Royal Australian Air Force

The purpose of this report is to compile historical information regarding World War II aircraft losses in the Lake Victoria region of New South Wales.  Lake Victoria was utilised as a training area for No. 2 Operational Training Unit (OTU) of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) which was based at Mildura, Victoria.  Five aircraft are known to have crashed in the immediate vicinity, resulting in the deaths of six servicemen.

Varying figures appear in different sources documenting Royal Australian Air Force losses in Bomber Command. But why has there been such a discrepancy in the numbers and what is the more accurate figure? New research explains how the true figure is much higher than that listed in the Australian Official History of the Second World War.

The purpose of this report is to compile evidence to ensure accurate descriptions of World War II photographs in the Australian War Memorial collection.  On 3 March 1942, Japanese aircraft attacked Broome, Western Australia, destroying a number of flying boats in the harbour and terrestrial aircraft located at the Broome airfield.  At least six photographs in the Australian War Memorial collection show wrecks of aircraft destroyed at the airfield, some of which include probable or questionable identities of the aircraft in question

The famous Avro Lancaster "G for George" (W4783) of No. 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, endured many near misses during its 89 completed operations with Bomber Command during the Second World War. Flown to Australia, "George" became part of the Australian War Memorial's collection in 1945.

Purpose The purpose of the study was to examine possible persisting eVects to color vision in a group from the Royal Australian Air Force who had exposure to formulations containing neurotoxins during F-111 fuel tank maintenance, relative to two contemporaneous comparison groups. Methods Color vision was tested in 512 exposed personnel, 458 technical-trade comparisons, and 330 non-technical comparisons using the Ishihara test plates and the Lanthony D-15 Desaturated Color disk arrangement test. Participants were excluded if they failed the Ishihara test as this indicates congenital color blindness. From the Lanthony results, the type of color deWcient vision (CDV) was diagnosed, and additionally, the Bowman's color confusion index (CCI) was calculated. Regression models were used to examine whether there was an association between color vision deWciencies and F-111 fuel tank maintenance, adjusting for possible confounders. Results The CCI ranged from 1 to 2.8 (median 1.2, quartiles 1.1, 1.4) in the 2,600 eyes tested. Forty Wve percent of all participants had blue-yellow CDV in at least one eye. DeWciencies of this nature are caused by environmental exposures. Logistic regression demonstrated statistically signiWcant diVerences in CCI category in the exposed group versus technical group (odds ratio 1.7: 95% CI 1.3-2.0) and a blue-yellow confusion in the exposed group versus technical group (odds ratio 1.4: 95% CI 1.1-1.7). No diVerences were observed between the exposed group and the non-technical group. Conclusion The results indicate reduced color discrimination among the exposed subjects compared to one of two control groups. The Wndings may be due to previous exposure to solvents among the air force personnel.

Antarctica is changing. Not just physically as climate change inexorably impacts but also in how countries and people perceive and act in the world’s last uninhabited continent. More and more states are becoming engaged in Antarctic issues and establishing research bases there.

The scientific endeavours of all the participating Antarctic states use a judicious mix of military and commercial air transport assets. Australia is notable in this use of national air power in Antarctica albeit on a small-scale. Sizeable investments have and are being made to create an effective and efficient air logistic network. In looking to the future however, exciting new possibilities beckon.

This paper initially examines Antarctica today including recent Chinese, Indian and Russian activities in the East Antarctic region that Australia asserts sovereignty over. In the second section, the paper focuses on Australia’s national interests, current air operations and development intentions. The third section looks two decades forward to develop four alternative futures both appropriate to Antarctic air operations and linked to the ADF’s 2035 Future Operating Environment’s alternative futures. The fourth section applies these futures to devise a range of strategic options in terms of potential Australian Antarctic national air power approaches and possible force structure changes.

The purpose of this report is to compile historical information regarding the loss of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Curtiss P-40N Kittyhawk A29-423.  The aircraft crashed in the Murray River, west of Mildura, on 1 April 1945 while conducting training exercises.  The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Warwick James Turner, was killed.

High Power Microwave technology has matured to the point where practical Elec- troMagnetic Pulse (1) weapons are becoming technically feasible, with applications in Electronic Combat, Offensive Counter-Air, Combat Air Support and in Strategic Air Attack. The current development of conventional ElectroMagnetic Pulse devices allows their use in non-nuclear confrontations. This paper proposes a doctrinal foundation for the use of such devices in warhead and bomb applications. † Carlo Kopp is currently working on a PhD in Computer Science. He is also a practising computer industry consultant who has specialised in computer systems, communications and operating systems software. He has prior industry R&D experience both as high speed electronic design engineer and systems integrator. As a Defence Technology Analyst writing for Australian Aviation journal in Canberra, he has produced technical fea- tures on modern military aviation since 1980. His other interests include the strategy, tac...

