Marshall,
Frank (Interviewer; Recordist. March 13, 1986)
This is Frank Marshall,
interviewing Air Vice Marshal Henry Neilson Wrigley CBE DFC
AFC, regarding his military career. Air Marshal Wrigley
was born 21 April 1892.
- Right, if you'd like to continue now and tell me about -
begin with your childhood and then through your education and
how it led into the military side of your career.
Wrigley,
Henry Neilson (Interviewee)
Actually I was born in Abbotsford. Of my parents, my
father was of Lancashire stock and my mother, her family came from
Dundee in Scotland.
My father was a foreman joiner with John Moore &
Son timber merchants in South Melbourne and he was an expert in
almost every kind of woodwork and his main hobby was wood carving
and wood inlay work.
As far as my schooling was concerned, I started school
in the Richmond Central School and went on from there to Melbourne
High School and completed the two years term at that school.
My first involvement in service work was when I joined
the school company of senior cadets and after leaving school at
Melbourne High
This was the Melbourne
High School cadets, was it?
Yes. On leaving school I became a teacher in the
Victorian Education Department and became involved at that time in
junior cadet training and a little later became an officer in the
senior cadets, and from there passed on to militia work and became a
militia officer and served with two battalions of that force.
One with headquarters in South Richmond with the unit officially
known as the Yarra Borderers, colloquially known as the Yarra
Murderers. And from there I was transferred to the Kew
Glenferrie Regiment on its formation. And I was still serving
as a militia officer with that regiment at the outbreak of the 1914
- 1918 war.
Like the majority of militia officers, I applied to
join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] but was turned down on the
grounds that my services were required in Australia. This was
something which was hard to understand as I was officially doing
about one and a half hours work a week.
This was with the
Education Department, was it?
No. This was at the AIF camp at Broadmeadows.
But why didn't they allow
you to go overseas?
Hmm?
Why didn't they allow you
to go overseas?
They said my services were required in Australia.
As a training officer?
Training purposes. And as I say one and a half
hours a week didn't seem to me to be an obstacle of any nature at
all to my going over to the AIF. However, eventually they
called for applications from officers to do a course in military
flying at Point Cook. And I applied for appointment to the
course at Point Cook. I was called up before a selection board
who questioned me on various subjects but mainly on whether I could
ride a horse or not. However, I enlightened them on that
subject by telling them that I had a thoroughbred horse which I
bought partially broken in and finished the breaking in business
myself.
But what - how did they
connect the being able to ride a horse with flying? What
connection was there? Was it from a balance point of
view?
Well, you know, the touch and balance. If you
were a good horse rider, you manipulated your horse by means of the
reins, bit and reins. And in an aircraft it was something the
same because you control the movements of the aircraft by your
control column. However, as I was going out of the room after
the interview, one bright member of the board asked me could I ride
a motorbike and I enlightened him on that question and was then told
I didn't have much chance of being selected for the course.
However, I went home and, however, in less than a week I got a
telegram telling me to report to Point Cook. So that was my
start with aviation.
Did they have a course
number in your day? You know, now we've got course
numbers. They know
Yes, they did. But I don't know what it
was. Can't remember what it was.
But you'd be one of the
first of them, anyway.
Be one of the early ones. However, I completed
the course at Point Cook and at that time they were forming what
became known as Number 3 Squadron about a mile down the road from
Point Cook station. And they - the fellows on the course, all
except two of us, were posted to the expeditionary squadron down the
road. The two who missed out was a chap who was an engineer
and myself. And we knew at the time that one member of the
course was to be retained at Point Cook as an instructor so that the
two of us that were kept back knew that one of us was ear marked for
the job at Point Cook. However, within three or four days I
was posted to the AIF camp down the road so I knew that I was clear
of the instructor's job. And from there, of course, we sort of
fitted up and got ready for overseas. And eventually we moved
to Port Melbourne and embarked in - I think it was A38 Transport
[Ship]. In peacetimes it was the SS Ulysses of the
Blue Funnel Line. And we went to Britain via Durban and
Freetown in Sierra Leone and disembarked at Weymouth and were then
shifted off to South Carlton which was
This is in the UK?
just north of Lincoln in the UK
Yeah, this is in the
United Kingdom.
Yes. And there the squadron was fitted out and
the mechanics were given a fairly lengthy period of training on the
type of aircraft which the squadron was to fly. And the
officers and pilots, we were sent off to various squadrons of the
RFC [Royal Flying Corps]. I did a conversion course to RE8
aircraft and then set out to do my first tour of operations which
was carried out with firstly, No.42 Squadron Royal Flying Corps,
commanded by an Irishman and a very gallant one at that. And
then when the Ypres offensive was due to open up, the squadrons up
on that front were short-manned, and myself and a couple of other
pilots from 42 Squadron were transferred up to 6 Squadron.
A very different type of commanding officer up there,
but a very good commanding officer. He was a member of the
House of Commons and a quiet, very unassuming type of man but like
his comrade with 42 Squadron, very gallant chap and a very high
reputation. And I finished my first tour of operations with 6
Squadron, by the end of which 3 Squadron was almost ready to go over
to France and I was transferred back to No.3. We had roughly
about a month there and then the orders came, off to France.
We had one casualty in the squadron on the way to
France. A very inexperienced pilot got himself into trouble and that was that.
This is on the journey
over, was it?
On the journey over.
And not in actual combat.
Yes. And we went over to the RFC squadron at Savy.
And we sort of did a little bit of orientation flying there to get
to know a bit more about the type of country we'd be operating
over. And then eventually we were posted out to our
operational airfield and strange as it may seem, we were in with
No.42 Squadron, whom I'd had my first active service experience
with. At a place called Bailleul.
From there we settled in fairly quickly. Our
NCOs and airmen were, by this time - like most Australians - they
were pretty adaptable and they learnt their job pretty quickly and
the squadron became operational down there. I think we did a
very good job of work down there as an army co-operation
squadron. The only fly in the ointment was that our CO never
flew. Never flew on operations at all. And as far as I
can remember, the only time he flew in France was when the squadron
left Britain and went to France. And there was a hard and fast
rule in the RFC at that time that when the squadron was going out to
France, the leader of the aircraft formation must the CO of the
squadron. And that is the only time I think he ever flew in
France.
Was there any reason for
him not to fly in combat?
No, not that I know of. He was a very good
administrative officer, I'll say that for him. But never doing
any operational flying in France, he lacked the ability to
appreciate the conditions under which pilots and observers were
working. And if a pilot and observer came back from the line
without having finished their job, he was very critical of
them. And no matter what reason they came back for, it didn't
sort of tone down his criticism, which was rather unfortunate.
He actually wasn't
experienced in that operational role himself.
No. But I think it said a lot for the aircraft
crews that they carried on very efficiently with their jobs and that
was the thing that really mattered.
In your operational
experience, did you have any close shaves with, you know, with
your adversaries?
Well, I think that a question of sort of - what shall
we say - it comes down to a definition of a close shave. A
close shave, we would consider, was one in which we probably got
shot up a bit ourselves. On the other hand, you might be out
there and be fortunate enough to be able to avoid the other
fellow. But we had our days out there and sometimes fellows
were unlucky.
We had one more extraordinary case in which a pilot
named Sandy, and an observer, a chap named Hughes, were shot up by
the Huns and both killed. And according to doctors they must
have been killed instantaneously and yet the aircraft flew on in
widening circles until it ran out of petrol and it sort of came down
and landed itself. With practically no damage. And on
that occasion, two others of our aircraft were on the scene.
There was one - the pilot was [Lieutenant E. J.
Jones]. And I was in the other one. We both
went up and after the Huns cleared up, we were able to get up and
have a look at Sandy's machine and everything appeared to be
normal. So we just sort of waved a hand and said good luck to
you and went off on our own jobs. And yet they both must have
been dead at time.
And yet they were both
killed. Mmm. Mmm. At the time - what was the
role of your squadron at that particular time?
Over the lines? Was it one of fighter escort or was it
one of
?
No. We were purely army co-operation. It
involved a variety of tasks.
In fact we always said that we were the 'maid of all
work' in the air force. We had the regular and standard
reconnaissance jobs. Both on our own side and the other side
of the line. We did a tremendous lot of observation for the
artillery.
And when an offensive was on, as far as we were concerned, one of
our own offensives, we had two other jobs to do. We had a
contact patrol and a counter-attack patrol.
The contact patrol was carried out actually over the
lines and it reported the progress of the troops engaged in the
offensive. The counter-attack patrol - which in my opinion was
a more arduous task than the contact patrol - had to be carried out
well on the Hun side of the line because you had to report on enemy
concentrations for counter-attack and that sort of thing. So
you were well over on the enemy side of the line. And if you
got into trouble and were shot up, you might not get back.
Whereas with a contact patrol, if you were shot up and damaged,
well, you came down on our own side of the line.
Yeah, at least you had a
safety area.
But the contact patrol were the blokes, were the
fellows that got all the kudos out of it.
Mmm. Any of our
chappies that were shot down and taken prisoner by the enemy,
were they treated well by the - pilots and airmen, were they
treated well by the Germans? Do you know?
As far as we know.
There's lots of stories of
course. They say that the Germans treated them just the
same as their own airmen.
Well, I think that from all reports, and I'm thinking
of overall reports in the RFC not only in the Australian squadrons,
I think from the reports that we heard, that there was a feeling of
comradeship when they were still with the enemy unit. What
happened after that, of course, is another matter.
Yes. Yes. And
how long were you over in France? Was it - did you do
tours like there was in the Second World War?
Well something the same. I finished a tour, my
second tour, with 3 Squadron and then I was posted back to Britain
and eventually became chief instructor in No.7, one of [the AFC's]
training squadrons. And I - it was - the circumstances were
rather peculiar. We had a tremendous lot of officers in
official positions who all wore observers badges but their
experience as observers were almost nil. And at Horseferry
Road, AIF headquarters, the senior bloke there was a Colonel
Reynolds. He was a man that... "I'm going to say this, that
and the other," sort of thing.
Before leaving France, I received my instructions to
report to the Australian training wing at Tetbury and then to go to
7 Squadron as chief instructor. And when I reported at
Horseferry Road, Reynolds said, "Now let's see where we'll send
you".
And I said, "Well I'm very sorry, sir, but I already
have my instructions".
"Oh", he said.
And I said, "Yes. I go to No.7 Squadron".
"Oh, no, no, no". And he looks at a chart on the
wall and he said, "No", he said, "you'll go to 5 Squadron".
Well, 5 Squadron was a fighter plane [training]
squadron. However, I went to 5 Squadron and as it turned out,
it had it's advantages. The station commander was a Wing
Commander Tedder, who afterwards as you know became
Lord Tedder.
very famous man. And there I got to know
Tedder fairly well, as far as a subordinate officer gets to know a
station commander, sort of thing. But whilst I was there, I
had the opportunity to go to the RFC School of Special Flying at
Gosport. And that was really something, more than
unusual. The staff of the school were very carefully selected
and included in the staff was Norman Brierley, who was one of the
instructors there. And of course in those days, forced
landings were a very frequent occurrence. And a great deal of
time was spent on training people to carry out forced landings in
the best imaginable way.
I found the course was very useful. In fact, I
later found that my training in forced landings at Gosport paid
dividends on the Darwin flight.
But there were certain tests that you had to pass
before they'd say that you'd passed the course. And then there
were certain tests which you were allowed to carry out voluntarily
if you wished.
And that was a really very difficult task, because
they had marked out on the field the deck plan of HMS Furious,
the first aircraft carrier, which was a converted merchant
ship. And this voluntary test that you were allowed to take if
you so wished, you had to land on that deck area in a cross-wind,
which was no mean effort.
And I said, "Yes, I'd like to have a go at it".
And I came off fairly well, I think. I managed to get the
whole of the undercarriage, one wing and part of the other wing
within the outlying limits of Furious, so I thought that was
Well, it wouldn't be a
very big area then, would it?
Oh, no. Very small one.
I notice that you have DFC
[Distinguished Flying Cross]. Obviously that was in the
First World War. When were you awarded DFC and how did
you come to win that award?
Pardon?
The DFC? How did you
come to win that award?
I don't know. I've never seen the citation.
Oh, well, we won't go into
that.
No, I've never seen the citation for that.
But obviously it must have
been for combat or something in France, was it? Must
have been. Obviously
?
Oh, yes. It had to be in France. It had to
be on active operations, yes.
So it was in France.
One of your tours of France.
So as I say, not having seen the citation, I don't
know how it was described.
That's interesting, isn't
it.
And when you finished your
instructional training and then you were instructing in the
UK, how far had the war progressed by then? Was it in
it's ending stages or
?
Oh, it was just beginning to get into the hotting up
period, you might say. Hindenburg Line etcetera. I went
out just about - back to France - just about that time when the
squadron had been moved from Bailleul up near Armentieres down to
the Somme front. And I saw a good deal of the - when the war
started to move, really move. And so that I feel from an army
co-operation point of view, I had some very good experience because
I saw the work of the army co-operation squadron in what you might
term stationary or siege warfare, and I saw the work of the squadron
when the war became more mobile.
In your period over there,
obviously - what rank did you hold when you were in France in
the war area? Did you rank?
Well, I was a flying officer to start with or
Lieutenants we were then, and then I became a flight commander which
was a Captain's job. And then when I went back for my third
tour, I was still a Captain but I was the senior flight
commander. And eventually the CO was invalided out owing to an
accident which crippled him temporarily and I took over the command
of the squadron.
I see. And that was
command of - what squadron was that?
Three.
3 Squadron?
And then took command of it and brought them home.
I see. And then you
came home to Australia with them then?
Yes.
And when you got back to
Australia, what were your impressions regarding the state of
the country? Did you notice any great differences in the
- from when you left? How long were you away? Were
you away
?
To tell you the truth, I
didn't have very much time to form impressions of that sort because
a telegram to report to the chief of the general staff dragged me
into a busy period getting ready for the Darwin flight. So
that
Oh, yes. Yes.
So you were smartly out of the war and into the operations
around Australia. Would you like to begin how you came
to be given this flight to Darwin?
