Search Results

Brian Weston 'On Target: Who was Richard Williams?' in Australian Defence Business Review, March-April 2019 p. 82 After several mutually supportive years with Australian Aviation , the On Target column, written on behalf of the Sir Richard Williams Foundation, is now to be published in the Australian Defence Business Review . As background, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation is an independent research organisation whose purpose is to promote the development and effective implementation of national security and defence policies, as they impact on Australia’s ability to generate air power appropriate to Australia’s unique geopolitical environment and values. The Foundation aims to strengthen Australia’s national security by advocating the need for forward-looking policies which take full advantage of the potential for air power to shape and influence regional security and by promoting constructive debate regarding the implementation of such policies. The Foundation is pleased to take the opportunity offered by the Australian Defence Business Review. An appropriate topic for this first On Target column would be to outline who was Richard Williams, and why is there a foundation bearing his name. Richard Williams was born at Moonta Mines ‒ roughly halfway up the eastern coast of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia, on 3 August 1890. After enlisting in the Australian Military Forces, he was commissioned in 1911 and attended the first ‘war-flying’ course at the Central Flying School, Point Cook in 1914. Following the raising of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) in 1915, Williams was posted as a Flight Commander in No 1 Squadron, AFC and accompanied the squadron to Egypt where the unit was to serve with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). For the next two years Williams served with distinction and gallantry, rising to command No 1 Squadron, AFC. In June 1918, shortly after the merging of the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Service to form the Royal Air Force (RAF), Williams was appointed to command the 40th (Army) Wing, RAF; comprising No 1 Squadron, AFC and Nos 111, 144 and 145 Squadrons, RAF. To enable him to command the RAF wing, Williams ‒ already commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the AFC ‒ was also commissioned into the RAF. At the end of World War I, after spending time in London investigating how Australia might follow Britain in establishing an independent air force, Williams returned to Australia where he was the driving force behind the merging of the aviation elements of the army and navy into the Australian Air Force, on 31 March, 1921. Soon after, the Australian Air Force become the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Wing Commander Williams was appointed to head the RAAF and it fell to him to establish the new service, aided considerably by the gifting of a quantity of war surplus aircraft and equipment from Britain. For the next 17 years, apart for periods of absence to serve with the RAF, Williams fought tenaciously to keep the small independent Australian air service alive in an atmosphere of hostility and severe financial stringency. Inevitably, during those years, Williams made some powerful enemies, especially in 1929 and 1932, when he convinced government not to abolish the RAAF as had been proposed. Subsequently, Williams went on to lay the foundation on which the RAAF, in World War II, built to a mighty air force of almost 175,000 personnel. Richard Williams never got the opportunity to command the RAAF in war as following Prime Minister Menzies decision, in 1939, to appoint Englishmen as the chiefs of the three Australian services ‒ a decision Menzies justified on the basis no Australian officer had leadership experience of a service in war. Williams was duly despatched to London and then to Washington to see out World War II. Williams autobiography bluntly records Williams view on this: “Menzies himself was facing a task beyond his experience but he was not calling for an Englishman to solve it”. But after the war, Williams was not done with Australian aviation as, following his retirement from the RAAF in September 1946, he assumed the appointment of Director General of Civil Aviation and led the department until 1955. As all Australian aviators know, our country is a nation made for aviation – both military and civil. But who was to build the essential, widespread national aviation support infrastructure on which Australia’s civil aviation could prosper? Certainly, Australia’s infant civil aviation operators could not. It was a task beyond them but one the Department of Civil Aviation undertook, under Williams leadership. Sir Richard Williams is the greatest figure in Australian military aviation history and someone who stands tall in the pantheon of great Australians. His autobiography, These are Facts, The Autobiography of Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO, written in 1977, is a must-read for any Australian aviator with an interest in the history and development of Australian aviation. Brian Weston is a Board Member of the Williams Foundation and On Target is published as a regular column in the Australian Defence Business Review. Download pdf