By 2025, the Royal Australian Air Force will be able, if all works out, to wage an air war using distributed forces all seamlessly exchanging data and fighting as an integrated whole. Earlier visions of network centric warfare will have been made real in the form of an advanced ‘combat thunderstorm.’

Much has been written about WWII in the South Pacific and the battle for Rabaul, but very little about the people Imperial Japan imprisoned there.  The six U.S. airmen and one Australian coast watcher who survived out of the 200 plus Allied airmen and coast watchers imprisoned at Rabaul were not alone.  Thousands of other Allied POWs,  hundreds of missionaries and  thousands of Korean laborers and "comfort women" shared a similar fate.  My father was one of the airmen who survived "paradise." Their saga is explored to better understand their captors' motives for treating their prisoners so inhumanely.

The term 'aviation archaeology' has been broadly defined as 'the investigation of material remains associated with the act of flying'. Some have suggested that such archaeological investigation is not necessary as all has been recorded within the written historical record. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. While the historical record is of course invaluable, an aircraft wreck's value as an historic artefact from which information about the aircraft itself and the circumstances of its loss cannot be understated. This paper will discuss a multi-disciplinary approach of analysing both the historical record and surviving physical artefacts to gain a more complete understanding about the 1942 loss of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Boston A28-20 and the larger ground battle in which it was engaged.

In 2005, diver and filmmaker Ben Cropp visited an underwater aircraft wreck off the eastern coast of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula. It has been claimed that the wreck is that of an American four-engine B-17 bomber that went missing in 1943 with an air force General on board. A desk-based study of Cropp’s video footage of the wreck by aviation enthusiasts has confirmed that it is not such an aircraft. Additional historical research and further analysis of the wreck footage has unearthed information that may suggest that the wreck is, in fact, an Australian transport aircraft that was ditched in the vicinity with no loss of life.

Australia is among the most urbanized people in the world, but the "outback" - the desert and semi-arid areas of the center and the North of the continent - is rarely considered. While the Northern zone has always been considered the likely direction of foreign attack. Few recognize the Spacial Air Service established in 1957, based in the State of Western Australia - everything to the north is desert or arid in climate and conditions.

Sabretache vol. lxiii.no. 2-june2O22 5 Darwin Raid No. 53 On the ground, members of the 19th Australian Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery went into action for the first time, describing the air battle in their War Diary: Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Flying Officer Granville .Allen Mawer, flying with No. 54 Squadron, RAF, was piloting one of those Spitfires and recorded his combat with one of the Zeros as follows: Big Japanese raid this morning consisting of 22 bombers and an unknown number of Zeros as escort. The formation coming over in bright sunlight was very' reminiscent of the Battle of Britain, and most of us had not seen such a sight since that time.8 One got on my tail and sent tracer past my left wing but followed it past in an overshoot. I kicked the rudder to follow and when I had closed to 50 yards [46 metres] opened fire, allowing one ring's worth of deflection on the sight.

The Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft is one of the most successful and long-lived military aircraft of the modern era. It is unlikely those in the US DoD and Navy who recommended the initial order could have foreseen a production run of over 30-years and production in Japan.

Many of the arguments supporting diversity in the military focus on the instrumental benefits available to an organization that embraces differences. Viewed through this lens, diversity risks becoming another "to do," and prioritized according to available resources. Arguing for diversity primarily from the basis of the "capability argument" also fails to challenge the as yet unresolved perceived tension between a military's com-bat effectiveness, and its adherence to the values and laws of the state it protects. This thesis seeks to reframe the diversity debate by arguing that a diverse military reflective of the demography of society is a fundamental necessity in a Western liberal democracy. The paper uses sociological theory to posit that current approaches to diversity in the US Air Force overlook the role of identity in molding behavioral norms and influencing the ability of the organization to process and integrate difference. Using the US Air Force Academy as a case study, this thesis seeks to determine how identities are constructed in early officer training, and how these nascent identities might influence the overall levels of diversity within the organization. By blending quantitative and qualitative evidence, this project concludes that the US Air Force Academy constructs and cultivates exclusive identities that conflict with government initiatives to build a diverse and inclusive organization. The analysis concludes with a number of policy recommendations that the author believes might be beneficial initial steps in re-casting the dominant identity of the US Air Force officer corps.

In the post-Cold War world, the variety of jet trainer options is remarkable. Some aircraft shortlisted by the RAAF are in the 'tried and true' class, like France's Alfa Jet and the British Aerospace Hawk. The problem with such a variety of aircraft is that it is not a case of comparing 'like with like'. Each aircraft has its areas of excellence and its areas of limitations.

