Flying Squadrons are the very substance of an air force. By its nature, the air service is a highly technical one requiring both complex machinery and sound human judgement to function at its peak. The smallest independent unit of an air force is the squadron. Squadrons have a discrete status which makes them ideal candidates for in-depth study. This thesis examines the impact of technology and command on a single squadron's operations because technology and command have been and will remain pivotal in determining the success or failure of the air service. Although the Australian No 1 Squadron has existed almost continually from 1916 to the present, this thesis only examines a specific period of its life. The period 1916-1958 was chosen since the squadron formed as an independent Australian Flying Corps unit in January 1916, served in both World Wars and the Malayan Emergency, returning to Australia to resume domestic operations and training in 1958. Of significance to the work, during the specified period, the Squadron was controlled by both the Army and Air Force, by both the British and Australian Governments, had successes and failures and was an operational and a training unit. The Squadron has thus mirrored the growth and changes experienced by the developing Air Force as a whole. The main purpose of examining such a squadron is that it provides an insight into the development and thinking of the RAAF and highlights pitfalls evidenced in technological and command problems which still plague military staff today. In examining the operations and operational effectiveness of No 1 Squadron, three determinants have been specifically examined: technology, that is the aircraft flown, the commanding officer's personality and his methods and the organisational structure under which the Unit operated. Naturally, all three matured as doctrine, knowledge and experience also matured. The Thesis concludes that when the Squadron is winning, it is generally technology that creates the relative advantage and when loosing, strong leadership in the form of command must come to the fore. The results obtained support the thesis in keeping with contemporary RAAF doctrine, that technology and command strongly impact squadron operations and hence, operational effectiveness.

&quotMeeting the ageing aircraft challenge&quot is not just about safety, not just about effectiveness, and not just about economy of support. It is about proactive and reactive optimization of all three service goals throughout long life cycles that span 20 or 30 years, or more, and typically, beyond the originally intended design life. It is therefore about organizational attitudes towards ongoing trend analysis and condition monitoring, and pervading cost benefit assessments of all forms of human innovation across what the author describes as 'the eight sustaining disciplines for long aerospace life cycles', including scientific and technological developments, and opportunities for reliability growth or 'refresh'. Complacency is the root cause of all problems with the design, maintenance and support of all modern infrastructure, and therefore life cycle planners and minders are required to be an enthusiastic but nervous lot - always hoping for the best, but planning for the worst impact of 'Mr Murphy'. Murphy thrives on complacency, is in bed with uncertainty, and never forgets (as we do often) that imperfection (no matter how small) breeds unreliability traps that patiently wait to surprise at some stage along the life cycle journey. He has the upper hand. ...Our best weapons against Murphy are continual, total picture and longer-term situational awareness; caution, vigilance, innovation and collaboration. This research study and thesis is intended as a broad and comprehensive management philosophy, a guide and checklist - a broad scrape of everything 'so deep', rather than coverage of any one-niche aspect of the ageing aircraft challenge in great depth. It includes a brief and simple strategic setting for Australian Military Aerospace requirements, and spans a three axes management philosophy: 1. a toolbox of eight sustaining disciplines, 2. trend analysis and 3. time-cost-benefit assessment. Along with complacency, the prime ageing aircraft 'killers' are identified, as are the key ageing aircraft 'age multipliers'. The eight sustaining disciplines are explained in varying depth, according to their broad significance to the ageing aircraft condition and life cycle. The ever-ubiquitous bathtub reliability curve - the key to understanding, predicting and controlling life cycle behaviour (including costs) - is emphasized. Engineering life cycle minding and capability management are broad focus areas. The eight areas of attention identified for this broad study are: 1. Aerospace design requirements and trends, 2. Science and technology opportunities, 3. Airworthiness, engineering and maintenance philosophy, 4. Reliability behaviour, 5. Operational use and abuse patterns, 6. Logistics support and managing obsolescence, 7. Technical workforce and organizational attitudes (requirements and outlook), and 8. Life cycle costing and budgeting. This thesis primarily draws attention to the fundamental driver of life cycle behaviour - reliability. The critical dependency that life cycle control and prediction has on consistent and high quality trend data collection and analysis is emphasized throughout, and the now pressing need for better identification of ageing aircraft cost growth drivers, and their containment, is linked to reliability trend awareness, manipulation and intervention. The human dimension is included - including coverage of organizational attitudes and what it takes to be a 'high reliability organization'. There are no magic or easy answers to the ageing aircraft condition and challenge. Trend analysis has to be done from the bottom up, system by system, for each fleet type. But over time, with consistent trend data collection, patterns emerge within the sophisticated and stochastic systems behaviour that that ageing aircraft play out. These patterns enable ongoing management of the long life cycle to be more confidently predicted, more assured and with best possible cost growth containment. The best, perhaps only, path to least surprises and best cost containment is now being re-identified in some military aviation organizations as a mature and evolving RAM engineering and RCM framework. RAM-RCM may well be the only recovery from what some admit is a death spiral of ageing aircraft cost growth.

