By the mid-1970s, the RAAF’s fleet of helicopters had grown to two and a half squadrons of UH-1 Iroquois and a squadron of 12 Boeing CH-47 Chinooks, all designated primarily in Army support roles. However, although helicopters formed a significant force within the RAAF, expertise in helicopter operations tended to become diluted in the RAAF’s broader command structure, with no centralised agency to coordinate the operation of helicopters or develop operational doctrine.
After Vietnam involvement ended, I was posted to the Transport Ops cell at Headquarters Operational Command to provide helicopter expertise. I persuaded my boss and the AOC that helicopters should be hived off into a separate role cell which they agreed, so I got it established for a Wing Commander and a Squadron Leader and became the inaugural HOPS, picking up higher duty allowance. There was then centralised management of helo operations in Australia with regard to Army tasking and capabilities upgrade initiatives ultimately flowed including night vision goggle trials, fighter versus helicopter tactics development (my kids designed the Iroquois camouflage scheme) and progressive upgrading of field deployment capabilities as equipments came available.
Contrary to popular belief, it was the RAAF who drove jointery via Air Support Unit at Williamtown where I served preceding posting to helicopters. The Air Force also conducted Army parachutist and instructor training at Parachute Training Flight and operated Air Movements Training & Development Unit at Richmond. Navy and RAAF also jointly staffed the Australian Joint Anti-Submarine School. All of the small tri-service staff at ASU ultimately served in joint roles in Vietnam.
Work to develop draft Australian joint and combined service doctrine was in train at ASU well before Vietnam involvement but has taken some years since to mature. The Army's attitude to jointery at that time seemed to be: 'Its okay, as long as we are in command', which of course would not be appropriate in all military scenarios. Some of them then thought helicopters in particular should be tied up outside tents, like horses!
Post exercise reports criticised the bureaucratic processes for arranging air support and the remoteness of air headquarters...Too often in the past, the Air Force has been reluctant to grant the level of command the operational situation and the commander’s directives required.
In my experience concerning exercises, the command and control arrangements for RAAF elements involved were figured by the HQOC Joint Warfare Group in accord with joint doctrine and invariably involved assignment of operational control to the Joint Force Commander. As for requesting forms of air support from elements not deployed into exercise environs, the usual bidding/tasking processes applied which have functioned well for decades. The vast air resources that were made available to 1ATF in Vietnam - beyond 9SQN under opcon - were requested via the small ASOC embedded with the ATOC in the 1ATF CP. There were multiple other headquarters commanding these resources, some of them thousands of miles distant, like for B-52s.
Army officers often cite instances where, at the end of a day’s training in the field, RAAF pilots would fly to a motel for the night rather than stay in an Army tent. RAAF claims that such accommodation was necessary to provide ‘mandatory aircrew rest conditions’ were undermined when pilots regularly appeared the next morning suffering the effects of a heavy night out. Moreover, the RAAF’s tendency to support its own requirements (rations, transport, accommodation etc) during deployments may also have antagonised Army opinion and created an impression that RAAF ‘didn’t know how to operate in the field’.
Before creation of a thinly-veiled unified ADF, the Army had multiple smallish units scattered all around the Sydney region in particular. The HQOC HOPS cell worked hand-in-glove with co-located HQ 1 GL Group which was the agency controlling utilisation of helicopter flying hours allocated for Army support and they decided which units would get support. The when bit was decided jointly to make cost-effective use of helo resources which had to be deployed to support Army units all around the nation, in the neighbouring archipelago and sometimes NZ.
When RAAF helos were assigned to support a particular unit, part of the tasking process involved HQ 1GL Group determining whether that unit could accommodate and feed the Air Force elements. Except for larger Army units and formations, the answer was mostly negative. Living accommodation was often limited and the Army rationing system was quite inflexible being rigidly based on numbers on unit strength. Where accommodation and catering was available at larger units/formations, it was generally availed.
Army did not then have the catering flexibility of Air Force and Navy with lesser staffing for that purpose and this also became a problem in some scenarios as feeding for flying elements often had to be at random hours to get the job done, so it was usually simpler to provide a degree of own rationing. As mentioned earlier, Air Force helo elements began enhancing field deployment capabilities post-Vietnam.