Well, the - as you know the Commonwealth Government
had offered a prize to the first aircraft manned by Australian crew
to complete a journey from Britain to Australia within 30
days. And they - the chief of the general staff who was the
officer who controlled aviation matters here in Australia at that
time, he wanted an organised route down from Darwin, south, with
decent, feasible landing grounds and supplies for any of these
aircraft that arrived in Darwin. And he'd sent a small party
out to select some landing grounds: Fysh [Hudson Fysh] and McGinness
[Paul "Ginty" McGinness] up in the north and - I've forgotten who it
was down in the south. But these were comparatively junior
officers and he wanted somebody, as he put it plainly - he said, "I
wanted somebody more experienced to make sure that the grounds
selected were suitable. And so we want somebody to fly up to
Darwin, inspect these grounds on the way up and if any of them are
not considered suitable, to select alternative ones. And the
only aircraft that we can use is a BE2E and according to the
records, youre the most experienced pilot in Australia on that type
of aircraft". So he said, "I've come to the conclusion that
you're the man for the job if you're willing to take it on".
And I said, "Oh, I most certainly am willing to take
it on and I very much appreciate the honour of being asked to do
it". And that's how I came into the Melbourne - Darwin thing.
And then obviously there
was a lot of preparation and - you know, you took off from
where? Point Cook or
?
Point Cook.
Point Cook.
Yeah. There must have been a lot of preparation prior to
your flight?
Well, there was a certain amount we had to
You must have had ground
staff and you must had to
?
Well, I had to get a mechanic to go with me and the
chap that I asked to come with me had just bought a motor repair
business and invested all his savings in it. And he said, "I'd
love to go but", he said, "after having put all my money into this
show", he said, "I'm afraid it's ruled me out".
So I said, "Well, alright", I quite understood his
point of view. I think left it to the then CO at Point Cook to
pick a
And who was that at the
time? Do you remember?
Chap named Sheldon.
Oh, Sheldon.
Asked him to pick out a
suitable man, well qualified particularly in engine work but also
well qualified in the air frame side as well. And he picked
out Murphy [Sergeant Arthur Murphy, DFC]. And Murphy and I had
been to school together and we knew each other very well
A
A good combination.
and furthermore, Murphy had been a pilot in No.1
Squadron. And he'd reverted to his peace time rank of sergeant
when he came back to Point Cook. So I very willingly said I
would take him if he was willing to come. So I got hold of
Murphy and explained the position and asked him whether he would
like the job and he, in his dry old way, said, "Well, what do you
expect me to say?".
Yes. He was a man
that built quite a name for himself in the engineering side in
the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force].
That's right. So we were - I found he was a very
good companion on that trip. He knew his job and, as I say, he
was also, having been a pilot, he knew something of that side of the
business and I could confidently hand over the control of the
aircraft to him while I did some mapping etcetera to improve on the
outrageous maps that were available.
I suppose they were little
or more or less there were nil maps in those days of much of
that area?
Well, the only map we had of the Northern Territory
and Western Queensland was what you'd expect to find in the school
atlas. And they were very primitive indeed.
And then what date did you
set off from Point Cook?
Oh, what was it? Now you're asking me something
I don't remember.
Well, we can get that from
the records.
It was - let me see, be the end of November. End
of November and we got up to Darwin about 12 December if I remember
rightly. I can check that up but it's
Now, your flight, when you
left Point Cook, how did the flight go in the beginning?
Did you have any traumas first off?
Well, we had two forced landings between Point Cook
and the railway line at Laverton.
I see.
Engine failure. And both from the same
cause. The engines were fitted with alloyed pistons which some
of us had never been very happy about. And we came down in a
crop of wheat about half way between Point Cook and the railway
line, in a crop of wheat and fortunately the farmer wasn't worried
about any damage to his crop. But I got the aircraft, towed it
back to Point Cook, dismantled the engine, found a nice big hole in
the top of one of the pistons. And we went to the store and
got a replacement engine, put it in, tested it out, seemed to be
alright and we set off again. And we didn't get very much
further the second time. The same reason. So we were in
a bit of a quandary then as to what we could do. So Murphy and
I went down to the stores, the store on the station, searched round
and we found the a set of cast iron pistons. And we both said
almost at once, "Right, that'll do us". So we fitted the cast
iron pistons and they served us very well.
We had some repair work to do at Longreach but on the
whole we had no serious troubles with the engine.
Were there any funny or
hilarious instances on the trip from Point Cook to Darwin or
was it all deadly serious because of the fact that being the
first one and of course the previous time your engine
?
Well, it was a serious sort of effort. Sort of
funny things happened.
We'd planned to arrive in Darwin two days ahead of
what we actually did. That was in our planning. And we
would have achieved that object but for two reasons. On the
first day we went to Longreach and then we intended to do another
stage on - not Longreach, Cootamundra - and then we decided to do
another stage on from Cootamundra. But it was a Sunday when we
went from Point Cook to Coota and there were no supplies at the
landing ground so we had to hunt round for the Defence petrol
contractor. Couldn't find him so we were hung up there till
the following morning. When we eventually found him and torn a
strip off him, he said, "Oh, we don't work on Sundays". And I
said, "Well, your contract requires you to have supplies here at any
time". "Oh", he said, "we don't work on Sundays". So we
lost a day there which was unfortunate.
And then of course the final blow came at Katherine
which - the landing ground there was being prepared by the
Commonwealth Works people who'd been given the dimensions required:
so many yards by so many yards and so clear of all obstacles.
And they didn't consider 50 foot trees right up to the boundary on
all sides as being obstacles. And I arrived over there and I
thought, hell, how the hell are we going to get down in the
spot. And I circled around and they'd put out a landing T and
they'd put it down back to front. And of course when we came
in that direction like bats out of hell and obviously it was
wrong. Then fortunately somebody on the ground, whether
intentionally or by accident, got a bit of smoke going and they had
the T round the wrong way and on it's indication we were coming in
down-wind. However, I went round and had a good look at the
ground then and then the Gosport forced landing procedure came into
good use, and I came in over the trees, slipped down, side slipped
right down practically onto the ground and almost hard up against
the trees, ruddered round and came in. And it just enabled us
to get down. We finished up with the engine and the propeller
over the fence.
And then of course the problem is how the hell are we
going to get out of this place. So the Works department and
the local inhabitants were very good. And they sent to work
straight away and worked all through the night and that, cutting a
lane down through the trees in the direction of the prevailing wind
and we had about
[end of tape]
This is reel two of the
Wrigley interview.
The Commonwealth Works Department and local
inhabitants got to work rapidly. Cut a lane through the trees
in the direction of the prevailing winds and the clearance in this
path allowed us about six feet from either wing tip, clear.
And we took off down this lane and set course once more for
Darwin. And arrived there in due course two days later than we
expected and a day after Ross and Keith Smith had landed there from
Britain. And we passed on a lot of useful information
concerning the route and then we had to consider our future
movements.
Our original intention had been to return south via
the overland telegraph route, down south and then across to
Melbourne. But there was a political uproar in parliament
following our arrival in Darwin and the government were severely
criticised for allowing two airmen to proceed to Darwin in an
obsolete aircraft. Obviously the people raising the point did
not appreciate the difference between obsolescence and
unairworthiness. And the next thing we received a telegram
from Melbourne: under no circumstances were we to attempt to fly
back south. Result was we had to dismantle the aircraft and
get it back south by sea.
We received a tremendous lot of help with this
dismantling job. The air field at the time at Fannie Bay was
right alongside Darwin jail and the governor of the jail said that
he was only too willing to give us any assistance he could with the
job in hand and he had some fellows, some prisoners there who were
more than handymen. They were super handymen. He'd found
them very reliable in any jobs he'd given them and he'd be only too
pleased to make some of them available under an overseer to help us
on with the job. And we accepted his offer very gratefully and
we had 12 life prisoners from Darwin jail to help us. He told
us that of the 12, eight of them were in for murder. So it
gives you some idea of the people we had. But they were hard
working, they were intelligent, they asked questions as they were
working about this, that and the other thing connected with the
aircraft and did a very good job of work.
So you had no trouble with
them at all?
We had no trouble whatsoever.
So in this flight, was
there much interest by the people at the various places you
landed? Obviously there wasn't a great population there
at that stage but
Oh, yes, everywhere we went there was a crowd turned
up when we landed. In - where was it? Longreach.
Longreach they had the town bellman out with his bell and saying an
hour before we arrived, we got advice of estimated time of arrival,
and he went round exhorting the population to turn up at the landing
ground.
Bit like the olden hear
ye, hear ye sort of thing, I suppose?
Hmm?
Bit like the old English,
hear ye, hear ye?
Yes, very much so. Course one of the troubles
was on that trip was people did turn out to sort of see in the
aircraft because in the majority of cases they'd never seen an
aeroplane before. And they were a bit of a nightmare in some
respects because they, you know, rushed up in front of where you
were landing and several times we had to hurriedly take off again
and come in at the furthest point from the spectators because you'd
appreciate how easy it would have been to collected one of them if
Were you exulted as heroes
by these people or did they just consider you ordinary
?
I don't know so much of the hero side of it but they
were interested in the fact that flying was really, as far as they
were concerned, something new. Something they'd never had any
experience of before. And they asked a lot of very interesting
questions and that and were obviously interested and they wanted to
know some particulars about performance of the aircraft and the
engine and the like. It obviously - a lot of them had read
quite a bit about flying and that but they didn't know very much in
the way of technical details and that sort of thing.
Now with you flying up to
Darwin and then you came back by ship, what was the difference
in the time flying up as coming back by ship?
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. When we had to get
- see the only shipping that went into Darwin was Burns Philp's and
we managed to get deck space on the [SS] Mataram I think it
was. But she only went as far as Sydney and in Sydney we had
to transfer to another ship and the only ship we could get quickly
was a Japanese one, Tango Maru. And I was in the
office of the manager of that line in Sydney and he had the captain
of the Tango Maru with him and it was perfectly obvious in the short
time I was there that the captain in that vessel was collecting
information of, not just commercial information but information on
That could be used for
military purposes?
That would be of use for military purposes.
Even as far back as that,
hey.
Yes.
Yeah. Yes.
Amazing.
You were awarded the AFC, Australian Flying Cross for
that particular trip. What was the outcome of that trip by the
government after when it was - was it laid as an air route then
?
Oh, yes. It was the official air route from
south to north for some considerable time and it was used by Fysh
and Qantas up in Western Queensland, that part of it, was used
through their original services.
And it was only when aircraft of longer endurance came
into the picture that they were able to short cut a lot of the
distances.
Two or three years ago you
went back - or you went, you followed your journey back with a
RAAF Hercules
No. We didn't follow the route back. We
were in one of their navigation trainer aircraft, the
Oh, I see. Orion,
was it?
No. What is it? N7 or something?
Oh, the A2748, was it?
Yeah. And owing to its endurance, we couldn't go
non-stop and then we went up via Alice Springs for a portion of the
route and then we connected up with the Darwin end of the route
then.
A little difference from
when you began that, from the initial or the inaugural trip to
the one you did that day.
Well, we - I found a lot of difference up there.
The original landing strip at Fannie Bay of course was right more or
less on the foreshore.
Open space, no obstacles sort of around it. And
when we were up on that trip, of course its right within suburban
area. Houses and that. And Darwin itself, from being at
best a small country town type of place had become a thriving
metropolis. Notwithstanding the fact that Tracy [Cyclone
Tracy: Darwin, Christmas Eve 1974] had levelled a great deal of it.
That's right. That's
right.
After you returned from
your Darwin flight, you had an appointment or you were
appointed from the AFC, the Australian Flying Corps, to the
Australian Air Corps and then on to the RAAF for its
formation.
Would you like to give me
some idea or would you like to talk about that and those
transitions?
Yes. Well of course the Australian Air Corps was
an interim corps formed to maintain service aviation until the
government made a final decision on the future of air defence in
Australia. There was a committee that was formed to
investigate and report on it. The members were - General
Blamey was the chairman, Admiral Nun, I think, was the naval
representative and Lieutenant Colonel Williams, as he was then, was
the air bloke. And they prepared a really pretty thorough
report as a matter of fact, quite comprehensive. Went into
quite a reasoned scheme. And that, if I remember rightly, was
signed in
was it February 1920 or
no, be later - either '20 or
'21. I'm not sure which now. The government accepted the
report but explained that the provision of a force as recommended in
the report was beyond the financial resources of the
Commonwealth. But they did, if I remember rightly, agree to
making a start on the programs for the first two years.
But the funds available were not very great. And
they certainly wouldn't have been able to do anything at all with
it, had it not been for the so called gift equipment from the
British government which was the equipment equivalent to the units,
the ASC [army service corps] units that Australian maintained during
the '14 - '18 war. So that was the sort of - the start there
and most of that time was spent on just checking over what we really
had. And also taking delivery of this gift equipment.
I was the chap who was given the responsibility for
handling all this equipment. I had to get it cleared through
customs and get it away from Victoria dock, down to Point Cook and
some old woolsheds at Spotswood and later an old warehouse in
Fitzroy. And when I was given that job, I asked Air Marshal
Williams how I was going to move all this stuff because there were a
lot of crated aircraft which were about 35 feet long. And he
said, "Oh, well in the first consignment there are a number of
Leyland lorries and two wheeled trailers. You'll have to use
those". All right. I sent to work. I was given one
offsider and that was Lucas. And we went down to the docks
there
If I can butt in
here. He later became Air Commodore Lucas?
Yes.
Yes. Mmm.
The Leyland vehicles were unloaded first but they'd
suffered on the way out through pilfering. They were all - all
the magnetos were gone, all the carburettors were gone and anything
else that was saleable had been removed. And we had one heavy
vehicle at Point Cook which I immediately commandeered and we got in
touch with a Leyland agent in Melbourne. They could supply us
with some of the parts we wanted but they had to get the rest down
from Sydney. So we set to work with that and managed to clear
everything from the docks without having to pay any demurrage on any
of it. And moving these big crates with aircraft in them on
these two wheeled trailers was not a funny business at all because
if you turned a bit too quickly or on too small a radius, the darn
thing just slid off. It tippled over. But we managed to
get them all away but we found that that the pilfering had been
pretty severe and
Was this with the aircraft
as well as the
?
Oh, no. The aircraft
The aircraft were all
right. Right.
because they were crated and a bit harder to get
at. But the vehicles of course were not crated and a lot of
the stores were just in the normal shipping crates and reasonably
deal with and a lot of stuff went. There was one - we had one
case of watches came out and it was a really a superior job.
Each watch was in a small cardboard container and when we opened up
the crates later one, we found in each of these cardboard
containers, there was the package that the watch had been in, you
could still see the outline of a watch in it and it was brought up
to the correct weight with sand.
