–1971, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995. David Stevens (ed), The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume III, The Royal Australian Navy, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2001. David Stevens (ed), In Search of a Maritime Strategy: The maritime element in Australian defence planning since 1901, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1997. David Stevens and John Reeve (eds), Southern Trident: Strategy, History and the Rise of Australian Naval Power, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2001. The Australian Naval Aviation Museum, friends and volunteers. Flying Stations: A Story of Australian Naval Aviation, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1998. Anthony Wright, Australian Carrier Decisions: The Acquisition of HMA Ships Albatross, Sydney and Melbourne, Maritime Studies Program, Department of Defence (Navy), Canberra, 1998.


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RAAF MILITARY OPERATIONS OTHER THAN WAR

GROUP CAPTAIN RIC CASAGRANDE

INTRODUCTION

Since the first flights in 1914, Australian military air power has forged a long and proud history of combat action and quite rightly these heroics deeds need to be recorded, recalled and celebrated. They are an integral part of our military history and tradition. But there is another proud story that has consistently accompanied the development of military air power in Australia: one of airman and airwomen rising to the occasion and serving their nation in less dramatic but often in no less trying or dangerous situations. This story is about lives being saved, suffering being ameliorated, welcome and essential relief being provided—often in times of great danger—the RAAF contributing to a sense of regional community in our neighbourhood by bringing vital help in times of need, and a story of success through air power’s contribution to important national events and activities. It is also a story about Australian air power’s contribution to international peace and security. This story is not often told or celebrated, it does not involve the more glamorous parts of our force but it is often about the work of most notably our people and some of the workhorses of the RAAF—like the Dakotas, Caribous, helicopters and Hercules. It has been this combination that has made the greatest contribution in this area, often working far from home. When I searched through our history books there are few consolidated accounts of the many and varied non-combat operations in which our Air Force has been involved. At the time, they may be newsworthy but too often they fade from collective memory and the danger is that lessons from this part of our collective experience may be lost, yet we are called upon to repeat these types operations time and time again. One exception to this is the seminal work by Chris Coulthard-Clark on our early history The Third Brother.1 When we starting planning for this conference, we were determined to capture the full scope of our history and for this reason I now have the opportunity to speak to you about the RAAF and its involvement in military operations other than war (MOOTW). I chose this description to capture the full myriad of Air Force activities that are carried out on a day-to-day basis by our people and the capabilities at their disposal. To put it another way, I will adopt Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason’s phrase that these are ‘operations in search of a name’ or, in my own words, all that other stuff we do. Military operations other than war is in itself a vexed term but for the purposes of this presentation I will use it as a very broad generic term to cover everything that military air power has done outside of theatres of war or armed conflict. And when I talk about air power, I mean the entirety of capability that is used to project military force in the

1 C.D. Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921–39, Allen &

Unwin in association with the Royal Australian Air Force, Sydney, 1991.


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third dimension above the surface of the world.2 The essence of this is our people and how they are able to work and employ our aerial platforms but it is not just about flying operations: some air power capabilities can be used on the ground to fight threats such as bushfires or provide medical aid, and again it is our people who we rely on to carry out these sort of activities. In the next 30 minutes or so, it will be impossible for me to describe all that we have done in this field or even give some historical snippets about all the types of MOOTW that we have carried out. What I will try to do is sketch some of the types of operations and illustrate them with some examples of how through our professionalism, courage, and ingenuity the RAAF has delivered air power to promote national security and further Australia’s interest. This story is a sterling example of the RAAF values in practice—when the RAAF has been called upon to do what are sometimes dangerous, unusual and unanticipated tasks, we have invariably achieved the mission. Our challenge for the future is to recognise that we will continue to be called upon to do these sorts of tasks and while we must always focus on warfighting we must also be flexible enough to rise to the occasion when other security challenges arise. In many ways this presentation is timely. Recently, we have developed a new awareness of our domestic security and new threats have been recognised as our concept of national security has broadened. As a result, we have had F/A-18 fighters deployed to provide combat air patrol for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Queensland in 2002, and air has a key role in Operation Relex to protect our northern maritime borders. As we speak, elements of the RAAF are in East Timor and Iraq engaged in nation building activities and we have just deployed Caribous and other RAAF elements to the Solomons to assist a neighbour get back on its feet. These are all types of MOOTW that I believe will remain increasingly relevant to our national security as we face up to the challenges of an increasingly difficult world security environment and the instability that arcs above us. These activities, when coupled with other national tasks, are producing an operational tempo that is stretching our ADF. In almost all of these tasks, air power may be required to provide lift to facilitate any deployment and for in-theatre manoeuvre, to provide a supporting presence or act as a deterrent. For these and many other roles, ADF air power will not only be provided by the RAAF but also by Army and Navy aviation representing a critical component of our current joint and transforming seamless force.

MILITARY OPERATIONS OTHER THAN WAR (MOOTW)

MOOTW are a strange conglomerate of activities. The classification is generally regarded as a US term that covers a diverse collection of military operations. Put into an Australian context, I use it to describe operations that encompass the use of military capabilities across the range of military operations short of armed conflict. These military actions can be applied to complement any combination of the other

2 AAP 1000 – Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power, RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra,

2002, p 3.

RAAF Military Operations Other Than War

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instruments of national power.3 These operations cover the provision of support and assistance in a non-threatening environment, and being prepared to conduct combat not associated with war, as occurred in the lead up to the East Timor operation. In our own doctrine we describe OOTW as:

… those conducted in hazardous circumstances to relieve distress and improve security in a place where the local civil administration has broken down because of conflict or natural disaster. They include evacuation, diplomacy, humanitarian aid, and peacekeeping.4

While I agree that these operations are often conducted in hazardous conditions and they include the activities described, I think I would characterise the range of activities in broader terms. I include not only peace operations associated with the breakdown of order or natural disaster but also domestic and international internal security operations, and domestic national defence tasks. For the purposes of this paper, I break up these operations as: • nation building and national support, • national constabulary and border protection, • humanitarian and disaster relief, and • peace operations. These broad divisions encapsulate the following types of operations: air evacuations, food drops, the various types of peacekeeping from observers to peace enforcement, surveys, flypasts and other ceremonial activities, law enforcement through defence aid to the civil authority, specialist support to important national events like the 2000 Olympics, search and rescue, medevacs, border and fisheries surveillance, VIP transport, flood relief supplies, medical support, security patrols, such as we saw with the CHOGM, and of course providing a military presence—having offensive air power available to support a peace enforcement operation such as INTERFET. As I have said, I will not be covering all of these different types of activities but I will draw on a few of the most dramatic and important operations that have been conducted over the history of military air power in Australia. What you will note is that some types of operations have remained constants while the character of other types of MOOTW has evolved, particularly since the end of the Cold War.

NATION BUILDING AND NATIONAL SUPPORT

As soon as World War I was over, there were calls upon military air power to conduct aviation tasks associated with the development of our then still fledging nation. This experience was similar to the US, where the American Air Service between 1919 and

3 Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other Than War, US Joint Pub 3–07, 16 June 1995,

Pentagon, Washington, DC, p 1-1. 4 AAP 1000 – Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power, p 344; and Ian MacFarling, Air

Power Terminology (2nd Edition), RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra, 2001, p 88.


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1922 provided border control patrols, forest fire patrols, aerial mapping and flood relief, as well as helping with the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers ice jam. In 1934, it was the US military that provided the first airmail in the US.5 Similarly in Australia, the RAAF was involved in tasks of a civil nature. In 1933, then Squadron Leader Bostock pointed out that:

Primarily the service aims at efficiency in training. In peace time a portion of this training can be merged with operations which are not strictly of a service nature, but which, while providing useful exercises in many branches of Air Force work, at the same time have some commercial or other civil purpose … To this end, public organisations, semi public bodies and even private individuals may, if the proposed work is of national importance, secure the services of the Air Force for flying operations …6

As Chris Coulthard-Clark points out, these remarks acknowledge that apart from the actual benefits of the tasks and incidental training there was an important public relations dividend to be gained, not least of all proving the worth of the still very new Service. The RAAF's senior commanders were very well aware of this and alert to the necessity to find a role for this independent, expensive and at times troublesome Service. This was made most explicit to the CAS (Goble) in March 1924 when confronted by Prime Minister Bruce’s desire that the RAAF take over certain duties such as airmail. When he tried to resist this proposal he found ‘the PM adamant and supported by the Minister for Defence (Bowden), who “added sweetly that the RAAF was not likely to get more money unless it indicated its willingness to carry out civil duties”’.7 No doubt this was the sort of motivation that prompted the air service, on its return from the theatres of World War I, to carry out such tasks as propaganda flights for the Peace Loans in 1919 and 1920, similarly promote sales of government bonds and to conduct a conduct series of flypasts for events like the Melbourne Show in 1919. Another area that attracted attention was long-distance flights. One noteworthy air expedition conducted between 16 November and 12 December 1919 was the first transcontinental flight from Point Cook to Darwin by Captain Henry Wrigley and Sergeant Arthur (‘Spud’) Murphy, his mechanic. They flew an obsolete two-seat BE2e trainer with a top speed of 72 mph. An early example of innovation was the addition of two fuel tanks under the wing and an extra oil tank on the side of the engine for extra range. This flight was the air survey for the Australia to England flight competition won by Keith and Ross Smith. Hudson Fysh, founder of QANTAS, was later to remark on this remarkable achievement that it was one that he was sure ‘will never be undertaken again’. Time of course would prove Fysh very wrong.8 Of a more sobering nature was the outcome of a search for a lost schooner in the Bass Strait area in 1920. This resulted in the loss of a DH-9A and its two crew, Captain 5 Alan Vick, David T. Orletsky, Abram N. Shulsky and John Stillion, Preparing the U.S. Air Force

for Military Operations Other Than War, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 1997, pp 80–81.

6 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p 374. 7 ibid, p 375. 8 ibid, pp 15–17.


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Stutt and Sergeant Dalzell from Point Cook. The court of inquiry concluded an accident had caused the loss of the aircraft but no remains or wreckage have ever been found.9 As we know, even in non-combat operations lives are lost. Another epic flight conducted about this time was by Flight Lieutenant Ivor McIntyre and then Wing Commander Stanley James Goble, who was acting Chief of Staff at the time. They made aviation history by making the first round-Australia flight in a Fairey 111D seaplane, a pioneering feat conducted to survey the coastline for defence planning but acclaimed as ‘one of the greatest achievements in the history of aviation’ and for which the two men were awarded the Britannia Trophy.10 How times have changed: how much time does our Chief have to go flying, let alone be away for 44 days on an expedition such as this! There were of course other such major long-distance flights, including one by Goble’s rival, Wing Commander Williams, who in 1923 flew from Point Cook into the Pacific through New Guinea and the Solomons to show the flag and provide a presence in the Pacific Islands. The flight was highlighted by the British CAS (Trenchard) at an Imperial Conference on Empire air defence. The Australian Prime Minister Bruce was at the conference and cabled back his congratulations to the airmen ‘on their splendid achievement’.11 Other national activities conducted between 1919 and 1939 were aerial photography, rescue stand-by at Point Cook, bushfire patrols (which in 1938 resulted in 90 fires being detected and reported), aerial dusting, air surveys both in remote areas and for specialist purposes such as the production in 1930–31 of a mosaic of Sydney and suburbs to assist the Metropolitan Water Board with the planning for water and sewerage services. Meteorological flights for forecasting purposes were another important activity, at times conducted in hazardous and difficult flying conditions.12 While few will recall the flights of Bill Garing in 1932–33 over Tasmania to photograph timber resources,13 many will recall the use of the F-111 by a then young Attorney-General, Gareth Evans, in April 1983 to photograph State Government dam building on the Franklin River—an act that earned the Minister the nickname ‘Biggles’. Just after World War II, in May 1946, the RAAF transport arm was called upon to undertake a remarkable operation named Pig Bristle. Australia’s war effort had left the country without many of the commodities required for national reconstruction. One vital item for home building was paintbrushes, and the only source of bristles was in China. An Australian company had procured 25 tonnes of pig bristles in the Tibetan foothills. Led by Squadron Leader John Balfe, three Dakotas flew deep into China from Hong Kong to obtain these essential supplies. Maps were unreliable, navigation aids suspect and the country below in turmoil. Despite these obstacles, the two week

9 ibid, pp 25–26. 10 Alan Stephens and Jeff Isaacs, High Fliers: Leaders of the Royal Australian Air Force, Australian

Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1996, p 35. 11 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, pp 390–392. 12 ibid, pp 381–384. 13 ibid, pp 379–380.


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shuttle was completed before the Communists occupied Chungking, their pick up point.14 There were and continue to be many types of special occasions which have Air Force involvement. An early, very special event was the opening of the provisional Federal Parliament House here in Canberra in May 1927—an event involving virtually the entire operational strength of the RAAF for the flypast and parade. More recently, we have had the spectacular F-111 ‘dump and burn’ at many events, notably the 2000 Olympics, and the by now regular appearance of RAAF aircraft at our cultural celebrations of football finals, grand prix events and many other ceremonial occasions, often by our specialist aerobatic team the Roulettes. But even these activities have their risk and we should recall that at the Parliamentary opening in 1927, there was a fatal crash of an SE5a with the loss of Flying Officer Francis Ewen.15 Yet another SE5a crashed on the way home to Point Cook with the official photographs that were subsequently lost, though the pilot, Sergeant Orm Denny, managed to walk out of rugged country near Mount Buffalo to safety.16 In terms of furthering national goals, notable operations have been the survey of the Great Barrier Reef in 1923, the New Guinea oil survey in 1927, Antarctic expeditions in 1929–31, searches for oil fields, mapping the north, and pelagic fish surveys.17 While these nation building efforts have perhaps dropped off, the calls on the RAAF to conduct other national tasks continue to this day. One continuing task is VIP transport. After World War II this was the responsibility of the Governor-General’s Flight, based at Fairbairn. Since 1959, Number 34 (Special Transport) Squadron, supplemented by Number 33 Squadron, has been in effect the private airline of our nation’s political leaders.18 But the RAAF has also carried many other visiting dignitaries, senior military officers and senior officials. Originally flying Dakotas, No 34 Squadron has also flown Convair CV-440 Metropolitans, Vickers Viscounts, HS748s, Mystere 20s, BAC-111s, Falcon 900s and of course now the Boeing Special Purpose B737 BBJ and the Bombardier Challenger CL-604. Additionally, the B707s of No 33 Squadron have been used for VIP duties. Amongst the VIPs safely carried by the RAAF has been Her Majesty and Prince Phillip, Prince Charles, the late Princess Diana, the Pope and of course all our recent political leaders. There are many other types of tasks that have fallen to the RAAF and could have been discussed under the heading of national support. One final operation, which needs a mention, was the rather controversial use of RAAF transport aircraft in Operation Immune during the 1989 pilot’s strike. Because of the strike, all commercial aircraft were grounded and the RAAF was called upon to provide air transport for the community between August and December 1989. For No 36 Squadron, which had three aircraft and five crews dedicated to the operation, this proved to be a very busy

14 Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force, 1946–1971, Australian Government

Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, pp 414–415. 15 Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p 319. 16 ibid, p 398. 17 ibid, pp 407–440. 18 Stephens, Going Solo, p 426.


