Part 1: The Beginning
Probably the most important factor leading to the raising of a flying unit in the Australian Army was the formation of the Aerial League of Australia in Sydney on 28 April 1909. The meeting was organized by George Augustus Taylor (1872-1928), a man of wide interests and soon to be an honorary lieutenant in the Australian Intelligence Corps because of his glider flying and wireless experiments, and Major Charles Rosenthal (1875-1954), an architect and Citizen Force gunner. In the chair was Lawrence Hargrave (1850-1915), gentleman-inventor, who, among other things, had been researching human flight for a number of years and discovered that a curved upper surface of an aerofoil generates an increase in lift.
The Aerial League was a pressure group and one of its members, Charles Lindsay Campbell (1863-1912), secretary of the Queensland Branch, wrote to the editor of the Brisbane Courier on 12 October 1910 that:
"…aircraft at a few hundred feet could, with certainty, drop a most dangerous explosive down the thirty foot diameter funnel of one of the modern Dreadnoughts".
Campbell went on to suggest that military aviation should be developed in Australia and soon after he wrote to the Minister of Defence submitting a plan for a school of aviation and an aviation corps. (Campbell has the melancholy distinction of being the first Australian to die in an aircraft accident when his Bristol Monoplane stalled at 300 feet, near Brooklands Surrey, on 3 August 1912.)
Due to the agitation of the Aerial League and others, the Minister of Defence, Senator George Pearce (1870-1952), when in the UK for the 1911 Imperial Conference, visited Brooklands the home of British aviation, and decided there should be a flying school in the Defence Department. Given the distances, the communications of those days, the lack of technological knowledge, that the Royal Australian Navy was being raised and the Army was busy in setting-up and then administering a large universal training and cadet scheme, there was a fairly quick reaction to the Minister’s decision. Aircraft were ordered, two flying instructors (honorary lieutenants) and four mechanics were selected, an airfield was chosen (Point Cook, although, for a number of years, the address of the Central Flying School was Werribee), stores and equipment delivered and Military Orders issued.
The aircraft ordered from the UK on 3 July 1912 were two Deperdussins and two BE2a (BE for "Bleriot Experimental", later for "British Experimental")and, on 6 December 1912, one Bristol Boxkite.
The first Course began at the Central Flying School, Point Cook on the 17th August 1914, two weeks after the declaration of war. There were only four students: Lt R Williams, a permanent member of the Administrative and Instructional Staff, (later to become Chief of the RAAF Air Staff, for a number of years between the wars and the first Director-General of Civil Aviation) and three Citizen Force officers - all from Victoria - Capt T W White, 2Lt D T W Manwell and 2Lt G P Merz
Eight courses were conducted at Point Cook during the Great War, but some of the 85 pilots produced were transferred to squadrons being raised before they qualified. The NSW Education Department also trained a number of pilots, mainly for the Royal Naval Aviation Service and the Royal Flying Corps, at Ham Common, now the site of RAAF Richmond.
Ab Initio training was on Bristol Boxkites, engine starting and taxiing on a Deperdussin and advanced flying on the BE2a or equivalent types.Soon after war was declared a BE2a and a Farman seaplane were crated and sent on HMAS Una to assist in the second phase of the seizure of German New Guinea possessions. The pilots were Lt E Harrison, one of the two flying instructors, and the recently qualified Lt G P Merz. The aircraft were not required and were returned to Point Cook from New Guinea still in the crates.
Early in 1915, in response to a request from the Viceroy of India, the First Half Flight of the AIF`s Australian Flying Corps, about fifty all ranks, was raised at Point Cook for service in the ill-starred Mesopotamia campaign. The pilots were Capt H A Petre, the other original flying instructor, Capt T W White and Lt Merz of the 1st Course and Lt W H Trealor, a Citizen Force infantry officer who had learned to fly in the UK. The Half Flight married-up with their aircraft at Basra and later were absorbed into 30 Squadron Royal Flying Corps. Lt Merz was to be the first Australian pilot killed on active service and both White and Trealor were to be prisoners of war of the Turks.
Four AFC squadrons were raised in the AIF during the Great War. 1 Squadron was formed at Point Cook, left Australia on 16 March 1916 and saw action in Egypt and Palestine. Its wide range of aircraft included the Martinsyde, BE2c and e, Bristol Scout, Bristol Fighter and the RE8. Its longest serving CO was Major R Williams of 1st Course and an original pilot was Lt F H McNamara of 3 Course, who won the AFC`s only VC.
The other three squadrons flew on the Western Front. 2 Squadron, beginning in October 1917, flew fighters, firstly the DH5 and then the SE5a. 3 Squadron was a Corps reconnaissance squadron and were equipped with the two-seater RE8 from September 1917 and 4 Squadron, which began operations in January 1918, flew the rotary-engined Sopwith Camel and then the Sopwith Snipe for the last month of hostilities. To back-up the squadrons in the field there were four AFC Training Squadrons (Numbers 5 to 8) in the UK.
The great German offensive of March 1918 and the possible threat of Japan spurred the Australian Government into approving a defence plan to have fifteen squadrons, 654 officers and 7,209 men and 270 aircraft, (most to be built locally) by 1921. This, of course, came to nothing with the Armistice in November 1918, although a number of officers and men had returned to Australia to put the scheme into effect.
In 1919 and 1920 various committees considered the future of military aviation in Australia and it was eventually decided to raise an Air Force which came into being on 31 March 1921 (the prefix Royal came in July 1921) with 21 officers and 130 airmen. The great majority had served in the AIF overseas in the AFC. Flight training of Army personnel then ceased although an association with aircraft was maintained during the War of 1939-45 when RAA officers flew as observers with RAAF pilots and directed artillery fire, mostly from Auster Mk III light aircraft.
