Featured Article Summary #218

Air Vice-Marshal Ellis Charles Wackett was a senior Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) commander who served as the RAAF’s chief engineer from 1935 to 1959. He worked with the RAAF’s Air Board for seventeen years and helped raise standards of aircraft airworthiness. Starting as a navy cadet in World War I, he moved to the Air Force in 1923, studied engineering in Britain, trained as a pilot, and returned to Australia. He began parachute training in the RAAF and in 1926 led Australia’s first freefall parachute jump from a military aircraft, followed by a survey flight to Papua New Guinea in 1927. During World War II he advanced through senior engineering leadership roles, later creating a separate Technical Branch for the RAAF in 1948 and becoming air vice-marshal the same year. After leaving the military in 1959, he served on the Australian National Airlines Commission until 1968, and he died in 1984. Ellis Wackett was born in Townsville in 1901 and joined the Royal Australian Naval College in 1914. After naval service, he applied to the Royal Australian Air Force in 1922, trained as a pilot, and later studied aeronautics at Imperial College in London before returning to Australia. He helped set up parachute training and made Australia’s first freefall parachute descent from a military aircraft, then led the Papuan Survey Flight in 1927–28 to map and photograph parts of New Guinea, though the aircraft proved unsuitable for tropical wartime use. He later married Doreen Dove and, after further postings and promotions, became the RAAF’s senior engineer and led work on technical and defence-industry readiness for supplying equipment. At the start of World War II, Ellis Wackett, as Director of Technical Services, struggled with shortages of spare parts because most RAAF aircraft were British-built, Australia’s aircraft industry was still growing, and a US arms embargo limited supplies. He used civilian repair facilities and recovery depots to salvage components, drawing on help from his brother Lawrence, a key figure in the RAAF’s technical organisation. From 1940 onward, Wackett took on wider roles in committees and councils focused on aircrew safety and aircraft production, was made an OBE in 1941, and became the first Air Member for Engineering and Maintenance in 1942. He worked for years on the RAAF’s Air Board, helping oversee a massive wartime expansion—from a few hundred outdated aircraft in 1939 to thousands of modern planes by 1945—supported by large-scale training and technical education. After the war, Wackett helped shape “Plan D,” which encouraged Australian industry to build and improve military aircraft. He supported apprentice and technical training schemes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, helping raise education standards in the RAAF. He also led the creation of a separate Technical Branch (from 1948), changed the role’s focus to technical services, and worked to improve engineering effectiveness, training, and support for aircraft spares planning, despite some internal tensions and career limits for technical staff. After leaving the Royal Australian Air Force at the end of 1959, Ellis Wackett joined the Australian National Airlines Commission and rose to Vice Chairman, retiring in 1968. He saw major changes as jet aircraft entered domestic service, including TAA’s first Boeing 727 in 1964 and Douglas DC-9 in 1967, and he was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He died in Warracknabeal in 1984, after his wife had died in 1975. Wackett was highly praised for promoting “airworthiness” as a quality mindset, helping the RAAF build strong skills in maintaining and upgrading complex aircraft. He founded a Technical Branch in 1948 and served for 17 years on the Air Board, the longest tenure of any officer, and his influence continued through later engineering leaders. He was considered for Chief of the Air Staff in the early 1950s, and when that role later required the holder to be from a specific Air Force branch, rules were eventually changed in 1976 so the requirement ended.