Dr Alan Stephens 'On Target: Richard Williams and the Defence of Australia' July-August 2019 This column written for the ADBR July/August 2019 an edition that was not published The two previous “ On Target ” articles have outlined the unsurpassed contribution made to Australian air power by Sir Richard Williams. This article continues that story by describing Williams’ strategy for defending Australia. The ultimate consequence was that, when Japan launched the war in the Pacific in December 1941, Australia was dangerously unprepared and vulnerable. Yet had one-quarter of naval expenditure been invested in next-generation technology, Australia might have fielded some 500 strike/reconnaissance aircraft armed with bombs and torpedoes.. In 1923 Williams went to England to attend the British Army staff course and then the RAF course, stopping-over on his way home for further study in Canada and the United States. On resuming command of the RAAF in February 1925 he was deeply disturbed by the government’s lack of interest in air power. Williams immediately began drafting a concept of operations, and by May had completed a “Memorandum Regarding the Air Defence of Australia”. “Memorandum” was something of an understatement because the document contained sixty-eight pages and a great deal of detail, analysing such issues as Australia’s strategic setting, Japan’s war economy, a proposed RAAF force structure, technical and personnel matters, logistics, costs, local aircraft production, and training. The lack of support for the Air Force was, Williams argued, inconsistent with modern theories of warfare, which postulated that the aeroplane would decide future conflicts. Drawing on the inherent qualities of air power, he pointed to his service’s unique ability to “pass over defences, armies and fleets and penetrate into those portions of a country and attack [targets] which previously have been immune”. While geography and the modest range of existing aircraft made the European strategy of bombing an enemy’s homeland impracticable for Australia, air power could still provide the key to national security by controlling the sea lines of communication. Williams suggested that the main justification for maintaining an army and navy was to prevent an enemy from occupying Australia, yet that was an outlook which more than any other demanded the use of aircraft. Command of the sea was a prerequisite for an invasion. Given Australia’s defensive challenge of immense distance, small population and limited infrastructure, the other two services could never be expected to provide the necessary level of security against invasion (a judgment which was implicitly acknowledged in the so-called Singapore strategy, under which Australia relied on the British Royal Navy to defend it). Aircraft, with their speed, range, and reconnaissance and striking power, were the obvious solution. It was also reasonable to assume, Williams continued, that no enemy could expect to secure a lodgement in Australia without first establishing air superiority, and fighter aircraft were the best means of defence against air attack. Williams identified five roles for the RAAF: air superiority (which would be limited to specific locations, such as overhead an invasion area); army cooperation; navy cooperation; long-distance reconnaissance over land and sea; and attacks against enemy targets on land and sea. There was no prevarication about which country might threaten Australia. In calculating the number of aircraft the RAAF needed, Williams based his figures on Japan’s military capabilities. Taking into account training, operational reserves, and the wide dispersion of the vital areas which might have to be defended, Williams proposed a force structure of thirty squadrons and 324 aircraft. Special emphasis was placed on the attack force, which he described as the component most relevant to Australia’s needs. Because aircraft were able to strike harder, faster, and at greater distances than any other weapon system for the same cost, a well-equipped and well-trained strike force would attack the enemy at sea “long before he reaches the coast”. But institutional biases and faith-based thinking could not, like battleships, easily be made to change direction, and Williams’ plan was ignored by the government. During the inter-war years, the RAN received about 60 per cent of all defence appropriations, the Army about 30 per cent, and the RAAF 10 per cent. Despite that financial largesse, the RAN amounted to little more than an auxiliary squadron of the RN, with no capability to defend Australia without major reinforcement. The ultimate consequence was that, when Japan launched the war in the Pacific in December 1941, Australia was dangerously unprepared and vulnerable. Yet had one-quarter of naval expenditure been invested in next-generation technology, Australia might have fielded some 500 strike/reconnaissance aircraft armed with bombs and torpedos. Almost fifty years later, in arguably what was the most significant Defence White Paper ever published, The Defence of Australia 1987, the superseding importance of protecting Australia by controlling the maritime approaches to our north and north-west was formally endorsed. This was, in effect, yet another acknowledgement of Richard Williams’ extraordinary legacy. Dr Alan Stephens is a Research fellow of the Williams Foundation and a visiting fellow at UNSW Canberra. On Target is published as a regular column in the Australian Defence Business Review. Download pdf

