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= Ellis Wackett =
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Introduction
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Ellis Charles Wackett (13 August 1901 - 3 August 1984) was a senior
commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Its chief engineer
from 1935 to 1959, he served on the RAAF's controlling body, the Air
Board, for a record seventeen years, and has been credited with
infusing operations with new standards of airworthiness. Commencing
his service career as a Royal Australian Navy cadet during World War
I, Wackett transferred to the Air Force in 1923 while on an
engineering course in Britain. He qualified as a pilot before
completing his studies and returning to Australia, where he
inaugurated parachute instruction within the RAAF and made the
country's first freefall descent from a military aircraft in 1926. The
following year, he led a three-month survey flight to Papua New
Guinea.
Wackett became the RAAF's senior engineer with his appointment as
Director of Technical Services in 1935. A wing commander at the
outbreak of World War II, he rose to air commodore by 1942 and assumed
the role of Air Member for Engineering and Maintenance. He established
the Technical Branch as a separate department of the RAAF in 1948, and
was promoted to air vice-marshal the same year. Wackett served as Air
Member for Technical Services until leaving the military in 1959,
having been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire and
Companion of the Order of the Bath. From 1960 to 1968, he was a member
of the Australian National Airlines Commission, parent of Trans
Australia Airlines. While he was generally known as "Wack", or "EC"
(to distinguish him from his elder brother, aircraft designer Lawrence
James Wackett or "LJ"), his prominent chin and nose also earned him
the nickname "Punch". He died in 1984, aged 82.
Early career
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Born on 13 August 1901 in Townsville, Queensland, Ellis Wackett was
the third and youngest child of James, an English-born storekeeper,
and Alice Wackett (née Lawrence). Following schooling in Townsville,
he entered the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay, New South
Wales, in 1914, aged thirteen. Graduating in 1918, he served as a
midshipman aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS 'Monarch' and
battlecruiser , and later the RAN light cruiser HMAS 'Brisbane' and
battlecruiser HMAS 'Australia'. He was commissioned a sub-lieutenant
in January 1921, and posted to England for study in July. Wackett was
at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Keyham, when he applied to
join the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1922. Accepted by the
Air Force the following year, he finished at Keyham in August and
trained as a pilot on Salisbury Plain. He then took a one-year
post-graduate course in aeronautics at the Imperial College of Science
and Technology, London, before returning to Australia to take up his
service as a flying officer with the RAAF.
Wackett's first role was to establish parachute instruction within the
Air Force. His trip home from England had been postponed at the last
minute to enable him to be trained; he began instructing volunteers in
1926 at RAAF Station Richmond, New South Wales, and made Australia's
first freefall descent from a military aircraft--an Airco DH.9--on 26
May. The Chief of the Air Staff, Group Captain Richard Williams,
himself made a successful jump on 5 August, to set "a good example"
before making the wearing of parachutes compulsory for all aircrew. On
21 August, Wackett piloted the DH.9 from which Flying Officer
Frederick Scherger made the first public display of parachuting in
Australia, at Essendon, Victoria.
By August 1927, Wackett had been promoted flight lieutenant and given
command of the Papuan Survey Flight formed at RAAF Station Laverton,
Victoria. Consisting of two Supermarine Seagull III single-engined
amphibious biplanes and six aircrew, the flight was to examine and
photograph the Papuan and New Guinean coasts as far north as Aitape
and, if possible, Bougainville. Stripped of all equipment considered
non-essential--including radio sets--to increase range, the aircraft
departed on 27 September and journeyed some 17700 km, covering almost
130000 km2 of country and taking 350 photos. Wackett's machine (serial
A9-5) returned to Melbourne on 26 December and the other (A9-6) on 19
January 1928. Inclement weather prevented the expedition from reaching
Bougainville, and thick jungle cover limited the usefulness of its
photographic record. Nevertheless, the Air Force learned valuable
lessons concerning the Seagull's capabilities in a potential wartime
role, as it was found to be unsuited to operations in the tropics.
On 14 August 1928, Wackett married Doreen Dove in Melbourne; they had
two sons and a daughter. In 1933, Wackett was posted to England to
attend RAF Staff College, Andover. Returning to Australia, he was
promoted to squadron leader and became Director of Technical Services,
an organisation within the RAAF's Supply Branch, in May 1935; the
appointment made Wackett the Air Force's senior engineer. The same
year, he took charge of the Resources Committee for Electrical
Equipment, Scientific and Optical Instruments, one of several
subcommittees on the federal government's Defence Resources Board set
up to investigate and report on the readiness of Australian industry
to provide munitions for defence in the event of international
conflict.