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time as they introduced civilians to the joys of Service transport.19 Overall, the RAAF introduced over 172,287 passengers to the joys of Service air, involving a total of 6524 hours.20 A controversy arose of the legality of using the military for what was characterised by some as strikebreaking and contrary to the Constitution. The operation while adding to the operational burden of the transport squadrons did have its unintended benefits for some of the crews. As I recall being at Air Command Headquarters over that time, when a C-130 was stranded on Hamilton Island of all places and, of course, had to call upon another C-130 to facilitate a rescue from the harsh tropical island conditions!

NATIONAL CONSTABULARY AND BORDER PATROLS

For many years the RAAF maritime element has policed our fisheries and other zones of economic importance. As our areas of economic sovereignty expanded with developments associated with the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, so did the pressures to regulate these areas and the responsibility to control their exploitation. Today, border protection and efforts to combat transnational criminal and terrorist activity are key national security issues and the RAAF has and is continuing to play its part. Similarly, our maritime borders have become more porous with time and since the 1970s there have been concerns of illegal immigrants breaching these borders. One major influx came from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and of course more recently, the RAAF has been playing its part in Operation Relex, designed to intercept and deter illegal immigrants entering Australia. During these types of operations it has been the maritime force that has been at the forefront of activity. Flying Sunderlands, Lincolns, Neptunes and the Orions they have patrolled our maritime areas, particularly in the 1970s, with large Taiwanese fishing boats in the Australian Fishing Zone being one of the prime targets. The protection of our fishing zones continues and just last year, the Russian vessels Volga and Lena were captured after being found poaching valuable Patagonian Toothfish in the Heard and McDonald Island fisheries zone in February 2002. The RAAF contribution was critical for the whole operation. In the case of the Volga, a RAAF Hercules detected the vessel on radar some 32 kilometres within the Exclusive Economic Zone and noted its heading at maximum speed in a direct line towards the high seas. This became critical evidence for the subsequent domestic and international hearings about the case.21 Of course, this is bread and butter work for the squadrons of No 92 Wing, who conduct routine patrols for fisheries on a day-to-day basis, directly contributing to our national economic security. 19 Units of the Royal Australian Air Force: A Concise History – Volume 4 – Maritime and Transport

Units, RAAF Historical Section, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p 59.

20 ibid, p 40. 21 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Case No 11: ‘The “Volga” Case (Russian

Federation v Australia)’, Australian response to proceedings dated 12 December 2002, p 6, at http://www.itlos.org/start2_en.html, accessed on 27 July 2003.


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HUMANITARIAN AND DISASTER RELIEF

The efforts of the RAAF in humanitarian and disaster relief are far too numerous to mention. It is enough to say that our people, units and aircraft have made a tremendous effort in this field. They have fought fires, dropped food for starving animals in floods, rescued people from danger and brought urgent medical attention to people in grave need. I have to say that I could find no comprehensive account of the work of the RAAF, which adequately covers this field. Generally, these activities have involved the use of the transport and rotary wing fleets. I will use one very recent example, which brings together medevac, evacuation and disaster relief tasks. This was Operation Bali Assist, which occurred after the tragic Bali bombing of October last year.

When Squadron Leader Greg Wilson switched on his television on the morning of Sunday, October 13, and saw the images of the destruction in Bali, he knew it would only be a matter of time before he was called into work.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang and Squadron Leader Wilson, a Senior Medical Officer at RAAF Base Darwin, was on his way to the base.

By lunchtime he and [the] rest of the base's medical staff assembled at Darwin had learnt that a C-130 Hercules with an Aero-Medical [sic] Evacuation team was on its way from RAAF Base Richmond.

After a briefing on the situation on the Indonesian island and a quick run-down on security procedures, Squadron Leader Wilson and Nursing Officer Flight Lieutenant Sally Scott prepared to board the first of the Bali-bound C-130s to complement the team of seven already on board.

One of those, Leading Aircraftman Michael Gunn, a Medical Assistant with No 3 Combat Support Hospital at Richmond, had been up since 7am preparing the unit’s medical equipment and loading it on to the Hercules.

Hours later the trio was part of the first team of Air Force personnel on the ground in Bali after the bombing, and the scenes they were confronted with were like nothing they had seen before.

While Leading Aircraftman Gunn waited with the Hercules at the airport, Squadron Leader Wilson and Flight Lieutenant Scott’s first task was to head to the local hospital to assess the wounded and decide which of the victims needed to be on the next aircraft back to Darwin Hospital.

‘The hospital was overwhelmed by the size and severity of the casualties,’ Squadron Leader Wilson said.

‘I'd never seen anything like it before. The closest similar experience I’d had was attending the aftermath of a tidal wave in Papua New Guinea a few years ago,’ he said.

‘We do mass casualty training, where we’re equipped with the skills to deal with a disaster, but you never think you're going to use them.’


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The situation was certainly something Flight Lieutenant Scott had never experienced.

‘When you’re the first team in and the first to see the hospital, you almost feel helpless with so many injured people and not enough staff to help,’ she said. ‘Everyone did the best they could.’

Eleven people were flown back to Darwin on the first C-130 flight out of Bali. All up, the Aero-Medical [sic] Teams ferried 66 victims back to Australia over the course of three days.

Leading Aircraftman Gunn said he slept for about one-and-a-half hours in the first 24 hours, and by the time he was back in Darwin, had slept for six hours in three days.

‘You're working on adrenalin for most of the time. It’s only when you sit down and rest that you have time to reflect on the job you’ve done. Our training is for that sort of environment, but you don’t expect to have to do it for real.’22

The RAAF responded quickly to the tragic event, deploying aircraft in half the time normally required to dispatch a medevac flight. In all, between 13 and 17 October, five C-130s were used to rescue the injured, evacuate the shocked, and bring urgent stores, equipment and our specialists to help the situation. Defence Minister Hill was full of praise:

The extreme dedication of ADF personnel during the shocking events in Bali must not go unrecognised … In response to an event that is unprecedented in Australian history, the ADF has shown its trademark professionalism under pressure.23

It is this commitment and professionalism that has become the hallmark of the RAAF and our people—not only in combat but also for all our operations as we rise to occasion to meet the needs of the nation. Outside Australia, we have also been active bringing relief at times of disaster, such as the cyclone in the Solomons on New Year’s Day this year. Or when assisting starving troops as Corporal Jack Stubbs tried to do when he dropped a millstone with a crude parachute to the besieged garrison at Kut in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in 1916.24 Of course, Australia and our immediate region has been and remains our focus but we have provided help to many parts of the world, including Laos, Vietnam, Iran, Rwanda, Rhodesia and numerous times in the Pacific We have often dropped bales of hay to starving animals cut off by floodwaters, rescued people who were left stranded, airlifted food and supplies to isolated communities, and flown the sick and injured to medical aid. Hard to believe today, but in 1973–74, the most damaging floods in Australian history left huge areas of the 22 RAAF website: http://www.defence.gov.au/raaf/people/community/Humanitarian/bali.htm,

accessed on 17 July 2003. 23 Minister for Defence the Hon Robert Hill, Media Release 18 October 2002, website

http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/Hilltpl.cfm?CurrentId=1990, accessed on 17 July 2003. 24 George Odgers, The Royal Australian Air Force: An Illustrated History, Child & Henry

Publishing Pty Ltd, Brookvale, 1984, p 180.


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continent inundated. Hercules, Caribou, Dakotas and Iroquois operated out of RAAF bases throughout Australia providing urgent assistance.25 We should not forget the RAAF contribution to the relief of Darwin after Cyclone Tracey on Christmas Eve 1974. The cyclone killed 49 people, caused scores of injuries and reduced the city to rubble. Of course, this also affected the RAAF Base but it and the rest of the RAAF soon swung into action. The first RAAF medevac aircraft arrived next day and, by Boxing Day, 12 Hercules were on stand-by at RAAF Base Richmond—on that day 680 people were evacuated and on the next 1218. By 31 December, 25,628 people had been airlifted out of the city by Service and civil air. For this operation, the RAAF had provided and coordinated the vital airlift, provided communications and brought in RAAF medical teams and urgent supplies.26 Another mission that the RAAF has been called upon to perform is search and rescue. Air power has a unique capability to save people far from home and in danger. Often this involves the crews putting themselves in danger to effect the rescue. Some of the rescues are medevacs from remote areas of Australia, or more often overseas. Without the rescue people would die. Others rescues are in situations where only certain types of aircraft can lift persons from extreme situations, such as helicopters in mountains or during floods. Another hazardous environment is the sea and the RAAF has a long history of maritime search and rescue. There have been many examples of these types of rescues, including an open sea rescue in dangerous conditions by our own CAF, Air Marshal Angus Houston, in 1979. In this role it is the maritime force that has a distinguished record but we should not forget the contribution of other aircraft, such as rotary wing and transports. Let me recount the now famous story of the rescue of Tony Bullimore and Thierry Dubois on 9 January 1997. This followed what became a rather notorious rescue of Isabelle Autissier three years earlier. The notoriety in that incident arose from the cost of the rescue and the risks being taken by sailors in the southern oceans. Both rescues have been regarded as miraculous, given the conditions and location just a few hundred miles north of Antarctica. ‘Am I bloody glad to see you buggers’, were the first reported words of rescued solo yachtsman Tony Bullimore when he was pulled out of the freezing waters of the Southern Ocean by the Royal Australian Navy. His boat had lost its keel and capsized five days earlier a few hundred miles north of Antarctica. A fellow sailor Thierry Dubois had also been overturned in the same storm just 10 miles away. For four days, a flight of six P-3C Orions, working at the limit of their range, kept a round-the-clock vigil over the two. One of the crew had spotted Dubois standing on his upturned hull and later located Bullimore’s upturned boat. Dubois’ life expectancy could have been counted in hours had the RAAF crew not managed to drop a life raft within reach—a perilous job at the best of times which called for a 120 mph precision drop from 150 feet without harming the person below. The world held its breath as the aircraft remained on station and HMAS Adelaide steamed to the site of the two men. Bullimore was in the

25 ibid. 26 ibid, pp 184–85.


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turtled hull with a finger sliced off, increasingly suffering from hypothermia, with frostbite in his hands and feet, and completely out of water when he heard banging on the hull and the voice of the Navy diver. Bullimore stated that when he saw the ship, the plane overhead and a couple of guys: ‘it was heaven – absolute heaven’.27 While these rescues, and the rescue of Raphael Dinelli earlier in the week, had cost $6 million, the Defence Minister Ian McLaclan countered by stating, ‘This was experience that you could not buy. Having done it, we now have a great wealth of experience … the store of knowledge we have gained is irreplaceable.’28 This was the ADF’s longest and most difficult sea rescue and will go down in the annals of maritime history.

PEACE OPERATIONS

Both before the breakdown of peace and certainly after a conflict, armed forces have been required to carry out tasks to ensure war does not occur or at least minimise the risk of armed conflict. At the moment, RAAF members and aircraft are carrying out these types of activities in Iraq, East Timor and the Solomons. For this section, I define peace operations as those military operations that are an adjunct to the diplomatic efforts to maintain peace and order in areas of potential conflict. Using this broad definition I will provide a brief discussion on occupation activities post-conflict, the full range of UN peacekeeping operations, other coalition peacekeeping activities and assertive action to defend sovereign rights against potentially hostile forces. Australian air power has played its part in all of these sorts of actions. I will mention just a few. Just after World War II, the RAAF was called upon to play its part in the Berlin Airlift. You will recall the parlous state of peace and the stand-off between the Russian and Allied forces over Berlin in 1948. As Berlin was cut off from the west, the British Air Forces of Occupation and the USAF realised they needed to supply the city by air. Australia offered ten RAAF Dakota aircraft and crews, but only the crews were needed. In time, the 41 airmen became part of RAF No 46 Group in Lubeck, operating as ‘RAAF Squadron Berlin Airlift’, and fitted into the larger Allied effort, flying sorties between 15 September 1948 and 26 August 1949, almost the entire time of the Airlift.29 In difficult and complicated flying conditions, the RAAF contingent carried 7968 tonnes of freight and 6964 passengers, during 2062 sorties and 6041 flying hours. Not once during all those sorties and hours was a RAAF crew turned back from the approach into Berlin for not being on time and with not one scratch on an aircraft.30 A remarkable effort from a small force of just ten crews and, as is often the case with

27 Barry Pickthall, ‘Miracle Rescues in the Southern Ocean’, Sailing Inland & Offshore, feature

article 97–02 from website: http://www.sailing.co.za/oldfeat/1997/fa_9702.htm, accessed on 28 July 2003.

28 ibid. 29 Stephens, Going Solo, pp 196–202. 30 Air Marshal S.D. Evans, ‘The Berlin Airlift’ in John Mordike (ed), The Post-War Years:

1945–1954 – The Proceedings of the 1996 RAAF History Conference, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1997, p 35.


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these types of contributions, the political contribution was probably even more valuable.31 Another important postwar contribution was to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan. In early 1947, there were 47,000 personnel in the force with 12,000 Australians. The Air Group had the following RAAF component: No 81 Fighter Wing, Nos 76, 77 and 82 Mustang Squadrons, No 481 Maintenance Squadron, No 381 Base Squadron, No 5 Airfield Construction Squadron and No 111 Mobile Fighter Control unit, totalling over 2000 people in late 1946. The force was withdrawn in 1950 but many elements were called to go straight into combat in Korea. Between December 1945 and 1950 the RAAF had provided forces for BCOF, which provided a substantial Australian presence, assisted the Japanese reconstruction effort and the implementation of the terms of surrender, and generally assisted with security and surveillance over Japan.32 Another Cold War operation was during Konfrontasi between Malaysia and Indonesia. There was a little known Operation Handover conducted in Darwin in 1963. President Sukarno opposed the formation of the new state of Malaysia and initiated a period of ‘Confrontation’ with the new nation. Australia played a delicate balancing act, actively participating in the defence of Malaysia while maintaining a cool friendship with Indonesia. A barely acknowledged deployment of RAAF units to our north, linked to a contingency plan to neutralise Indonesian air strikes against Malaysian targets, is a footnote to Australia’s involvement in the Confrontation. Operation Handover recognised that Darwin was a vital base on our route to South-East Asia and it was within range of aircraft operated from a potential enemy air base, Kupang in West Timor, where Russian built Ilyushin IL-28 medium bombers were capable of flying strike operations. The plan to secure Darwin called for the deployment of two squadrons consisting of 32 Sabre aircraft from Number 81 Wing. They were to be supported by four Neptunes, and Hercules, Caribou and Dakota transport aircraft. Search and rescue was to be provided by a No 9 Squadron Iroquois helicopter. The Canberra strike assets of Number 2 Squadron were also available from Butterworth in Malaysia. At the height of the Confrontation the fighters and support aircraft deployed to Darwin on 7 September 1964 and remained till 17 October 1964. During this time they were on constant and various levels of alert. In all, 170 officers and airmen and 16 Sabres deployed to Darwin from No 81 Wing. They were supported by the transports and Iroquois, as well as Number 2 Control and Reporting Unit, who maintained a 24-hour watch for the initial 10-day period. At the time, there was little recognition or official acknowledgment of the deployment and little since. What the operation did highlight was a serious deficiency in our preparation and particularly the vulnerability of our northern air bases despite the 1942 Japanese experience. The positive aspects were the efficient logistics support available for the deployment and the demonstration that within our own nation we

31 Stephens, Going Solo, p 202. 32 Group Captain J.P. Harvey, ‘British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan – The RAAF

Contribution’ in Mordike (ed), The Post-War Years: 1945–1954 – The Proceedings of the 1996 RAAF History Conference, pp 57–62.


