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  CHAPTER 3

  With Wings as Eagles

  The idea to join the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Academy didn’t come out of nowhere. In 1972, three years before the end of school, we went to our bush property for the weekend. When we arrived at the Ponderosa we found the property had been carved up: huge bulldozer tracks cut deep into the soft soil, fences had been flattened, trees toppled, and there were charcoal burns on the grass from campfires. It appeared to be a wanton act of vandalism, although whoever did it had left our house alone.

  Dad asked around. It turned out the destruction was the result of the RAAF conducting a local bivouac. While looking for their training site, the group had become lost and camped on the wrong property.

  Dad tracked the guilty parties down and had a chat with the base commander responsible. The Air Force was highly apologetic and offered to pay for any damages. Dad still had great memories of the RAAF in 1944, so he suggested that, instead of financial compensation, the RAAF could make amends by taking two of his sons (Simon and me) on a tour of the RAAF Academy at Point Cook Air Force Base (now combined with Laverton and called RAAF Williams). Dad knew I was interested in flying because my uncle Humphrey had recently taken me for a flight over Melbourne in his Cessna and I’d come home raving about it. The base commander agreed to Dad’s request, and I remember that tour very clearly.

  The RAAF Academy had extraordinarily manicured grounds, a modern overarching graduation hall and mess halls, and spectacular lecture theatres and labs for chemistry, com­puters, electronics, engineering and aerodynamics. Jet engines, subsonic and supersonic wind tunnels – you name it, if there was leading-edge aviation technology in Australia you’d find it at the Academy. There was even a full-size aircraft hangar fitted out with tools, spray painters, welders, presses and sheet iron for the Academy cadets’ exclusive use. There was also a strong sense of history about Point Cook. It was the site of the original Australian Flying Corps – before it became the Royal Austra­lian Air Force after the First World War – and its aerodrome is still the longest continuously operating military aerodrome in the world.

  The Academy was the most remarkable institution I had ever seen – and I immediately wanted to be a part of it. This would be the career that combined my love of technology with my need for physical challenge. I would gain an education, learn extraordinary skills and be pushed to my limits. I decided there and then I had to go flying – I had to join the Academy. But there was a problem. I needed to graduate in the top 5 per cent of the state to be accepted. At that stage I was probably in the top 40 per cent. I now had a new target.

  My dogged determination to excel at school increased another notch in 1974, my last year of school. Back in 1973 Mum became sick, a sickness that would persist for two years and see her in hospital many times. Both of her kidneys had failed. In late 1973, after six months on the waiting list, she was finally put on dialysis. She’d visit hospital two times a week for the procedure and was beginning to feel well again. It was great to have her back with us, relatively healthy and happy, and wanting only for a kidney transplant. Our lives were returning to normal.

  Three months later, in February of 1974, Mum visited hospital for her dialysis session, but there was a problem. The dialysis machine’s thermostat malfunctioned and failed to regulate her blood temperature. Her cleansed blood was too hot when it re-entered her body. The dialysis machine had a warning system, which would emit an aural warning and illuminate a warning light when an overheat is detected, but the nurse tasked to monitor the machines was absent. Mum effectively died on the dialysis machine that day.

  The grey matter in Mum’s brain had been overheated and destroyed. All that remained were the autonomic reflexes of breathing, heart rate and the semblance of an intellect no more advanced than that of a newborn child. The mother we knew and loved was gone. I would go and see her in hospital, hold her hand and talk to her, hoping the way her eyes followed me around the room was a sign there was awareness within. But for visit after visit there was no improvement, and we began to realise her reactions were no more than basal reactions – like a baby’s eyes following a moving object above its cot. Mum would never recover.

  On 22 May 1974 – the middle of the school holidays – my best friends and I were riding our motorbikes at the Ponderosa when Dad turned up unexpectedly to tell us Mum had died. It seemed so unfair for Mum, especially when I thought of how tough we, her sons, had been on her. She had sacrificed and endured so much, and now – just when her quality of life should have been improving – she was gone. Dad, my brothers and I suffered for a long time – we never properly grieved her loss and it took me more than 30 years to revisit those memories and confront the pain.

