| Eric Harrison | |
|---|---|
Eric Harrison at Central Flying School, 1914 |
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| Born | 10 August 1886 Castlemaine, Victoria |
| Died | 5 September 1945 (aged 59) Melbourne, Victoria |
| Allegiance | Australia |
| Service/branch | Royal Australian Air Force |
| Years of service | 1913–1945 |
| Rank | Group Captain |
| Commands held | Central Flying School (1917–18) Directorate of Aeronautical Inspection (1928–45) |
| Battles/wars | World War I World War II |
Eric Harrison (10 August 1886 – 5 September 1945) was an Australian aviator who made the country's first military flight, and helped lay the foundations of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born in Victoria, he was a flying instructor in Britain when he answered the Australian Defence Department's call for pilots in 1911. Along with Henry Petre, he established Australia's first air base at Point Cook, Victoria, and its inaugural air training facility, the Central Flying School (CFS), before making his historic flight in March 1914. Following the outbreak of World War I, when Petre went on active service with the newly formed Mesopotamian Half Flight, Harrison took charge of instruction at CFS and was responsible for training many pilots of the Australian Flying Corps. He transferred to the RAAF as one of its founding members in 1921, and reached the rank of Group Captain in 1935. Retiring from the Air Force in 1938, he continued to serve as Director of Aeronautical Inspection in a civilian capacity until his sudden death from heart disease in 1945, aged fifty-nine.
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Born on 10 August 1886 at Clinkers Hill near Castlemaine, Victoria, Harrison was the son of printer and stationer Joseph Harrison, and his English-born wife Ann.[1] He attended Castlemaine Grammar School before starting work as a motor mechanic. Keen to fly from the first time he saw an aeroplane, he travelled to Britain in March 1911 and trained as a pilot at the Bristol School on Salisbury Plain. He qualified for his Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate six months later, having accumulated some thirty minutes flight time.[2] Gaining employment as an instructor for Bristol, he taught flying on behlaf of the company in Spain and Italy, as well as in Halberstadt, Germany, where he became aware first-hand of that country's militarism; some of the students he trained and examined later served as pilots in the Luftstreitkräfte during World War I.[1][3]
In December 1911, the Australian Defence Department advertised in the United Kingdom for "Two competent mechanists and aviators" to establish a flying corps and school. Henry Petre, a former solicitor employed by Handley Page, and H.R. Busteed, then Bristol's chief test pilot, successfully applied.[4][5] Petre was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Australian Army on 6 August 1912, but Busteed withdrew his application in October and Harrison took his place, gaining his commission on 16 December.[1][4] Petre selected Point Cook, Victoria to become the site for the Army's proposed Central Flying School (CFS) in March 1913; meanwhile Harrison remained in Britain, ordering the facility's complement of aircraft including two Deperdussin monoplanes, two B.E.2 biplanes, and a Bristol Boxkite for initial training.[6][7] By January 1914, the pair had established the school with themselves as instructors, augmented by four mechanics and three other staff. Harrison made Australia's first military flight in the Boxkite on Sunday, 1 March 1914, followed by a second in the same aircraft with Petre as passenger, then a third by himself in a Deperdussin.[3][5] On 29 June, Harrison married Kathleen Prendergast, daughter of future Premier of Victoria George Prendergast, at St Mary's Catholic Church in West Melbourne.[1][8]
Its coterie of personnel by now being referred to as the Australian Flying Corps, CFS commenced its first flying course on 17 August 1914, two weeks after the outbreak of World War I. Its students included Captain Thomas White and Lieutenant Richard Williams, with Harrison providing initial training to solo standard and Petre advanced instruction.[5][9] In September, Harrison was given command of a flying unit that accompanied the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force to Rabaul in German New Guinea. With little in the way of enemy resistance, however, the aircraft were never assembled in country and he had to return without the distinction of leading the first Australian airmen into combat, which instead went to Petre as commander of the Mesopotamian Half Flight the following year.[2][6]