Good Lord.
And the whole crate was like that. So it was
They knew their job.
Somebody knew their job and I think the only place
that could have happened was at the depot in Britain and you never
knew who was in those depots in those days. But there was a
lot of pilfering. But we got that away and the - I found
myself the CO of No.1 Aircraft Depot for a time when it was at Point
Cook. And I had
Well, that was the virtual
beginning then of the RAAF.
It as before that really, you see.
Yeah, before that.
It was in the Air Corps
days. But we put all the aircraft we could that Point Cook
could use, we put at Point Cook. And the spares and the like
that they could use. And the rest went to Spotswood and North
Fitzroy. And
A
And then of course came
the formation of the RAAF and you were transferred across I
take it?
Yes.
And what rank were you at
that stage?
Flight Lieutenant.
Flight Lieutenant.
And then where were you? At Laverton or Point Cook?
I was at Point Cook to start with but not for very
long. I was whisked out of there - or really before the RAAF
was concerned, I was whisked out of there up to headquarters and I
found myself staff officer to Lieutenant Colonel Williams as he was
then. And seemed to be stuck to him then for the greater part
of my career in one way or another. And in fact, I suppose
with the formation of the RAAF, next to Williams, I suppose I had
more to do with the formation development of the RAAF than anybody
else because I became director of organisation staff duties.
And was at the beck and call of my master and did a lot of the
devilling for him.
In that period, you
obviously had time to do a night flight to Richmond from Point
Cook. What were the reasons for
?
No, the other way round.
It was the other way
round?
From Richmond to Point Cook.
From Richmond to Point
Cook. What was the story behind that?
Well, it was really to get some idea of night flying
conditions between Sydney and Melbourne.
Was this the first time it
had ever been done? Night flying
?
Yes. And we - the job was given to myself and
Hepburn and we tossed up as to who would be the pilot and Hepburn
won. So I was the navigator and made all the notes and that
that were required on the way down. We had a very hostile go
at the press at Richmond. They stood in front of the aircraft
just as we were - or just - when I say in front of it, almost in
front of it, just clear of it - with powerful flash lights.
And as we started to get to the stage where we were just about to
take off the ground, these damn press lights came on. And they
were blinding.
And of course we didnt' get off and we turned round
and as the saying goes, we tore a strip off the press. Press
photographers. Not that I think what we said had any effect on
them. But anyhow we vented our feelings and we set off and
everything went very well until we got south of the Murray.
And down about Eurora and thereabouts, the engine just faded
out. And we [inaudible] and we landed with the aid of Holt
flares under the wings. I knew that part of the country fairly
well because when I'd been teaching up near Seymour, I had a number
of friends in schools up a bit further and at the weekends we used
to visit each other and cycle to each other and that. And I
knew that round about that particular area or just south of where we
were - ah, no, yes - that there were some reasonably open
country. And I said to Hepburn, "Turn back a bit and you'll
have a better country for a forced landing than you've got just in
this particular spot". And we had the height to be able to do
it and we came down in a field near Violet Town. Then we
tossed up again as to who would go to the local post office and
rouse them out of bed at two o'clock in the morning to notify Point
Cook where we were. And the loser had to go and Hepburn lost.
It would be a very hairy
sort of a - I would say episode when you're flying at night
time with little or no navigational aids, nothing like we have
today of course with modern aircraft.
No, no. We weren't worried about the
navigational side of the business. After all, we had on the
Sydney end all the towns and villages along the route were still
lighted up. And it wasn't until we got down probably round
about Cootamundra that we were in the black out. But there
were no problems from the navigation pilotage point of view.
But we got down and when we examined the aircraft in the morning, we
found no petrol. And yet we filled up, right up to the brim at
Richmond and that should have taken us to Point Cook and got us
there with a reasonable reserve left. And we never found out
any reason for that.
No. Not a head wind
or anything like that?
No. No. No, we were making very good time
as a matter of fact.
Mmm. And what was
the actual result of the night flight from a - was it a
feasible study for
?
Well, we established the fact
that the route between Sydney and Melbourne was quite a feasible
route for night flying. And when use could be made of some of
the aids that were coming into use at that time, it would be quite a
comparatively simple matter.
So this was another first
from your point of view?
Yes.
It was a massive girth
[inaudible] air ship, wasn't it?
Oh, yes, yes. And get it out and fixed to the
mooring mast. And I saw that. And then later on, they
got in touch with me and said, look, would you like to come on the
trial flight of 101. And I said, "Yes, I most certainly
would". So it was arranged that I'd do one of the trial
flights on her. And they looked after us remarkably
well. And from a comfort point of view, you had all the
facilities that were available on a normal sea going liner at that
time. Cabins didn't have beds, they were bunks, but they were
spacious, plenty of room and the catering was excellent and on the
whole I had a very enjoyable trip on it and got an insight into what
the designers were aiming at with the vessel. And it's rather
unfortunate that it came to such an untimely end.
Came to grief. Yes,
well, that's
There again, explosive gases instead of a
non-explosive gas. And of course America, I think, had a
priority on the non-explosive gas.
[end of tape]
This is reel three of the
interview with Air Vice Marshal Wrigley. So you made
mention about returning to Australia after your staff college
course, your appointment on return at the Air Force War
Book. Would you like to give me some information on
those three items in their turn? First of all your
return to Australia? You came back to the RAAF and then
what was your appointment after that?
Director of organisation and staff duties was the
appointment that I went back to on my return to Australia. And
I suppose one of the most important jobs about that time was the
compilation of the RAAF war book. This was a volume which was
intended to lay down the actions to be taken by the various
branches, headquarters and units, in any case of emergency.
And the commencement of the job was undertaken by a Squadron Leader
Drummond who was an Australian in the RAF who was on loan to
Australia at the time. And he and I commenced work on the
compilation of that book. It was not completed by any means
before Drummond returned to the RAF and the completion of it fell to
me as the director of organisation and staff duties. And the
book was duly completed and produced and circulated for
comment. Any comments that were made by various branches or
units were taken into consideration and some minor adjustments,
minor amendments were made to portions of the book. Then it
was produced in its finalised state and thence available to all
concerned to use if the necessity arose.
This would be something
like the Air Force bible, I suppose you'd call it?
Yes, in a way. And it apparently stood the test
of years up to the outbreak of the Second World War. I revised
it in the early months of 1939 and when the emergency arose which
led to the outbreak of the '39 - '45 war, we found that what we'd
laid down in the War Book was fairly sound. And I'm sure that
various branches at headquarters and minions found it was a very
good guide when they were faced with problems of what should be done
and when it should be done.
And later on you - I
noticed in your notes here, you've got yourself down as a RAAF
trouble shooter. What role did that take?
Well, that came about in an extraordinary way.
Air Marshal Williams very frequently would sound his buzzer and call
me into his office and say, "Look here, I'm not satisfied with so
and so at so and so. Go and see what's going on there and
whatever the trouble is, whatever's wrong, get it straightened out
and when you've got it done, tell me what you've done". And
that, in some respects, was not an easy job because we were a small
force and we knew each other personally and, I think, on the whole
were very good friends throughout the service. And when the
occasion arose and you had to, as the saying goes, put somebody on
the mat, you wondered how it would perhaps work out. But I
found that the problems that arose were, on the whole, problems that
were easily solved by a bit of understanding on the part of the
transgressors, as you might term them. And they took the
criticisms etcetera in good spirit and most problems were solved
fairly easily. Occasionally you came across a difficult one
which you had to refer back to the chief for his final
decision. But on the whole, it was possible to clear most of
the matters that arose without any very great difficulty.
Was it through that
troubleshooting period that you were sought after as the chief
of staff to the CAS [Chief of Air Staff]?
Oh, no, not really. That was a sort of a means
of relieving the pressure on the chief in a number of matters
without having to make another appointment when you were hard
pressed for experienced people.
Did you have any great
differences with Air Marshal Williams when you were chief of
his staff?
Ah, no, not really. As always, as you will find
that there are differences of opinion between a commander or a chief
and his chief of staff. And that's almost inevitable.
Differences of opinion. And I had some differences of opinion
with him and on the whole they were reasonably solved. The one
that gave me what you might call a
a pleasurable feeling, put it
that way, was on the occasion when he told me that, oh, I think I'll
send you out to a command. And I said, "Thank you very much,
sir, when do I go?" And he looked at me with a bit of a surprise, he
said, "Do you really want to get out of a staff appointment to a
command?" I said, "Well, I've been trying to get a command again
ever since the end of the 1914 - '18 war". And his retort was,
oh, go on, get away with you. However, within about a
fortnight he called me into his office and said, "I'm having you
posted to Laverton to command". He said, "I'm not satisfied
with the morale on that station and I'm sending you down there in
command and I expect you to clean the place up a bit". So that
was the sort of background in which I became station commander at
Laverton.
And obviously you cleaned
it up and to his satisfaction.
Well, we cleaned up. We cleaned up a lot of
things there. Without any sort of nasty criticism on previous
commanding officers, there were a number of things there that hadn't
gone as well as they should have gone. Although we tried on
numerous occasions to get action taken, it didn't occur. And
apart from the sort of purely service aspect of things on the
station, some of which did want straightening up a bit, but we had
down on the north eastern corner of the station, a pile of builders
rubble that had accumulated ever since the station was first
established.
And I tried for a number of years to get somebody to
take action and clean it up because it was the first part of the air
force station at Laverton that travellers along the Geelong road,
saw. That was in the days before the road was moved from the
north of the air field to the south of it.
Like the window into the
shop type of problem.
Yes. And nobody took any action. Well, one
of the things I'd been on it for years to try and get something done
so I felt that was one thing I had to clean up when I went to
Laverton. The main problem was by what means would we do
it. And the training program laid down an hour's physical
training per day. And you know what the old physical training
scheme was: arm stretch, legs full bend type of thing which I myself
was quite against although I'd qualified as a physical training
instructor in the Defence Department. In those days I didn't
altogether tolerate a hundred percent of a scheme of arms stretch
and legs bend. And I knew that technical men had a very
adverse feeling towards that type of training. So we decided
that - well, I had to make the decision - I decided that instead of
doing the old type physical training, they would go down to the
north east corner of the aerodrome and start to clean up all this
builders rubble and stuff. And of course for the first couple
of days the station commander was not very popular and quite nasty
opinions were expressed about him wanting this job done.
However, once the fellows knew what the object was and, as I say,
not be very partial to the old type physical training, they became
interested and the ones on the station after stand-down, they used
to go down of their own accord and voluntarily put in an hour or
two's work in the evening. And we eventually cleaned up the
rubble and we extended that. There was a little water course
went through that corner and we planned a dam across the stream and
eventually had a very nice little lake there on the water course
which we levelled out and put in a bit of grass and that.
And it became a very nice spot in the final
effort. Even though it was christened Wrigley's folly.
That same pond or lake as
you call it, stands there today and of course the golf course
takes in part of it as well.
That is so, yes.
It's a very nice area down
there now.
Well the gold course was an
after thought but we cleaned up all along that water course and
really made it a pleasant little corner of the station. And of
course the station's extended beyond that now and the gold course
came in and
I notice that you had
yourself down as a member of the naval exercise.
Was this naval exercise
prior to the coronation of George VI or was it separate?
No, it was - every year the navy used to come down
from Jarvis Bay to Melbourne, usually about [Melbourne] Cup
time. And they - we tried to work in a little exercise with
them each year. But it became rather stereotyped and had no
particular training value, in my opinion. So I decided the
first year we'd make it a bit more realistic. And as in
warfare, you learn as much as you can about your opponents methods
and his course of action under certain conditions and that, and if
possible, apply the principle of surprise. And I thought it
was time for us to do the same thing. And on thinking back, we
found that the routine of the navy was almost identical every
year. They used to come down and they used to anchor around
Western Port and then come up in a leisurely fashion in the
morning. So we thought, right, they've been doing this for
years, they'll do it again. So we'll apply the principle of
surprise. So the exercise was that we would reconnoitre the
navy's movements and attack them from the air. Well, we
decided instead of this being a daylight affair, we were going to
catch them just as day broke, when they'd be just sort of turning
out of their bunks, getting ready for breakfast and certainly not
thinking of moving. And we went down and we caught them just
at first light and came down with a mock attack on them. And
by the time we'd got back and landed at Laverton, a signal came in
from the navy, very generous on their part in on respect. The
signal said that: Navy attacked by air force. All vessels
bombed and damaged, some sunk.
So the exercise from the
air force's point of view was a success?
Was a success. And I think it - I don't know -
but I think the navy woke up to the fact that in these sort of
things, if you're having an exercise, you must make it a bit more
realistic.
Was that continued on
after that? Was that the one and only exercise you had
with the navy or was that then a yearly operation?
That's the only one that we had whilst I was
there. After that, as a matter of fact, things were starting
to hot up a bit internationally and the thought of a, what you might
call, a routine exercise of that sort was sort of washed out.
And something of more realistic value substituted for it.
What about your part in
the coronation of King George VI?
Oh, well that, we - there was an all services review
at Royal Park. The organisation, the administrative
organisation of it was in the hands of the army but all three
services partook. And in the air force, the whole of the air
force was, took part in it except for sort of a small duty party at
Laverton, Point Cook and Richmond. And we had a full dress
rehearsal at Laverton on the Sunday and before, if I remember
rightly, the actual review was on the Tuesday.
Anyhow, we had the rehearsal on the Sunday. Went
off very successfully. Air Marshal Williams came down to see
the rehearsal but arrived just as we were marching off after
rehearsal and he wanted it all done again. But I had told all
the troops that if the rehearsal was successful they'd be dismissed
in time to catch the midday train to Melbourne. And that was
something that the interstate fellows valued very much, being able
to do that, because they could visit friends which otherwise they
wouldn't have had an opportunity to do.
How many men would be on
that particular parade?
We had the equivalent of three wings.
And all told, with the
navy and army, have you any idea of the number that was
?
Oh, I can't remember what the total number was but it
was a pretty fair force. Of course the army had the majority
but we had, as I say, three wings. The army was in
administrative control. Tom Blamey commanded the whole review
and the - oh, we had one criticism of the army's arrangements.