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must be prepared to be expeditionary at all times.33 This operation represents the only time the fighters had been deployed in possible harms way on Australian soil since 1945. Of course, since then we have deployed the fighters to provide domestic air security over the CHOGM meetings and overseas to Diego Garcia and in combat over Iraq just this year. When many people consider MOOTW they immediately think of peacekeeping, particularly UN peacekeeping. Because of this and the attention given to the subject generally within the ADF, I have tended to highlight other types of MOOTW in this presentation. That is not to say that the RAAF has not made its own unique and important contribution to ADF peace operations well deserving of mention. Again the term covers a gamut of activities and RAAF involvement has been extremely varied. From the formation of the UN, military forces in various forms have been used to support international efforts to maintain peace and security. One of Australia’s earliest deployments was a two-man team in 1949 as part of the UN mission to Korea. One of those officers was Squadron Leader R.J. Rankin, who was on the ground in Korea between 9 and 23 June 1950 inspecting military disposition on the 38th parallel on the eve of hostilities. The report of this team was crucial for they provided evidence that North Korea was the aggressor.34 When Russia boycotted the Security Council, it was this evidence that enabled the UN to intervene and defend South Korea. Since then the RAAF has made numerous contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. These have ranged around the globe including India and Pakistan, The Sinai, Cyprus, Somalia, Rwanda, Iraq, West Papua, Cambodia and, of course, the peace operations in East Timor. The contributions have been very varied: individual observers, helicopters, transport aircraft, medical staff and units, airfield support units, ground defence capabilities, specialist teams and specialist individuals. Most recently in East Timor, a number of air operations preceded and supported the INTERFET coalition force, and of course successor operations continue to this day. Before the INTERFET deployment, during the period 12 June – 6 September 1999, the RAAF transported UN volunteers, police and military liaison officers to East Timor to assist with the independence poll. Operation Spitfire was conducted to evacuate people who were in danger after the vote was completed. Over the period 6–14 September, the RAAF and RNZAF evacuated 2478 Australians, consular officials and internally displaced individuals whose lives were in danger. The record for one flight went to Flight Lieutenant Alderton who took 175 people to Darwin—and claimed another three were found on board before landing. Hercules from RAAF Nos 36 and 37 Squadrons and RNZAF No 40 Squadron flew 28 sorties to Baucau and Dili to meet the mission.35

33 David Wilson, A Footnote to History – ‘Operation Handover’ – Darwin, September 1964,

Australian War Memorial Journal at http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j37/darwin.htm, accessed on 30 July 2003; and Air Force News, 27 February 2003.

34 N. F James, ‘A Brief History of Australian Peacekeeping’, Australian Defence Force Journal, No 104, January/February 1994, p 6.

35 David Wilson, United Wings, unpublished paper, RAAF Historical Records, RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra, 2003, pp 13–15.


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The RAAF contribution to the East Timor operations has been sizeable and has included Nos 381, 382, 383 and 386 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadrons, No 2 Airfield Defence Squadron, No 86 Wing Detachment C, RAAF No 3 Combat Support Hospital, No 6 RAAF Hospital No 1 Air Terminal Squadron, and many individuals to various ADF or UN units. These units and people developed the airfield point of entry at Comoro Airfield (Dili) and at Cakung Airfield (Baucau), contributed to the airlift capacity of the INTERFET Combined Air Wing, provided military airlift from Australia to East Timor, supplied vital medical services and general logistics, as well as training support from RAAF Bases Darwin, Tindal and Townsville.36 Another less obvious contribution was the pre-deployment of a number of RAAF assets and the use of RAAF capabilities to provide essential support for the ADF effort. The pre-deployments consisted of F-111 aircraft from No 82 Wing, F/A-18 Hornets and PC9 forward air control aircraft from No 81 Wing, Orions from Edinburgh, and No 33 Squadron B707 tankers, which all deployed to RAAF Base Tindal. The Jindalee over-the-horizon radar network and No 2 Control and Reporting Unit provided electronic surveillance.37 No doubt the presence of these capabilities was reassuring to the INTERFET forces, who were not sure of what sort of welcome they could expect on arrival in East Timor.

CONCLUSION

As is evident by my brief sketch, the RAAF should be very proud of its history of MOOTW. These have ranged from relatively benign peacetime ceremonial tasks, to hazardous peace enforcement operations in places such as Somalia, and of course East Timor. The RAAF has acted as part of an occupying force in Japan and is currently assisting with the rebuilding of Iraq. We have sent people on epic journeys around Australia, and deep into China to obtain pig bristle. RAAF members have served around the world performing many types of tasks for the nation. I not been able to tell all the stories or even mention all of the operations. This has been just a quick dip into our MOOTW work, which in total represents a rich vein of operational experience. In many ways, this history exemplifies the role of our people highlighting their courage, skills, knowledge, expertise and flexibility. They have brilliantly adapted to tasks that they may not have been particularly trained for. While we have often used our units and aircraft for MOOTW, many times we have called on individuals to support our community domestically and internationally by requiring them to undertake a wide variety of MOOTW tasks. This is a history that we should not neglect, but rather we should celebrate the vital contribution military air power has made to the security, prosperity and stability of our nation, region and the world. This legacy continues today all around Australia and the world but most notably in East Timor, Iraq and the Solomons.

36 ibid, pp 216–224. 37 ibid, p 3.

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PANEL DISCUSSION

COMMODORE JACK MCCAFFRIE, RAN GROUP CAPTAIN RIC CASAGRANDE

Squadron Leader Greg Wells (RAAF – Australian Command and Staff College): A question for Commodore McCaffrie. I was just wondering, Sir, in the last 20 years have we missed the carrier capability, particularly with our emphasis on littoral warfare, as happens now? Commodore McCaffrie: Yes, it is an interesting question and not least because, even 20 years on, the issue is still so sensitive around the halls at Russell. It is very much in the league of ‘don’t mention the war’, at least as far as the Navy is concerned. My answer, clearly, would be yes, and for essentially the reason that you have alluded to. But in trying to deal with the issue now I think we ought not to be asking the question do we still need the carrier. I think the approach that the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force are looking to take with the next generation of Royal Navy ‘flat-top’ is perhaps the one we ought to consider. It is not really about do we need a carrier, it is about projecting air power—how we are going to project air power and where are we going to project it. And if we find that where we need to project it and the way in which we need to project it requires something other than home base, then the answer has to be looking at some other means. And in doing that, the answer doesn’t have to be a conventional carrier either. Looking now at the way in which the capacity to project air power is changing with the introduction of UAVs and UCAVs, with the introduction of longer range and essentially very accurate cruise missile technology, there are going to be different ways of doing it. But do I think that we could use that kind of capability, a deck of some kind projecting some kind of air power from it? Yes, absolutely, but it would not necessarily need to be the conventional kind that we have thought of in the past. And how we do it, I think, would need to be much different in the future than the way we did it in the past. I don’t think there could be any question now of having two ‘Air Forces’, and I think that the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force model might well provide a useful starting point if we ever got to that stage again. Air Vice-Marshal Hans Roser (RAAF Ret’d): Ric [Group Captain Casagrande], a very interesting presentation, thank you. You mentioned Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley’s flight to Darwin in 1919. I had the opportunity to discuss that flight with him about 20 odd years ago when he was still alive, and he told me a very interesting storey as part of that. He flew up through central New South Wales and got himself lost in the wilds of Queensland, and on one occasion he actually met with Hudson Fysh and they sat down for a long time and discussed landing grounds in Queensland and where you could put aircraft down, because he put his BE2 down on various stations to have it repaired and so on. Wrigley always maintained that that discussion probably had some influence in Hudson Fysh’s decision to launch Qantas some years later. So, just a little interesting aside. Group Captain Casagrande: Thank you very much, that’s a fascinating story.


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Group Captain Arthur Skimin (RAAF Ret’d): Ric [Group Captain Casagrande], it’s interesting to follow some of those incidents you have put together for that dip, as you say, into where we participated in non-warlike operations. There was one incident that came out in World War II of the RAAF’s contribution to humanitarian activities during the uprising in Warsaw. And it is interesting, the official history gives one line, but when we got together recently with some Polish ex-Servicemen we found that Peter Raw1 was instrumental in those humanitarian flights from Southern Italy right across all the occupied nations of Europe into Warsaw, and they continued those humanitarian operations predominantly with Australian crews operating with RAF squadrons out of Southern Italy for 60 days. It’s interesting now that we get the information in from London just what sort of conditions these Australian crews flew through, and they all volunteered for those humanitarian flights as distinct from the war operation flights of the time. Group Captain Casagrande: I think your comment does capture it perfectly. Even during wartime we have these sorts of operations being conducted and, of course, Baghdad Assist was another one of those. So, yes, they are snippets and unfortunately they tend to be buried under the other combat operations that do capture people’s attention, so thank you again. Mr Alex Freeleagus (Honorary Greek Consul): A question for Group Captain Casagrande, what part did the Reserve play in the Bali operation? Group Captain Casagrande: Oh, now you’ve got me on that. I know there were Reserve elements involved and perhaps they are not highlighted specifically because we work as an integrated force, and we don’t say Reserve Unit such and such etc. So the specialists are brought in, particularly the medical staff and others who provide their time and make themselves available, and they are part of the unit and therefore are not identified specifically as Reserves. Perhaps there may be others in the audience who might be able to add some more information but I think, again, it rightly highlights the important part played by the Reserve in everything we do. Mr Sebastian Cox: Just one brief, very minor correction to what Ric [Group Captain Casagrande] said and one question. The brief, minor correction is that the millstone dropped in 1916 was not dropped to tribesmen. It was dropped to the Imperial Forces surrounded by the Turkish Army in Kut al-Imara and, perhaps, if the Australian airmen had succeeded in dropping it on the head of General Townsend that might have been a greater relief to the besieged forces. My question is to Commodore McCaffrie. Have we come full circle in the British experience, in that we are now suggesting that the Royal Air Force is going to provide at least a substantial part of the Air Wing on the new ‘flat-tops’? The thought is, in the long term will that mean 1 Editor’s Note: Peter Frank Raw joined the RAAF on 15 August 1941, and was appointed to a

commission as a pilot on 5 December 1942. His appointment was terminated on demobilisation on 17 January 1946. Peter Raw began his second period of RAAF service on 9 May 1946, as a pilot in the General Duties Branch, and retired as an Air Commodore on 28 February 1978. During his two periods of service he was awarded the DFC for his flying skill and courage in bombing operations over Europe in World War II; the Polish Cross of Valour for his airmanship while flying Liberators on relief supply missions from Italy to Warsaw; the AFC for his part in the 1953 London to Christchurch Air Race, in which he and his Canberra bomber crew were placed second; and the DSO for outstanding leadership qualities as Commander of RAAF Contingent Vietnam in 1966. Air Commodore Raw died on 14 July 1988.

Panel Discussion – Commodore McCaffrie / Group Captain Casagrande

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that we are going to end up with a situation back to pre-1938 in the British experience? Commodore McCaffrie: I don’t think so, and I would like to think that we have moved a good deal beyond that by now. I think there is a recognition that resources are going to continue to be limited and this is a very flexible way to apply them. I am not suggesting that it’s going to happen anywhere else. Certainly, I cannot see it happening in the US in the near term. I see no reason, given the much greater concentration there has been in the last 40–50 years on joint operations, why this should not work entirely satisfactorily for both Services. I don’t know whether the Falklands was the first instance of it, but it was the first recent one anyway.


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WORKSHOP SESSIONS

Three concurrent workshops were held on the second day of the conference. The sessions were repeated to allow all delegates the opportunity to attend two of the three workshops and interact with a larger number of participants. The workshop themes were designed to facilitate further discussion on topics that had been presented by speakers during the course of the conference. The specific topics addressed in the workshops were as follows: • Workshop A: Does history support the notion that people are more important

than technology in the development of air power? • Workshop B: What is the efficacy of air power as a peace enforcement and

monitoring force as understood from the lessons of history? • Workshop C: From a historical perspective, has the military aviation industry in

Australia been a success or a failure? The discussions conducted were productive and a synopsis of the major issues raised and the points that were highlighted in each of the workshops is given below.

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WORKSHOP A:

DOES HISTORY SUPPORT THE NOTION THAT PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN

TECHNOLOGY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AIR POWER?

Moderated by Wing Commander Dave Thiele

The discussion brought out the following points: • War is a politically driven activity and, therefore, it is people and not

technology that are the driving force behind any development. The decision to use or not to use technology in the pursuit of war aims is also people-driven.

• The need for development of technology is identified, developed and then used

by people. • There is a perception that only the aircrew actually go into battle in the Air

Force, whereas the entire force fights in the Navy and the Army. Combined with the fact that junior air force officers are put in charge of equipment and


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machinery, rather than people, the Air Force tends to be more focused on technology in comparison to other Services.

• Technology becomes obsolete relatively quickly, but well-trained and educated

people can overcome this disadvantage and go on to win the war. • The dominance of the United States in military matters is purely because of

technology. • The ability to use available technology comes from the people and is the

decisive factor in warfighting. • The rapidity of change in technology requires a focus on technology so that the

force remains at the cutting edge at all times. • Tactics and technology can be defeated if the adversary knows about them, but

people’s innovation and ingenuity remains a force to be reckoned with at all times.

• Everything else being equal, technological superiority can win wars and this has

been demonstrated through history. The debate regarding the relative importance of people versus technology in the context of air power has always been contentious. Even this workshop was evenly divided regarding which of the two was the more important. The points raised during the discussions, however, tended to support the greater importance of people since they are the ones who drive technology.

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WORKSHOP B:

WHAT IS THE EFFICACY OF AIR POWER AS A PEACE ENFORCEMENT AND MONITORING FORCE

AS UNDERSTOOD FROM THE LESSONS OF HISTORY?

Moderated by Group Captain Garry Dunbar

The discussion centred on the use of enabling and support elements of air power in support of peace enforcement operations. Although it was not articulated as such, there appeared to be an underlying belief held by the participants from the beginning of the workshop that combat air power did not have a role to play in such operations. The moderator initiated the session with the observation that the concept of peace enforcement/monitoring had undergone changes after the end of the Cold War and also as a result of the changed dynamics within the United Nations Security Council. The number, complexity and diversity of operations requiring an international

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contribution to peacekeeping had also increased. Regional security issues were becoming more prominent in the international diplomatic arena. The following points were highlighted during the discussions. • Air power can provide the best means of observation but the capability has to be

balanced with cost effectiveness. UAVs were considered a viable option in this sphere.