  When Mum died, I was in the middle of my last year at school. I was not a bright student, but I could work hard. I remember thinking to myself that I could not bring Mum back and nor could I make up for all the grief I had caused her. But I could do something that would have made her proud – I would work day and night to get into the top 5 per cent of the state, to get accepted to the RAAF Academy. Nothing would stop me now.

  In order to apply for the RAAF Academy I had to matriculate in English, chemistry, physics, and the tougher pure mathematics and applied mathematics. The maths courses ran over two years; for the first year (fourth form) I had been in the lower class of general mathematics and so Melbourne Grammar wouldn’t let me switch across because they said I wasn’t smart enough. The school thought I should follow a career with my hands, like watch-making. But if I was to join the RAAF I had to do pure and applied maths, so I gave the school no option: ‘I’m turning up for pure and applied maths, so you’d better schedule my classes.’ Dad received a letter warning there could be adverse effects from my taking on subjects beyond my ability, but the school later relaxed and put me into the lowest of the three graded pure and applied maths classes.

  I was bottom of the class in maths when I started fifth form, but it’s amazing the difference ambition and motivation can make. Four thousand would apply for the 28th RAAF Academy course and only 44 would be accepted, so I didn’t just have to pass my subjects, I had to excel. Through grunt, determination and the help of my extraordinary teachers, I did so well in the final year that I could have been accepted into medicine at Melbourne University. It was an extraordinary time in my life and I was very proud of what I achieved.

  My advice for all young, aspiring students is simple. Find your passion; develop and work hard at it, and you will be rewarded. Better still, if your work is your passion, you’ll never have to ‘go to work’. John Bartels, the captain of the QF30 aircraft in July 2008 that suffered an explosive decompression after an oxygen bottle exploded, expressed these thoughts even better: ‘The harder I work the luckier I get.’

  These days I look back on myself during those intermediate years at Melbourne Grammar and I can clearly see a directionless kid who just needed to find motivation. I thank Dad who, when faced with a bad event (the RAAF damaging the Ponderosa), turned the problem into an opportunity (the RAAF Academy tour) that changed my life. We all face situations like this and we should always strive to think outside the box to get the best results.

  When I applied for the RAAF, after evaluating me they said there were few openings in the RAAF for pilots but plenty for engineers and navigators. They offered to accept me immediately for the engineering and navigation courses, and advised that if I passed up those opportunities I might later miss out on the pilots’ course and therefore lose my chance at a career with the RAAF altogether. My decision was easy: ‘It’s the Academy and flying – or nothing.’ They then told me they could accept me as a direct-entry pilot, which meant they’d throw me straight into pilot training. But there is little security in being a pilot. I wanted a backstop, a safeguard in case I failed the pilots’ course or lost my aircrew medical. So I said, ‘No, I want the science degree from the Academy and then training to be a pilot.’

  On 22 January 1975 I joi
ned number 28 Academy course with 43 other cadets. My earlier interest in electrics morphed into a passion for electronics, and I particularly enjoyed the engineering and electronics–related studies. I built a ‘music chaser’ – a device for pulsing coloured lights in synchrony to musical sounds. The three-channel lights used triacs (electronic switches) that were designed to have their ‘base’ at the active (240 volts) potential. Most people find this hard to understand, and so did I because one day I accidentally touched a triac with one hand and the kit chassis with the other. I remember the scorching pain running up my arms and meeting at my chest – I could hear and feel the hum of my chest vibrating at 50 hertz. My legs kicked hard and I found myself thrown 2 metres back, lying on the floor. Like anyone who has suffered a severe electric shock or been injured, I ran through a checklist of my body to see if anything had been damaged: toes, feet, chest, arms, fingers, neck – all okay. I was lucky I had learned a valuable lesson without being hurt.