This thesis presents a study of the incidence of hypercholesterolaemia in a 1988 sample of male personnel from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The thesis defines hypercholesterolaemia as a plasma total cholesterol level in excess of the risk threshold promulgated by the National Heart Foundation of Australia (NHF). Since 1981, RAAF personnel have been subjected to a series of regular physical and physiological examinations, including a comprehensive blood lipd profile, as part of a preventive approach to reducing the incidence of coronary heart disease in the Service. The study presents data on the extent of hypercholesterolaemia in the RAAF and illustrates the spread of the condition through various age cohorts. In excess of 40% of the RAAF personnel studied had total cholesterol levels in excess of the NHF "increased risk" threshold with the prevalence varying from 11.8% of personnel aged 20-24 years to some 64% of personnel older than 49 years. The increase in total cholesterol level with increasing age is statistically significant. The study compares these data with previously published observations on certain motivational characteristics of military communities, with a view to providing an evaluation of the structure of the RAAF Health Promotion Programme as a lifestyle based educational initiative. The data are further compared with data from two conceptually similar studies of male personnel in the United States armed forces. These comparisons suggest that the age related frequency of educational intervention which characterized the 1988 RAAF programme may well have been inappropriate for optimal effect. The study further utilizes a tabular (matrix) analysis of a number of educational strategies to identify several preferred option(s) for programme design in the RAAF community. The analysis suggests that the present mode of educational intervention may also be inappropriate for optimal effect (when addressing the 1988 RAAF population at least). The study concludes with the presentation of a series of recommendations aimed fundamentally at a redesign of the cholesterol monitoring component of the RAAF Health Promotion Programme. The study recommends, however, that given the multifactorial nature of coronary heart disease risk, the cholesterol monitoring component of the programme should not be redesigned in isolation. Instead, the findings of this study suggest that a more wide-ranging study of the educational basis for the client interface to the RAAF Health Promotion Programme is warranted.