• Air power contribution will be dependent on the force composition. • Air Forces by themselves have very limited continual experience in peace

operations to evolve a cohesive strategy towards such deployments. • The role of helicopters in identifying targets and the consequences of striking

the wrong target in peacekeeping operations were discussed in some detail, with no specific conclusions being drawn.

• Air power’s inherent characteristics and the full range of capabilities can be

brought to bear very effectively in these kind of operations. • The support elements of air power are more suited to peace-related operations

and, therefore, should become integral to any peace enforcement/monitoring force prior to its deployment.

There was general consensus within the workshop that air power was suited for employment in peace enforcement and monitoring missions because of its range of capabilities. The participants, however, regarded its use as being not cost-effective and deduced it as the reason for the inadequate use of air power in such operations. Organic air power capabilities on an as required basis would meet the requirements of the force being deployed.

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WORKSHOP C:

FROM A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, HAS THE MILITARY AVIATION INDUSTRY IN AUSTRALIA BEEN A SUCCESS OR A FAILURE?

Moderated by Mr David Wilson

The discussion centred on the cut backs that the aviation industry as whole has suffered in the post-World War II era. The following points emerged from the discussion: • The participants felt that the term ‘success or failure’ was perhaps too stark and

strong to adequately judge the Australian aircraft industry.


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• Sir Lawrence Wackett was a very influential figure and played a vital role in the aviation industry in its developing stage.

• Any judgement of ‘failure’ must be tempered with consideration of the

prevailing geo-strategic constraints before, during and after World War II. • The changing demands of the RAAF and the Army in terms of leading edge

technology and the poor definition of requirements have also contributed to the Australian aviation industry not being able to achieve optimum outcomes.

• The participation in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program offers a great way

forward for the Australian aviation industry to develop further and expand on niche capabilities.

• The F/A-18 aircraft assembly in Australia was supported by the Government

with large resource grants, which could not be capitalised on because of the recession that occurred in the United States shortly after the Australian facility was established. This experience needs to be kept in mind when pursuing possible opportunities in the JSF program for the sake of the industry.

The workshop generally felt that the Australian aviation industry has not been optimally developed and that the JSF program might give it a chance to become a global entity. There was also scepticism regarding the capability of the industry in its current state to become an effective global partner for defence aviation development programs.

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ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AIR POWER – AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE


INTRODUCTION

As with all things, the best place to start is at the beginning. The Wright brothers—Wilbur and Orville—were the first to achieve powered, sustained and controlled aeroplane flight in 1903, and they built and flew the first fully practical aeroplane in 1905. So says the Encyclopaedia Britannica.1 The Smithsonian History of Aviation Series offers a little more colour—‘On December 17, 1903, on a windy beach in North Carolina, aviation became a reality’.2 The first aircraft flew in Australia in 1910 from Mia Mia in Victoria, in response to a prize offered by the Defence Minister of the day, Senator Pearce.3 Indeed, the development of air power since 1903 is awe-inspiring in both its civilian and military dimensions. Again, as the Smithsonian Series suggests, air power has brought whole continents together and become a lethal instrument of war. In this context, the latest version of the RAAF’s AAP 1000 argues that the advent of aircraft has given commanders an additional dimension of war to consider.4 I should point out here that the first recorded use of the term ‘air power’ did not occur until 1908, with the publication of H.G. Wells’s book, The War in the Air.5 Air power certainly developed in its use in war, in terms of strength and numbers, from the few fairly primitive reconnaissance aircraft of 1914 to the thousand-bomber fleets of 30 years later. The Italians were actually the first to use air power for reconnaissance and some limited attacks in 1911 against the Turks in North Africa.6 For its part, Australia has been peculiarly suited to developments in air power, to overcome great distances, paucity of transportation and communications infrastructure, inaccessibility of many areas to surface forms of transportation, and the relative sparse populations in areas separating our major cities. In times of war, Australia’s air power has been called upon to support allies in regional confrontations,

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Volume 12, The University of Chicago, 1989, p 772. 2 Frontispiece to Richard P. Hallion, Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Attack,

1911–1945, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1989. 3 Air Marshal Angus Houston, CAF Speech to the Australian International Aerospace Congress,

29 July 2003. 4 AAP 1000 – Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power, RAAF Aerospace Centre, Canberra,

2002, p 4. 5 See Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason, RAF, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal, Brassey’s,

London, 1994, p 1. 6 The Italians used their aircraft to map the movements of the Turks on the ground and even fired at

them with rifles and pistols. See Geoffrey Blainey, ‘Power in the Air’, in Alan Stephens (ed), Smaller but Larger: Conventional Air Power into the 21st Century, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1991, p 165.


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to support global initiatives in two world wars, and to defend the domestic skies over mainland Australia.

WORLD WAR I

The British, French and German aircraft that met over northern France in 1914 were driven by engines of less than 100 horsepower. And the pilots of these aircraft shot at each other with rifles and pistols. The bombs they used were not much more than hand grenades.7 Indeed, the range of these aircraft in 1914 was quite small and they could not do much damage with their bombs, even if it had been possible to drop their bombs accurately.8 By 1918, however, aircraft had developed into powerful, reliable machines that could cover thousands of kilometres in almost any weather conditions. That said, there were virtually no enclosed cockpits, pilots flew with no protection other than their basic clothing, oxygen was generally not available, and there were no radio navigation aids.9 Even though the bombing operations carried out over Britain and Germany were limited, by 1918 the use of air power had added to the strategic dimension of war. It is worth pausing to note here the observation of Lord Kitchener, who in 1914 as Britain’s War Minister, argued that the nation that attained control of the air would win the war.10 As if paying great heed to this pronouncement from the other side of the world, Australia initiated flying training at Point Cook on 17 August 1914. Australia fielded four operational squadrons in World War I, with No 3 Squadron being the first to serve on the Western Front. At this early stage of air power development in Australia, the expeditionary nature of air power was well recognised. Australian legends were born out of this conflict—names such as Frank McNamara, who went on to win a Victoria Cross in Palestine, and Arthur Cobby, who shot down 24 aircraft and five balloons between March and September of 1918.11 The Australian Flying Corps during this war produced the founders of Australian aviation—both military and civilian. From the very beginning, Australians exhibited a tenacity of fighting spirit in the air, just as much as they did on the ground. To this day, Australian servicemen and women continue to uphold the nation’s cultural traditions of mateship and a ‘fair go’. Professor Geoffrey Blainey has argued that ‘by the end of the First World War the aircraft had become pervasive. In World War II they would be decisive.’12

7 Gerald Bowman, War in the Air, Evans Brothers Limited, London, 1956, p 18. 8 Attributed to Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert, in Bowman, War in the Air, p 18. 9 Bowman, War in the Air, p 20. 10 Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferte, The Third Service: The Story Behind the Royal Air Force, Thames

and Hudson, London, 1955, p 27. 11 AAP 1000 – Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power, p 35. 12 See Geoffrey Blainey, ‘Power in the Air’, in Stephens (ed), Smaller but Larger, p 165.

One Hundred Years of Air Power – An Australian Perspective

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BETWEEN THE WARS

Despite this pervasiveness and decisiveness, a clear challenge for air power has been the difficulty in defining precisely what the objective of air power is. As Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley wrote in the late 1920s, the first object in land warfare is the destruction of all the enemy armed forces, and the first object in naval warfare is the destruction or neutralisation of all the enemy naval forces. However, the objective of air power depends on whether it is being used for air bombardment or air superiority.13 History has shown this tension since the period between the wars; indeed, it has added to it as we have witnessed the successes of air power in helping land and naval forces prosecute battles and win their first object of warfare on land and at sea. Air power has had to be flexible and adaptable to accommodate these tensions—fighting in the air, cooperating with surface forces, and carrying out strategic bombing. The early air power theorists themselves could not agree—with Hugh Trenchard arguing that a country’s industrial infrastructure was the primary target and Billy Mitchell advocating the use of air power to destroy an enemy’s fielded forces. The Italian, Douhet, saw the will of the people as the prime target and advocated bombing the civilian population, while Trenchard and Mitchell believed there was more to be gained through bombing facilities rather than people. The limitations of range and reliability on the early aircraft of the RAAF meant that air power could not play a strategic role in an Australian context, and hence air power was seen as a means of supporting land and naval forces. In a country the size of Australia, and with its limited resources, this paradox does tend to stand out. As observed by one of the RAAF’s more recent pre-eminent aviators and someone who influenced me significantly in the 1980s, Air Commodore Ian Westmore, ‘almost every conceivable air strategy and tactic known today was employed between 1914–1918’.14 And so you have it—the myriad of discrete roles for air power that emerge from its ability to bomb, fight in the air, and support land and naval forces. As I mentioned earlier, the flexibility and adaptability of air power had come to the fore early in its history. Indeed, so pervasive was its potential that people started characterising air power by its ubiquity—a sense of being able to appear anywhere, anytime, which implies a sense of movement unconstrained by traditional physical barriers. Turning away from the use of air power in war for a moment and reflecting on those early days of aviation, we should need no reminding that Australians were quick to get into the air. For example, Ross and Keith Smith flew from Europe to Australia in 1919, taking 24 days. A couple of years later, Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm became the first to fly across the Pacific, and then the Tasman Sea. In 1928 another Australian, Wilkins, flew from Alaska to Spitzbergen, Germany—

13 Alan Stephens and Brendan O’Loghlin (eds), The Decisive Factor: Air Power Doctrine by Air

Vice-Marshal H.N. Wrigley, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1990, pp 128–29.

14 Air Commodore Ian Westmore, ‘Air Power and the 1914–1918 War’, cited in Stephens (ed), Smaller but Larger, p 26.


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marking the first transpolar flight. Bert Hinkler was the first to fly west to east across the Atlantic (from South America to Africa). Not to be outdone, other Australians took to the air and raced, with the first air race being in 1912, from Sydney to Parramatta. W.E. Hart, flying a Bristol Box-kite, won in 23 minutes. Furthermore, it was not just individuals that were seized of the moment—Victoria celebrated its centenary in 1934 with an air race from London to Melbourne.15 Famous Air Force people also wrote their names into aviation history—Goble and McIntyre in 1924 with their flight around Australia, and Williams’s 1926 flight into the Pacific Islands. And new airline companies emerged—Qantas in 1920 and Western Australian Airlines in the following year.

WORLD WAR II

Moving on to 1939, World War II saw enormous effort going in to strategic bombing campaigns, but it also saw the refinement and maturing of tactical air power. Germany concentrated tactical air power over its ground forces as it swept through Poland in 1939; Holland, Belgium and France in 1940; and Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia in 1941. On the Allies side, 1941 saw Coningham’s Desert Air Force start carrying out air-land operations.16 From this early development came the fighter-bomber, an important development underpinning one of air power’s enduring characteristics—its flexibility. This flexibility was also evident as air power came to the fore in the maritime environment as well. Indeed, so intrinsic was it that aircraft carriers became a natural part of war at sea. This notion of air cooperation (or support for surface forces) saw a series of imperatives develop—the utility of transport aircraft, supply drops from the air, casualty evacuation, long-range fighter support, and pinpoint bombing of selected enemy targets in contact with friendly surface forces. A powerful example of air cooperation comes from Normandy in June 1944, where overwhelming air superiority was achieved, airborne and glider-borne troops were inserted, coastal batteries were attacked, and the Panzer divisions were devastated. The inherent flexibility of air power saw it protecting an amphibious force at sea one day, providing air cover to disembarking ground forces the next day, and the day after, helping those ground forces as they closed with and routed the enemy. Moving away now from the close battle, early inadequacies in aircraft size, navigation and munitions saw limited success in strategic bombing. However, with improved navigation aids and the advent of four-engined bombers, things began to change. And

15 See Geoffrey Blainey, ‘Power in the Air’, in Stephens (ed), Smaller but Larger, pp 166–67. 16 See Vincent Orange, Coningham: A Biography of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, KCB, KBE,

DSO, MC, DFC, AFC, Center for Air Force History, Washington, DC, 1992.


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the entry of the US in to the war in Europe in 1942 allowed mass to make up for the lack of accuracy in bombing.17 The 1000-bomber raids that started at the end of May 1942 showed just what sheer bombing power could do—Cologne was flattened on a clear night. Two nights later came Essen, this time on a cloudy night and although Essen got off lightly, the neighbouring towns of Duisburg, Oberhausen, Mulheim and Hamborn did not.18 Air bombardment entered another phase in July 1943, with the British and American incendiary bombing of Hamburg. The ensuing firestorm destroyed Hamburg. Dresden was attacked in like fashion in February 1945. World War II also saw the advent of missiles—the German V1 bomb and V2 rocket. Almost 9000 people were killed and over 23,000 injured by the ‘V’ weapons.19 In the Pacific theatre, events too were drawing to a close with low-level night incendiary attacks against Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama and Kawasaki, and the atomic bomb attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Japan, with a powerful army standing at the ready to defend the homeland, surrendered as a result of the devastation wreaked on it through air bombardment and the total loss of her lines of communication. Australia sent three squadrons to Europe, with No 3 Squadron again to the fore and No 10 Squadron operating in the maritime arena. Another 17 squadrons were formed under the Empire Air Training Scheme and operated as part of the Royal Air Force. These squadrons contributed to the strategic bombing over Europe; fighter operations in Britain, the Middle East, the Far East, and the South-West Pacific; and maritime air operations over the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Australia also contributed air force units in Malaya and the South-West Pacific Area in wide-ranging roles such as air superiority, close air support, anti-shipping, convoy protection, reconnaissance, aerial mine-laying, search and rescue, and transport. In the air operations over Borneo in 1945—known as the Oboe operations—Australia planned and conducted successful joint operations. The three operations—Tarakan, Labuan Island/Brunei Bay, and Balikpapan—followed a well-planned sequence that was refined from operation to operation. Each operation was phased, with enemy air capability and significant infrastructure attacked first, followed by preparation of the battlefield, and then finally close air support. Lessons were learnt quickly and passed on from operation to operation. The responsiveness of the RAAF in its planning is underscored by the timings between

17 A good summary of these issues is provided in AAP 1000 – Fundamentals of Australian

Aerospace Power, pp 43–51. 18 Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, Air Bombardment: The Story of its Development, Chatto &

Windus, London, 1961, p 142. 19 ibid, p 191.