World War II
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Ranked wing commander at the outbreak of World War II, Wackett
immediately faced major supply challenges in his role as Director of
Technical Services. Spare parts for the RAAF's mainly British-built
equipment were now in short supply, a fact complicated by the infancy
of the local aircraft industry and a US arms embargo. His directorate
made whatever use it could of civilian repair facilities, setting up
recovery depots to salvage spares from damaged aircraft and other
equipment. He also drew on the advice and support of his brother
Lawrence, who had established the RAAF's technical services
organisation in the 1920s and, having retired from the Air Force,
headed the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC). By late 1940,
Wackett had been promoted temporary group captain, and joined the
Flying Personnel Research Committee. Its members, drawn from the
aviation, medical, scientific and technical disciplines, were to study
and report upon such factors as aircrew safety, comfort, fatigue,
survival, motion sickness, decompression and hypoxia.
Wackett was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in
the 1941 New Year Honours. In June, he became the RAAF's
representative on the federal Aircraft Advisory Committee, set up to
assist the Director-General of Aircraft Production. As well as members
from governmental and scientific bodies, the committee included
delegates from aircraft manufacturers such as de Havilland Australia
and CAC, Lawrence Wackett acting as Chief Technical Advisor. Later
that year, the two brothers joined the academics on the newly formed
Australian Council for Aeronautics, established by Prime Minister John
Curtin to advise government, educational and scientific organisations
on technical developments in the aircraft industry.
Raised to air commodore, Wackett was appointed the first Air Member
for Engineering and Maintenance (AMEM) on 4 June 1942. As AMEM, he sat
on the Air Board, the RAAF's controlling body, which consisted of its
most senior officers and was chaired by the Chief of the Air Staff.
Along with the new position of Air Member for Supply and Equipment,
filled by Air Commodore George Mackinolty, AMEM had been created to
replace the positions of Director-General of Supply and Production, a
civilian post, and Air Member for Organisation and Equipment. Wackett
would serve on the Air Board for the next seventeen years, a record
tenure for the RAAF, his experience and intellect making him, in the
words of Air Force historian Alan Stephens, "singularly adept at
bringing a committee around to his point of view". During the war, the
Air Board oversaw expansion from a complement in 1939 of 246
obsolescent machines such as CAC Wirraways, Avro Ansons and Lockheed
Hudsons, to a strength in 1945 of 5,620 sophisticated aircraft
including Supermarine Spitfires, P-51 Mustangs, de Havilland
Mosquitoes and B-24 Liberators; to support this force, the RAAF had
provided all-through training for 18,000 technical staff, and further
education for 35,000 more schooled initially outside the service.
Post-war career
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Following the end of the war, Wackett contributed to "Plan D", the
blueprint for restructuring the RAAF sponsored by the Chief of the Air
Staff, Air Vice-Marshal George Jones. A major facet of Plan D, adopted
in June 1947, was its encouragement of local industry to design and
build military trainers and produce more sophisticated combat aircraft
under licence from overseas manufacturers. This policy eventually led
to the CAC Winjeel basic trainer and Australian co-partnership in
production of the CAC Sabre jet fighter and GAF Canberra jet bomber.
Wackett also supported Air Vice-Marshal Joe Hewitt, the Air Member for
Personnel, in fostering apprenticeships as part of what Stephens
considered the "education revolution" that took place in the RAAF
during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Apprentice Training Scheme,
designed to raise the standard of technical roles in the Air Force,
opened early in 1948 at the Ground Training School in RAAF Station
Wagga, New South Wales, to provide education and technical training
for youths aged fifteen to seventeen. By 1952, it had been renamed the
RAAF School of Technical Training.
Wackett played a key role in establishing technical services as a
distinct department within the RAAF, rather than forming part of the
Supply Branch as in previous years. Mindful of the increasing
responsibility that was being placed on scientific and technical
resources in the modern Air Force, he had raised the question of a
specialist engineering branch immediately after the war, and in March
1946 gained broad approval for its establishment. After eighteen
months of work defining its scope and responsibilities, the Technical
Branch was formed under Wackett's leadership on 23 September 1948, his
goals being "to support the operational power of the RAAF by providing
the most efficient technical organisation possible" and "to increase
the effectiveness of air power through technical development". This in
turn led to a separate "list" of engineering personnel, as opposed to
the earlier Technical List subgroup under the General Duties Branch.
