Air Force History Lesson
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pdf document (1mb) has been made available containing all the history information in this section, you are welcome to use it for your school projects and anything you like.
Peace keeping
Australia has had peacekeepers in the field with the United Nations continuously for over 50 years. In Indonesia in 1947, Australians were part of the very first group of UN military observers anywhere in the world, and were, in fact, the first into the field. In the early years, Australia's peacekeepers were generally unarmed military observers, promoting peace indirectly. Observer missions help create stability, but do not necessarily help end the conflicts. Australian observers took part in a UN operation in Kashmir from 1950 to 1985. The operation continues today, without a resolution of the conflict in sight.
Since the 1970s, Australia's contributions to peacekeeping operations have increased in size and scope. In that decade, and again in the 1980s, Air Force helicopters operated in the Sinai, as Egypt and Israel ended three decades of hostilities. The Air Force was part of the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan from March 1975 until January 1979. No 38 Squadron operated the Caribou and 12 crew members based on rotation at Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and Srinigar, Kashmir, flying re-supply and border patrols. The Caribou, with a fully loaded ceiling of 21,000 feet, was operating in an area where 33 mountains topped 25,000 feet and weather conditions varied from dust to snow. A detachment of Mirage fighters was also based at Tengah, Singapore, from 1971, later moving to Butterworth, Malaysia, staying till 1988. Today the Orion aircraft of No 92 Wing, together with an administrative unit, maintain the Air Force presence in Malaysia.
Another UN Emergency Force was established to supervise the cease-fire in the Sinai following the Yom Kippur War. The Air Force contributed four Iroquois helicopters and 46 personnel at Ismailia on a six-monthly rotational basis from 1976 until 1979. Later, based at El Gorah, the Air Force provided helicopter transport for observers conducting verification and reconnaissance missions in the four treaty zones established as a result of the Camp David Accords of September 1978. The Iroquois helicopters were painted white and bore MFO (Multinational Force and Observers) markings.
With the end of the Cold War, the 1990s proved to be the busiest decade in the history of multinational peacekeeping. For a period in 1993, Australia had over 2,000 peacekeepers in the field, with large contingents in Cambodia and Somalia. A year later, Australians were in Rwanda, another country to fall victim to genocidal civil violence. This time, the Australian contingent centred on medical staff, who were able to treat many of the local people, in addition to members of the UN force.
Since 1997 Australians have also served in Bougainville, monitoring the long-running conflict between the Papua New Guinea government and the separatist Bougainville Revolutionary Army. Then, in September 1999, Australia led a peace enforcement operation which dwarfed all its previous peacekeeping efforts, as East Timor achieved independence from Indonesia. It also represented a full turning of the circle, for it was in this same month, but 52 years earlier, that the very first Australian peacekeepers were deployed, and the state whose independence they helped bring about was Indonesia itself.
In 1999, Australia sent over 5,500 peacekeepers to East Timor. In 1947, our first group of military observers - probably the first United Nations peacekeepers anywhere in the world - numbered just four.
A brief Air Force history
From humble beginnings in the Australian Flying Corps just before World War I, the Royal Australian Air Force came into being in 1921. Within six months of formation it had a strength of 300 officers and men, and consisted of a single flying school based at Point Cook, Victoria. We are proud of the fact that we are the world’s second oldest air force.
By the end of World War II in 1945 our RAAF had peaked at 182,000 personnel and 6,200 aircraft, making it the fourth largest air force in the world - surpassed only by the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain. We subsequently served with distinction during conflicts in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam and, in recent times, in support of the international Coalition Against Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.
An overview of Air Force today
Today our Air Force of over 13,000 highly skilled personnel operates some of the most technologically advanced equipment in the world from bases at Amberley, Edinburgh, Richmond, Williamtown, Tindal, Pearce, Darwin, Townsville, Wagga, Williams and East Sale, with “bare” (unmanned) bases at Learmonth and Curtin in Western Australia and Scherger in Queensland.
The Air Force is made up of many different elements: Air Force Headquarters, Headquarters Air Command, and force element groups, wings, squadrons, schools and support units all around Australia. The Air Force team - service and civilian - works towards achieving the vision of preparing for, conducting and sustaining effective air operations to protect Australia’s security and interests.