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operations—Labuan was six weeks after Tarakan and Balikpapan was only three weeks after Labuan.20 Well before Oboe was planned, RAAF Kittyhawk squadrons (Nos 75 and 76) made a significant contribution to the Allied victory at Milne Bay (August 1942). Australian air power made a similarly significant contribution to victory on the Kokoda Track (the following month) by disrupting Japanese supply lines and airdropping equipment to the Army. Air-landed reinforcements captured the Wau airstrip in January 1943, and the RAAF’s No 4 Army Cooperation Squadron provided close air support during the recapture of Lae, Salamaua and Finschhafen. Many other RAAF squadrons provided close support as the 5th Division moved from Sio to Saidor, the 7th Division reached Madang and Alexishafen, and overhead the landings at New Britain, Hollandia, Aitape, Biak, Noemfoor and Morotai. Australia had started the war with around 3500 people in the Air Force. This grew to 185,000 during the war and resulted in Australia then boasting the fourth largest air force in the world.21 A lot has been made recently of the ability for aircraft to attack targets of opportunity. During World War II in the Middle East theatre, aircrews were briefed to attack preselected targets, but the aircraft were able to attack higher priority targets if they arose since the crew briefing—basically, if a call was not received to attack a higher priority target, the aircraft would attack its preselected target. And in the South-West Pacific theatre, RAAF aircraft were directed on to other targets over Borneo if preselected targets could not be attacked. Indeed, the RAAF was at pains to ensure that air effort was not squandered and that air support was coordinated effectively with ground force requirements. We saw from the invasions of Sicily, Italy and Normandy, and again in the Oboe operations, that amphibious assaults required sound intelligence on the strength and disposition of enemy forces, and on the ability of friendly ground forces to capture nearby airfields. Subsequent landings were covered by friendly aircraft, as were the break-outs from beachheads. Air power was used to interrupt enemy communications, win air superiority and neutralise enemy air defences.

THE 1950S, 60S AND 70S

The early 1950s saw a different air war, this time over Korea. It was different in that a specific campaign to win control of the air was not needed and political constraints limited the effect that strategic bombing could achieve. The use of offensive air power was concentrated against enemy ground forces. In this respect, the US Air Force, Navy and Marines tended to carry out air operations independent of one another and

20 For a detailed description of these operations, see Gary Waters, Oboe: Air Operations Over

Borneo 1945, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1995, p 209. 21 Houston, CAF Speech to the Australian International Aerospace Congress, 29 July 2003.


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so we saw dissipation of effort through an inability to coordinate and synchronise the available air power. Indeed, Korea, as did the 1944–45 campaign in Italy, showed that aerial interdiction of battlefield supplies would only be successful if friendly forces had the tactical initiative and could influence the enemy’s rate of consumption. Australia contributed a fighter squadron (No 77 Squadron) and a transport unit (a forerunner of No 36 Squadron) to the conflict in Korea. We should pause here to note that No 77 Squadron suffered very high casualties through 1950 and 51. We should also note that it was from this conflict onwards that Australia would tend to provide niche forces to handle crises of the future. Around the same time, the Malayan Emergency saw the need for small and frequent airdrops to supply ground patrols, rather than the traditional large and infrequent drops of past campaigns. The advent of the helicopter also proved instrumental in affording greater tactical mobility. Clutterbuck was moved to say that ‘I am convinced that we could never have cleared the guerrillas from the deep jungle without helicopters’.22 The war in Vietnam in the early 1960s again saw political control imposed on strategic bombing. The strategy of a graduated response against the North showed the fallacy of limiting payloads and target selection in a fight for survival. Vietnam was important because this war saw the introduction of precision guided munitions (PGM) in carrying out successful attacks against bridges. One clear example was the attack against the Thanh Hoa railway bridge, which had been subjected to 700 raids with free fall bombs that had failed to drop the bridge. One raid with laser-guided bombs saw it destroyed. Examining the attack on the Thanh Hoa bridge is important for another two reasons. First, some 50 bombers were destroyed in the unsuccessful free fall bomb attacks. And second, loss of the bridge did not interrupt supplies because a ford across the river, just five miles away, was left untouched.23 The US also used remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) in Vietnam as drones and for tactical reconnaissance. In this latter role, they were used for photographic reconnaissance, electronic intelligence gathering, and bomb damage assessment. They were also used in psychological operations for leaflet dropping. Australia’s involvement in the air war over Vietnam grew to a force of three squadrons—No 9 Squadron flying Iroquois helicopters, No 2 Squadron flying Canberra bombers and a detachment of Caribou transport aircraft from No 35

22 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War: Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam, Praeger,

New York and Washington, DC, 1960, p 156. 23 Gary Waters, The Architect of Victory: Air Campaigns for Australia, Strategic and Defence

Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1991, p 82.


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Squadron.24 As noted by Alan Stephens, the RAAF performed with distinction in Vietnam, with the experience being professionally rewarding. Indeed, the operational skills forged in Vietnam provided the foundation for the RAAF for the next 20 years.25

THE 1980S

The new-found precision of air power was demonstrated again in 1981, when Israeli F-16s, escorted by F-15s, attacked Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha near Baghdad. Here we saw the combination of strategic reach and great precision being demonstrated for the first time. The Israelis demonstrated this again in 1985 with an attack on the PLO headquarters in Tunis. This time the force package included aerial refuellers and electronic warfare aircraft. The following year, the US used similar tactics to attack Libya. They added airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft and suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) aircraft to their force package. The import of these changes was that a bombing force of 32 aircraft now needed 70 other aircraft in support—but the effect of those 32 attack aircraft was magnified several times over. The Israelis found the need for RPVs in 1982 for reconnaissance and electronic warfare, just as the US had in the previous decade. But the Israelis also used RPVs to activate Syrian air defence radars, and while the Syrian air defences were focused on the RPVs, the Israeli combat aircraft were virtually given a safe passage through Syrian airspace to be overhead their targets. Throughout the history of air power, we have seen an enormous amount of intellectual effort go into its use. Two latter day luminaries spring to mind—John Boyd and John Warden, both Americans. Boyd gave us the ‘OODA Loop’ and Warden gave us the concentric rings. Boyd’s OODA Loop, in which he argues planners must observe, orient, decide and then act, emphasised speed and action to disorient and confuse an opponent. The characteristics of aircraft make them ideal weapons through which to exploit Boyd’s process. In fact, the Australian Defence Force uses Boyd’s OODA Loop to explain its future warfighting concept—multi-dimensional manoeuvre. The ADF argues that in creating a dilemma for an adversary, it needs the ability to understand the adversary, the environment, our own forces and how the adversary views their goals and our capabilities (the ‘observe’ part). Based on this assessment and joint intelligence preparation of the battlespace, the ADF can then determine the options for generating the necessary effects (‘orient’), use the joint planning process in its decision-making (decide) and finally ‘act’ through joint task forces and coalitions as appropriate.26 24 See Chris Coulthard-Clark, The RAAF in Vietnam: Australian Air Involvement in the Vietnam

War 1962–1975, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, St Leonards, NSW, 1995.

25 Alan Stephens, Going Solo: The Royal Australian Air Force, 1946–1971, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1995, p 307.

26 ADDP-D.3 – Future Warfighting Concept, Department of Defence, Policy Guidance and Analysis Division, Canberra, 2003.


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John Warden argued that technology had advanced to such an extent that air warfare could be waged in parallel, rather than in series. He emphasised that the enemy should be viewed as a system and that attacks should be designed to unhinge the system. Warden’s concentric rings started with leadership at the centre, followed by key production, transportation infrastructure, population, and fielded military forces. The criticality started at the centre ring and moved outwards; hence, the concentration of effort should do likewise, with all being attacked in parallel.27

THE 1990S

In 1991, Desert Storm witnessed something of a revolution in warfare, with surprise, concentration and the simultaneous effect of stealth, precision and penetration occurring on a scale not previously seen. Here, offence decidedly beat defence, and air superiority proved vital. The Los Angeles Times was moved to comment that ‘a combination of good planning, deft diplomacy, skilled military execution – and a few essential strokes of luck’28 contributed to the Allies’ success. Air power demonstrated its employability across the full spectrum of war. At the strategic level, it attacked the sources of Iraq’s military power. At the operational level, it disrupted and destroyed forces and resupply even before forces came into contact. And at the tactical level, it contributed to the successful outcomes of individual ground battles.29 Victory came through a coalition, which used air power projected by armies, navies and air forces of many countries. At one end of the spectrum were sophisticated stealth fighters striking deep into Iraq, while at the other end were the troop and supply helicopters spread across the battlefield in Kuwait and into Iraq. In between, we saw every form of air power—carrier-borne aircraft, strategic bombers, tactical and strategic airlift, and of course, cruise missiles.30 The use of Scuds by the Iraqis (a relatively cheap single-stage liquid fuel rocket) and the anti-Scud campaign of the war set the scene for research and development into means of detecting and destroying mobile missile launchers before they could fire.31 The Iraqis had started using Scuds in 1982 and when Iran responded a few years later, the ‘battle of the cities’ saw the use of terror attacks against civilian populations taken to another level. The nature of the threat from mobile ballistic missiles made it a strategic issue because of its political implications, rather than its military ones. The lack of precision of the weapon and potential for inclusion of chemical or biological warheads added to political concerns during the Gulf War of 1990/91. This flexibility in the use of the air

27 See John Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, Pergamon-Brassey’s International

Defense Publishers Inc, Washington, DC, 1989, pp 128–40. 28 Los Angeles Times, 1 March 1991, p 1. 29 See Gary Waters, Gulf Lesson One – The Value of Air Power, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre,

Canberra, 1992, p 284. 30 Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War, Smithsonian Institution Press,

Washington and London, 1992, p 1. 31 Philip Finnegan and Neil Munro, ‘DoD Molds Strategy to Destroy Missile Launchers’, Defense

News, July 1991.


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as a medium for prosecuting war underscores yet again how much the nature of warfare changed forever in 1903. On the military front, a Scud missile hit a barracks in Dhahran, killing 28 and wounding 97 American soldiers. This single event resulted in 25 per cent of American deaths from enemy action throughout the entire war.32 This war also heralded the use of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, launched from ships and submarines and air-launched cruise missiles, launched from B-52s. Both weapons achieved precision effects, yet were able to be launched hundreds of kilometres from their targets, affording increased protection to the launch platforms. Space-based systems offered considerable coverage for early warning, limited reconnaissance, electronic signals intelligence, military navigation (through GPS – Global Positioning System), communications and meteorology. Some even referred to the 1990/91 Gulf War as the first ‘space war’. The US-led coalition experienced significant bottlenecks in processing the wealth of information that was returned from space. The Iraqis also used satellites—certain Soviet imagery, US weather satellite information, and SPOT photographs from a French company.33 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) proved useful in 1990/91, especially for tactical reconnaissance. US UAVs flew 530 missions and logged 1700 hours aloft through Desert Shield and Desert Storm.34 France also used UAVs, as did the Iraqis, who used the Al Yamamah, the Marakeb-1000, the Sahreb-1 and Sahreb-2.35 Between March and June 1999, we saw this notion of coalition air power taken a further step in Kosovo, or more to the point, over Belgrade. Air power became the weapon of first choice by the politicians. If the history of air power can be said to be littered with examples of penny-packeting and gradualism, then Kosovo could well be seen as the culmination of the ineffective use of air power. The excitement with which some have interpreted what precision can achieve has tended to cloud the fact that offensive air power destroys things and kills people. Air power can achieve a lot when it is used to support a campaign with clear intent and well-defined effects that need to be achieved. But in the end it is a tool, and notwithstanding the precision with which it can be applied, it is nevertheless a blunt

32 Hallion, Storm over Iraq, p 185. 33 See Desmond Ball, The Intelligence War in the Gulf, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence

No 78, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1991, pp 75–76.

34 James Blackwell, Michael J. Mazarr, Don M. Snider, The Gulf War: Military Lessons Learned, Interim Report, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, July 1991, p 15.

35 See Shaun Gregory, Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence in the Gulf War, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Working Paper No 238, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1991, p 16.


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instrument that breaks things. As a tool, it can only be as effective as the strategy it is intended to support.36 This would seem an appropriate time to remind ourselves of George Orwell’s reputed observation that one is only right when either a wish or a fear coincides with reality. Doctrinally, Australia has encapsulated those wishes and fears that have been translated into reality. And while Orwell’s comments of almost 40 years ago remain relevant, so too are the recent comments by Eliot Cohen just a few months ago—‘the failure to think historically includes a failure to appreciate discontinuity too’.37 These observations and the stark lessons of air power over the Balkans remind us how easy it is to get it wrong and how important it is to get it right—and history helps us to differentiate between the right and the wrong. Throughout the 1990s Australia deployed air power elements and its people to war zones in Somalia, Rwanda, Cambodia and East Timor, as well as the Balkans, the Pacific and with the United Nations. Australian C-130s began delivering troops to East Timor on 20 September 1999; the day after then Major General Cosgrove had been appointed Coalition Commander. Blackhawk helicopters arrived the next day, self-deploying into Dili to provide tactical mobility. One of the first activities had been to seize control of the airfield. Strategic lift and tactical mobility proved essential for a swift and successful operation to bring peace to East Timor. The Air Component Commander tasked all air assets and ran the in-theatre airfields at Dili and Baucau, having to set up air traffic control and security at those airfields from the outset. The deployable Combat Support Group, which also included engineers and firefighters as well, allowed continuous air operations to be mounted from these bare bases.38

THE NEW MILLENNIUM

September the 11th 2001 heralded a new dimension to the use of air power. While the world had seen a number of incidents occur over the previous decades, where terrorists either hijacked or shot down civilian airliners, the destruction of New York’s twin towers (the World Trade Centre) brought home a new reality. Here we saw civilian airliners, laden with commuters and holiday-makers used to inflict a more horrendous form of terror on the domestic front than many could have ever imagined. The response, which led to eviction of the Taliban from Afghanistan and the hunting down of many of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda operatives, witnessed air power once again being used in flexible and innovative ways. For example, the use of sensor fusion and data networking turned old warhorses like the 40-year old B-52 into a potent weapon system. B-52s received real-time changes to targeting plans via a

36 Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment,

RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2001. 37 Eliot Cohen, ‘How a War Makes Fools of Experts’, London Financial Times, 18 May 2003, p 23. 38 For a more detailed explanation, see Alan Ryan, Primary Responsibilities and Primary Risks:

Australian Defence Force Participation in the International Force East Timor, Study Paper No 304, Land Warfare Studies Centre, Canberra, November 2000, pp 77–78.