&quotMeeting the ageing aircraft challenge&quot is not just about safety, not just about effectiveness, and not just about economy of support. It is about proactive and reactive optimization of all three service goals throughout long life cycles that span 20 or 30 years, or more, and typically, beyond the originally intended design life. It is therefore about organizational attitudes towards ongoing trend analysis and condition monitoring, and pervading cost benefit assessments of all forms of human innovation across what the author describes as 'the eight sustaining disciplines for long aerospace life cycles', including scientific and technological developments, and opportunities for reliability growth or 'refresh'. Complacency is the root cause of all problems with the design, maintenance and support of all modern infrastructure, and therefore life cycle planners and minders are required to be an enthusiastic but nervous lot - always hoping for the best, but planning for the worst impact of 'Mr Murphy'. Murphy thrives on complacency, is in bed with uncertainty, and never forgets (as we do often) that imperfection (no matter how small) breeds unreliability traps that patiently wait to surprise at some stage along the life cycle journey. He has the upper hand. ...Our best weapons against Murphy are continual, total picture and longer-term situational awareness; caution, vigilance, innovation and collaboration. This research study and thesis is intended as a broad and comprehensive management philosophy, a guide and checklist - a broad scrape of everything 'so deep', rather than coverage of any one-niche aspect of the ageing aircraft challenge in great depth. It includes a brief and simple strategic setting for Australian Military Aerospace requirements, and spans a three axes management philosophy: 1. a toolbox of eight sustaining disciplines, 2. trend analysis and 3. time-cost-benefit assessment. Along with complacency, the prime ageing aircraft 'killers' are identified, as are the key ageing aircraft 'age multipliers'. The eight sustaining disciplines are explained in varying depth, according to their broad significance to the ageing aircraft condition and life cycle. The ever-ubiquitous bathtub reliability curve - the key to understanding, predicting and controlling life cycle behaviour (including costs) - is emphasized. Engineering life cycle minding and capability management are broad focus areas. The eight areas of attention identified for this broad study are: 1. Aerospace design requirements and trends, 2. Science and technology opportunities, 3. Airworthiness, engineering and maintenance philosophy, 4. Reliability behaviour, 5. Operational use and abuse patterns, 6. Logistics support and managing obsolescence, 7. Technical workforce and organizational attitudes (requirements and outlook), and 8. Life cycle costing and budgeting. This thesis primarily draws attention to the fundamental driver of life cycle behaviour - reliability. The critical dependency that life cycle control and prediction has on consistent and high quality trend data collection and analysis is emphasized throughout, and the now pressing need for better identification of ageing aircraft cost growth drivers, and their containment, is linked to reliability trend awareness, manipulation and intervention. The human dimension is included - including coverage of organizational attitudes and what it takes to be a 'high reliability organization'. There are no magic or easy answers to the ageing aircraft condition and challenge. Trend analysis has to be done from the bottom up, system by system, for each fleet type. But over time, with consistent trend data collection, patterns emerge within the sophisticated and stochastic systems behaviour that that ageing aircraft play out. These patterns enable ongoing management of the long life cycle to be more confidently predicted, more assured and with best possible cost growth containment. The best, perhaps only, path to least surprises and best cost containment is now being re-identified in some military aviation organizations as a mature and evolving RAM engineering and RCM framework. RAM-RCM may well be the only recovery from what some admit is a death spiral of ageing aircraft cost growth.

&quotMeeting the ageing aircraft challenge&quot is not just about safety, not just about effectiveness, and not just about economy of support. It is about proactive and reactive optimization of all three service goals throughout long life cycles that span 20 or 30 years, or more, and typically, beyond the originally intended design life. It is therefore about organizational attitudes towards ongoing trend analysis and condition monitoring, and pervading cost benefit assessments of all forms of human innovation across what the author describes as 'the eight sustaining disciplines for long aerospace life cycles', including scientific and technological developments, and opportunities for reliability growth or 'refresh'. Complacency is the root cause of all problems with the design, maintenance and support of all modern infrastructure, and therefore life cycle planners and minders are required to be an enthusiastic but nervous lot - always hoping for the best, but planning for the worst impact of 'Mr Murphy'. Murphy thrives on complacency, is in bed with uncertainty, and never forgets (as we do often) that imperfection (no matter how small) breeds unreliability traps that patiently wait to surprise at some stage along the life cycle journey. He has the upper hand. ...Our best weapons against Murphy are continual, total picture and longer-term situational awareness; caution, vigilance, innovation and collaboration. This research study and thesis is intended as a broad and comprehensive management philosophy, a guide and checklist - a broad scrape of everything 'so deep', rather than coverage of any one-niche aspect of the ageing aircraft challenge in great depth. It includes a brief and simple strategic setting for Australian Military Aerospace requirements, and spans a three axes management philosophy: 1. a toolbox of eight sustaining disciplines, 2. trend analysis and 3. time-cost-benefit assessment. Along with complacency, the prime ageing aircraft 'killers' are identified, as are the key ageing aircraft 'age multipliers'. The eight sustaining disciplines are explained in varying depth, according to their broad significance to the ageing aircraft condition and life cycle. The ever-ubiquitous bathtub reliability curve - the key to understanding, predicting and controlling life cycle behaviour (including costs) - is emphasized. Engineering life cycle minding and capability management are broad focus areas. The eight areas of attention identified for this broad study are: 1. Aerospace design requirements and trends, 2. Science and technology opportunities, 3. Airworthiness, engineering and maintenance philosophy, 4. Reliability behaviour, 5. Operational use and abuse patterns, 6. Logistics support and managing obsolescence, 7. Technical workforce and organizational attitudes (requirements and outlook), and 8. Life cycle costing and budgeting. This thesis primarily draws attention to the fundamental driver of life cycle behaviour - reliability. The critical dependency that life cycle control and prediction has on consistent and high quality trend data collection and analysis is emphasized throughout, and the now pressing need for better identification of ageing aircraft cost growth drivers, and their containment, is linked to reliability trend awareness, manipulation and intervention. The human dimension is included - including coverage of organizational attitudes and what it takes to be a 'high reliability organization'. There are no magic or easy answers to the ageing aircraft condition and challenge. Trend analysis has to be done from the bottom up, system by system, for each fleet type. But over time, with consistent trend data collection, patterns emerge within the sophisticated and stochastic systems behaviour that that ageing aircraft play out. These patterns enable ongoing management of the long life cycle to be more confidently predicted, more assured and with best possible cost growth containment. The best, perhaps only, path to least surprises and best cost containment is now being re-identified in some military aviation organizations as a mature and evolving RAM engineering and RCM framework. RAM-RCM may well be the only recovery from what some admit is a death spiral of ageing aircraft cost growth.

