A stirring address by FOTOBAI Patron, AVM Peter Scully (Rtd), at our reunion luncheon on ANZAC Day 2019, is recorded below. The address sets a challenge for members and indeed all Australians to remember the sacrifices made by RAAF personnel in WW2.
ANZAC DAY
2019
ADDRESS TO ‘FRIENDS
OF THE ODDBODS’
Mr
President, Oddbods and Friends of the Oddbods.
It is both a great privilege and a pleasure to be with you once again
this year. Thank you for your kind
invitation to give a short address….but Bruce, how long is a piece of string?
However, I
would like to say a few words on why I think you are one of the most important
of the many ex-service organisations in our country – and I mean that most
sincerely.
At the
beginning of World War Two, all realised that this would be a war in which
airpower would play a major and dominent role.
So much so that Britain and the old Dominions, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and later on South Africa entered into an agreement: The Empire Air Training Plan, or more usually
called the Empire Air Training Scheme – EATS.
Britain, despite its small size would be able to manufacture the
necessary aircraft – and nearly all aircraft involved were in fact manufactured
in that country – but would be unable to produce the numbers of aircrew
required. So, the dominions agreed to
develop a training programme to supply the necessary aircrew. The
RAAF’s responsibility was an immense and daunting one, tasked with producing
over 27,000 aircrew in Australia plus an additional 10,000 in Canada and 700 in
Rhodesia.
The RAAF
grew from 27 to 3037 operational aircraft plus another 2808 training
aircraft. 38 new flying schools were
established, the number of Qualified Flying Instructors grew from 27 to 3061. The force grew from 10 officers in 1939 to
20,000. Airmen increased from 3179 to
144,000 together with 18,000 airwomen:an absolutely incredible undertaking.
The RAAF
served in every theatre of that war, including Russia. 5036 were killed in action in Europe and the
ME alone – and another one third were killed in training accidents. Indeed, of the total Australian battle
fatalities, Army, Navy, Airforce, in all theatres of that war, over 30 percent
were RAAF in Europe and the ME alone. 3
percent of the RAAF served in Europe but suffered30 percent of casualties.
At the end
of the war, the Australian War Memorial produced and film, ‘Sons of
ANZACS’. It lasted 124 minutes, the RAAF
coverage lasted just 10 minutes and the RAAF’s contribution to
bomber/fighter/Coastal Commands received NO mention at all.
The then
Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, referring to the RAAF in
Europe stated: “They did not realise that most of their achievements were not
recorded in Australian history.”
Even to this
day, the great majority of our population is totally unaware of these great
RAAF efforts and sacrifices; awareness made less likely by the current
‘political correctness’ which denies our British heritage.
I’d like to
give another example of how our RAAF history has been lost. Some years ago I was asked by the Australia
National University to write an entry for the Australian Dictionary of
Biography on an RAAF airman, a Russell Foskett. I accepted thinking that the task would be
pretty simple and as I had many contacts with WW2 aircrew (most of my early
instructors were pilots who had served in Europe). No-one had ever heard of him. So, I applied to the National Archives for
his file. It contained but two entries;
his enlistment documents and his discharge documents. There was no record of his overseas service
in Australia. It seemed I’d reached a
dead end.
However,
from his enlistment details at least I knew where he used to live. So, I armed myself with a Sydney map and
phone directory and wrote to everyone by that name within a 10 mile radius of
his home address. What luck – I managed
to get in touch with his two spinster sisters.
Unfortunately, one had just entered a nursing home and had thrown out
his log book and associated documents.
Nevertheless, we established good friendships and I learned much about
his early life.
Next, I
wrote to some RAF contacts I’d made during my time as Airforce Advisor at the
Australian High Commission in London.
This produced some useful information.
Foskett had an impressive record with the RAF. He’d earned an OBE and DFC and flew Hurricans
and Spitfires in the Med, Greece and Yugoslavia. He’d become a flight commander on No 80
Squadron RAF and then Commanding Officer on No 94 Squadron RAF. He lost his life following an engine failure
at low level preventing his parachute from opening properly. His body was recovered by a Royal Navy
warship. He died just eight months
after his younger brother who was a navigator on a Royal Canadian Air Force
aircraft shot down over Berlin. They
were both ‘Oddbods’.
I hope this
might give you a better understanding of why your organisation is so
important. You have the opportunity to
keep alive the memories of these Australian airmen who served their country so
selflessly and at such a tragic cost.
Please spread the word because there seems to be no-one else to do so.
FLYING
OFFICER BRUCE W. FOSKETT, (413755), RAAF
Since I have last written we have started what we have for so
long been training. We've a few trips
in now, all to the Ruhr, and oh boy is that one hot place. No one who has ever seen a target in there,
as we go to work and blow it all to hell, could ever believe what it is
like. It is fantastic almost and how on
earth we can go through it and come out unscathed as we have done so far, is
beyond me. The amount of hate Jerry
throws up at us, everything but the kitchen sink, and even that at times I
think, is amazing. And I don't blame
him, for, although they are Germans and all that that entails, I sometimes feel
sorry for those people that we give such an awful plastering to. There was never a closer thing to a living
hell I don't think, than one of our raids at its height I know I'd sooner be up
where we are than down on the ground under us, catching all the stuff we let fly
at them.
The first thing of course is the searchlights. The feeling of security you have in all the
enveloping darkness of the night as we scream across enemy territory on the way
in, goes west the moment those light get cracking. We've only been caught once so far, and then
only for a couple of minutes, but I thought we'd had it. Up there with something between 20 and 30
lights on us, I felt as though I was standing naked on the stage of a full
theatre and it appeared we'd never get out of that blinding, dazzling
glare. We must have been living right
though, for somehow one moment there we were lit up like a Christmas tree just
waiting for it and the next moment we were out in the clear and we were back in
the darkness again. Boy, did I have my
fingers crossed, especially when I could
see they had us bracketed with flak, six bursts on each side every few seconds,
right at our height and gradually creeping in on us, closer every salvo.
Next thing to the lights is the flak. All over the sky you see the pin pricks of
bursting flak, everywhere it seems, but when they cone a kite they just pour
everything up those beams till they either get the kite or the kite beats them
and gets out of the cone. All over the
place you see aircraft coned. All
around these targets for miles you see these cones, 20 and 30 and often more
lights to a cone, and away up where the beams cross is an aircraft looking just
like a moth and absolutely surrounded by flak burstsThis light stuff is green
and red and blue and silver and its an awesome sight to see it pouring up. Then there are the hundreds of flares,
theirs and ours, all colours and types bursting all over the sky in great
showers of fire spreading out and gradually falling like a giant coloured blanket. There's some kind of stuff they put up
that's silvery in colour and breaks out like tinsel, shimmering and shivering
in the sky, amongst all the other strange lights and flares. Maybe you'll see a kite go for a burton and
murmur a silent prayer for the boys with her who are not having the luck you
are. But that part of it is not a nice
sight. And then there is the target,
its terrific, just one great area burning and smoking like hell, even from the
height we bomb we can see the ugly dark red flames as the incendiaries we drop
get a hold and the building start to burn
I hope you haven't minded me telling you about the work
over here. My only wish is that you
don't let it worry you. We've been
through it a few times now and can do it again as many times as we have
to. There's nothing else I can tell you
of what we do without perhaps overstepping the censor. I thought perhaps you'd want to know how it
impressed me and what our job is like.
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