As the Service responsible for operating and supporting the aircraft, the RAAF set down most of the detailed specifications for the aircraft, specifying a much higher level of sophistication for the helicopters than the UH-60A Blackhawk then in service with the US Army. However, there were significant shortcomings in the acquisition process, notably in the ordering of spares and the estimation of support costs.
The Air Force wisely saw need for enhancement of some early Blackhawk capabilities which has proven to be necessary over time. The project officer (a close friend) sought very comprehensive spares provisioning but this was denied. If spares have been a problem since AAvn takeover of the helicopters in 1989, then why was this situation not rectified by Army funding; they were/are Blackhawk operators? I guess it reflects the apparent ADF/Defence policy of not progressively enhancing hardware in service to maintain continuous adequate and credible military preparedness!
Among its wide-ranging conclusions, Dibb’s report included the following recommendation: Combat efficiency may be enhanced if ground force tactical helicopters and their crews were operationally part of the Army. The review considers that its recommendation to enhance the helicopter lift capability for the Army provides a suitable opportunity to integrate the helicopter element into the Army structure.
Post #12 adequately explains the flawed helicopter transfer decision 'process' from a CAS perspective. A key question is how did such an unsupported recommendation by Dibb emerge?
I made this relevant statement in post #16: 'When visiting Amberley early 1960s, I was astounded at the openly expressed bitterness of some AAvn personnel (who were being hosted on a RAAF base) at the Air Force having oversight responsibility for their activities - 16ALA Squadron was commanded by a RAAF officer at the time. That core of now retired malcontents have generated much of the anti-Air Force misinformation over the years.'
Australian Army Aviation has long been enamoured by US Army Aviation operating concepts and has directed criticism at the RAAF in this regard since the early 1960s. I believe there was protracted ambitious lobbying by former AAvn entities post-Vietnam toward ultimate helicopter transfer. Consider how Army aviator wings were hung on Army Chiefs of that time who were involved in the helo transfer decision!
However, at the very least, it was likely to have been severely prejudicial to creating an environment of harmonious working relations between the Services. Air Marshal Evans claims that the transfer created an atmosphere of dislike, distrust and disdain between the Services, while the RAAF Historian believes it traumatised some senior levels in the RAAF.
Mid-2004, then Brigadier Tony Fraser kindly invited all former members of 9SQN to attend a Burshranger Gunship Farewell event on (premature) decommissioning of that AAvn capability. Many former 9SQN members expressed intent to attend, until they became aware of some writings on the Fourays website (http://www.fourays.org) which generated outrage, so there was a much diminished Air Force attendance. The offending articles were this one by Wing Commander Martin Sharp, RAF; the Tactical Air Support Group by Owen Eather – Part 3 in particular and some of the content in 'Letters to Chickenhawk'. A consistent thread of anti-RAAF sledging has prevailed on that website for decades and it does no credit to Army Aviation or Army generally and, you have to wonder why the hierarchy have allowed it to endure. The sad part is there have been many valued long-standing friendships evolve between Air Force and Army aviators (Navy too) and they could very easily change uniforms; but the bile projected by the old heretical core of Army Aviation has largely fostered the acrimony highlighted by AM David Evans.
In the event, however, in 1989 the Defence department agreed to a RAAF proposal to discontinue operating Chinooks as an economy measure.
The CH-47C was a technical nightmare and the 11 remaining could not be cost-effectively maintained in sufficient numbers to be a viable force even with the high level of engineering expertise inherent in the RAAF of that time. Army decided the Blackhawk would suffice for logistic support but belatedly appreciated they still needed heavy lift helicopters. The CH-47D is more technically sound and the CH-47F will be better, but it is still a technically complex aircraft and 7 will not be sufficient to maintain an adequate force on line.
One of the problems for a relatively small aviation force like that of the Australian Army is that its aircrew operate in a narrow specialisation. Additionally, a small aviation force is less well placed to absorb fluctuations in the availability of suitably trained personnel. In a larger flying organisation such as the RAAF, aircrew are able to move between roles, which encourages the cross pollination of techniques and knowledge. From the RAAF’s perspective, the loss of helicopter pilots from its pool of aviators reduced some of its flexibility to re-role aircrew, a facility that proved useful during the Vietnam War when there was a rapid expansion in the helicopter fleet. In a force the size of the ADF, there would appear to be benefits in considering personnel with specialist skills, such as aircrew and aircraft technicians, as ADF assets, available for employment across the Services.