The executive - obviously, out on either flank, couldn't hear Tom
Blamey's voice so they had to have some other means of giving the
executive command. And that was to be a mounted troop with a
lance. And on the cautionary, he'd raise the lance above his
head and on the actual command, he'd bring it down. And the
commanders of the three services were supposed to take their cue
from that. But what the army failed to realise was that from
the position of the air force at any rate, and I think it applied
partly to the army, the troop with his lance was completely screened
from observation by the air force and part of the army by a block of
toilets. But by keeping a sharp eye on the fellows that could
see him, we were able to sort of coordinate our movements with
theirs and from that point of view, everything went off very
satisfactorily.
From memory, I think the
chiefs of staff of the day rode horses on that particular
didn't they? The three chiefs?
That's right, yeah. Yes.
Yes.
And Tom Blamey's chief of staff on that was Colonel
Blake who at one time had been the commanding officer of No.3
Squadron AFC. But the only misfortune in the whole show was
that the general public broke the barriers and encroached on the
ground which was to be occupied by the air force for the advance in
review order. And I had to go in with one wing back to front
and - owing to the confined space left for us.
And I was a bit worried whether they would remember
they were back to front. However, they did and everything when
off very smoothly.
And Air Marshal Williams came along after the review
to congratulate the troops, he wanted to do it personally, but
unfortunately we were all - we'd been dismissed to local parades so
that there was only one wing left in it's original position.
The other two were in their own sort of private ground.
However, he took his sort of misfortune at not being able to address
the fellows, very well and he issued an order to myself to have
issued in units orders, his appreciation of the forces efforts.
From Laverton you were
posted back to Air Force headquarters. You had a special
appointment there.
Yes, I had a very
This was in 1939, I think
it was.
important sounding designation. There was no
official post in the establishment for me so they brought me in as
the advisor on war organisation. The main point being that the
war book had been put into effect and as I had been responsible to a
very great extent for the compilation of it, it was considered that
I was the most appropriate person to supervise its
Its operation.
its working.
Also in November '39 you
had an appointment overseeing a Group. That was at
Southern Area, I think, wasn't it?
Yes. It was originally No.1 Group and then its
name changed to Southern Area. And that comprised all air
force units in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the
Riverina. And we had to start off from scratch. I was
given a vacant $griller in St Kilda Road as our headquarters.
It was furnished with a trestle table and a hard wooden form and one
telephone. And my staff was one officer for the start.
And we had to take over the control of all units in that area in, at
midnight on a certain night and we had to build up a staff of course
to
'Cause that grew into a
very big area, didn't it...?
Oh, yes.
...eventually Albert Park
later on.
Yes. Well, we managed very well because we had
excellent cooperation from all the units and all the personnel that
we were concerned with. And then of course the expansion was
taking place and we had to establish new units and new air fields
and so on. And it was quite a, quite a big job actually but we
decided it was no sense in trying to sort of be too speeding with
things and we decided that we'd set down an order of sequence for
the various jobs that had to be done and the various new units that
had to be formed and so on. And we solicited the co-operation
of AMP's branch [Air Member for Personnel] with regard to personnel
and everything went remarkably smoothly.
Apparently
there was some lack of confidence by the government in the
RAAF senior officers. Did that turn out to be a very
difficult task to overcome? Did they eventually - or
what was the reason for the government not having sufficient
confidence in the RAAF people?
Well, it was something that was a bit difficult to
understand because as you probably realise, Australians generally
wanted Australians in key jobs in Australia. For instance,
that went even to important appointments. When McKell [Sir
William McKell] was premier of New South Wales he fought a very
strong battle with the British authorities for an Australian as
governor of New South Wales.
And the general attitude in Australia was Australians
were as good an anybody else and in the war '14 - '18, Australians
proved they were damn good troops and there officers were looked
upon as being of high quality. And then in the beginning of
the '39 - '45 war, it was a - the government showed a complete lack
of confidence in our people; notwithstanding all our senior officers
in all three services underwent exactly the same courses of training
as the British officers. And taking the case of the staff
colleges, for instance. Our officers underwent the same
training as British officers. When we sent Australian away on
various courses of instruction in Great Britain, they invariably
returned to Australia with very good reports on their abilities and
the same with officers that went to the RAF on loan. Came back
with excellent reports. And so there was really little
difference between the training of British and the training of
Australian officers. So why shouldn't the government recognise
that the Australian officers were as good as the others.
What we were speaking
about, did that have any connection with you going to London
for the chiefs of staff meeting? You had a chiefs of
staff meeting in London. Was that because of the
?
Oh, well that showed the views of the senior British
officers on the abilities of Australians. I was invited to
attend chiefs of staffs meetings and I went along to the first
meeting wondering just how I'd be received by the chiefs of
staff. And I went into the first meeting. I was an air
vice marshal, the three chiefs of staff, one an admiral of the
fleet, one a field marshal, the other a marshal of the Royal Air
Force. And I was a very junior fry compared with them.
And the first time I was there I listened very carefully and a point
came up which concerned Australia to some extent. And after
hearing some of the discussion, I said to the chairman of the chiefs
- and at that time it was Field Marshal Alan Brooke - I said,
"Excuse me, sir, do you mind if I pass a comment at this stage?" And
he said, "Oh, no, no". He said, "We invite you to these
meetings so that you can express opinions and if you have any point
you want to raise, even if it's a matter of criticising what we're
doing, don't hesitate to speak up. That's what we want you to
do".
And I'm sure that the chiefs of staff would not invite
somebody to partake in their discussions if they were considered to
be incompetent of doing so.
So your presence of an
Australian was accepted and went over very well obviously.
Yes. Oh, we got along very well and the affects
of attendance there were perhaps even more widespread than would
appear at first sight because in addition to the chiefs of staff
themselves, the prime minister Winston Churchill's representative, a
full general, General Ismay [Hastings Lionel Ismay] was always there
and the secretary to the chiefs of staff was a senior major general,
so that it was, they were all, you know, top level people. And
as I say, well, they wouldn't invite anybody to attend and
participate in their discussions if they were considered incompetent
or ill qualified.
And I notice that Sir
Charles Burnett, a former or he was a RAF serving officer,
came out here and took over as chief of the air staff just
prior to the war or just during the war. What experience
did he have from the point of view of service and also as an
officer, was he a competence and was he a man as suitable as
CAS [chief of air staff] to control our RAAF?
Well, of course, in '14 - '18 he'd served in the
Middle East and he'd commanded a wing there. Matter of fact it
was rather interesting because he commanded the army co-operation
wing and Air Marshal Williams or Lieutenant Colonel Williams as he
was then, commanded the army wing. And of the two, Williams
was senior to Burnett. And Williams at one stage was acting
brigade commander. So - and between wars Burnett had filled a
number of posts but he never, he never held a post in which he was a
member of a corporate body like our Air Board or the Air Council in
Britain. The only higher command he'd had was one in which he
was a commander in chief and - a commander in chief, of course, in
his own sphere is the final authority in matters. But as I
say, he never had any experience in working in a corporate body and
of course when he came here, he adopted the attitude that as chief
of the air staff, he was in a position similar to that of a
commander in chief in effect. And he acted accordingly.
And he was very prone to try and override members of the Air Board
here. And the duties and responsibilities of members of the
Air Board were definitely laid down in the Air Force regulations and
that. And that caused a lot of difficulties because he had a
habit of overriding decisions of board members without the said
board member knowing he was doing it. And it caused a lot of
confusion and a certain amount of difficulty.
How
was he viewed, how was he viewed by our own air force
officers? Was he viewed in any great way or was he, you
know, not considered a very great leader or anything like
that? Or didn't they have much to do with him?
Well, apart from, apart from the members of the Air
Board, his personal contact with senior officers was not very
great. But with members of the Air Board, it was very
frustrating to find that decisions they made in accordance with what
was laid down as their duties by the Air Force act and regulations
were somewhat difficult. You never knew where you stood.
And he had a nasty habit too of getting authority for things behind
the back of board members. Now, I had, for instance, as air
member of personnel, found that on occasions, that cabinet approved
of an appointment or promotion of an officer without my knowing
anything about it. And
And what appointment did
you hold at that stage?
As AMP. [Air Member for Personnel]
Oh, as AMP. I see.
Yeah. And I found that, for instance, a case in
point was Bostock. He got permission from cabinet to appoint,
to promote Bostock over the heads of several more senior, more
capable officers. And the first I heard of it was Gazette
notice.
[end of tape]
Reel number 4 of Wrigley
interview.
The choice of Burnett as CAS was an unfortunate one
and much of the trouble, in my opinion, lay with our own
cabinet. The officer that was offered to us in the first place
was Air Chief Marshal Mitchell who was an Australian in the
RAF. And a man with a very high reputation. But cabinet
dithered about and couldn't come to a decision. Finally the
Air Ministry informed us that Mitchell was no longer available, that
a man of his capability couldn't be kept hanging round
indefinitely. The next offer was a man named Air Chief Marshal
John Steel. John Steel was an interesting character. He
was an ex-naval officer and he had been sent to command the Royal
Naval Air Station at Eastchurch. Anyhow, he was much older
than the average fellow on the station and he decided that he must
learn to fly himself. So he learnt to fly and he eventually
became the air officer commanding the Wessex Bombing Area which was
the forerunner of the later Bomber Command. He was a very
stout officer. I met him when I was at the staff college and
got to know him reasonably well. And later on I asked
Fairbairn when he was minister for air, why he was turned down as
CAS. And I was told by Jim Fairbairn that, oh, if he'd come to
Australia as CAS, he'd be telling cabinet what to do instead of
cabinet telling him what to do. So we lost a darn good man
there and we finished up by getting Burnett. And Burnett was -
he had no time for any persons other than 'yes' men. And he
was a bit against anybody who stood up against him. Bostock
became his sort of deputy which also was unfortunate because there
was - wherever Bostock was posted, there was trouble of some sort or
another. And as deputy CAS, the same conditions applied.
And I found that the door between Burnett's office and Bostock's
office was never closed. And if any senior or important person
went in to see Burnett, you could be sure that within seconds
Bostock would be in the CAS's room. And of course the most
unfortunate of position with Bostock was when Burnett sent him on
his - well, orders to go to the United Kingdom and tell the Air
Ministry that the Australian government and the RAAF wanted air
force, Australian air crews distributed as widely as possible
throughout the RAF. And fortunately on his way to Britain,
Bostock stopped in the Middle East to have a look round there and
told the commander in chief, the air officer commanding in chief in
theMediterranean that Australian wanted her personnel distributed as
widely as possible. Fortunately Peter Drummond was then the
deputy AOC in C in Middle East and he knew that that was contrary to
Australian policy. And he took the matter up with the Air
Ministry and fortunately put the brakes on that particular type of
distribution. And after that Bostock was recalled to Australia
and went back as DCAS.
So that
Deputy Chief of Air Staff,
mmm.
there was an unfortunate muddle there again which
had quite widespread repercussions actually. But that was the
sort of episode there. And of course, Burnett too, in his
dealings with other officers and that, could not tolerate opposition
of any kind. In fact he was very much like a - he acted very
much like a small boy who has had a sweet taken away from him.
And we had an occasion on one Board meeting in which an important
matter with regard to our overseas troops arose, and the two members
of the Board most concerned were Air Marshal Williams as the air
member for organisation and myself as the air member for
personnel. And we'd discussed the matter between ourselves, we
knew what was wanted and we put it up to the Air Board
meeting. And Burnett opposed it strenuously and sort of almost
adopted intimidating attitude. However, both Williams and
myself stood firm on the matter and Burnett just got up, threw his
papers on the table and walked out without any apology
whatsoever. And when board members looked at each other and
thought, well now, what next.
So as these matter [sic] was a very important one we
were discussing, I moved that in the absence of the CAS, that the
next senior member take the chair. And I moved that Air
Marshal Williams take the chair.
The other board members concurred and we went on,
carried on with the business, carefully avoiding anything on the
agenda that was the prerogative of the CAS. Next morning I was
called to the CAS's office, he obviously had found out that I moved
that the next senior member take the chair. I was called to
his office and severely reprimanded in front of a junior officer to
which I took very grave exception.
Mmm, I can understand
that.
So that's the sort of incidents that were occurring
during his regime as CAS.
Mmm.
I often wonder why - course you explained these other men were
available but why, you know, I can't understand why they
should send such a - well, such a dope of a man out here when
they knew that he wasn't of a, you know, the high class we
required?
Well, I think that the Air Ministry themselves were
getting a bit exasperated with Australia for not making up their
mind
Yes. That's
right. Yes. They could have done.
You were the organiser and
the man who got the air training corps on its feet and moving
and what have you. All the young fellows that come in
the air training corps to do basic training and then we got a
lot of those out who made very good air crew as well as ground
staff.
Would you like to
?
Yes. Well, there was a stage in which we were
losing a lot of very good air crew types because in their school
days, they either had not had any fundamental training in
mathematics etcetera or if they had, they'd forgotten it after they
left school. And we wanted to be able to obtain the services
of these types and not let their sort of personnel then be sort of
collared by the other two services. So we thought well the
thing to do is to set up some sort of a training organisation where
we can give refresher courses to those who had forgotten or
partially forgotten their previous training, and to give the
necessary training to those who'd had no previous training of that
description. And so we decided that it would be a very good
idea to set up an organisation where we get these chaps in and train
them up to the standard in maths etcetera that we required for air
crew. And that was agreed to and I was told, yes, go
ahead. And I had a look round then for a man to sort of
control it, to be the sort of director of that particular
show. And I didn't want to take an experienced officer away
from sort of fully, a full air force job. And looking round I
looked among some rejects from our reserve officers and I came
across a name there who'd been turned down medically for air force,
full air force duty. And he - I knew him quite well.
He'd served as a pilot in the old AFC [Australian Flying
Corps]. He was a very well qualified engineer. In fact
he was the right hand man to the then top man in the State Rivers
and Waters Supply, East. And I said, "Well, if he's willing to
take on this job, he's the man for it". But I thought, now the
difficulty is with his boss, the chairman of the State Rivers and
Waters Supply.
However, I got in touch with East and he was quite
happy about it. He said, "Yes, if you can use him, we'll make
him available. We want to help as much as we possibly
can". So we got him as the director of the
Who was he, by the
way? What was his name?
Robertson. And he came along and he started the
air training show going. But when we sort of officially formed
the agency, I had in mind a short term and a long term aspect and
this one was under Robertson was the short term. But having
been associated with the army cadet system in my earlier days and
seeing the great benefits that were derived from it, I decided that
in the long term it would be a pretty good idea to have a similar
thing here in the air force. And we made provision for that
and although the long term effort was in abeyance for a certain
time, we gradually formed it originally with a number of fellows who
couldn't for some reason, either medical or some other reason,
couldn't cope with the short term one and go on into the
service. So we had a nucleus there that we were able to build
on after the war ended. And as you know, today the air
training corps is a very successful and very useful organisation.