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common network connecting UAVs, Special Forces and a whole range of sensors. PGM were then used to attack targets of opportunity. The long mission endurance of the B-52s made them ideal for this, and changed the whole notion of responsiveness, which heretofore had primarily relied more on the dash speed of the fighter/attack aircraft as they flew from bases to positions overhead the target. Indeed the B-52 exemplifies the notion of flexibility. It started life as a high-level bomber. It was then used as a low-level intruder. Next, it was used as a stand-off cruise missile launcher. And most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have seen it used as a close air support bomber. Australia’s air power contribution to freeing Afghanistan of the Taliban regime included F/A-18s over Diego Garcia, aerial refuellers based in Kyrgyzstan (tanking US Marine Corps and US Navy Hornets as well as French Mirages), C-130 support to Special Forces and other tasks, support staff in-theatre and liaison staff with US Central Command. The two Australian Hornet squadrons—Nos 3 and 77—take us back to the first Australian squadron (No 3) that deployed to the Western Front in World War I. And there we were again—in the Middle East, a long way from home bases, and deployed for expeditionary operations. During the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Coolum, Queensland in 2002, we saw Australia’s F/A-18s in action again—flying missions overhead Coolum in policing the air exclusion zone. The task force also included a deployed air defence radar, air traffic controllers and B-707 tanker support. Australia’s air power has also contributed to surveillance of the northern approaches on the border protection task in which the bare base at Learmonth in Western Australia was activated to provide support for four P-3Cs that were assigned to the task. This started in August 2001 and continues to consume about one-third of the P-3 flying effort. By early May, the P-3s had flown over 5000 hours in support of the border protection task. An air war returned to Iraq in early 2003. The first mission on 19 March, which indicated just how much Boyd’s OODA Loop had been speeded up, was not part of the initial planning. Intelligence had indicated the suspected presence of Saddam Hussein in an underground bunker in Baghdad. Two F-117s carried out the planning, loaded the EGBU-27 one-ton penetrating bombs, flew to Baghdad and bombed the bunker, all in four hours. The actual planning of the mission was done in just under 30 minutes. During the 1990/91 Gulf War, a similar mission would have required about four hours of planning before the aircraft took off. Commander of the 8th Expeditionary Squadron that was tasked with the mission paid tribute to the mission planners, the weaponeers (involving selection of the bomb, fusing and programming of weapons support), the loaders, and the incorporation of new data on the different modes and settings for the weapon and aircraft. Indeed,


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some of the information was provided direct from California, where two bombs had been dropped in a test just four and a half hours earlier.39 The 1990/91 Gulf War saw the use of the Air Tasking Order (ATO) to simplify planning and coordination (in-flight refuelling, radio frequencies, times, locations, altitudes, targets and munitions for over 1000 sorties a day were coordinated through the ATO). It ran to some 250 pages and took about 48 hours to construct. The typical time required to transmit the ATO was two hours. Not all missions were tasked through the ATO—for example fleet air defence, USMC Harriers and some USMC F/A-18s were not tasked through the ATO. This all changed in 2003. Special Operations Forces entered Iraq in the early hours of 19 March 2003, with ground forces pushing forward into Iraq the next day. Sixteen days later, on 4 April, the first coalition fixed-wing aircraft operated from Iraqi soil—A-10s from Tallil. Another four days on and the first coalition fixed-wing aircraft landed at the renamed Baghdad International Airport. The regime in Iraq fell on 9 April and major military operations ended on 14 April—less than four weeks after the first Special Operations Forces had crossed over into Iraq. Another example from the 2003 Gulf War illustrates the nature of some of the changes since 1991. B-52s flying above an intense dust storm monitored the movement of Iraqi forces on the ground by using radar images transmitted directly to them from other aircraft, and at the appropriate time they were then able to strike those forces with conventional bombs, without risking nearby friendly forces.40 One of the most important technical advances to emerge in this war was the satellite-guided bomb—the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)—that homed in on targets identified by their satellite coordinates. Unlike earlier precision guided munitions, these weapons do not require the use of lasers, which cannot penetrate cloud or dust. What else can we learn from this most recent use of air power in war? First, as Donald Rumsfeld has been reported as saying ‘never before have so many been so wrong about so much’.41 I remind readers of my earlier comments about the importance of history. Second, the media brought images of Baghdad being bombed night after night; yet only a few dozen bombs fell on Baghdad each night, while thousands of precision munitions were dropped on the Iraqi Army on the battlefield. Real-time radar and targeting systems like JSTARS, combined with satellite-guided bombs meant that almost all aircraft were able to deliver precision weapons—in 1990/91, only the F-117, F-15E and F-111F were able to do that. Coalition forces were able to identify Iraqi targets on the ground, such as armour, immediately convert the location to a digital map coordinate, and relay that to the attack aircraft that used their satellite-guided bombs.42

39 See Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 7, 2003, p 24. 40 New York Times, ‘Digital Links Are Giving Old Weapons New Power’, April 7, 2003. 41 Eliot Cohen, ‘How a War Makes Fools of Experts’, London Financial Times, 18 May 2003, p 23. 42 Stephen Budiansky, ‘Air War: Striking In Ways We Haven’t Seen’, washingtonpost.com, Sunday

April 6, 2003, p B01.


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Military aircraft flew 15,825 strike sorties and dropped 27,250 weapons.43 The percentage of PGM used was similar to the 69 per cent used over Afghanistan. Of note, the percentage of PGM used during Kosovo was 35 per cent, and in the 1990/91 Gulf War, PGM constituted nine per cent of the weapons fired from the air.44 The Commander of the USAF’s 484th Air Expeditionary Wing was quoted as saying ‘… when you can destroy over three divisions’ worth of heavy armour in a period of about a week and reduce each of these Iraqi divisions down to even 15 or 20 per cent of their strength, it’s going to have an effect’.45 The ability to strike time-critical targets in a more effective way had been worked on since 1991. A joint integrated prioritised target list, from which the daily bombing missions were drawn, was compiled at the Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Also operating out of the CAOC was the Time Sensitive Targeting (TST) cell. The Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, argued that the way in which time sensitive targets were handled showed the unprecedented level of fusion of intelligence, communications and precision weapons that overwhelmed the Iraqi Government.46 The Chief of Operations for the air war, operating out of Prince Sultan Air Base, said time sensitive targeting allowed the coalition to capitalise on the inherent flexibility of air power.47 Just one example is sufficient to illustrate how the combination of improved time sensitive targeting and rapid reaction time has changed the equation. B-1B bombers were used to strike Iraqi leadership targets, with crews being able to strike their targets with GPS/inertial-guidance JDAMs 12 minutes after receiving the target’s coordinates.48 It would seem that Afghanistan was the test bed for TST, re-affirmed just after in the experimentation war game Millennium Challenge 2002. TST can be traced back in history, with perhaps the most famous being that launched 60 years earlier, on 18 April 1943. Four US P-38s flew 435 miles (700 kilometres) to intercept an aircraft carrying Admiral Yamamoto, who came to fame in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The P-38s arrived at their intercept point just two minutes ahead of Yamamoto. CENTAF Commander, Lieutenant General Michael Moseley, noted that the CAOC executed 156 TST missions and another 686 missions against ‘dynamic targets’. TSTs were identified as leadership, weapons of mass destruction, or terrorist sites. Dynamic targets were defined as important targets that could be attacked using the same tools as required for TSTs.49 43 See Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2003, article by William M. Arkin, ‘It Ain’t Broke After All’. 44 Defense Daily, April 11, 2003, p 7, ‘Coalition Forces Have Fired 15,000 Guided Munitions

During Iraqi Freedom’. 45 Chicago Tribune, April 22, 2003, ‘Air War Credited in Baghdad’s Fall’. The 484th directed air

strikes in support of Army and Marine ground troops. 46 Baltimore Sun, April 20, 2003, ‘Strike Team Advances Precision, Pace of War’. 47 ibid. 48 Defense Daily, ‘Air Force Offered Improved Networking Capabilities During OIF’, July 4, 2003. 49 Operation IRAQI FREEDOM – By the Numbers, released by Lieutenant General Moseley,

USCENTAF, 30 April 2003.


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Returning to UAVs for a moment, the US deployed 10 different UAVs over Iraq in 2003, including Predator, Global Hawk, Dragon Eye and Hunter. The utility of Global Hawk, which could photograph between 200 and 300 individual sites or targets during a 26-hour flight, was highlighted. So too, the utility of Predator was seen, with armed Predators firing more than a dozen Hellfire missiles, as well as the all-important reconnaissance missions flown. Certain UAVs were even controlled by crews in the US, a capability that had not been used during operations in Afghanistan. The clear observation from this most recent use of UAVs is that new degrees of freedom have now been found in their use.50 A typical integrated mission might see a Rivet Joint aircraft intercepting an anti-aircraft missile radar’s signal. The Rivet Joint would relay that information to a Predator or Global Hawk that, in turn, relayed the coordinates of the air defence site to the CAOC in either Saudi Arabia or Qatar. The target planners would then swing into action, sending the attack instructions to an F-15 or F-16 via an AWACS aircraft, which would, in turn, direct the attack aircraft on to the target. It is my view that Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld has been pushing a three-pronged doctrine that was proved in Iraq—speed of action, air power, and rapidly processed information. This wins conflicts. By 2003, some of the earlier weaknesses that we had seen in space-based systems had improved—greater capacity for relaying satellite imagery, improved mapping of areas for better cruise missile navigation, and better sensors and systems for providing warnings of small missiles such as Scuds, with their short flight times. There were some real firsts in this latest use of air power. The first combat package of B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s was put together. This was the first time a C-17 was used to airdrop combat personnel. This was the first time a Global Hawk was used for strike coordination and reconnaissance. A B-52 dropped a laser-guided bomb for the first time in conflict. And it was the first use of a B-1 using a moving target indicator for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance).51 In one of his invaluable updates during the war, Air Marshal Houston noted that in achieving ‘airspace dominance’, the coalition conducted simultaneous operations including strategic attack, counter air, interdiction, close air support, airlift and reconnaissance. Australians participated in all of these roles. He also commented that air power was definitive in shaping the land environment and that the men, women and aircraft of the RAAF were prominent in the achievement of these successes.52 F/A-18s, P-3s, C-130s, and imagery analysts, as well as combat support personnel of the RAAF, had all contributed. Indeed, Air Marshal Houston noted in May that the Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron concept had been well and truly validated in the Middle East.53 The F/A-18s flew their last sortie on 2 May 2003, logging over 50 Defense Daily, ‘Air Force Offered Improved Networking Capabilities During OIF’, July 4, 2003. 51 Operation IRAQI FREEDOM – By the Numbers, released by Lieutenant General Moseley,

USCENTAF, 30 April 2003. 52 ‘Message from the Chief of Air Force [Air Marshal Houston]: Operation Falconer’, 9 April 2003. 53 Air Marshal Angus Houston’s closing address at the RAAF Awards Night, 1 May 2003.


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2300 hours of mission time and attacking targets such as artillery, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, and military installations. The P-3s flew over 600 mission hours or around 70 missions and the C-130s over 130 missions. The C-130s managed to lift more than 10 per cent of cargo and people, yet represented only three per cent of the C-130 fleet in-theatre.54 Indeed, by the end of June, Australia’s C-130s had lifted almost 5,000,000 pounds of cargo, with more than two-thirds of their effort being in support of coalition forces in general. And the P-3 effort had climbed to 112 missions and exceeded 1000 hours of flying—achieving an impressive mission success rate of 96 per cent and a launch rate of 99 per cent.55 Praise from coalition leaders for the 2000 RAAF people in the Middle East was genuine and overwhelming. Air Marshal Houston noted that ‘our people have been living our Values – and it has been noticed by all’.56 These values were also demonstrated through the RAAF’s humanitarian response to the bombings in Bali in October 2002. Once the peace had been won in Iraq, it then had to be maintained, and in this the RAAF contributed air traffic controllers and combat support personnel to provide security, logistics, technical support, airfield engineering, administrative support, medical, communications, operations, environmental health, and facilities management.57 C-130s and P-3s continued their efforts in terms of flying in humanitarian aid and in providing comprehensive maritime surveillance across the Persian Gulf. During a visit to the Gulf in April 2003, Air Marshal Houston was moved to comment on morale and motivation—he came away mightily impressed with the ingenuity, proficiency and leadership at all levels. He saw this in the ground staff as well as in the aircrew—a strong sense of all people feeling they were part of a larger team—the Australian Air Force team.58 Air Marshal Houston has previously commented on how important the cumulative experiences of Australian airmen and support personnel are, and noted the sacrifices that so many have made—including the ultimate sacrifice.59 The indomitable spirit of Australians and their readiness to sacrifice all can be no better illustrated than from two citations that date back to World War II. First, ‘Flight Lieutenant William Newton … dived over half a mile through intense and accurate anti-aircraft fire in order to bomb his target at the lowest possible altitude … His aircraft suffered from direct hits … On the following day Flight Lieutenant Newton 54 ‘Message from the Chief of Air Force [Air Marshal Houston]: Operation Catalyst’, 5 May 2003. 55 ‘Message from the Chief of Air Force [Air Marshal Houston]: Update from the Middle East and

Canberra’, 1 July 2003. 56 ibid. 57 ‘Message from the Chief of Air Force [Air Marshal Houston]: Operation Falconer’, 24 April

2003. 58 ‘Message from the Chief of the Air Force [Air Marshal Houston]: Operation Falconer’, 22 April

2003. 59 Air Marshal Angus Houston, CAF Symposium Keynote Speech, entitled ‘Culture, Capability and

Concepts’, 10 February 2003.


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without hesitation … repeated this magnificent act … His aircraft burst into flames … He gave his life in the service of his country.’60 And second, ‘A piece of splinter tore into the side of Flight Lieutenant Rawdon Hume Middleton’s face, destroying the right eye and exposing the bone … Middleton expressed the intention of trying to make the English coast so that his crew could leave the aircraft by parachute … although he knew that by then he would have little or no chance to save himself. … Five of the crew left the aircraft safely … Their gallant captain was apparently unable to leave the aircraft and his body was not recovered.’61

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

This brief canter through history has shown us that, broadly speaking, air power has a prime function of controlling the air so that the airspace may be used by friendly forces and denied to hostile forces. It can be used as a strategic tool of government, through its ability to deploy over long ranges and the threat of such deployment. And it can be used to enhance the relative combat power of land and maritime forces. The importance of airlift has tended to be overshadowed somewhat by the more prolific and detailed reporting of combat air operations. Not only has the importance of airlift been demonstrated through its marked contribution to the success of combat operations on the ground, but enormous effort has also gone into ensuring the continuation of worldwide commercial air routes during times of world wars and regional hostilities. The 1948–49 Berlin Airlift remains one of history’s most notable airlift operations. Since then, airlift has figured prominently in conflict, famine relief, evacuation of friendly nationals from unstable countries, evacuation of refugees from oppressive regimes, and movement of Commonwealth, Coalition and United Nations sponsored monitoring forces. There can be little question that technological developments in terms of airframes, engines, avionics and weapons systems have dominated the way in which air power has evolved since 1903. But as important as technology has been, the quality of the people—both aircrew and highly competent, mission-oriented ground crew—has been at the heart of the success that Australia has enjoyed in the air. Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason of the Royal Air Force expresses this well: ‘one asset possessed of an air force that actually appreciates ... [over time] ... is its people’.62 We should need no reminding that ‘the successful application of air power involves a number of essential elements, including people and their training, platforms and their associated weapons, bases and their supporting infrastructure, and guiding principles’.63 Indeed, ‘while operations may be an air force’s lifeblood, the flow,

60 RAAF Saga: The RAAF at War, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1944, p 187. 61 ibid. 62 Air Vice-Marshal R.A. Mason, RAF, ‘The Decade of Opportunity: Air Power in the 1990s’,

Airpower Journal, Fall 1987, p 14. 63 From the Foreword by the then CAS, Air Marshal L.B. Fisher, to Stephens, Going Solo, p v.


