Gopher Proxy
gopherpedia.gopherspace.dk:76 gopherpedia.gopherspace.dk:76/0/Ellis Wackett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
______________________________
_ Ellis Wackett _
______________________________
Introduction
______________________________
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
______________________________
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
______________________________
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
______________________________
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
______________________________
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.
License
_________
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Wackett
.
you're on gopherpedia.gopherspace.dk^76/0/Ellis Wackett
back link is gopherpedia.gopherspace.dk:76