Our Air Force has an international reputation for expertise and professionalism. In times of need it has provided humanitarian and peace-keeping support both within Australia and overseas countries including Somalia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Solomon Islands and Indonesia.
Further history resources
Australian Military Aviation and World War One
Inter-war years 1921-1939
World War Two
Post War 1946
South-East Asia and Vietnam
1980s, 90s and Gulf War
2000 - A New Century
Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams
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A pdf document (1mb) has been made available containing all the historical information in this section, you are welcome to use it for your school projects and anything you like.
Richard Williams is the most significant figure in the history of the Royal Australian Air Force. On a calm morning at Point Cook, Victoria in November 1914, he completed three brief flying tests in a Bristol Boxkite, thus qualifying as the first military pilot trained in Australia. Eight years later he became the first Chief of the Air Staff, a post he held for most of the difficult inter-war years when the Air Force's continuing existence as an independent service was frequently under threat from the Army and Navy.
A thin, intense man whose high forehead and penetrating gaze accurately indicated his probing intellect, Williams was born in Moonta, South Australia in 1890, the eldest child of a copper miner who laboured underground. Educated to junior certificate level in the State school system, Williams worked in a bank and served in the militia before joining the Permanent Forces in 1912. He was selected for pilot training in the nascent Australian Flying Corps in 1914.
Strong minded and confident, Williams rapidly established himself as a leader in the new art of air warfare. After deploying to the Middle East in 1916, he Richard Williams was appointed firstly to command the AFC's No 1 Squadron, and then a wing of the Royal Air Force, a considerable achievement for a 'colonial' in those days. A brave and capable pilot, he was decorated with the DSO and OBE for his valour and leadership in combat and was twice mentioned in dispatches.
The Royal Australian Air Force was formed in 1921 against the express wishes of Australia's generals and admirals, who lacked the vision to foresee the dominant role air power would soon come to play in the defence of Australia. As Chief of the Air Staff, Williams needed all of his considerable political skills to keep his fledgling service from being dismembered by the Army and Navy. Sharp, even waspish in his manner, Williams worked shrewdly to preserve and promote his service. He established a personal correspondence with the British Empire's greatest and most influential airman. Marshal of the RAF Sir Hugh Trenchard; developed a brilliant plan to defend Australia against the emerging threat of Japan by employing air power in the sea and air approaches which constitute the nation's natural defensive barrier; and fought tirelessly in the political battle against the Air Force's enemies.
Despite his somewhat puritanical, stiff-necked manner and legendary pedantic attention to detail - the latter characteristic which made his frequent inspection of Royal Australian Air Force units a severe trial for those on the receiving end - Williams' devotion to his service and his manifest intellect made him an admired leader.
Notwithstanding his great responsibilities and demanding administrative workload, Williams found time to burnish his operational reputation with a pioneering flight into the Pacific islands in 1926. He had also become the first Australian Air Force officer to complete staff college training when he graduated from the British Army and RAF courses in 1924; while ten years later he added attendance at the Imperial Defence College to his impressive qualifications.
By the early 1930s all threats to the Royal australian Air Force's independent existence had been averted. Shortly afterwards the government approved a dramatic expansion of the Air Force, a decision which not only recognised the likelihood of war in the near future but also amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that Williams had been right.
That may have been cold comfort to Williams who in February 1939 was removed from office, ostensibly because of the allegedly high accident rate. A more likely reason for the dismissal was that, after almost 20 years of political in-fighting on behalf of his service, Dicky Williams had simply made too many enemies.
Air Vice-Marshal Williams spent most of World War II overseas, firstly in the United Kingdom and then as the Royal Australian Air Force's senior representative in Washington. He was retired against his wishes in 1946 by the Chifley Government, extraordinarily shabby treatment of a man who had contributed so much to his country. On leaving the Air Force he became Director-General of Civil Aviation. He published immensely interesting and invaluable (if understandably idiosyncratic) memoirs, These Are Facts, in 1977.
Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, died in 1980. He is properly remembered and honoured as the 'Father' of the Royal Australian Air Force.
Air Force Annual Magazine
Each year Air Force Headquaters puts together the Air Force Annual Magazine.
The magazine contains a whole bunch of information on the Air Force, its past acheivements, goings on and future ideas.
You can find the 2008 edition and past editions at the RAAF Annual Magazine website: http://www.airforce.gov.au/annual/
Worth checking out!