With Petre on active service, Harrison took on the prime responsibility for training pilots of the first three Australian squadrons to be sent overseas, many of whom would continue to play a prominent role in the future Air Force, including Bill Anderson, Harry Cobby, Adrian Cole, Frank McNamara, Lawrence Wackett, and Henry Wrigley.[10] Harrison's mechanical abilities were also put to use initiating the building of aero engines in Australia and maintaining the CFS's complement of airframes; according to Wackett, only Harrison had the skill to keep the obsolescent machines in the air. He was appointed Officer-in-Charge of CFS in June 1917 with the temporary rank of Major; this was made permanent in September 1918.[1][2] The CFS was disbanded at Point Cook on 31 December 1919.[11]
Harrison began a long association with engineering and air safety when he was posted to Britain for secondment to the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate following the end of World War I.[2] He transferred as a Flight Lieutenant (honorary Squadron Leader) to the newly formed Australian Air Force in March 1921, becoming one of its twenty-one founding officers; the prefix "Royal" was added to the service's name in August that year.[12][13] Dissatisfied with his RAAF rank considering his leading position in the pre-war Central Flying School, Harrison appealed for greater seniority. As a result, he was appointed Air Liaison Officer to the Air Ministry in London, with promotion to the substantive rank of Squadron Leader.[14] Returning to Australia in 1925, he was appointed Assistant Director of Technical Services in 1927, and soon after helped form the RAAF's Air Accident Investigation Committee. The following year he became Director of Aeronautical Inspection, receiving promotion to Wing Commander on 1 July 1928. Harrison's position took him throughout the country, inspecting equipment and investigating the causes of air crashes. Promoted Group Captain on 1 January 1935,[1][2] he took charge of the Resources Committee for Aircraft, Aero Engines, and Motor Transport, one of a number of subcommittees on the Federal government's Defence Resources Board set up to investigate and report on the readiness of Australian industry to provide munitions for defence in the event of international conflict.[15]
In 1937, Harrison returned to Britain for further study of accident investigation methods, as well as aircraft production. His position as Director of Aeronautical Inspection was civilianised on 12 March 1938, which saw him retired from the RAAF but continuing in his role.[1] He was a member of the court of inquiry into the crash on 25 October of the Douglas DC-2 airliner Kyeema, which overshot Essendon airport in low cloud, killing all fourteen passengers and four crew members. The inquiry's report singled out Major Melville Langslow, Finance Member on both the Civil Aviation Board and the RAAF Air Board, for criticism over cost-cutting measures that had held up trials of safety beacons designed for such eventualities. When Langslow was appointed Secretary to the Minister for Air in November the following year, he reportedly went out of his way to "make life difficult" for Harrison, causing "bitterness and friction within the department", and necessitating the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Stanley Goble, to take steps to shield the safety inspector from the new Secretary's ire.[16] Harrison nevertheless held the position of Director of Aeronautical Inspection throughout World War II, his staff numbering over 1,200 by 1945.[1] The pre-war reorganisation of the Directorate permitted civilians with the necessary engineering qualifications and experience, who for various reasons were ineligible for service in the Air Force, to be recruited for work that required increasing technical expertise.[4] Harrison also proposed a series of test houses to help decentralise chemical, mechanical and metrological testing of materials used in the manufacture of munitions that had previously had to go through either the Munitions Supply Laboratories or the National Standards Laboratory. The result was a major improvement in the speed of testing and "a fuller use of the country's scientific and technical manpower".[17]
On 5 September 1945, just as the war had ended, Harrison died suddenly of hypertensive cerebrovascular disease at his home in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton; he was survived by his wife and daughter, and cremated. One of the original Deperdussins that he ordered and helped assemble for the Central Flying School in 1914 later went on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.[1][2]
Until Air Marshal Richard Williams assumed the title of "Father of the RAAF", the term was often used to describe Eric Harrison. His early technical expertise, long association with Australian military aviation as a founder member of the AFC and the RAAF, and "more assertive" personality tended to overshadow the contributions of Henry Petre, whom historian Douglas Gillison considered "equally entitled" to the accolade. Dr Alan Stephens, in his volume of The Australian Centenary History of Defence in 2001, concluded that "perhaps any judgement would not only be moot but also gratuitous, as by circumstance and achievement both men properly belong in the pantheon of the RAAF".[4][5]