Very useful organisation,
yes. Especially now with the wide scope of which these
young fellows can take. I mean, all the job
opportunities that they train for - or at least the things
they train for for job opportunities is very good. Very
good indeed. Especially - I think its a good thing from
a discipline point of view too with young [inaudible]
Oh, it's a very good thing. It's some
It's from 14 to 18, isn't
it?
Yes. And parents are all full out for it.
So much so that today the air training corps have a waiting list,
you know, almost as big as the approved establishments.
That's right. Well,
of course
And of course, they're not allowed, the governments
have put a curb on it, that they will not exceed the number that
they had at such and such a date. They can have replacements
up to that limit.
They've got young girls in
it now too. A female part of the air training corps.
Oh, yes. Girls in it too. And they're very
good.
Oh, yes. Yes.
I've spent a lot of time in Victoria with the
Victorian units. I was, would like to go round and see what's
been done in some of the other states but that, at the moment, is
something that is in the future.
Did they ever give you the
title as 'king of the kids' with these young boys?
No, I don't think so. They might have.
This is behind your back
probably but not to your face.
Also you did something
with the establishment of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force?
Yes. I came in as the sort of a founding
[inaudible]. In compiling the Air Force war book originally, I
realised that Australia would be faced with a very considerable
manpower problem and I started to think about it and wonder, now how
can we sort of relieve the manpower problem a bit. And the
only way that was feasible to make any impression on it was to
enlist women in fields in which they could play a useful, profitable
part. And so I went ahead when the proposals which were very
strongly opposed politically. The politicians were frightened
of it, I think. And of course a lot of the goodie goodies in
the general public thought it was wrong. Just straight out
With having women in a
man's service, type of thing?
Yes. However, we went ahead and very reluctantly
got authority from the government to enlist a certain number in
certain jobs which would sort of be, would sort of isolate them from
service personnel generally. Sort of put them in a class apart
which was not a very sensible idea.
However, we kept plugging at it and I eventually got
approval to take on a certain number, very small number and they had
to be girls who could go into jobs where they required no further
training. Not an easy proposition. Anyhow, eventually we
got approval to go ahead on a limited scale and we proceeded.
And then of course the question came up: women, they'd have to have
a woman in charge of them. So we had to have a director of
WAAAFs [Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force] and then the fun
started.
Air Marshal Burnett of course brought two daughters
out to Australia with him, both of whom had been in the WAAF
[Women's Auxiliary Air Force] and he wanted the elder one to be
director of WAAAFs out here. However, I said, "Well, there was
enough public outcry in Australia in certain directions against your
appointment as CAS". And said, "There's going to be a further
public outcry if a woman other than an Australian is brought out as
the director of Australian WAAAFs. So your daughter's out of
the question". Then there was a lot of propaganda for a Mrs
Bell who'd been a prominent leader in a women's organisation
somewhat on the lines of the Girl Guides and the Air Training Corps
as it is today. And there was a lot of political lobbying on
her behalf and a certain amount of pressure brought to bear from the
organisations with which she was concerned.
However, in my opinion, I considered that the women's
corps would grow to quite large dimensions and be quite a sizeable
force and that we had to be very particular about the
director. And the CAS, when he couldn't have his daughter as
director, lost all interest in it and said, "Hmm, AMP, it's your
pigeon. Your responsibility, you take the
responsibility". So I said, "All right". And there was a
lot of pressure from socialite quarters. And I put my foot
down and said, "We will not have any socialite for that post".
And I laid down the sort of person we wanted. We wanted a
woman of mature age, a woman that had practical experience in
running women's affairs, who was able to gain the support of people
in the service, not only the females under her but also the
men. Who had the ability to enforce discipline understandingly
and a person with some administrative experience and, if possible, a
certain amount of business experience. And those were the
conditions that were laid down. And a certain amount of
academic experience also.
And I hunted round and I
eventually found a woman in the Sydney University who fulfilled all
the conditions that I laid down bar the one on business
experience. I'd see, gone round it pretty carefully and I came
across this woman and I went and saw her and explained the position
and asked if she was at all interested. And eventually, after
careful consideration, she said that she was very interested.
But she said, "Unfortunately, this post I hold at the university
here, I've only held for a matter of a few weeks and I feel
that at this stage I can't let the university down, much as I'd like
to take on the job that you're offering me". So I had to look
further afield.
I asked her if she had any recommendations and she
made one recommendation and I had recommendations from several other
people, very responsible people. However, I eventually decided
on the person who was appointed as director of WAAAFs because she
filled pretty well the conditions that I'd laid down. And I
went and saw her and asked her if she was interested. And she
said, "Oh, yes, she found it very interesting". And I said,
"What about your job?" And she said, "Oh, well, I'll see the
company's board of directors", and she said, "they're all very loyal
types and I think they would raise no objection".
So eventually they said, no, go ahead. We're
delighted that a member of our organisation's been offered the
job. So hence we got the director of WAAAFs.
And who was she?
A Miss Clare Stevenson [Clare Grant Stevenson].
Oh, Clare Stevenson.
Mmm.
And she did the job very very well.
Mmm. Then of course
you had rather a prominent WAAAF officer in the Olympic
sprinter, didn't you? Doris Carder. Who later
became chief of WAAAF after the war.
Oh, yes. I didn't consider her at the time
because
No, no. She was a
lot younger woman.
the other one's qualifications were far far superior
and, as I say, she did a very very good job.
Yes. Well, WAAAF did
an amazing job through the war. You know, you've said
they gradually became wider in their field of operations, not
just clerical and that, they were transfer drivers and
No. As the proved their
worth in one sphere, so the people in charge of the other spheres
they thought, oh, we'll try them here. And so the spread of
WAAAFs increased. And they became a very important factor on
the operational side which lot of people, I don't think,
realised.
After
that of course, you were sent to London. You had an
appointment as Air Officer Commanding the Australian
contingents over there. What date did you take that
up? That would be in about the 1940s, I suppose would it
be?
Ah, no, 1942 I went over there. And I took over
from Air Marshal Williams. He'd been posted to Washington as
the senior Australian officer there and sort of the link with the
American air force to some extent. But his job of course was
really a very important one concerned with the procurement of
aircraft and aircraft spares.
And as AOC, what was your
particular job there in London?
Well, I had the overall jurisdiction of all RAAF
personnel serving outside the southwest Pacific. That's what
it amounted to. Other than those serving in Canada where Gobel
was responsible.
And what about - did you
have any dealings with the Empire Air Training Scheme as
such? With the RAF personnel there?
Oh, yes. After all the bulk of our personnel
serving overseas were the ATS [air training scheme] personnel.
And there were a number of problems with regard to that. They
received a directive from the government for certain things to be
done. The original Empire Air Training Scheme Agreement was
found in practice to require a number of amendments. We had
considered these amendments in Australia and agreed to what
amendments we wanted. And the government brief to me was that
the conference with the British authorities to make these amendments
was to be given the highest priority. It was the first thing I
had to do.
I went over there knowing in detail just what
amendments we wanted.
They were mainly drawn up, as a matter of fact, by
myself as AMP [Air Member for Personnel] because they were mainly
matters concerning personnel. There were a few others which
other branches wanted to make. And when I arrived over in
British after having made the necessary courtesy calls on the CAS
and the seeing of people at the Air Ministry, I went over and saw
Air Chief Marshal Courtney. I'd met him and became very good
friends with Courtney at the staff college. Courtney had been
the deputy commandant and he became the Air Member of the Air
Council for supply and organisation. And I told him I had a
brief and that we wanted these amendments considered and dealt with
as soon as possible. He said, "Right", he said, "I'll get the
director of organisation along", which he did and it was decided
that we would give top priority to getting these amendments
okayed. And the director of organisation and I sat down and
went through the lot. That didn't take very long because he
agreed in general with what we put up. He made one or two
minor suggestions which I agreed to and in, oh, less than a
fortnight after I arrived there we had agreement on the amendments
that would be put forward to the conference.
But meanwhile, a signal arrived that the minister had
given permission for Air Marshal Williams to attend the conference
as an observer. Now that's the key point: as an
observer. That meant he had just to look on. Nothing
else. But however, he arrived in London and promptly installed
himself as AOC and addressed me as the deputy. Alright, that
didn't worry me very much at that stage. But then he got half
the staff of overseas headquarters assembled before he and I set to
work and went through the whole of these amendments, dotting the
'i's and crossing the 't's. Well, I'd told him that we'd
already got Air Ministry agreement in the first fortnight I was
there. Oh, no, that didn't suit him.
And this damn business went on day after day from nine
o'clock in the morning, frequently till nine and near ten o'clock in
the evening without a break except for lunch. And the fellows
were getting pretty fed up with it. However, in the finish, Mr
Bruce apparently found out what was happening and rang me up and
said, "I want you and Air Marshal Williams to come round to my
office immediately". Well, Air Marshal Williams raised all
sorts of objections to going. Oh he wasn't going around
there. I said, "Well I'm going and after all, Mr Bruce is the
High Commissioner and resident minister and he can't be ignored".
So eventually he, we went round there and Mr Bruce saw
us both and then he said, "Air Marshal Williams is to return to
Washington as soon as can be arranged". And he told me to
arrange an air passage back to Washington for him as soon as
possible and that I was the AOC there and carry on as the AOC.
So once Air Marshal Williams had gone, we put the
machinery in motion again and the conference was held in the Air
Council chamber at the Air Ministry and formal agreement was
received after a half day's sitting. And the documents were
all signed and that particular point in the directive was finally
solved. And the certain point in the directive was that RAAF
air crews serving overseas were to be collected into squadrons in
which the air crews were predominantly Australian. Well when I
arrived over there, there were RAAF personnel serving in 400
different units of the RAF. And
We didn't have any of our
own units there?
Oh, we had our own but they were fully manned by our
own people.
These were those over and above the demands of our own
squadrons.
And it was a matter of simplifying the administration
enabling us to supervise the training and operations of our own
personnel and to simplify welfare and administrative matters
generally. Fortunately cabinet said that this was to be done
without any sort of adverse effect on operations. Well, of
course we could have done all that in a matter of three, perhaps
four weeks at the most. But it would have had a very adverse
effect on operations. So it had to be done gradually and
although we didn't achieve as much as we would have liked to have
done in that respect, we achieved a very considerable concentration
of our people and that provided opportunities for promotions which
are a very important factor with fellows serving overseas. And
it removed any impression that people might get that the Australians
serving in an RAF squadron would be completely ignored when
promotion was possible in that unit. So that was affected very
considerably and as a result we got a steady flow of promotions, we
got a certain number of units, RAF units, became more or less RAAF
units. For instance, operate - the school that carried out
conversion courses became almost entirely RAAF. And operation
training units the same. And units which previously had been
RAF command units, became Australian ones. Mountbatten was an
RAF station which eventually became an Australian station.
[tape ends]
Number 5 reel of the
Wrigley interview.
Mountbatten was a two-squadron station for flying
boats and No.10 Squadron, when it was formed, went to Mountbatten
and stayed there the whole of its career overseas. The other
squadron on the station was an RAF one until, at a later date, I
arranged to move No.461 Squadron RAAF which was at Milford Haven, to
Mountbatten. And then the station became a fully RAAF one and
enabled us to promote the CO of No.10 Squadron and he became station
commander of the fully RAAF station at Mountbatten.
Are you going to mention
the third point of the government direction?
We come now to the third point of the directive given
to me by the government. And that was that I was to ensure
that no RAAF squadron or any RAAF personnel were engaged in any
operation which, in my opinion, was unduly hazardous. There
was only one occasion in which I had to step in and ensure that two
of our squadrons didn't take part in an operation which to my mind
was not hazardous only but foolhardy.
A couple of RAF officers who'd been rapidly promoted
and had, I think, went to their heads a little bit. And at the
time of Anzio [Amphibious Landing], they concocted a scheme where
they were going to send some British squadrons to operate behind the
German lines in Italy with the co-operation of the Italians.
Well, to start off with, the thing seemed to me to be somewhat
ill-conceived because to send squadrons based and operating from
behind the German lines was a very hazardous business to start
with. And we had learned that we couldn't depend on the
Italians in any way whatsoever. However, to assure myself that
the scheme was not a workable one, I borrowed an aircraft from the
RAF and carried out a reconnaissance of the area in which these
squadrons were to be based. I didn't take a long time to
consider the question.
When I saw the proposed area and knew what the
disposition of the Germans in that area were, I decided under no
circumstances would our two squadrons, No.3 and No.450 Squadron take
part in that particular operation.
That was in the Italy
area, was it?
Yes. Yes. In Italy. North of, north
of a line east and west through Rome.
Relationships with other people in Britain: for
instance relationship with the Air Ministry and the RAF.
Generally speaking our relationships with the RAF at all levels was
absolutely first class. Both sides worked well with each other
and we had very little trouble there.
The senior RAF officers were very helpful and our own
RAAF personnel, notwithstanding their somewhat independent ways on
occasions, worked very well with the Air Ministry and the RAF.
We had very few conflicts. The most serious conflict with the
RAF commanders was, I think, with Sir Arthur Harris, the Air Officer
Commanding in Chief of Bomber Command who took some action which was
opposed to the conditions laid down in the Empire Air Training
Agreement and he and I found ourselves on a collision course.
The event was concerned with the operations in
Normandy. Sir Arthur Harris had always been strongly opposed
to the use of Bomber Command in a tactical role. His point
being that it was equipped with aircraft to carry out a strategic
role and his pilots and crews had not been trained in any way to
operate in the tactical role. However, the powers that be
decided that on this particular occasion, Bomber Command had to get
into the tactical thing. It was at the time of the hold-up in
Normandy at Caen where the British and Canadians were held up by the
Germans in a very critical position. And Sir Arthur Harris was
ordered to use his heavy bombers to bomb the German positions.
The operation was carried out and unfortunately some
of our bombs from Bomber Command fell on some of our own people and
there was a terrible row about it. Sir Arthur Harris dismissed
the CO of one our heavy bomber squadrons because his squadron was
involved in this - involved to some extent in this bombing
business. He had no right to dismiss a squadron commander
which was clearly laid down in the Empire Agreement, that the only
person who could do it was the AOC RAAF.