  I made life-long friends at the Academy. When joining the RAAF, the orientation course had simple ambitions: to shred every recruit down to their basic being, then rebuild them with the standard military substrate. We lost all our personal rights; we were challenged as a group and we discovered we would only survive if we functioned as a team. Over four years you end up knowing many intimate details about each other, and you develop a close friendship and trust. By the time you graduate you share an esprit de corps with your course mates, and many become part of your extended family for the rest of your life.

  *

  Even though I was now at the RAAF I still had very little flying experience. Commercial flying was a very privileged and expensive activity. When my mother died at the age of 43 she had never travelled overseas. I was eighteen years old when I first left my home state of Victoria. I fitted earplugs, then walked up the ramp into the back of a very noisy ‘A’ model RAAF Hercules that would transport me from Laverton, Victoria, to the Richmond Air Force Base outside of Sydney, New South Wales.

  The Hercules is a transport aircraft devoid of passenger comforts. I can still remember the cocktail of screeching noises: hydraulics, pneumatics and engines. The noisy propellers generated a highpitched scream and a painful ‘beat’. The ‘beat’ is a cyclic noise, created when the propellers rotated at slightly different RPMs, enough to make the pressure on your ears ramp up and down every few seconds. Having no other experience, I assumed all large aircraft were just as noisy.

  A year later, I was nineteen and on my first commercial aircraft flight, a DC9 from Melbourne to Sydney. As we taxied towards the runway, I noticed the low hum that indicated the auxiliary power unit (APU) was running. I wondered when the pilots were going to start the engines prior to take-off. It was only after we charged down the runway and launched into the sky that I realised what I thought had been the APU’s noise was actually the sound of the engines, the engines had been running for the last fifteen minutes, and I wasn’t even wearing earplugs! It might seem naïve to have expected that commercial jets were as noisy as Hercules, but in the 1970s air travel wasn’t as common as it is now.

  For the four years I spent at the Academy I often looked across the road to the airfield where the direct-entry cadets were learning to fly – and I was envious. Conversely, the direct-entry pilots looked down at us in our lecture rooms and thought we were nerds. At the start of the second year we flew twenty hours in Winjeels, which was provided to boost our motivation and morale.

  In the fourth year of the course each of us spent one month visiting the squadron of our choice, to participate in their operations and lifestyle. I wanted to experience the latest and best technology, so there was only one choice – F-111s. The F-111 was a strategic long-range bomber capable of delivering conventional or nuclear weapons with pinpoint accuracy in bad weather, day or night. I spent one month at 6 Squadron attending briefings, researching the aircraft and mixing with the pilots. It was a remarkable time – I had one three-hour flight where I experienced my first supersonic cruise, and then low flying with terrain following radar (TFR). TFR was unique to the F-111, permitting it to fly at high speed under the radar detection heights. The pilot selected the ground clearance (down to 100 feet) and the ride (soft, medium or hard), and the computers did the rest. A typical mission profile was a high-altitude transit followed by low-level interdiction at 480 knots (890 kph), just 100 feet above the ground and under the radar – and the F-111 could do all of this in cloud or at night. It was remarkable to fly through a valley at night and see nothing except the short flash of ground illuminated by the wingtip strobe lights. After this experience I was convinced about my flying career – I had to fly F-111s!

  The Academy years were difficult but rewarding. I graduated in December 1978 with a Bachelor of Science (majoring in physics and maths) and a Graduate Diploma in Military Aviation. I also graduated as an RAAF commissioned officer – presented by His Excellency Sir Zelman Cowen, the governor-general. I had become a flying officer yet I had very little flying experience.

  The RAAF Academy trained many more officers than would ever get their wings. Like most armed forces around the world, the majority of Academy cadets are ultimately destined for management positions, liaison and diplomatic postings – they’re more likely to be sponsored through officer promotion and executive MBA courses than through multiple expensive aircraft conversions. The reality was the Academy did not want to invest four years of education in a young man so he could go kill himself in a damn plane. It was a dreadful irony that those who duxed RAAF Academy – being the best – won a poisoned chalice. For it was the dux pilots who disproportionately lost their lives in aircraft accidents.