For flexibility, and to ensure that the flying and engineering
branches had a better appreciation of their respective operations,
Wackett supported the practice of some general duties officers
continuing to perform engineering work, and as many technical officers
as possible receiving secondary training as aircrew. He was
disappointed by the limits imposed by the Air Board on career
advancement for his personnel: the General Duties Branch in the late
1940s was permitted to maintain thirty-seven officer positions of
group captain and above but the Technical Branch was allowed only
fourteen such slots, though both departments had an almost identical
overall strength of just under 400 staff. This anomaly led Wackett to
submit a dissenting report on the subject to the Air Board, one of the
few occasions a board member exercised his right to such a protest.
His new organisation caused some other tensions in the RAAF: new
airworthiness considerations frustrated pilots who found their flying
time restricted by the introduction of more rigorous maintenance
procedures; supply officers feared being "outshone" by the new status
accorded to engineers; and so-called "black handers"--old-school
technical officers who had risen through the ranks--regarded with
disdain the prospect of an influx of "silly young blokes with
degrees".
Wackett had been promoted temporary air vice-marshal on 1 January
1947; this rank was made substantive following the formation of the
Technical Branch. On 31 October 1949, his title was changed from Air
Member for Equipment and Maintenance to Air Member for Technical
Services (AMTS), in which capacity he would serve until his retirement
from the RAAF in 1959. Appointed a Commander of the Order of the
British Empire in the 1951 King's Birthday Honours, Wackett again
worked closely with Air Vice-Marshal Hewitt, now the Air Member for
Supply and Equipment, to introduce the concept of acquiring spare
parts based on "life-of-type", whereby the forecast number and type of
spares necessary for an aircraft's projected service life would be
ordered when it was first deployed, to reduce costs and delivery time.
In 1953, Wackett established advanced diploma training for twenty-five
airmen annually at Melbourne Technical College, the graduates
receiving commissions as pilot officers. He also began recruiting
university-qualified engineers to the Technical Branch, and put in
place formal relationships with such bodies as CSIRO, the Council of
Aeronautics (of which he was a member), Aeronautical Research
Laboratories, and local aircraft manufacturers de Havilland Australia,
Government Aircraft Factories, and CAC. He further initiated RAAF
sponsorship of a chair of aeronautics at the University of Sydney.
Wackett was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1957
New Year's Honours. Two years later, his wife Doreen was appointed a
Member of the Order of the British Empire for her service as Vice
President and, from 1948, President of the RAAF Women's Association.
Later life and legacy
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When Wackett left the Air Force on 31 December 1959, he was its
longest-serving officer. The next year he joined the Australian
National Airlines Commission (ANAC), the controlling body of the
federal government's domestic carrier, Trans Australia Airlines (TAA).
He rose to the Vice Chairmanship of ANAC before retiring in 1968.
During his term on the commission, Wackett witnessed the arrival of
the Jet Age on domestic air routes; TAA took delivery of its first
Boeing 727 in 1964, and its first Douglas DC-9 in 1967. He was also
elected a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Like his brother
Lawrence, who wrote two books on the subject, Ellis Wackett's chief
hobby was angling. He died in Warracknabeal, Victoria, on 3 August
1984 and was cremated; his wife predeceased him in 1975.
For his commitment to the concept of airworthiness, as an attitude to
quality and professionalism that went beyond simply whether aircraft
were fit to fly or not, Wackett was described in the official history
of the post-war Air Force as among the "outstanding officers of the
post-war era". The establishment of a dedicated Technical Branch,
which he founded in 1948, was a key factor in the RAAF developing the
ability to successfully manage the maintenance and upgrade of such
highly sophisticated aircraft as the General Dynamics F-111. Wackett's
seventeen-year tenure on the Air Board, which was dissolved in 1976,
remained the longest of any officer in the RAAF. He was followed by a
series of leaders of the Technical Branch (renamed Engineering Branch
in 1966) who shared his vision, including Air Vice-Marshals Ernie Hey
(1960-1972) and James Rowland (1972-75). Wackett was among those
considered as possible successors to Air Marshal George Jones as Chief
of the Air Staff (CAS) when the latter was retired in 1952, but Prime
Minister Robert Menzies's federal government chose an RAF officer for
the role, Air Marshal Sir Donald Hardman. In any case, Air Force
regulations at that time stipulated that appointees had to belong to
the RAAF's General Duties (Aircrew) Branch. In 1975, Air Marshal
Rowland was appointed as CAS, though he had to transfer from
Engineering to General Duties before this could be formalised. The
following year, the requirement for CAS to be a member of the General
Duties Branch was removed.
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