That was you at that
stage?
That was myself. And I protested to the Air
Ministry about it, hoping that they would take up the matter with
Harris. And much to my surprise, Air Chief Marshal Portal sort
of turned the job back on to me and said he thought I should go and
interview and settle the matter with Sir Arthur myself. I took
a dim view of that at the time but afterwards, thinking it over and
having dealt with the subject, I think Portal was right.
Actually, to my mind, the planning for the job was not all it might
have been. The principle of the operation was a timed run from
a fixed point to the target. And in my opinion, the distance
between the fixed point and the target was too short a one to ensure
accuracy. And, as a result as I say, some bombs fell on our
own troops, mainly on the Canadians. Portal suggested I should
go and see Harris myself, which I did.
On arrival at High Wickham, where his headquarters
were situated, I found myself faced not only by Sir Arthur Harris
but by five senior members of his staff, all who'd been carefully
briefed beforehand. I listened to all they had to say, I
learned one or two things that I didn't know before but which really
didn't affect the issue whatsoever. And after this conference
with Sir Arthur and his staff, the staff went off and I was left to
continue the matter with Sir Arthur himself. I pointed out to
him that I had gained some information which I had not previously
had but on weighing up that information, I considered that it had no
relevance to this particular problem. I saw I would have to be
somewhat - make myself somewhat of a heavyweight in dealing with Sir
Arthur Harris. After all, he was an air chief marshal which
was two steps in rank senior to me and I had to be - tread a little
bit carefully but on the other hand I had to be pretty firm and
definite in my views. And I eventually told Sir Arthur that
either he reinstated the commanding officer of that squadron or else
I would be forced to seriously consider withdrawing from Bomber
Command all the RAAF squadrons and all RAAF personnel employed in
the Command. And Sir Arthur looked at me with some
astonishment and said, "Oh, well, of course, you realise that only
the Commonwealth government can do that". And I said, "Yes,
sir, I realise that. But I don't think you realise that in
this particular case, I am the Commonwealth government, because I
have a delegation of powers under the Defence Act which enable me to
do it".
Which I think rather surprised him and he was
thoughtful for a moment and then said, "Well, let's go and have some
lunch". And we had some lunch, on very amicable terms. I
then bid him farewell and returned to London and by the time I'd got
to London, Sir Arthur had taken all the necessary action I
desired. The commanding officer was - his acting rank which
had been taken from him was restored and he was posted back as
commanding officer for further operations. So that was an
exceptional case.
Otherwise our - I only had one brief encounter with
another senior officer in Bomber Command. This particular
officer had rather abused an administrative case. I found that
a certain officer in his particular group had been very highly
recommended for promotion by his squadron commander. Equally
highly recommended by his station commander and on the bottom of the
file was, in the hand writing of the group commander, 'not
recommended under any circumstances'. As I was the final
authority, I rang this particular officer up and wanted to know what
his reasons were for not recommending a man who'd been highly
recommended by the two officers closest in contact with him.
And he informed me that he was not in the habit of
giving reasons for decisions he made. And I said, "Well, in
this circumstance you certainly will give me reasons". It was
rather unfortunate because he was an Australian and and Australian
who'd been trained at Point Cook for the RAF. I made it quite
clear that there was something wrong if the two men, two officers
most closely associated with an individual, highly recommended him,
for a man who was remote from his day to day operational activities
should overrule the other two. And I told him he had - either
he changed his recommendation or I would completely ignore it and
state my reasons why I ignored it. But that
Did he in fact recommend
it after that?
No. It was just
left. I overruled his decision on the matter. So that
was the only two sort of conflicts with sort of senior RAF
people. With the remainder of the RAF, we had very, through
all ranks, we had very good relationships with the RAF.
And speaking of
relationships, how did you get on with the Australian press in
Britain?
Well, relationships
Did they upset you at any
stage?
with the Australian press in Britain were
excellent. There'd been some misunderstanding, I think it was,
between the Australian press representatives and Air Marshal
Williams when he was AOC over there. And I felt that the
situation with them was a little bit touchy so I thought the best
thing to do was to have a press conference and get them all
together. And I arranged that. The senior bloke and the
sort of unofficial leader in a way of the Australian press, was a
man from the Herald, Trevor Smith.
Anyhow, I got them altogether and I asked them to
express their views on general matters and press coverage. And
they expressed their views which were quite reasonable. There
was nothing abnormal in the press.
So I said to them, "Well, this is a case where we must
have cooperation between you and myself and my staff here. And
I said, "I'll make a proposition to you. When there's a story
that can be sent without any trouble on either side, I will get you
together or you can send along one of your representatives and I
will give you the story in writing so that there's no chance of a
mistake being made. And in return, I would like you to
consider your side of the question. If you get a story other
than from my office here, will you submit it to me to check its
accuracy before you dispatch it". And I said, "I think that's
fair on both sides". And there was only one objector to that
and he was the representative of a somewhat scurrilous paper here in
Australia and they other press representatives undertook to see that
he didn't send anything.
So no names of the paper
that were mentioned?
No. No. So we had very amicable relations
with the Australian press and that was to the benefit of both
sides. And there was only one occasion on which a story was
leaked to Australia without our being able to check it. And in
the long run the effects of that story merely reinforced the
stupidity of some civil people here in Australia.
So your relationships with
the press were very good?
Very very good indeed. In fact, I could say they
couldn't have been better.
Mmm. And what about
Australia House? Did you have a great deal to do with
Australia House?
Well, Australia House - first of all I think Australia
House had been warned by Mr Bruce to keep their fingers out of our
pie, so to speak.
And although the relationship with the members of the
staff there were more or less formal, but they were nothing
detrimental about the relationship. I found that the staff at
Australia House were not, generally speaking, not interested in
anything that we were doing or the RAAF was doing unless they could
see some avenue for personal profit from it. And the only time
that we really came into conflict with - or I came into conflict,
was on one occasion after the war finished when I had a phone call
from the official secretary not requesting me to go and see him but
telling me to come and see him. And I told him I had no
intention of coming at that time because I was in the middle of a
conference. But I eventually went to see him and enquire into
what the matter was and, in a very pompous way he informed me that
he wanted to get all our ex-prisoners of war back to Australia as
soon as possible.
"Well", I said, "that's none of your business.
These fellows under my command until they arrive back in Australia
and in any case, you're somewhat late. The majority of
them are already half way back to Australia". And that is the
only sort of conflict we had with Australia House.
You had a rather
distasteful incident there at one stage too, with a white
feather incident, a moral fibre type of - type of thing?
Oh, yes. That was a case - on one of my
inspections, I went to a couple of our own units and in both
squadrons, I had a sort of a deputation of a - a small deputation,
about three or four NCOs with a request if they can have an
interview with me. And I said, yes they could. And they
said, they had been receiving letters, they and other members of the
RAAF had been receiving letters from relatives and friends in
Australia wanting to know when they were coming back to where the
real war was being fought and enclosing a white feather. So I
asked them to let me have copies of some of these letters and then
when the minister for air, Mr Drakeford made a short and very
hurried visit to Britain, I raised the matter with him and asked him
if he would take action and put a stop to that sort of thing.
It was something that had to be done from the Australian end.
And his reply to me was that, well, I don't believe you. I
don't believe what you're telling me is correct. And I handed
him some of the letters with the feathers attached. And he
still said he didn't believe me. So I felt that this was a
case of it was absolutely hopeless trying to do anything through the
official channels and I quietly released the story to the Australian
press and they handled it very tactfully and very nicely.
I told them that Drakeford had refused to have
anything to do with it and they, at my request, kept his name out of
it altogether. But it left rather a nasty taste in the mouth
of fellows who were going out every two or three, well, two or three
times a weeks sometimes, on long bombing raids as far as Berlin for
instance. And for fellows in other - well, not - I don't want
to use the term hazardous but in jobs in which there was a great
deal of operational danger. Put it that way.
It's under operational
conditions, mmm.
And that was the white feather episode which I thought
was a damned awful thing.
It was a disgrace wasn't
it, really. Big disgrace. Especially when the
chappies were doing such a good job over there.
A good job, yes.
So you had in your time a
number of ministerial visitors, Australian ministerial visits
to London. What was the purpose and what was the outcome
of their visits?
Yes. We had quite regularly a number of
political visitors. I'm excluding Mr Bruce in this case.
I've mentioned relationships with him before which were always on an
excellent footing but we had, for instance, we had Dr Evatt, we had
Mr Ford, we had Mr Drakeford.
And they're three cases in point. Dr Evatt
showed a particularly keen interest in the RAAF and what they were
doing and he wouldn't under any circumstances be enticed into any
political talk. I took him round on a number of visits.
He visited some of our units each time he was in Britain which was
fairly frequent for a minister of his standing. And on one
occasion I took him down - funny thing, it was at Mountbatten too -
and he said, "Will you arrange the CO to get the lads together so
that I can talk to them?" And we duly did that. And whilst he
was telling them about conditions in Australia and what was going on
out here which the chaps liked to hear but I noticed two sergeants
in the background sort of chatting away there and looking at Evatt
and then at each other and a smile. And I thought, now those
two fellows are up to something. And sure enough, when Evatt
had finished, he said, "Now for any questions anyone would like to
ask, I'll be very pleased to answer them if I can". And in due
course one of these sergeants came out with a question which was
purely political, no other aspect to it.
And Everett looked at him in a very fierce way and
said, "Sergeant, I think that your rank, three strips is a sergeant,
isn't it?" And the reply was, yes, sir. Well he said, Everett
said, "I have come here as one Australian visiting a number of
Australians engaged in very serious tasks. And I came here to
say how do you do to you and to tell you something about what's
going on in Australia which you might be interested in but if you're
going to drag politics into this, then I'm leaving and I won't come
again". So that was Evatt's attitude.
Ford made his visits a purely electioneering
stunt. He had a secretary with him, he asked each man as he
went along where he came from. And if he was a Queenslander,
he'd say, oh yes, your father alive? what does he do?
and so on and so on. And where do you live. Make a note
of that will you. And he did - all except people from that
state he just passed by. Took no notice. So I came to
the conclusion that was purely electioneering. Although I
couldn't say so on the spot.
And Drakeford as minister for air, you would have
expected to take some keen interest in what our chaps were
doing. And he asked me to arrange for a visit to one of the
squadrons, which I did. And he said would I arrange transport
and all the rest. Picked him up at nine o'clock in the morning
and the first thing he did was he wanted to go and see an
optician. Right. That occupied an hour and a half.
Then we set off for the squadron and we were due at the squadron at
eleven o'clock in the morning. On the way, he decided, oh,
that's an interesting place, I'd like to have a look at this.
And we stopped sightseeing and occupied quite, another period.
Then he decided it was lunch time, he'd better have some
lunch. I tried to restrain him from that but I couldn't and he
went to lunch. He had Air Marshal Williams with him.
They wanted me in too but I said I was in the habit of doing without
lunch. And we arrived at the squadron at three o'clock in the
afternoon. And it was a cold wintry day, a heavy mist right
down onto the ground so that flying had been cancelled for the
day. And when that happened, the troops were usually given
leave for the day, sort of local leave. They'd missed out on
that and by the time the minister arrived, the heaters in the
lecture hut had gone out and it was icy cold and they had to put up
with a meandering talk from Drakeford which lasted for a good half
hour. And then he departed and that was that.
I take it the troops
were not impressed?
Not at all. As a matter of fact they made their
feelings very very obvious indeed.
What? In his
presence?
Yes. And that was that as far as our ministerial
visitors to London.
So in your period over
there, did you have any instances of LMF?
Yes. We couldn't expect to be without them
actually.
Which of course is "Lack
of Moral Fibre", for those people who don't realise.
That's so. And we had a very low number of
cases. I think, if I remember rightly, the Air Ministry said
we were very much the lowest with that particular type of
case. The - I found that the RAF officer who'd been dealing
with all these type of cases was a chap that I had met when I was at
the staff college. And he was on the staff then of the
headquarters of Wessex Bombing Area. And I got to know him
very well and I found him a very careful and painstaking sort of
officer. He retired from the RAF as a wing commander to become
a farmer and of course was on the reserve, was called up on the
outbreak of war and he was given the job in the Air Ministry of
dealing with these LMF cases.
I had a look at two or three of the cases that he'd
dealt with and they impressed me with there careful sifting of the
evidence and the summing up and circumstances and all the rest of
it. And when our headquarters were formed, when I got there,
the Air Ministry said, "Oh, I suppose you'll want to deal with these
LMF cases yourself". And I said, "Well, eventually I'll have
to make the decisions but I've read through some of the reports of
your senior staff bloke on this job and they're so good that if
you've no objection, I'd like him to carry on on our behalf", which
he did.
The worst case I had was two officers who were trained
on heavy bombers. And then they boasted openly that they had
no intention of doing any operations. That their sole object
in learning to fly heavy bombers was to qualify them to fly civil
aircraft after the war. And it was so blatantly open in their
talks that I decided that, right, they were of no further use to the
RAAF, I sent them back home as services no longer required.
That was the worst case.
The most interesting case was a lad who came up and
asked for an interview with me. A nice looking lad, clean,
well turned-out. And he came in and I said, "Well, son, what
do you want to see me about". He said, "Well, sir, I'm an LMF
case". I said, "Yes, I know that". And he said, "Well,
sir, I've been classified LMF and very rightly so. But", he
said, "I've been thinking a lot about it since that classification
and I'm going to make a somewhat extraordinary request. I'm
going to ask you can I have some leave where I can get away
somewhere where I'll neither see nor hear an aircraft because", he
said, "thinking it seriously from all aspects, I think I can cope
with the situation". So I said, "Right, how long do you want?"
And he said, "Oh, if I could have about three weeks?" I said, "You
can have up to three months but report to me each month and we'll
see how you get on". That happened.
He came back at the end of about, well, not much over
a fortnight and said, "Can I go back to my squadron, sir?" I said,
"Well, are you all right?" He said, "Oh, yes, I'm - a lot of thought
and that and I'm quite convinced now that I've got over my
trouble". And I said, "All right. Well, I'll send you
away to another squadron". He said, "No, sir, that wouldn't
do. I must go back to my original squadron. I've got to
show the blokes there that I'm all right". So we sent him
back. And to my amazement, three weeks or a little later over
three weeks after he returned to the squadron, he was awarded an
immediate DFC.