Performance appraisal has been well established as an important management tool for improving individual and organisational performance, and has attracted considerable research interest over the past fifty years. Many previous studies of performance appraisal have been conducted either in laboratory settings, or have tended to focus narrowly on raters and/or the appraisal process, or of necessity have excluded from consideration the group dynamics prevalent in large organisations. Additionally, although it has long been recognised that the purpose of performance appraisal can affect ratings, little appears to have been done in situ on performance appraisal as a part of a complex personnel management system. One consequence of this approach has been a degree of uncertainty on the utility of laboratory and other findings to working appraisal systems. Moreover, previous examinations have focused on civilian organisations even though military organisations have an equally long history of using performance appraisal for a range of purposes. Using a sample (N = 577) of senior air force officers from three adjacent rank levels, this study examined the relationships between performance appraisal rating leniency, the perceived causes of leniency, and two personnel selection processes based on appraisal data. Rating leniency was perceived to be widespread, and was found to be associated with a lack of confidence (or mistrust) in several aspects of the performance appraisal system and related officer selection processes. While officer groups did not show any practically significant differences in perception of the prototype of the ideal commander (the leader), raters used a range of prototypes for estimating officers' promotion potential and suitability for command. Officers from one employment specialisation tended to stand apart in their view of the appraisal system and personnel selection processes, and the lower ranking officers surveyed tended to be more critical of the performance appraisal system and selection processes than were the higher ranking officers. In terms of selection process outcomes, 21.7% of officers were not satisfied with the management and leadership style of their commander, and officers at the lower organisational levels were found to be significantly (p<.005) more satisfied with their commander that those at the highest level. Satisfaction was found to be predicted by a multiple regression equation (R2=.72, p<.001), with the elements of the equation reinforcing the importance of a human-relations orientation for effective leaders. This study suggests that the behaviour of a working performance appraisal system can be predicted by established theory and that a model of system effectiveness may be possible, embracing rating errors, rating format, reliability factors (such as dyadic quality and period of observation), criterion validity of the appraisal instrument, and rater trust in the system. Additionally, this study suggests that upwards appraisal may be a useful input to the process for selecting leaders, if only to indicate which appraisal dimensions are perceived by subordinates to be important.

Between 1914 and 1945 the Australian air services, the Australian Flying Corps (AFC ??? 1914 to 1919), the Australian Air Corps (AAC ??? 1920 to 1921) and their successor, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF ??? 1921 to 1945), developed from a marginally effective air arm into a major air force with a continental strike capability. The interwar period saw a series of pioneering flights which not only laid the foundations for the air defence of Australia but also assisted in national development. Essential to the development of the AFC and the RAAF was the practice of air navigation. While much has been written on World War II RAAF operations, almost nothing has been published on the policy, training and practice of air navigation in support of wartime operations or the interwar period. This omission is addressed by the examination of air navigation in the AFC and the RAAF from the rudiments of World War I to the emergence of air navigation as a critical specialist function which culminated in its practice in World War II tactical and strategic air operations. It was the wartime development of Australian air power between 1939 and 1945, and the parallel practice of advanced navigation techniques, that underscored Australia???s contribution to the allied air offensive.

