Vale Ainsley Gotto
 

Today, The Australian newspaper reported the death at age 71,of Ms Ainsley Gotto, the former Private Secretary to John Gorton who became Prime Minister following the disappearance of Harold Holt at Cheviot Beach, Victoria on 17 December 1967.

The report stated that Ms Gotto is famously remembered for the words of sacked minister Dudley Erwin in October 1969 who blamed her for his downfall, telling journalist Laurie Oakes at the time, "it wiggles, it's shapely, it's cold blooded and its name is Ainsley Gotto. Erwin said later she ruled with a ruthless authority

At the time I was a pilot with the RAAF No 34 (Special Transport) based at Fairbairn, Canberra. I recall on one occasion flying a group of passengers in a VIP Viscount from Canberra to Melbourne in 1968. We were to return to Canberra empty. Taxiing for Essendon runway 26, we received a call from ATC that a single passenger had just arrived and requested we return to the tarmac. That passenger turned out to be Miss Ainsley Gotto.

We then departed and en-route to Canberra I took the opportunity to visit her in the passenger cabin. There I saw a young looking freckled face girl smiling at me and who thanked me for returning to pick her up for the flight to Canberra. In the few minutes we talked she came across as a highly intelligent confident young woman who was really going places in her career. In later months she was a passenger on my aircraft when flying with her boss, Prime Minister John Gorton.

When booking a VIP flight for the PM she was known to be somewhat imperious in her job for such a young woman. But one day she met her match in the form of the then Commanding Officer of No 34 Squadron, Wing Commander Ray Drury AFC. Ray Drury was a former wartime Liberator pilot and when I first met him in early 1953 he held the rank of Flying Officer and was a captain on Lincoln bombers based at No 10 squadron, Townsville. I was a Sergeant Pilot and his co-pilot.

During a take off from Darwin I could see from the co-pilot's seat, fuel streaming back over the tail of the Lincoln from the filler cap area on the starboard wing. The No 4 engine exhausts were close to the filler cap. It would take little imagination to realise what would happen if some of the fuel spray was ignited by the hot exhausts. I told the captain Ray Drury what I had seen. He looked over my shoulder at the starboard wing and quietly remarked it would be wise to land as soon as possible. He remained quite calm throughout and made a perfect landing. I was impressed.

Fast forward now to some time in 1968. I was in the CO's office when his phone rang. From the conversation, it was Ainsley Gotto ringing to order a VIP flight for her boss the Prime Minister. Time dims the full recollection of their conversation, but I do remember Ray Drury listening to the voice at the other end of his phone and his reply of "listen young lady, if you ever talk to me like that again, I'll come over there and smack your bum." I was impressed..
Vale Ainsley Gotto.

Despite similar personalities, I reckon that Ainsley Gotto was far more stylish than Peta Credlin.

Terrific yarn Centaurus.

Thank you for sharing.

Thumbs up, Centaurus:ok:

John Gorton survived a Spitfire crash but his face was ...ummm...remodelled. Not particularly attractive.

After he became PM, a journalist met him and his daughter, and was later heard to comment "I didn't know plane crashes were hereditary."

It was a P-40 Kittyhawk. Spitfire sounds for glamorous like Ainsley but alas not so...

While he flew Spitfires, Hurricanes and P-40s, the facial injury seems to have been in a Hurricane while flying out of Singapore. Wonder how a Hurricane and Zero would match up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gorton

Probably the same as the P-40. The Zero would be all over it in a turning dog-fight but could be defeated using "dive and zoom" tactics.

Slight thread drift from the OP which I am sure you will understand why.

On 3 September 1968, I flew the then PM John Gorton and entourage including Minister David Fairbairn, from Brisbane to Gladstone -Emerald -and overnighted at Mount Isa. Several journalists were aboard. The aircraft was HS 748 A10-595. Crew self as captain, P/O Jim Smith and P/O Barry Ney as copilots, F/L Ron Aitken navigator, Cpl's Tony Muspratt and Roy Philips as maintenance personnel and LACW Joan grant as stewardess.

During cruise between Gladstone and Emerald the aircraft had a duct pressure failure causing the aircraft to slowly depressurise. We made a gradual descent to below 10,000 ft for the remainder of the flight to Emerald and Mount Isa. The PM was advised that it may be bumpy below 10,000 ft and he understood.

At Mount Isa our two engineers fixed the broken duct. In the early hours of the following morning I received a phone call from a senior officer at RAAF HQ demanding to know WTF was going on as he had received intelligence that the morning newspapers would be publishing a story filed by one of the journalists aboard our aircraft. That story stated that when all pressurisation was lost en route Gladstone to Emerald, the pilot was forced to make an emergency power dive to enable the PM to breathe oxygen.
Today that would earn the title of Fake News. I explained to the senior officer that was all BS and there was no emergency and the descent had only required 500 feet per minute.

Next day was Mount Isa-Weipa -Groote Eylandt. Then the following day (5 September) GTE -Gove -Snake Bay -Darwin. Snake Bay is on Melville Island. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Bay_Airport

Shortly after take off from Snake Bay and heading to Darwin, Tony Eggleton, the press secretary to the PM came up front and asked if the PM could visit the cockpit as he wanted to see the spot where he had forced landed his Kittyhawk, 25 years earlier. I sat the PM in the co-pilot's seat and he flew the HS 748 very smoothly as we circled the remote beach at 500 feet. That done, he returned to his VIP chair in the cabin and we flew to Darwin.
After the engines were shut down, Tony Eggleton asked if it was OK for the press to publish that the PM had personally flown the 748 as it circled the place he had forced landed. I could see no problem with that but told Eggleton that the journalists should emphasise the fact that we never came below 500 ft, which was true.

The next day, the following story appeared in one of the southern newspapers.
GORTON SEES WHERE CRASHED
The Prime Minister, Mr Gorton, yesterday flew his Hawker Siddeley aircraft over the beach on which he crashed-landed as a wartime pilot 25 years ago. He took the controls of the 12-passenger plane for a few minutes over Melville Island, a few miles off the coast of Arnhem Land in north Australia.
The pilot had brought the aircraft down to 500 feet and then handed over to the Prime Minister. With the pilot alongside of him, Mr Gorton flew the aircraft along the Melville Island coastline until he spotted the beach.
“I just wanted to have a look at it again,” he said later in Darwin. “It is almost 25 years to the day since I put a Kittyhawk down on the beach during the war as a World War 2 pilot.”

In September, 1943, Mr Gorton made a crash landing on the beach with engine trouble. “It wasn’t really a crash landing. I landed on the sand with wheels down,” he said. The wheels caught and the small fighter plane tipped on its nose. He was stranded for six days and lived on turtle eggs until rescued.
Mr Gorton arrived in Darwin late yesterday at the half-way point of his six-day, three-State tour of major developmental projects in the north.

At least the journalist who filed that report wrote the truth. Not so, a journalist from a rival newspaper who said “The aircraft gave a sickening lurch as the Prime Minister took control.” I understood later it was that same journalist who described earlier pressurisation events as “an emergency power dive to enable the PM to breathe oxygen.” Drama sells newspapers so I am told.
The term “Fake News” wasn’t invented then but these were two examples where the term was warranted.