Brian Weston 'The Birth of an Australian Air Force – Part 2' Australian Defence Business Review – May/June 2019 p 82 The On Target column in the previous edition of ADBR ‒ written on behalf of the Sir Richard Williams Foundation ‒ provided a brief outline of the man who is regarded as the person responsible for not only establishing an Australian Air Force, but also establishing a sufficient and robust foundation on which the service could later expand into a credible Australian Air Force. This column will expand on the huge task Richard Williams faced when the Australian Air Force was established on 31 March, 1921 ‒ the prefix Royal being added in August 1921. The genesis for the establishment of independent air services lay in the rapid advances in military aviation during World War I, accompanied by much theorising about how military aviation might be used in future conflicts to provide alternative strategies to the stagnant and attritional industrial-scale trench warfare of World War I. But there was no consensus in this debate about the future strategies, roles and organisation of military aviation, with claim and counter-claim vigorously prosecuted; with navies and armies generally showing little enthusiasm, indeed often outright hostility, for the concept of independent air forces. Britain, with massive personnel losses in World War I, was at the forefront of the development of new concepts for air operations with a view to finding new ways of winning future conflicts, without suffering the huge human losses incurred in World War I. In a watershed decision, Britain decided to establish an independent air force by merging the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) on 1 April 1918, to form the Royal Air Force (RAF) ‒ seven months before World War I concluded. Australia, tied into the British Empire and with the experience of raising the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) in 1915 and of its subsequent employment with the RFC in the Middle East and the Western Front, soon gained experience with the employment of military aviation in war. AFC personnel also witnessed the establishment of the RAF as the world’s first independent air service, as well as understanding the reasons why the RAF was established. The debate about the future of Australian military aviation was decided by the Australian Government on 9 September, 1920 when, speaking in the House of Representatives, the Prime Minister, Mr Hughes said: “It may be confidently expected that aviation and those scientific methods of warfare which developed so rapidly during the war, and which, particularly during the latter period of the conflict, were resorted to so freely, may develop still further. No doubt that development will completely revolutionise warfare and let us hope that it will make war impossible… The air, that new element which man has now conquered, is but the sea in another form and it is on the sea and in the air that we shall have to look for our defence…” We believe too that in the air we may hope to create a force which will be of incomparable service in defending us from an enemy. The Government therefore are placing on the estimates a sufficient sum for the building up of an efficient air force. It is proposed to afford such inducements as are hoped will encourage manufacturers to make engines and aeroplanes in this country and the Government will not hesitate to give a very substantial bonus for that purpose.” To give effect to the government decision, the Air Board was constituted on 9 November, 1920 to provide for the governance of the new air force. It comprised four members: First Air Member ‒ Director of Operations and Intelligence Second Air Member ‒ Director of Personnel and Training Third Air Member ‒ Director of Equipment Fourth Air Member ‒ Finance Member Wing Commander Richard Williams was appointed as First Air Member although his position was not as a chief, but as a ‘first among equals’. The task for Williams, and the Air Board he chaired, was immense. There was no legislative governance framework unlike the Navy and Army, to which the Naval Defence Act and Defence Act applied. Then there was the matter of the gifting, by Britain, to the new fledging air force, of 128 aircraft ‒ indeed, the new air force had more aircraft than personnel ‒ including spare parts, engines, motor transport, tenders, motorcycles, tools, ammunition, bombs, cameras, wireless equipment, etc. For which, there was no process to receive, receipt and account for the gift equipment, nor to store and maintain the equipment. A not insubstantial task for the new Air Board led by Wing Commander Richard Williams, then of 30 years of age. The fact that he did succeed is why he is held in such high regard today. Brian Weston is a Board Member of the Williams Foundation and On Target is published as a regular column in the Australian Defence Business Review. Download pdf here