This thesis sets out to examine the proposition that Air Marshal Sir George Jones??? time as Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) of the Royal Australian Air force (RAAF) was both beneficial and detrimental to the Service but the benefits gained from his time in office outweighed the detriment. Sir George Jones served as CAS for nearly ten years (1942 - 1952). This was the longest continuous appointment of a CAS to date. Jones was CAS for most of the Second World War and it was during that time that the two events for which he is most remembered occurred, viz the controversy surrounding his appointment and his ongoing conflict with the RAAF Operational Commander (W.D. Bostock). In order to assess his impact on the RAAF, this thesis describes events and incidents that occurred while Jones was CAS. To compile this work, data was drawn from numerous sources including: interviews with family members and ex-RAAF personnel; official records maintained by the National Archives of Australia (NAA), the RAAF Historical Section and the RAAF Museum; Jones??? personal papers held by family members and the Australian War Memorial; and the papers of other RAAF officers and politicians held by the RAAF Museum and the National Library of Australia (NLA). Jones wrote a brief autobiography, which (together with other secondary sources) was used to ???fill in the gaps.??? This research shows that Jones??? time as CAS was far more eventful and filled with more conflict than he alludes to in his autobiography. He had no say in his appointment as CAS but his personality did not allow him to make the best of the situation with Bostock. Contrary to the views expressed in earlier works, Jones??? appointment was not a mistake but a deliberate move by the Minister for Air. The conclusion reached is that Jones??? time in office was beneficial to the RAAF. He presided over its growth to being the world???s fourth largest air force at the end of the Second World War. He oversaw its post war demobilisation and was responsible for planning the Service???s structure to meet the Australian Government???s needs during the early years of the Cold War.

In the year 1983/84, the Commonwealth Government decided to redevelop a RAAF airstrip at Tindal into a northern air base in NT. It would replace RAAF Base Darwin that was situated close to the coast and susceptible to both cyclonic weather and any 'enemy' sneak raid attacks. Tindal is located about fifteen kilometres south from Katherine on the Stuart Highway. A social survey conducted in the second half of 1983 formed the basis for SIA predictions that appeared in the EIS. These encompassed social impacts that would occur during the construction phase and later throughout the operational phase. Included among the predicted impacts on local residents was aircraft noise from military aircraft flying overhead and this was confirmed by a social survey conducted in 1994. Other predictions included the integration of a RAAF population with its own set of values into a conservative Katherine community. The social survey of 1994 asks the same type of questions as asked in 1983, and the two sets of answers are compared over time. A subsequent longitudinal analysis follows the structural development of the Katherine population/community. A group of 1994 respondents was found to have resided in Katherine in 1983 and cohort by cohort their state of affairs discovered. As Katherine developed into a regional centre the views of respondents toward the RAAF became more accepting and residual social impacts from the redevelopment phase were difficult to find.

Between 1914 and 1945 the Australian air services, the Australian Flying Corps (AFC ??? 1914 to 1919), the Australian Air Corps (AAC ??? 1920 to 1921) and their successor, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF ??? 1921 to 1945), developed from a marginally effective air arm into a major air force with a continental strike capability. The interwar period saw a series of pioneering flights which not only laid the foundations for the air defence of Australia but also assisted in national development. Essential to the development of the AFC and the RAAF was the practice of air navigation. While much has been written on World War II RAAF operations, almost nothing has been published on the policy, training and practice of air navigation in support of wartime operations or the interwar period. This omission is addressed by the examination of air navigation in the AFC and the RAAF from the rudiments of World War I to the emergence of air navigation as a critical specialist function which culminated in its practice in World War II tactical and strategic air operations. It was the wartime development of Australian air power between 1939 and 1945, and the parallel practice of advanced navigation techniques, that underscored Australia???s contribution to the allied air offensive.