Following the discovery of fatigue crack in the F111 lower wing skin, the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) implemented a boron/ epoxy composite repair to restore its strength. This was carried out by bonding the composite repair patch to the lower wing skin. It was proposed that an in situ monitoring methodology be developed to monitor the fatigue crack development after the implementation of this repair on the structure. This paper presents a set of numerical results on the use of Lamb waves for the monitoring of crack growth in the lower wing skin adhesively bonded with a composite repair patch. These results show the significance of a good understanding of the propagation characteristics of the stress wave over the defective region. This task is made more challenging because of the severe geometry changes in the region of interest and the multi-layered construction (with aluminum, adhesive and boron/epoxy) of the repaired structure. This paper will outline the efficacy of this stress wave based monitoring methodology.

Australia’s entry into the Second World War created a demand for trained pilots. In July 1940 the Commonwealth Government acquired 468 acres of land on the Nepean River floodplain at Macquarie Grove `for defence purposes’ for an airfield.1 The site had been  inspected in January 1940 for the RAAF by Wing commander EC Bates (RAF).2 He had found it eminently suitable for the establishment of a flying training school. The Air Board had taken control of the airfield in April with the initial expectation for the airfield to house 150 men and 50 aircraft.3 According to reports the airfield had an ideal location with a long runway (1100 feet), clear approaches, room for expansion and existing hangars.4 The site had the advantage of a good surface, reasonable weather throughout the year, and quiet rural surroundings.

Variants of the Frost–Dugdale crack growth law now form the basis of one of the fleet management tools in use within the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Directorate General for Technical Airworthiness (DGTA) for the management of cracking in RAAF Combat Aircraft. To help understand the basis for this methodology the present paper examines the crack length versus cycles histories associated with a range of materials, viz: Mil Annealed Ti–6Al–4V, a high strength aerospace steel, several aerospace quality aluminium alloys and several rail wheel steels, subjected to constant amplitude loading. This paper also examines the crack length histories obtained in surface flawed 7050-T7451 and Ti–6Al–4V specimens under operational flight load spectra, in the Boeing 767 and 757 Material Characterisation test program, in a Northrop–Grumman study into crack growth under a representative fighter spectrum, in the Aloha Airlines accident, in several full scale fatigue tests and in-service cracking ...

Variants of the Frost-Dugdale crack growth law now form the basis of one of the fleet management tools in use within the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Directorate General for Technical Airworthiness (DGTA) for the management of cracking in RAAF Combat Aircraft. To help understand the basis for this methodology the present paper examines the crack length versus cycles histories associated with a range of materials, viz: Mil Annealed Ti-6Al-4V, a high strength aerospace steel, several aerospace quality aluminium alloys and several rail wheel steels, subjected to constant amplitude loading. This paper also examines the crack length histories obtained in surface flawed 7050-T7451 and Ti-6Al-4V specimens under operational flight load spectra, in the Boeing 767 and 757 Material Characterisation test program, in a Northrop-Grumman study into crack growth under a representative fighter spectrum, in the Aloha Airlines accident, in several full scale fatigue tests and in-service cracking in rail wheels. In each case it is shown that crack growth conforms to the Generalised Frost-Dugdale crack growth law and that for spectra that consist of a number of repeated block loads the crack length history follows a form similar to that used to manage the RAAF Combat Aircraft fleet.

: Many of the arguments supporting diversity in the military focus on the instrumental benefits available to an organization that embraces differences. Viewed through this lens, diversity risks becoming another to do, and prioritized according to available resources. Arguing for diversity primarily from the basis of the capability argument also fails to challenge the as yet unresolved perceived tension between a militarys com-bat effectiveness, and its adherence to the values and laws of the state it protects. This thesis seeks to reframe the diversity debate by arguing that a diverse military reflective of the demography of society is a fundamental necessity in a Western liberal democracy. The paper uses sociological theory to posit that current approaches to diversity in the US Air Force overlook the role of identity in molding behavioral norms and influencing the ability of the organization to process and integrate difference. Using the US Air Force Academy as a case study, this ...

Both Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and Border Protection Command (BPC) aircraft fly maritime surveillance missions for the Australian Government on a regular basis. These missions involve searching particular areas of interest (AIs) for illegal fishing or people smuggling activities. In this work a square AI is considered, with an aircraft tasked to search for ships using its sensors (e.g., radar, electrooptical). Waypoints (points that must be visited) are included in the AI to ensure that the entire AI is covered. The aim for a particular search is to detect and classify as many ships as possible, while doing so in the shortest time. Depending on the ship density, the aircraft may not have time to search the entire AI.