  I nearly considered resigning from the RAAF one week before my graduation day. If I graduated from the Academy and accepted a commission I would become bonded to the Air Force for another five years. But only 25 to 35 per cent of pilots pass the one-year pilots’ course. The odds were against me. I told my father I was thinking of resigning because I couldn’t stand the thought of being stuck in the RAAF at a desk job. He said, ‘Rich, flying is your dream. Nothing’s easy, and taking risks brings rewards, so take a risk and try your hardest.’ My great friend Adrian Wischer was more direct: ‘Security is a swear word; there is never security, you make your own luck.’

  I graduated from the RAAF Academy, then entered number 107 Pilots’ Course flying CT4 (piston) aircraft and Macchi jets. This twelve-month course was exciting – the risks were high but the rewards were breathtaking. I joined a strict training path where every flight had goals and requirements, and I was generally too busy concentrating to enjoy myself. We were always only three fail rides away from being scrubbed – the first flight, the retry flight and then a scrub ride with the chief instructor. Our training covered a diverse range of skills, from navigation, aerobatics and low flying through to formation and instrument flying. Instrument flying tripped up the most pilots. I think all those years of manhandling and fixing motorbikes at the Ponderosa helped me through my pilot training. Being unafraid to aggressively manoeuvre aircraft was an asset when chasing my instructor around the skies, trying to stay on his tail. Appreciating machinery and knowing my body’s capabilities also helped me to stay relaxed and fly smoothly in stressful situations.

  The basic flying techniques drilled into me during formation flying helped me 30 years later when converting to Airbus aircraft with Qantas. Aircraft fly in formations to maximise the number of aircraft that can manoeuvre in a limited airspace, and air controllers treat a formation of aircraft the same as they treat a single aircraft. So aircraft in formation must fly very close to each other – close enough that the wingman never loses sight of his leader. The wingtip-to-wingtip separation reduces, getting down below 2 metres when penetrating the thickest cloud.

  It’s hard learning to fly in formation. Just when you think you have nudged up close enough to your wingman your instructor berates you for being too distant and out of position. You respond by pushing in closer to you
r wingman, but your primitive survival instinct takes over and your hand moves subconsciously to fly you apart. You consciously push in closer; your body subconsciously pulls away – in, out, in, out, in, out. It’s very frustrating – your conscious and subconscious minds are at war with each other. Learning to fly in formation is the classic tracking exercise where pilots often over-control and, in the worst case, enter an oscillating (in-out) behaviour called a pilot-induced oscillation (PIO). It was ‘Stork’ who had a wonderful remedy that corrected my PIO tendencies.

  All RAAF pilots are given an alias name that sticks for their entire career. I had two – ‘Dick’ and ‘Gino’. Most pilots take animal names for aliases – such as ‘Dog’, ‘Rat’, ‘Snake’, ‘Beetle’ – and ‘Stork’ was no exception. At 6 foot 3 inches tall and wafer thin, ‘Stork’ was an exceptional instructor who guided me through my Macchi pilots’ course. During one formation flight, I was trying to keep close-in beside my manoeuvring leader. I was becoming tired and tense – my hand was squeezing the top out of the joystick – and I was starting to get the wobbles. I knew I was tense, but I couldn’t relax and I was tending towards another PIO. Stork’s suggestion broke through my concentration and fixed my problem.

  ‘Dick,’ he said, ‘you’re too tense on the joystick – you’re grabbing it too firmly. Imagine the aircraft is your girlfriend and the joystick is your girlfriend’s nipple. Don’t grab it with a clenched fist! Hold it gently between your thumb and finger. Now fly the aircraft by bending the nipple, gently – just as she would like it. Fly the nipple!’

  I’ve never forgotten Stork’s remarks. My formation flying improved, and this technique works a dream on the A380!

  I finished close to the top in my course, so I could have my first preference for the squadron I’d be assigned to. There were no vacancies at 6 Squadron on F-111s, so I planned to make my next bid to go to Mirage fighters instead.