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direction and sustenance of that lifeblood are determined by many individuals’.64 Furthermore, ‘smart platforms are all good and well. But it is well-trained people who operate, support and protect them.’65 All that said, as Dr Alan Stephens has rightly observed, ‘the history of air power is very much an exercise of ideas’.66 While these ideas have sometimes been overstated, the traditional strengths of air power have remained—flexibility, mobility and adaptability.67 Indeed, so powerfully have these attributes been demonstrated at times that doctrine writers have referred to the ubiquity of air power. Australian airmen have always found themselves constrained by resources, but ever ready to seek to balance these resources with the ideas or concepts that continue to emerge to keep Australians at the forefront of aviation and the use of air power. They have had to balance the reality of the present with the uncertainty of the future—made possible in part by the inherent flexibility, mobility and adaptability of air power and the ingenuity of Australians to get the most from those attributes. That ability continues today.68 And I am impressed with what I see—agile minds for fragile times. Finally, history has provided examples of the primacy of air superiority, or control of the air, and the fundamental need, whether it be in air-to-air or air-to-surface operations, to seize the offensive. Those are the broad lessons, but the most fundamental lesson of all is that you ignore history at your peril. I was reminded of this recently in Parliament House, where Robert Kaplan, a noted US author and journalist, noted that the study of history is the best preparation for the future.69 And in preparing for that future, it behoves us today to examine what I think are the underpinnings of successful organisations so that we might take a little more with us on the mission. In essence, the resilience and strength needed for success comes through leadership, culture and values. I will just elaborate on these briefly. Leadership communicates clearly and decisively the organisation’s context and commitment to its mission and backs up direction with action. It sets the priorities, allocates the resources and follows through on commitments to its people. An enduring culture is built on empowerment, purpose, trust and accountability. A strong sense of purpose cascades down and across the organisation—it glues the organisation together and aligns individual, unit and whole-of-force goals into the one continuum. The enduring Air Force culture is built on a strong sense of trust between

64 ibid, p v. 65 Houston, CAF Symposium Keynote Speech, entitled ‘Culture, Capability and Concepts’,

10 February 2003. 66 And this continues today as the Air Force develops its aerospace warfighting concepts of

aerospace strike, joint fires, mobility, and protection and response. These concepts will be further developed to inform capability development and experimentation to ensure the RAAF remains integral to the ADF’s realising its joint future warfighting concept of multi-dimensional manoeuvre.

67 Stephens (ed), Smaller but Larger, p 29. 68 Houston, CAF Symposium Keynote Speech, entitled ‘Culture, Capability and Concepts’,

10 February 2003. 69 Robert Kaplan, ‘The Future of the Nation State’, an address to the Australian Institute of

Company Directors 2003 Conference, The Alchemy of Change, Parliament House, 15 May 2003.


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all, including the Air Force’s customers and stakeholders. People assume responsibility readily and commit to action decisively and ethically. It is through a robust and common set of values that the culture endures, the organisation remains committed, and the leadership provides added value. Knowing what your values are and maintaining them in times of crisis is fundamental. Organisations that deal best with rapid and unsettling change and the effect of discontinuities (the things you don’t foresee) are those that are values-based and values-driven. This is how you deliver with a difference in the future—as your predecessors have delivered throughout the last 100 years. In looking at the Air Force of 2003, I see an organisation that is currently up there with the leaders in cultural realignment. This requires enlightened leadership to continue—not just from the Chief, but from the one and two-stars and those more junior who are destined to be in that senior leadership team in the not too distant future. Ensuring the Air Force has the leaders to carry on the traditions and the ability to deal with the exigencies of the future, demands as much a focus on leadership development as it does on technical excellence. My view, biased as it might be, is that the RAAF is well positioned to handle whatever comes its way in the second hundred years of air power.


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PANEL DISCUSSION


Air Commodore Norman Ashworth (RAAF Ret’d): Gary [Air Commodore Waters], I would like to commend you on your homily at the end of your presentation on leadership. That was excellent and I hope it will be an inspiration to people in the room. I would like to go back, an historical point of view. You gave a very quick run down of World War II and its air power lessons. One area I think that you omitted, and a lot of people tend to omit this, is the use of air power by Japan in its southern advance from December 1941 to mid-1942. I believe when you look at that particular set of campaigns, air power was the feature that enabled Japan to move so rapidly and across such a wide front. And then if you follow that up when Japan started to be pushed back by MacArthur from the South-West Pacific and by Nimitz across the Pacific, air power again and again tended to be the key feature for success in those campaigns. Air Commodore Waters: Thank you Norm for your comments on the homily. As ever, I hate standing up in front of Norman Ashworth because he always asks really good questions. I understand that the Aerospace Centre has just been given a great task to have a look at Japan’s advance in World War II and develop a paper, so I guess I have just ducked that one. One of the things that is quite surprising and has always amazed me when I go to history conferences in the UK is that they always bring a German expert over to talk about how air power was used, not only RAF conferences but also the other Services. They bring a German airman over to talk about how he saw Germany used air power. Maybe it is more difficult, but we never invite someone from Japan to come over here and talk about their lessons; maybe it is time we did that. Perhaps, those who have better cultural sensitivities than I could let me know whether that is a good idea or not. But again, I think that is probably something that the Aerospace Centre might like to pick up on. So Norm, thank you very much. Squadron Leader David Jeffcoat (RAAF – Aerospace Centre): Sir, I notice your overview did not seem to cover the period of the 1950s and 1960s, when Strategic Air Command from the United States was dominant—intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched and ground-launched missiles. Sure, we do not have nuclear weapons here in Australia, although in the past couple of weeks I have read in the paper about the Australian Government perhaps joining in with the United States, about ballistic missile defence, rumours about North Korea having long-range missiles and so on. Is this part of the air power experience we should be learning from? Air Commodore Waters: Yes it is. The organisers said to me very precisely that I had 45 minutes for my presentation. I obviously picked up on the things that I liked, the things that I knew a bit more about and I tried to avoid some of those that could be contentious so we could tease them out in question time, so thank you. I avoided as much as I could ‘political-type’ issues. Having also been fortunate to spend a bit of time in the United States, on and off, I saw the rise and fall of the missileers, and


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some of them are good friends. There was great opprobrium in the US through a few years when the missileers were starting to move up, and then, of course, it dropped away. So, I didn’t really get into it. I think to my mind a lot of the observations can be a little bit about political things to avoid in any Air Force, but you’re quite right, it is an element of air power that we should look at and, indeed, in the future we will have no option but to look at it; perhaps not learning those sorts of lessons from history though. Dick [Dr Richard Hallion] I don’t know if you wanted to make any other comment or if I have maligned your missileer colleagues. Doctor Richard Hallion: We did see a very difficult time in the early 1990s, and I am trying to sort out the relationship between missileers and the rest of the force. There was a feeling in the missile community, and indeed in the larger space community, that they were second-class citizens. The idea was that you could see a leader coming in from, say, Air Combat Command into Space Command but you could not see it going the other way, so to speak. That has been a difficult one to work, as well as the cultural issues of dealing with people who were focused on the operational side of missile operations and then those who may have been coming in from the R&D side, where time criticality was not necessarily at the top of their agenda. It was a difficult business. Mr Sebastian Cox: Well Gary, I couldn’t let you get away with it really, could I? Politics, you avoided politics, so I am here to make you talk about politics. In talking about Kosovo you had ‘ineffective use of air power, through gradualism’, I think you said. And you then said you need the tools to support the strategy. In the real world, of course—outside of doctrine manuals that we all like writing and contributing to—you have to deal with politicians and you have to deal with coalitions and you have to deal with coalitions of politicians. And coalitions of politicians are difficult things to deal with. Now, I am perfectly well aware of the views of airmen on Kosovo and the ‘mistakes’ made at the beginning of the campaign. The quotes about, ‘We should have gone downtown Belgrade from day one’ etc. None of which, in theory, I necessarily disagree with, except that I think if we had gone downtown Belgrade on day one, then I am not sure that the coalition would have survived politically. Because of the politics of NATO, bizarrely enough and paradoxically enough, it required the campaign to fail initially in order to concentrate the minds of the politicians sufficiently, particularly in some south-east European capitals (let’s put it that way), to realise that it was not in their interests for the campaign to fail and that they had to fall in behind it. And if that required a more organised and frankly brutal air campaign, then they had better get onside because the alternatives were, frankly, less acceptable to them than getting in behind it. Do you agree that that bizarre paradox was in fact in place and that, had the air campaign been conducted at the beginning in the way it was at the end, the coalition would have fallen apart? Air Commodore Waters: Well Sebastian, in a decade or so of knowing you, I know you never ask a question unless you have the answer. And, invariably, in posing your wonderful questions the way you do, you have usually encapsulated your thoughts. So, I think you obviously do believe that. I would put forward four points. Number one, because you have studied it far more than I, I am very happy to bow down to your knowledge and analysis and interpretation of all those sorts of things. But let me suggest, from my own view, knowing some of the world’s best airmen—and I don’t mean that from a flying point of view, but from a planning point of view—I doubt that

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any of them have ever planned to fail. So, one should always be a little careful I think in looking at things retrospectively and suggesting that anyone might have planned to fail so as to achieve something. Real world and pragmatism, you mentioned those two words. Were our Minister here, he would give you a view on that because I had the pleasure of meeting with him and talking about where we were going with network-centric warfare. And he said, ‘Well Gary, there are a couple of things that we differ on. One is I’m operating in the real world and two is I’m a pragmatist’. So, perhaps, you have encapsulated it very well that my paper today did lack ‘real worldism’ and pragmatism and, if so, then you are in good company with my Minister. My fourth point, and let me suggest to you Sebastian that this is a wonderful thing about coming and visiting Australia, Australia is not in NATO. It does not have to deal with that ungodly mess of politicians to get something going. Let me take that point, since it is the last point, and let me congratulate all of our Chiefs that are here today and those that are not for actually ensuring that they have kept us out of that sort of unholy mess. Gentlemen, you do deserve to be congratulated. We have not got ourselves into that because we have had far-sighted leaders and I see more far-sighted leaders coming down the pipe for us. Thank you, Sebastian.


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OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONFERENCE

AIR VICE-MARSHAL JOHN BLACKBURN, AM

Chief of Air Force, ladies and gentlemen, the question I am going to try and look at now, as we summarise what has happened over the last two days, is what do we take away? But perhaps the question should be, what do we learn if we don’t do something about it? Therefore, I want to pose the question, what do we take forward? At this point, I particularly want to thank Sanu Kainikara for assiduously taking notes through these two days. What we have done is looked through those notes and sat back and said, are there some common things? I certainly do not intend to try and repeat the air power lessons that have come out of this, but are there some common things that we need to think about. Chief of Air Force set the theme when he emphasised the lessons from history and their relevance to today. History is very important to us as a Defence organisation, not only from the warfighting focus, which by and large is what we tend to focus on at these types of conferences, but as an overall issue and also in our relationships with the Government, because it is the effectiveness of that relationship and our organisation as a whole that has a direct impact on the effectiveness of our force. Certainly, those of us who have participated in some of the many and repetitive reviews that we go through in Defence could, on occasion, be forgiven for thinking that we do not learn the lessons from history. We tend to look at the problem as it exists today and blunder forward without understanding some of those issues from the past. When we look at modern concepts, we sometimes kid ourselves that this is something new. Commodore Goldrick and I, and Air Commodore Gary Waters as well, have been very much involved in the network-centric warfare (NCW) paper that we have been doing, and right at the core of that is the OODA Loop from Boyd. I have recently read some history of Boyd’s life and where he got his ideas from, all the way back from some of the very early scholars. So, it is looking at that continuity. There may be some new terminology, but there are some important historical links back in the NCW work we have done. Most important of all is that history is telling us about people and possibilities. That doesn’t change through time. Doctor Alan Stephens spoke to us about the three themes that underlie the constraints of air power employment—the political challenge of promoting and maintaining alliances, the challenge in balancing offensive capability and the reactions in the region, and the increasing impact of air power on national security decision-making. He highlighted, in particular, some issues about direct and indirect threats and how we posture our force. It is interesting to note the path, again a historical path, from forward defence, through defence of Australia to the cusp of where we are now, which is focusing back into the region and our ability to operate there as our primary aim, and then the ability to operate beyond the region. We are part of the way around that wheel. It was interesting to hear about the concept of a mobile task force and how in recent years we have been talking, once again, about an ‘expeditionary Air Force’. But even as recently as the last few months that term still causes quite a bit of nervousness around town, although that, as CAF often says, is the key to our effectiveness.


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Professor John McCarthy spoke on what I thought was an interesting term, air power and sensibility. He noted a couple of contentious issues, particularly the issue of collateral damage; the term itself being a problem. But I think we can address those through looking at our technology—the PGM, our sensors, our designators and our targeting. Educating the broader population about our abilities in that area is going to be the key—educating them about our professionalism and about our ability to avoid collateral damage, or perhaps whatever better term we come up with. The second issue he highlighted I think is probably a more difficult one. In promoting air power and the benefits it brings, issues arise about priorities between the forces. He highlighted the concerns held, perhaps, by our Naval and Army colleagues that when we promote air power it can be seen to be at the expense of the other Services. This issue is certainly going to be more difficult for us to address—moving from preaching to actually proving our case, to discussing a joint approach to educating people and to be educated ourselves about the other Services. Picking up on the point made by Doctor Richard Hallion last night, what stuck in my mind is that, even with his breadth of experience and depth of knowledge, the challenge he still faces is trying to educate a broader audience about the issues. As he pointed out, we ignore history at our own peril. In looking at this joint lesson, just a question to pose in your mind, have we ever had a joint history conference? I am not aware of one. I asked Alan Stephens before and somebody said we had not. The other thing we need to draw from what Professor McCarthy said is that perhaps we need to be our own critics as well as our own champions. I think sometimes we can reinforce ourselves without looking very critically at what we provide and without looking at it from the perspective of our sister Services. I will come back to that issue about jointness a little later. Sanu Kainikara reminded us that while we can and will continue to operate in a very wide spectrum of operations, particularly operations other than war, the primary reason for an air force is the ability to apply lethal force in pursuit of national security, at the right time and at the right place. In other words, let us not forget the basics of what we are about, particularly in periods of peace. Air Vice-Marshal Brian Weston raised the issue about the relationships between the Air Force, our manufacturers and our supporting organisations, and again highlighted some lessons from history about the partnership and the challenges we faced. I understand some of the workshops covered this issue as well. The role of that partnership, not only in the selling and supporting equipment, we see nowadays to be one of growing and learning, and to participate or partner with industry in exploring the way forward. As Gary Waters has mentioned and a few others, the experimentation programs that are emerging now, building on what Army has done in recent years, provide an excellent opportunity for a much closer partnership with industry to look at how we will work together in the future in a far more complex environment. Air Commodore Mark Lax spoke about critical shaping events, both external and those internally that we have brought upon ourselves, and the reality of that that we have to deal with. That change that will continue, but our strategic planning needs to cater for these future influences as strategic planning without a good historical