Was he? Mmm.
As you know, an immediate DFC is
Is really hard to get.
well, it's for definite
Bravery on the spot, yeah.
Yes. And that was our, my most interesting LMF
case.
Mmm. Were there a
great number of - well, I think you said that there weren't as
many as with the RAF but there were - we did have some?
They weren't serious cases.
Well, some of them were
serious ones. Some were cases where we had to take
someone away from flying and put them on to other jobs.
But the Air Ministry told me afterwards - or at least the air
member of personnel told me afterwards that without checking
up the actual lists and that, he was under the impression that
our LMF numbers were the lowest of all the British and
dominion air forces.
We had some but I
Is that so? Mmm.
Which is rather pleasing to know.
Yes. Yes. It's
a, you know, rather a fierce thing when you get branded with
that [inaudible], isn't it?
Oh, yes. And
It's not a light thing to
have to carry and it's not a light thing to have to overcome.
No. Because it's - all
your comrades at the unit, they know what's happened to you.
And the news spreads through the - it spread through the whole of
the RAAF overseas, that so and so turned down for that reason.
And it eventually gets back to Australia so that
And of course your
comrades are your toughest judges too, aren't they? In
these things. And I mean they don't leave anything
unturned.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Your fellow workers are
the ones that are the most critical.
[end of tape]
Reel six of the Wrigley
interview.
So we have spoken about
various ministers from the Australian government visiting the
UK but I believe the top member you had was the Australian
prime minister of the day, Mr John Curtin. Did he meet
the troops at all and how was he received on his visit?
Yes. Mr Curtin was undoubtedly the most
important of the visitors that we had and he arrived in London in
May '44 with a very full program ahead of him. But he was very
good as far as the RAAF was concerned because he told me he would
devote a whole day to the RAAF and he wanted to see some of the
troops and he wanted to see some of their work. And with that
in view, I arranged for him to come with me to Waddington for a full
day. I selected Waddington because it was a station with two
of our squadrons stationed there, two heavy bomber Lancaster
squadrons and I thought he would get a very good idea of the work
that the squadrons were doing. He agreed to the program that
was nutted out and we went to Waddington and he spent most of the
day, or the earlier part of the day, going around the squadron,
meeting the men, talking to them, questioning them about their views
on the work they were doing, on their service views generally,
whether they had any particular worries that he could perhaps help
to solve. And that filled in the greater part of the
day. But he also expressed a desire to see the squadrons take
off on an operational job and he would like to see them when they
came back. So I arranged for him to be present first of all at
the briefing. And he sat in at the briefing of the crews,
listened very intently and once or twice asked very pertinent
questions which were sometimes answered by some of the officers,
sometimes by some of the NCOs. As I say, he sat in for the
whole of the briefing, he stayed and saw all the troops, all the
aircraft take off on their mission. And when they'd all taken
off, I suggested to him that he go back to his hotel where he was
staying for the night and have a bit of a rest because none of the
aircraft would be back again for a matter of five or six
hours. He accepted that and I arranged that I would pick him
up and get him back to the station comfortably before the first
aircraft were due to arrive back.
We did that, got him back and he stayed and watched
them all come in, had a word with each crew as they landed.
And then he insisted that he should go and sit in at the de-briefing
of the crews, which was a fairly lengthy process. However, in
he went and he stuck it out until the small hours of the morning and
finished up with having a chat with the crews and a cup of coffee or
a cup of tea and thanked them very much for putting up with his
questions and the like. Thanked them very much and said that
having spent the day there and seen what was going on, he then had a
much better appreciation of the work they were doing and he wished
them all the best of luck and safe return to Australia.
Besides the air crew
members, did he have a chance to talk to the ground people,
ground staff and so on?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
And were they impressed
with his
?
Oh, yes. What I think pleased them more than
anything was that his questions were intelligent ones. Where
previously lot of them were very superficial and meant nothing very
much. And I'm sure that they all appreciated his visit to
them. He told them too that he'd tell the Australian people
when he got home the sort of work that they were doing.
Mmm. Oh, that's
nice.
And I felt personally that if he did that - and I'm
sure he would do it - it would have helped to brush away the white
feather episode. So on the whole, it was a very good visit.
How did the RAAF effort
stack up against the other dominion services that were
operating out of UK?
Well, that's a bit of a difficult question to answer
because I'm perhaps a little bit prejudiced. But I think
generally speaking the RAAF were held in high esteem in the Air
Ministry. And I think that - I would not express my own
opinion on the comparison between the various sides, RAAF and the
dominions, but a very senior officer in the Air Ministry expressed
to me on one occasion that in his opinion and in the opinion of a
number of his colleagues, he ranked, to put it plainly - to use an
old expression which would perhaps not offend anybody - he said,
well, they were second to none. So that seemed to be a fair
summing up of their ability, as I say, without offending anybody
else.
In the area, UK, Middle
East, etcetera, how many squadrons did we have and how many
personnel overall?
Well, we had, overall we had two of our permanent
squadrons were over there. No.3 and No.10. No.3 was in
the Middle East and No.10 was at - flying boat squadron
Flying boat
squadron. Mmm.
Yes. And in addition to that, under the EATS
[Empire Air Training Scheme] Agreement, what were none as the
Article 15 squadrons. And those we had six fighter squadrons,
two of which were later transferred to the south west Pacific.
We had a fighter bomber squadron, a general reconnaissance bomber
squadron, two general reconnaissance squadrons, the five heavy
bomber squadrons, three Lancasters and two Halifax. A flying
boat squadron and a light bomber squadron. The light bomber
squadron being equipped with the well known Mosquito aircraft.
Yes. Yes, they
played a very important part in - not only the bombing but
also the
?
Oh, in every air activity, you
might say, the RAAF had some part to play. And there's - one
interesting point about those Article 15 squadrons. There was
one of them, No.455 Squadron, actually saw service in Russia.
Oh, yes? What was
that? That was a bomber squadron, 455, was it?
Yes. It was equipped with Hampden aircraft and
actually it should never have been in Russia. But some of our
people - it happened before I arrived over there - but some of our
people slipped up there a bit and didn't say boo about them going to
Russia. However, they took their squadron of Hampdens over to
north Russia and they taught the Russians to fly them and to operate
them. And when they were satisfied that the Russians could do
the job, they were air lifted back to Britain and re-equipped in
Britain.
Hmm. So they left
the Hampdens
?
They left the Hampdens with the Russians. And in
the course of those operations, they picked up two Russian
decorations. So apparently the Russians appreciated what they
And did they work in
co-operation with the British and Australian squadron?
That Hampden squadron? Did they work in co-operation?
No, they were - as far as the
RAAF were concerned, it was purely an operational training mission
to teach the Russians
I see. Teach the
Russians how to fly.
how to fly the Hampdens and how to use them.
What about our strength
over there? Did it - our strength in the UK? How
did it compare with the rest of the dominions? We had a
very substantial number of air crew and ground staff, didn't
we?
I don't know how the RAAF compared with the other
dominions with regard to strengths. Of course Canada would be
the nearest in numbers to the RAAF and New Zealand and South Africa
would come in at, of course, on a lower scale. But as far as
working conditions went, they were all operating on very much the
same lines. There was very little difference there. But
as to, as I say, as to comparative strengths, I can't express
Well, how many officers
and airmen did we have over there at that stage?
Ah, in
in air crew we had
5,672 officers and 8,396 other ranks. And on ground staff we
had 495 and 2,595 other ranks.
That's a pretty
substantial crew, wasn't it?
A substantial showing.
In all there was over 17 thousand RAAF members served overseas and I
suppose you could say that at any one time we had, well, in round
figures, ten thousand plus. So it was quite a substantial
force.
And out of that, what were
our casualty rates?
Well, our casualties - we had three theatres of
operations and our casualties in Europe were over six
thousand. In the Middle East, about 1500 and in India and
Burma, slightly over 300. So you might say, in all, our
casualties were about 8,300 odd.
Mmm. A lot out of a
force, isn't it?
It's a lot, yes. And
it's rather an interesting comparison. In the South West
Pacific, we had five thousand three hundred odd. So that the
overseas force was bigger than the South West Pacific force which
is, I think, not appreciated here in Australia.
Mmm. They probably
didn't know at that stage or the figures were never
released. What about decorations? We received our
fair share of decorations, did we?
Decorations for flying operations were 1,462 including
one VC. And foreign decorations: nine including the two
Russian ones. So that
They would be unique,
would they?
The Russian ones? Yes.
Would that only apply to
Australia or did any of the other dominions get any Russian
decorations in the war?
No, I don't know, I don't know of any other
decorations at all. But I do know those two because of the
squadron being there. So that
You had a number of RAAF
personnel visiting from time to time. Did they have any
great part to play in the operation over there or was
[inaudible]?
No. As a matter of fact, we had quite a number
of people sent over there. And except in, I suppose round
about - well, I suppose a little less than fifty percent of them, we
knew all [inaudible] what they were sent for because they were sent
to undergo courses or to investigate something on the technical
side. But there were a number more that arrived over there, we
didn't know what they were coming over for. I don't know
whether they knew themselves.
And except in one case, we had one to our point of
view, a rather - an annoying posting. We were protesting at
the time about the ration and accommodation allowance that had been
paid to many members of my staff who had to live in London.
And they were paid, same as I was, one and eleven pence a day for
rations and two and five pence a day for accommodation. Well,
you can imagine how far two and five pence a day would go for
accommodation in London. Air Marshal Williams when he was over
there, had tried to set up barrack accommodation and messing in
London but Australia, who all knew better what should be done in
London than anybody else, said no. I raised the question again
and the Air Ministry were very good. And they said, look,
we'll provide you with barracked accommodation at no expense to your
government and we'll ration your people the same as we ration the
people in the units. Now, if that's acceptable to you, it's
acceptable to us. And I said, "Yes, most acceptable to us as a
matter of fact".
But unfortunately it somehow or other was leaked to
Australia and we got a signal back saying, under no
circumstances. So these poor individual airmen were stuck with
trying to keep themselves, feed themselves and find sleeping
quarters for themselves at that rate. Well, we kept up the
fire and the demand to be allowed to do this and they took a man out
of the finance branch, a civilian, made him an honorary wing
commander, I think it was, and sent him over to London to
investigate the matter. And he spent all his time sort of
wondering round overseas headquarters and he eventually put in a
report which I endorsed, I heartily disagreed with, that the
allowance was adequate.
And that seemed to strange to me, coming from a man
who, whilst he was in London, was paid a very handsome
allowance. And at the same time he complained that expenses
were very high and could I arrange for him to be accommodated with a
London family like one or two of our airmen were. Oh, I - to
that I took very strong exception.
So we never got any further with that. They just
dug their feet in here in Australia. British people were very
good helping where they could and in one or two cases where it was a
married man with a family in Australia, I put my hand in my pocket
and withdrew some of my meagre savings and helped one or two fellows
who were really in a spot of bother. I thought that was really
unfair to the personnel concerned.
You had a welfare effort
going - when you're speaking about welfare, you putting your
hand in your pocket - you had a welfare scheme going that
apparently helped the troops over there?
Yes, well, we had our normal welfare arrangements such
as were within our means so to speak. And the Australian
Comforts Fund were very good, of course, over there. But as
you know their funds were very limited and that of course limited
what they could do. But we had - for instance, one of our very
good efforts was known as the cigarettes scheme. On one of my
inspection visits to some of our units, I had a deputation from some
of the senior NCOs in one of the squadrons who explained to me that
they were - their nearest neighbours in the service were an American
squadron which was situated only about, oh, very short distance away
from them and that all the personnel on that station received once a
week a full American carton of cigarettes, free of charge. It
didn't cost them anything. And these lads of our wanted to
know if some scheme could be devised whereby they could get regular
supplies of cigarettes. They didn't want them for nothing,
they were quite prepared to pay for them. And the average cost
of a packet of 20 cigarettes in Britain at the time was two
shillings and sixpence. And as they said, they didn't mind
paying for them provided they could get them. So I said,
"Well, leave it with me and I'll look into the matter".
So I approached the Board of Trade which covered the
customs people and asked them if they'd help the Australians by
allowing me to bring in supplies of cigarettes, duty free. And
I explained to them and position, you allow the Americans to do it,
isn't the fair thing to allow one of your own dominions. And I
dealt only with the heads of the departments in these things, and I
dealt with the head of the Board of Trade who got the senior customs
bloke in with him and they said, oh, by all means, we'll agree to
that without any hesitation. Well, the next thing of course
was how to get the money out of Britain to pay for them. So I
had to go along and see the head of British Treasury and again, got
full co-operation from them. And then of course the next thing
was Board of Trade - ah, Ministry of Shipping. To get shipping
space which was always scarce.
So I got whole-hearted co-operation from all the
departments concerned. And then the problem came up of
purchasing them. I sent a signal to Air Marshal Williams in
Washington explaining the scheme roughly and would he co-operate
with us and arrange for one of his staff to do the actual
purchases. He needn't worry about anything in the way of
payment or anything else. Just purchasing. And I got a
signal back that he'd have nothing whatsoever to do with the scheme.
Is that so?
Which annoyed me intensely. So I went and saw
Air Chief Marshal Bowhill, the chief of RAF Transport Command and
said to him, "Look, I want to send a welfare officer over to the
United States on a job and I'm here to request you to make a passage
to USA, air passage USA and back for him", and I explained what it
was about. He said, "It's alright. We'll fix that for
you". So I sent my welfare officer over to the United States,
he made all the purchase arrangements and I told him how - to tell
the people over there how payment would be made and all that was
fixed up. And so the scheme started. A packet of 20
cigarettes in London at the time cost two and sixpence and under
this scheme of ours, we sold them to the troops to the nearest
penny. So they got a packet of cigarettes for sixpence.
And we made - at that figure, we made a very very handsome profit.
Another welfare effort: our ex-prisoners of war, when
the Germans collared them, they confiscated their watches. And
these lads came back and they didn't have a watch and they wanted a
watch. I said, "Right, we'll have a similar scheme to the
cigarette scheme". I sent a welfare fellow over to Switzerland
where he purchased good watches under an Air Ministry contract and
the lads got good watches at a little more than cost. We made
a round figure on it. And out of our welfare activities there
and a small canteen that we had - oh, and plus another welfare
scheme that we brought in there. Colonel George Langley
representing the Red Cross in Australia, arrived in London with a
shipment of - to describe it using a common term - a shipment of
goodies for ex-prisoners of war. But unfortunately I had all
the ex-prisoners of war on their way home before he arrived and he
was in a bit of a difficult position to know what he was going to do
with all these goods. Colonel Langley and I had been school
mates together so we knew each other pretty well, and I went along
and got hold of him and said, "Look here, George, what are you going
to do with all these goodies you've got?" And he said, "Well", he
said, "I've got to get rid of them. I can't take them back",
and he said, "I'm in a bit of a fix and the only avenue I can see of
disposing of them is NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force
Institute]. Navy, Army, Air Force
Institute?
