Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

When Jack joined the Public Service (Treasury) in 1942, the war was on but as Jack was only 17 years of age, he was too young to enlist. Dave Murray, who was a World War I digger, helped Jack enlist and he was released into the Air Force on 14 July, 1943.  He initially trained at Kingaroy in Queensland and then at Ballarat in Victoria, from where he was posted to Mt. Gambier in S.A. as a trainee Navigator-Wireless on a Beaufighter.  He began flying 100ft. over the water off Kangaroo Island and it was on one of these flights that they spotted a large white pointer shark beneath the plane.  The shark appeared to be 6-7 metres long and was longer than the shadow that was cast on the water by their Avro Anson plane.  They regularly flew at 'dot' feet while Jack was navigating, which, for the record, is only 10 feet above the water.  He graduated as a Navigator-Wireless on the 27th May, 1944, having completed 82 hours day flying and 12 hours night flying in Avro Ansons, a British twin-engined aircraft.

He graduated 2nd in the course and was posted to the training school for navigators at Bairnsdale in Victoria.  He became a full-time wireless-operator whose job it was to oversight the navigators in training at the School.  Unfortunately, there were no vacancies in the special squadrons of Beaufighters for which he was trained and he was posted to train air crew in various disciplines throughout Australia and, as such, was not considered to be involved in active service, despite the dangers they faced every time they took to the air with trainees.  In Jack's area of expertise, a large number of lives were lost training pilots to fly the very difficult to handle Beaufort Bomber.  The records for Sale, in Victoria, will verify the number of lives lost.

It was not uncommon for aircraft to be diverted to another aerodrome when they were caught by fog rolling in from the sea at night.  On one night alone, four planes were caught in the fog.  One attempted to land at Bairnsdale and crashed killing all but one of the crew.  Two other aircraft were forced to crash land in the fields away from the coast and both aircraft were written off, but without loss of life.  The last managed to land at an airport closer to Melbourne.

Jack was disappointed because when you enlisted in the services, you did what you were ordered to do and what was considered best for your country but, when the war ended, there were two classes of people.  The returned soldiers, who were treated like heroes and serviceman, like Jack, who, having not been given the opportunity to fight for their country, were considered "also-rans" and not accorded the same privileges.

Jack completed his attachment to the General Reconnaissance School at Bairnsdale in Victoria on 26th October, 1945, having flown over 490 hours by day and 84 hours by night:  a total of 574 flying hours.  Jack was then posted to 36 Squadron at Townsville with the forward base at Morotai (a small island located in the Halmahera group of eastern Indonesia's Maluku Islands).  This was a Transport squadron served by the famous Douglas DC3 transport planes.   He considered this to be the most interesting part of his flying career.

The squadron did a lot of flying to New Guinea, Ambon (another of eastern Indonesia's Maluku Islands), Morotai, Darwin and other places.  However, the trips that stood out most in Jack's memories were the trips to Japan after the war ended.  His first flight was in February, 1946.  This was one of the first transport flights from Australia to Japan which flew directly over Hiroshima.  He flew from Townsville via Darwin, Ambon, Morotai, Labuan (an island off Brunei), Tacloban (part of the Phillipine Islands), Okinawa (Japan), Konoya, Iwakuni (near Hiroshima in Japan) and Osaka to Tachikawa airport at Tokyo.  The flight took about 33 hours and required a lot of very careful navigation, the majority of it across the ocean.  One flight, for example, from Laoag at the top of the Philippines to Okinawa, took approx. 5 hours and there was nothing but water all the way.  You could not afford to make a mistake as Okinawa was only a very small island.  Jack traded with both the Americans and Japanese on these trips which, he felt, would have been of great benefit to the survival of the Japanese in the difficult years after the war.  

Jack flew home to Australia in March, 1946 and then did another trip to Tokyo in April 1946. He completed his service with 36 Squadron on 21st May, 1946 with a further 545 flying hours to his credit.  His overall flying time in the R.A.A.F. amounted to 1222 hours which by the Air Forces' standards was a lot of flying.  

During his service at Townsville, Jack experienced his share of danger.  Twice on take-off from Rabaul airport in New Guinea, they lost their port motor and had to fly around the field and attempt a landing on one motor.  This was not easy.  A similar situation occurred on their trip to Cloncurry in Queensland.  They lost their starboard engine and had to return to Townsville where they again landed on one motor.  

However, the most dangerous flying conditions occurred when the inter-tropic front covered the Northern Territory and the route over the sea to the Philippines.  They were forced to fly through very turbulent cumulo nimbus storm clouds with their landing lights on, in order to avoid the black hearts within the clouds.  If you were caught in the centre, the odds were that your plane would disintegrate because of the extreme up and down vertical currents that existed within them.  On one of their northern flights, Jack and his crew had to search for some planes that had gone missing but they were never located.  They concluded that they had simply been torn apart under the tremendous stress inside the clouds.  

THIS ACCOUNT WAS WRITTEN BY JACK HIMSELF FOR A FAMILY HISTORY WE PUT TOGETHER. 

P.S.  I can remember taken my parents to the War Memorial a few years before Jack passed away.  We saw the small Avro Anson cockpit which is exhibited there.  I could not believe two people could fit in it.  

We also attended the "G for George" exhibit.  After it was over Dad said - "I flew in that" but I could not get him to elaborate.     

Jack continued in the NSW Treasury, Public Service Board and had a very illustrious career culminating in his role as Commissioner of Motor Transport in NSW.  He was a visionary and instigated a lot of reforms and policies that are still in effect today.  

Jan Curran - daughter