Transfer of all Air Force helo assets to Army Aviation (3 utility squadrons and a flying training component plus an MLH squadron) effectively gutted the surge capacity of the RAAF. A downstream consequence was the strike/fighter force suffered serious under-manning of pilots which was only offset because the RNZAF and RAN terminated their fixed-wing offensive air roles thus shedding pilots. The overall capability of the ADF and Australia's military capacity/credibility was substantially diminished by the helicopter transfer decision and 26 years of helicopter operating experience was forfeited including 5.5 years of invaluable combat experience for which there is no substitute.
The ADF is now somewhat an amorphous mass and the strong loyalties that once developed in the individual armed forces and were essential to esprit-de-corps have perhaps faded. Shuffling of aircrew and maintenance personnel among the 3 Services as W/C Sharp suggests is perhaps impracticable; but the question does now arise whether maintaining 3 air arms within a virtually unified small ADF is cost-effective?
In the harsh Australian conditions, Blackhawks suffered a significant number of technical problems, including airframe cracking and higher than expected component usage. This led to an inadequate inventory of spare parts, some of which required long-lead times for delivery, resulting in prolonged aircraft down times for maintenance.
AAvn became infatuated with so-called 'nap-of-the-earth' low level flying and kept stub wings and drop-tanks fitted to the Blackhawk against RAAF advice. That is what caused the airframe cracking and consequent diminished aircraft availability.
Blackhawk Tragedy. In June 1996 two Army Blackhawks collided during a night training exercise involving the SAS, resulting in the death of 18 soldiers. In addition to the immediate causes of the accident, a Board of Inquiry also identified a number of systemic and equipment issues as contributory factors. In a statement on the accident, the Minister for Defence chose to highlight a lack of flying experience among Blackhawk pilots as a ‘major contributory cause’, although this was identified as only one of 26 contributory causes by the Board.
The RAAF had developed very sound helo formation flying procedures and also conducted comprehensive trialling of night vision goggles, but the lessons learned in this regard were not absorbed by AAvn. CO 5SQN gave evidence to the Army Court of Inquiry, but it was not embraced in proceedings to my knowledge. More recent accidents/incidents also reflect lack of respect for the helicopter operating expertise developed by the Air Force.
That is enough from me re posts #1,#2,#3. I will plug a few images into my posts this thread which some might find interesting, including a beaut one of the USAF Caribou that got knocked over near the 9/35SQN hangar. Might be a day or 2 delay there while I arm wrestle with my computer.
Some have raised my background so just to summarise that for clarification. Flew mainly transport and fighter aircraft preceding Iroquois helicopters. An 11 month tour with 9SQN in Vietnam beginning toward the end of the Tet Offensive 1968 followed by 2 short tours in 1969 and 1971. 4,360 sorties, 211 SAS patrol insertions/extractions and involved in 50 enemy engagements. Bushranger gunship project officer. TFAC Rep at Nui Dat for 2 plus months. Served at RAAF Air Support Unit developing joint service doctrine. Established the Helicopter Operations Cell at RAAF HQOC. CO 9SQN 1976/77. Worked in Defair Canberra preceding early retirement late in 1978.
Just one response to post #21 by chippiemick.
Mate; I am across the history of early helicopter development and particularly the Iroquois. I meant to convey that 'Vietnam involvement for RAAF helicopters was not on the horizon when the Iroquois was introduced to RAAF service'. The Iroquois was as you say first introduced in Vietnam 1962 and my mention of around 1960 related to helicopter types that were operating preceding Iroquois introduction.
To all forum contributors. I baled out of visiting PPRuNe early 2009 because I felt it had become too adversarial and the value of worthwhile discussion was being clouded if not lost. A very good friend recently encouraged me to participate in the last couple of threads.
There is enough in posts on this thread alone to demonstrate how misinformation and sledging over decades has materially damaged the image of professional military units and an Air Force with a hugely comprehensive proud history in combat dating back to 1921. Please give that some thought.