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understanding or basis, again, is ill-informed and likely to lead us to the same sets of problems. Major Russel Parkin spoke to us about moving from an independent approach to air power to interdependence, and heading towards integration—picking up perhaps some of these seamless force themes that we have tried to put into the joint vision. But this approach has to be underpinned by a shared understanding, by the processes, procedures, doctrine and strategy, but a shared understanding of history is again very important. Once again, how we approach our learning from history and perhaps also in our various air power, land power and maritime power conferences. I would raise the point here again; does it allow us to achieve that shared understanding to the best effect? These conferences are certainly very valuable but, as I will come to a little later, perhaps we have to find a way of getting a much broader and more balanced participation in some of these discussions to learn from them and, therefore, work out the way forward. Sebastian Cox spoke of maturing relationships with the RAF and RAAF—and perhaps I need now to focus on our abilities to lead an air campaign where appropriate—and the requirement for us to develop further our doctrine and strategic capabilities. Commodore Jack McCaffrie discussed the historical challenges of funding and inter-Service rivalries and then led into the challenges of today, where we balance an independent capability versus the need to conduct and support coalition operations. He highlighted concerns regarding the lack of an air strike capability and the need for Air Force to understand air power requirements, in terms of air defence and maritime strike. Again, a theme emerging from here about the need for shared understanding and development, and I am very heartened to see in the last 12 months or so discussion of a shared Navy and Air Force experimentation program. The possibility of approaching it that way to build that understanding of the future together, rather than doing it individually and then trying to piece it together afterwards. This links to some broader issues of education, once again, for that pool of experience, for those people working together need to have some common understanding to experiment with future force possibilities. Group Captain Ric Casagrande spoke about the broad range of operations the Air Force has conducted, particularly focusing on operations other than war, and the challenges we face in balancing lethal capabilities with our support to nation building and aid to the civil power. Whilst military operations other than war will not affect force structure planning directly, there is an increasing need to facilitate operations that are conducted in aid of civil authorities. He mentioned the key to this flexibility is our people, highlighting the need for continued emphasis on their education and training to be adaptive to emergent situations; how we innovate and make the best use of our capabilities to meet new circumstances. Air Commodore Gary Waters, in setting the global context retrospectively, had a ‘shotgun dance’ through history, emphasising the flexibility, mobility and adaptability of air power and particularly of our people, with a growth in capability based on some consistent principals. He highlighted some of the new ideas emerging and, again, I have looked back to the discussions of Boyd and Warden and it is interesting to reflect on where their ideas were developed from in the historical links. He highlighted some challenges for us and I think the important one that will still take some time for us to


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understand is the need to value and protect our information. One of the problems we find there with the construct of the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is the challenge of ownership. It does not fall naturally or obviously to any single Service and, therefore, that history of ownership and support for that capability and the priority of that capability compared to some of our historical platform approaches is something we still have some way to resolve, but I think we are actually heading in the right direction. The other challenge he highlighted was the need to ensure that air power is applied with clear intent, intelligently and in support of a coherent strategy. History certainly offers the opportunities to learn from previous mistakes and successes, but only if we are prepared to learn from them. Again, the linkage I bring out of those discussions is about a broader education; encouraging people to learn from history, to examine it and to include it in their considerations of what they do in their day-to-day jobs. It is certainly something that is strongly in my mind as we try to look at the force 15 or 20 years out; what is it that we can take with us forward that will still be applicable to the future? There was a series of workshops run today and it will be interesting to see your separate feedback on the value of those. In talking to the people involved, it was interesting to note some of the themes that emerged from these discussions. From the ‘people versus technology’ workshop, the point that was highlighted was that it is not a matter of versus technology, it is trying to determine that appropriate balance; not one or the other for every case. Highlighting, of course, that technology in itself cannot innovate and it will not create the seamless force—it may help it or it may hinder it. Again, the value of people was an issue of some concern about the exodus of experience from the forces over time. Perhaps something for us to ponder on is that we only show people as a ‘cost’ on the balance sheet, we actually do not show them as ‘value’. Hence, when we lose experience or we invest in our people, it is never shown as a balance of an asset that we have in our organisation, and this is still a fundamental problem for us today. So whilst we do value people and we are pushing the concept of people first, I understand there was some concern about how that can be the case in the face of reducing people numbers. Well, we still have to face reality. People are first, but in a balanced force between people, capability and operating costs. The reality we face of a six to seven per cent per annum growth in people costs and some of the challenges that we will face with the demographics in the future, which may not allow us to recruit the number and type of people we want, mean that we are going to be driven to having more ‘combat outcome’ per person with appropriate support from technology doctrine and training. That does not mean that we are always going to have 54,000 people in the ADF. I would suggest that we will not; we will not be able to afford it. But how we get the better combat outcome for our people and how we place the priority on the people in the Service does not mean that the numbers are sacrosanct. In the workshop on air power and peace enforcement and monitoring, the discussion emphasised the flexible range of capabilities that Air Force has if those capabilities are effectively matched to task but did note that there were some limitations in the range of perhaps non-lethal weapons or smaller capability weapons that could be used with less risk of associated damage. Highlighted also was the growing role of Air Force in this area. Whilst Army has the primacy here and a long history of it, the need for us to explore how Air Force can continue and make a greater contribution in these areas was identified. But again, as has been discussed in a few other points, the need

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to explore that jointly is the key; not for Air Force necessarily to do it by itself and then try and jump in on the issue later. The third workshop was on whether the Australian military aviation industry has been a success or failure. I believe that the summary out of that was essentially that it is not quite that simple. It is not success or failure. The challenges we faced historically of being a small player with, on occasion, unclear requirements from the customer and variable government support have given us some significant difficulties in producing a sustainable capability. The future was discussed as being, perhaps, one of niche capability, and showing some of the supporting contracts in the area of JSF as being examples. One issue in talking to the moderators of that session that perhaps did not come up, or certainly was not highlighted in the notes, is the role of Australia’s military aviation industry in the future. I would just like to throw one issue on the table that we have been trying to explore somewhat. It is not only in support of capabilities, or the provision of those capabilities, but the biggest challenge we are going to face down the line is systems integration. Whilst we have been very largely a platform-focused organisation, Air Force is moving rapidly with the capabilities we are getting to being a much more networked force. We now have a problem that we are building a ‘system of systems’ without a blueprint—not that perhaps you could have one. One of the key industry roles that we are going to have to look at is lead system integration. Within Defence and our acquisition organisations I do not think we will have the expertise of continuity actually to perform the lead system integrator role and, therefore, that role must fall to industry. The network-centric warfare processes and proposals that we are putting in place provide an outstanding opportunity for industry to think about that and to progressively step into that role. Therefore, I would suggest that the role for military aviation history and industry is far more than a niche capability. It is to be a part of that lead system integrated team to understand how to integrate these complex and capable platforms and capabilities into this broader ‘system of systems’ in the future. So, when I look at some of the points here, if that is what we take away, what do we take forward? A couple of key words kept coming out as we looked at what people said: education—a shared understanding of lessons and possibilities, not forgetting the basics—shared experience and shared planning. What we have in these conferences, as for a lot of others, is rich in knowledge, but the question is, is it shared and is it applied? Now, I think this has been a very successful and very well-organised conference, and I certainly want to pay tribute to the Aerospace Centre and all those involved, and all the speakers who came here because I think we have had a successful outcome. I am deeply impressed with what has been achieved over the past couple of decades by the three single Service Study Centres in advancing their thinking about the historical, contemporary and future issues of Australia’s defence. I think they have done a great deal to advance a balanced approach to our history than what had been in place in the past. But perhaps it is time for us to move to the next step forward. There will always be a place for the single Service history conferences, but I think we need to do more; not to replace those single Service efforts, but in addition to them. I sat down this morning with Commodore Goldrick, who had been here yesterday, and tried to get a flavour of where we would go with this sort of issue and what sort of impression does someone who is not in an Air Force uniform bring to this. We had some pretty common concerns and thoughts, so I will put those on the table. The difficult questions in Australian defence history are not related to the single


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Services alone, but largely to their relationships and interaction with each other, with the Department of Defence as it exists as a whole, and with the wider machinery of government. I asked Alan before, but have we ever had a Defence history conference, a joint history conference? I was particularly struck by last year’s history conference when we brought out some of the lessons of our past joint operations. But if we take those and disaggregate those into the single Services, and then push those as being examples of how we are being joint, in the past, it is pretty hard to glue together. So, perhaps it is time to look at a joint Defence History Conference, a joint power conference. The RAAF Aerospace Conferences have been attempting to go in the direction of joint air power, but I think we need to look at joint power in totality to allow us to bring those lessons forward from history and to share collectively understanding and knowledge, to portray that future force capability. If you look around the conference hall today, I think you will understand the point that I am trying to make. There are too few Navy, Army and Australian Public Service personnel in the group, and my Navy colleagues will tell me that there were not many Air Force personnel at last week’s King Hall Naval History Conference. There are also too few people from outside of the Defence organisation, both today and in the past. We are mature enough now as a Defence Force and as a Defence organisation to set about examining together some of the more complex and controversial periods in our history. Commodore Goldrick has suggested that we should take a new look, for example, at the era of the Singapore strategy, at the period of forward defence and at the bitter argument over the aircraft carrier. We need to do this because it is only through a deep understanding of where we come from that we are going to do better in the future, and we will not achieve that deep understanding by keeping too closely within single Service boundaries. We need to put the ‘dead cats’ on the table to understand what happened and why, and then move forward from there to understand how we are going to build together on those very valuable lessons from the past. In dealing with one of those difficult subjects, that of air support to land forces, I understand Major Parkin spoke yesterday about the third phase of an Army-Air Force relationship being one of integration. Implicit in his discussion was the point that integration very much depends upon the sort of understanding I am talking about. Why, for example, did Army take the line that it did over the control of rotary wing aviation? Why did the Air Force and what were the other issues? What line did the Navy take at the time and why? What was the view within the Department? What can we learn from that story and what can we take ahead to help inform us in some of these critical decisions that will be made not only in this capability review, but in the next and the one after that and henceforth? Let me throw out a challenge to the Studies Centres to bring about together a Defence History Conference, and perhaps in due course a Joint Power Conference, that coldly, deliberately and fairly looks at one or more such questions, even when there may be issues that we are not very proud about. We need to take the lead to help build that joint culture and, as Gary Waters once repeated before, that common set of values. But it is like a family; you have got to put the ‘dead cats’ on table first. We need to have some lively debate and to hear speakers that make us feel uncomfortable and force us to reflect on our past in ways that we are not accustomed to, and to let those speakers be prepared to defend and argue their case when their audience is not inherently sympathetic or right-minded. The only inhibition to us achieving that shared understanding and taking those shared lessons of history forward is us. We have the opportunity to take the next step.

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CLOSURE

AIR MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON, AO, AFC

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I only want to take a few minutes to close this conference, I think it has all been said. John Blackburn, you did an excellent job in pulling the whole conference together and I thank you very much for that. I think what I would like to do is pick up on what John said about perhaps going a little bit more joint, and I totally endorse the way he wants to go—the challenge to the three Studies Centres to put on a joint conference to explore some of those issues. A few years ago I had the great pleasure of sitting next to General Tim Cape on one side and Sir Richard Kingsland on the other side at a dinner. Of course, Sir Richard was a Group Captain in the Air Force and they were both together on a headquarters in Morotai in 1945. I was sitting at this dinner, in fact I was the Dining President, and early in the evening I turned to Tim and said, ‘Tim, how did you find the Air Force?’ He said, ‘Angus, operationally brilliant, courageous, innovative, but when it came to the staff work they were hopeless’. A little bit later on after that conversation finished I turned to Sir Richard who had been on exactly the same headquarters as Tim and I said, ‘Sir Richard, how did you find the Army?’ He said, ‘Angus, their planning was meticulous, the way they put their divisions in the field was most impressive but, Angus, there was a lot of bull—!’ As they are still very much alive and kicking, I would suggest a good start might be to get these two gentlemen together as the opening activity of the conference. I think it has been a great conference. I extend my thanks to all the speakers, particularly the two that came so far, Richard Hallion and Sebastian Cox, and we will miss that interaction with Garry, it was very entertaining this afternoon. I would also like to thank all the delegates for your contribution. A conference such as this is not successful unless we have a responsive audience and there has certainly been plenty of discussion in the time that I have spent here. Before I go on and thank the staff, I would just like to congratulate a couple of officers, who I think are in the audience. Group Captain Lee Roberts and Group Captain Simon Harvey have both been promoted to Air Commodore. So would you join with me in congratulating them? I would like to thank Ric Casagrande and his team at the Aerospace Centre for putting on an excellent conference and an excellent dinner and awards ceremony last night; all of it has been first class. I would like to single out a few people. Sanu Kainikara who was actually the manager that pulled it all together, Andrew Haese, Roz Bourke, Sharmane Mifsud, Allan Crowe, who did a marvellous job of keeping us all on time although I know it was a bit challenging with a couple of speakers, and of course the corporate knowledge for the Aerospace Centre, Sandra Di Guglielmo. Sandra, you have been around the Aerospace Centre for a long, long time and we know that you are the glue that holds everything together. I would like to thank you for doing it yet again. It has been a great conference and a great couple of days. Thank you all very, very much and I think the line that I would like to finish on is ‘history is important, we ignore it at our peril’. Richard Hallion said it last night and Gary Waters said it again


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this afternoon and I think that is where I would like to leave it. So, I have great pleasure in closing this conference. I hope you enjoyed it. I will not pick up on the joint activity next year. What we are going to do is have an Air Power Conference next year followed by a History Conference the year after. The Air Power conference will be one that will concentrate on the network-enabled Air Force of the future. I think we need to look at where we have been in the past. Have we been networked before? Some have suggested that we probably have been. I think one of the lessons of the Battle of Britain was that the British were networked, the Germans were not, and that was actually a very decisive factor in the Battle of Britain. Then, perhaps, we can have a look at where we are right now and where we are going to go in the future as an Air Force in this joint construct, or this beyond-joint construct that we are thinking about in Defence at the moment. I think that would be a very useful Air Power Conference to have and we will start working on that right away. In terms of the History Conference the year after, Air Marshal Les Fisher gave me a very good idea last night. He suggested to me very strongly that we needed to spend more time thinking about the ‘air power masters’, the Kenny’s of the world, the Trenchard’s of the world and so on. That idea that came up late this afternoon that we always ignore the adversary perspective has merit. I think would be very interesting to explore Yamomoto’s strategy as he came south in World War II, from an air power point of view. So, I think there is plenty we can pick up on there and, perhaps, I could challenge some of the retired Air Marshals to give us a hand in exploring some of those masters of air power, the practitioners. We have spent a lot of time talking about the theorists, but I think we need to have a look at the practitioners and what we can learn from them. So, it gives me great pleasure now to close the 2003 RAAF History Conference. Thank you all very much for your contributions and thank you for your attendance.