Canteens.
Yeah, canteens, yeah.
And he said, "They're the only avenue I can see of
disposing of them".
And he said, "I don't suppose I'll get much for them,
however", he said, "better to have a little than be messing about
with it". I said, "Alright.
Well, George, how much do you think the NAAFI will
give you for that?" And he said, "Well, according to enquiries, so
much", and it was some ridiculous figure. And I said, "Well
look, George, I'll buy all those from you - and give you ten percent
more than the NAAFI are offering you. And you'll only have one
delivery point instead of several". And he said, "Right" and
accepted it on the spot. So I took over all that and treated
it in the same way as we'd treated the cigarettes. We made it
available to all our personnel at a nearest even figure to what it
cost us and that enabled them to, in the way of goods they received
that way, to return some of the hospitality that they received from
British people. And as a result, that was - that stock of
material was snapped up very quickly at no real cost to us or the
service and that made us a little extra profit. And taking in
the cigarette scheme, the watches and the Red Cross business, we had
an accumulated profit of 52 thousand - this is sterling - 52
thousand eight hundred and sixteen pounds sterling which we sent to
the RAAF Welfare Fund in Australia who never acknowledged it nor
said thankyou for it.
Good Lord.
Which I thought was very very poor.
And you didn't know where
it went to after that once you'd
?
No. So
Amazing.
So that was one of our welfare, three of our welfare
efforts which my welfare officer and his small staff of about three
men, managed in their stride. They did an excellent job of
work. And the troops were happy
The troops appreciated it.
And I hope that somebody in Australia was happy too.
Mmm. You'll probably
never know.
No.
So how did you repat your
prisoners of war, all those that were kept in the enemy
prisons? They come to UK and then they were transferred
to
?
Yes. We gradually got them back into the United
Kingdom. They came back more or less in small parties because
they had to be collected from some very remote parts of
Europe. We got them all back, we got them into our personnel
reception and disposal depot in Brighton. We re-fitted them
with uniform, equipment and that and sort of treated them - although
there was a certain amount of discipline in the depot at Brighton,
it was not anything heavy handed you might say. It was a
benevolent attitude towards them. We realised the experiences
most of them had gone through and we saw that they were comfortably
accommodated, that they were well rationed and given an opportunity
of mixing with not only our own service people but with the British
population generally, as a sort of get them used to
Mmm. Of the Royal
Air Force?
Oh, well, they take the Royal Air Force as being, you
know, the combination of all.
Oh, I see.
And that's made quite clear in the place.
Just combines all the
other dominion air forces.
My wife and I visited the church when we were in
London a few years ago and I had a long talk with the verger and
also with the vicar. And our only regret was that there was no
special service being held there whilst we were in London. But
we attended a service there and the old parishioners still turn up
and always a sprinkling of air force people as well. A very
worthwhile effort.
[end of tape]
This is Reel 7 of the
Wrigley interview.
What
were you views of the RAAF achievements in the European
theatre?
Well, actually the RAAF squadrons in the overseas
theatre took part in every important operation that was carried out
by the RAF and dominion air forces. It's a bit difficult to
detail exactly the extent to which they took part except in the case
of Bomber Command. In Bomber Command we had a force of five
squadrons of heavy bombers, three squadrons of Lancasters, two of
Halifaxes and it was easy there to make a sort of assessment.
But those five heavy bomber squadrons actually constituted just
under five percent of the total of Bomber Command. And I've
selected four different bombing attacks which give some clear idea
what that five percent did.
In Berlin, for instance, on one raid, 645 aircraft
actually attacked the primary target. And of that 645
aircraft, 9.15 percent were RAAF. So that five percent
accomplished, you might say, 9.15 percent of the total effort on
that raid.
There were two occasions against Frankfurt. One
of them was 736 aircraft attacked the primary target and of those,
9.3 percent were RAAF. Another raid on Frankfurt, 745 aircraft
attacked the primary target and 9.92 percent were RAAF.
Taking a third place, Stuttgart: 762 aircraft attacked
the primary target and 9.72 percent of those were RAAF
aircraft. So that gives you some idea of the RAAF effort.
This effort was not imposed on the RAAF by the RAF in
any way. It - the effort - was stepped up by the air
crews themselves. The RAAF air crews themselves. They
wanted to show that they could do a little bit better than the other
fellow and so it was not exactly a voluntary effort but a little bit
stepped up effort, you might say. And that sort of attitude
occurred not only in Bomber Command but in Coastal Command, Fighter
Command and all other commands of the RAF, both in Britain, in the
Middle East and North Africa and in India and Burma.
Mmm. Would you call
this a competitive spirit? Would it be termed a
competitive spirit in a war time
?
Well, I don't know
exactly. I suppose you could. But I think it was
something - that feeling that a lot of Australian have. That
they liked to be doing things just that little bit better than
anybody else. The average reasonable thinking Australian feels
that way.
Yes. In other words
a competitive spirit without going overboard.
Yes.
Mmm. So I suppose
now comes the time when your job as AOC in London more or less
came to an end and you returned to Australia. What were
your thoughts about returning to Australia after the wide
scope of job or position that you - or command - that you had
in the UK?
Well, when this question of coming back to Australia
for retirement, I felt a little bit disappointed to be sort of
retired the day I got back on Australian soil. I felt that I
could have contributed somewhat to the lessons learned during the
war had I stayed on for a while. But however, the powers that
be have the final say. One thing that did annoy me about it,
is that I first learned of my impending retirement from a paragraph
in the London Times. And it was not until almost three
months later that I received official notification. And I
thought that was most discourteous.
Mmm. Very much so.
However, that's as it worked out and it was a bit of a
blow in a way too, insofar as loads of us that were retired were
left without a job at the time and we had no retired pay of
course. And the Commonwealth public service objected to us
participating in the Commonwealth superannuation scheme on the
grounds that we were occupied in a dangerous occupation and air
casualties would cause a terrific drain on the financial resources
of the superannuation scheme. Which was of course all
nonsense. But of course the government made a great song about
the fact that they'd given us a grant on retirement. I don't
know the basis of the grant, whether it was the same case for all of
us that were retired but as far as I was concerned, it was an amount
of five thousand pound. But a great song was made about the
generosity of the government in making this grant but what they
didn't mention publicly was the debits that were made against that
five thousand pounds. For instance, there was a debit of
deferred pay which in my case amounted to some three thousand pounds
odd. And that was our own money that we'd had deducted
regularly from our salaries. And I thought that was a bit over
the odds to make such a song about their generosity. But as
far as I was personally concerned was that I didn't get back to
Australia immediately the war finished because there were a lot of
things still to be done. There was getting our personnel back
home and numerous other things and by the time I got back - and
being retired I had to earn a living so to speak - as I said, by the
time I got back, all the worthwhile jobs round Australia had been
snapped up by people, not only air force people but other people on
the spot. So I had difficulty actually in finding a job for a
while because there were no jobs going. But I eventually
earned a living by taking on some administrative jobs which carried
on for a few years. But once those opportunities - waiting for
those opportunities to arrive, I went into business for a while but
I had to give that up because I found I couldn't compete with these
chain store people who were selling goods on the retail market for
considerably less than I could buy them for.
You
would have difficulty too - the fact that you spent virtually
all your life as a military man with no training other than
probably your flying and of course your administrative side
within the services, you'd find it fairly difficult trying to
apply that sort of a qualification outside?
Yes. And of course, well, of course I'd had some
years experience as a teacher in the education department, both in
metropolitan and country schools. But there again, the
education department was faced with the problem of placing all their
returned people. So that as I'd been away from the profession
for a while, it - well, not for a while, for some years - of course
there were not anything in the way of openings there. But
still, we got on with the job.
That seems to be the main
thing [inaudible], yeah. What in your service life, do
you consider your greatest achievement or the part of the
service that gave you the most satisfaction or the job within
the service that gave you the most satisfaction? 'Cause you
had a very varied - what shall I say - number of appointments?
Well, that's a difficult question in a way. I
held some appointments, for instance as director of organisation and
staff duties, next to Air Marshal Williams, I suppose, I had
probably more involvement than any other officer with the
development of the service. Then as station commander of
Laverton, I got to know pretty intimately a considerable number of
war ranks there, which was very useful. And I was sent down
there with a specific job to do, a bit over and above the normal
command job and I think I got - not only myself but my fellow
officers and airmen on the station - got a good deal of satisfaction
out of some of the things we achieved there.
Then of course came along the period when I was AOC of
Southern Area and I derived a lot of satisfaction there building up
one of the main training efforts of the RAAF in south eastern
Australia and got that going. And then of course I was moved
in as Air Member for Personnel and had the administration of the
personnel in the service and the training program in the
service. I got a lot of satisfaction out of the personnel side
because I'm afraid that that had got into disarray somewhat.
We'd had an RAF officer on loan to us here who'd been a very gallant
squadron commander, very gallant squadron commander indeed, but it
was unfortunate that his real ability ended as a squadron
commander. But he came out here and the then minister for air
had been a junior officer in his squadron in the first war and he
indulged in too much intriguing with the minister. And when he
returned to the RAF he was promptly placed on the retired
list. But I got a lot of satisfaction in getting a muddle in
personnel matters straightened out and sort of introduced a proper
personnel scheme where we knew what we wanted and we knew how we
would get it.
And then of course I was send overseas to the job
there. And I must say, I obtained a tremendous amount of
satisfaction in that job, so far as the RAAF personnel serving in
the overseas theatre were concerned and satisfaction from the
excellent work that they were putting in over there and the
excellent results that they were achieving. That gave me a
very great amount of satisfaction and the only trouble I found with
that job was with our own people who were always wanting to
interfere in matters of which they had no detailed knowledge at all
and yet thought they knew everything. But I certainly received
a tremendous amount of satisfaction in knowing that our chaps were
doing an excellent job of work and also satisfaction in being able
to look after their interests and the like.
I think this is probably
pointed out every year, when you attend the RAAF Europe dinner
when you take your place at the head table with the other VIP
members, how some nearly 300 members give you a standing
ovation as you come into the hall which I think must be a
tremendous satisfaction for you.
Yes. That gives me a great deal of satisfaction,
a great deal of pleasure, to know that they feel that way. And
that goes not only at that particular function but another one that
I always get a lot of satisfaction from is the annual reunion of the
Odd Bods Association. As you know, the Odd Bods are the RAAF
personnel who were distributed among RAF units. And were
always the most difficult part of our overseas people to deal with
because they had no Australian boss on the spot in the squadron, so
to speak. And it fell on the AOC to pay particular regard to
their particular interests and wellbeing. And the fact that,
as you say, they give me a standing ovation on these occasions does
make me feel that after all I was of some use. And so that's
I suppose that in the
flying side of it, would you consider the south to north
Melbourne to Darwin trip, flight that you did, would that be
probably one of your more notable flying trips?
Well, I suppose it was in
[Inaudible] being of an
exploratory nature, more or less?
Yes, I suppose that is so because it had been
organised almost at a moment's notice; you might say with an
aircraft which was not by any means of a recent model at the
time. It was certainly an aircraft in which I'd had a lot of
experience and knew pretty well but it was an occasion on which one
had to use a good deal of initiative and what is perhaps more
important, a good deal of commonsense. And I was very
fortunate in my comrade, Murphy, who was an old school mate and who
was a chap who, in a way, had learnt in the hard way and knew his
job, was co-operative and dependable and I couldn't have had a
better comrade on that job.
The trip also was of interest to me in somewhat of a
personal way because I'd heard stories of the Northern Territory
when I was a boy.
My mother had a very great friend who married a
Territorian and she used to have, not very infrequent visits to a
certain part of the continent, and when she did come south she
always came to visit my mother and we heard tales of life in the
back blocks of the Northern Territory. This person was really
quite famous. It was Mrs Aeneas Gunn who wrote two books on
the Northern Territory: We of the Never Never
and The Little Black Princess. And having heard
her stories of the Territory and live there even, as I say, as a
teenager, a very young teenager, I thought to myself, well that's
the sort of place I'd like to know more about or see something
of. So when the opportunity to go to the Territory on that
flight arose, I didn't hesitate in accepting the task. And
although I didn't see the very rugged parts of the Territory where
Mrs Gunn lived, I at least saw enough of the Territory to appreciate
the isolation and loneliness of life of the settlers in the
Territory, particularly of those who were not living on one of the
big cattle stations. Even life in some of them was fairly
primitive but not quite so much so as in the more lonely
settlers. And I appreciate the guts of the people that went
out there. And of course going up and seeing Darwin in those
days, when we arrived there was not much more than a very small
country town. And life there was not the easiest. And of
course later on when we went up there 60 years later, and found a
thriving metropolis and the old landing ground there was a
flourishing residential area, it shows how the Territory had grown.
Had grown... 'Cause
Tracey [Cyclone Tracey] had gone through before then, hadn't
it?
Yes.
And
that cleaned it up. Of course I think, all due respects
to the northerners, with Tracey going through, I think it did
a great thing for them because it enabled to build much more
beyond than they had before.
Yes, I think it enabled them to - they got rid of a
lot of stuff that they could well do without and it was replaced
with a better class of stuff.
But what I found on that trip up there 60 years later,
I was amazed at the way they'd cleaned up after Tracey. It was
absolutely - mind you, there were many scars about the place but the
scars were not the result of the cyclone. They were scars
resulting from the making of new roads, improving communications and
various amenities of one kind or another and of course I don't know,
they've probably disappeared now with new vegetation and that about
the place. And I'm hoping I'll be able to go up to Darwin
again in the near future.
Well, I'm hoping so too,
even if you are - even if next month does herald your
ninety-fourth birthday!
Well, thank you, sir for
your time. It has been a very interesting interview and
I'm sure that what we have on tape will also be of value to
those people who are looking for the history of the RAAF,
coming from such an important person as you, with the
important job you held with the RAAF.
Thank you.
[End of interview]
