The Canberra Air Disaster

Air Disaster Canberra: The Plane Crash That Destroyed a Government
by Andrew Tink
NewSouth, 2013, 304 pages, $45

Comptometrist Sheila Palmer walked out of the Temple Court Building down Collins Street for a smoke and a bite of lunch. She was twenty-eight, newly married and was happy processing RAAF pays. It was more of a war-time contribution than behind the counter at Buckleys. Three of her brothers were in the Army, another two were Air Force officers. Her husband Jack was a Hudson bomber air crew member in the RAAF, but she wasn’t worried about him. After all, his aircraft was a converted dual-control VIP squadron plane.

That morning he had flown from Essendon to Canberra with some top brass and ministerial bigwigs. Corporal Jack Palmer sat in the small seat directly behind the pilot as the wireless operator, keeping flight communication flowing.

It was bleak in Melbourne that day—not unusual in August. The war wasn’t going well. Hitler was planning the invasion of England from occupied France. And Melbourne was windy.

Sheila noticed her brothers Ron and Frank coming down the street. They seemed anxious but she didn’t hesitate to accept their invitation to go down the street for lunch. She loved catching up with her brothers, not to mention having her favourite cork-tipped Turf cigarettes and a cup of black tea.

When they were all seated they told her. It had been on the Air Force radio. There had been a plane crash in Canberra and some important government people had died. She knew.

Australia was rocked. The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Brudenell White, was dead, as were nine others, including Jack. The three Cabinet members killed were Army Minister Geoff Street, Sir Henry Gullett and Air Minister Jim Fairbairn. They were all First World War heroes. As Andrew Tink tells it, without them Robert Menzies would no longer be Prime Minister.

Prime ministers are not always popular on their own side. In Menzies’s case, the Deputy Country Party Leader Archie Cameron had just reminded him on behalf of the fools that they couldn’t suffer him either. Some suspected, perhaps unfairly, that Menzies had undermined Joseph Lyons. And Billy Hughes did his best to bring Menzies down, saying he “couldn’t lead a flock of homing pigeons”.

Menzies’s main conservative opponents, Sir Earle Page and probably R.G. (Dick) Casey, devastatingly criticised him for not having volunteered in the Great War. Under pressure, he needed defending, and he particularly needed the backing of the three war heroes.

Flying was more dangerous then. People remem­bered how the war hero and Cabinet minister Charles Hawker, who was seen as a future leader, had been killed on October 25, 1938, when the Kyeema crashed in fog into Mount Dandenong.

The country was distressed when the Prime Minister, the popular and affable family man Joseph Lyons, died suddenly on Good Friday 1939. The UAP had prevailed on him to continue despite his heart problems and he had financial pressures to do so with eleven children, some very young. These events exacerbated the nation’s shock on August 13, 1940.

In Air Disaster Canberra, Tink suggests Arthur Fadden briefly and later John Curtin might not have been Australian leaders during the war but for the Canberra crash. Be that as it may, what is clear is that the investigations were highly unsatisfactory. No photos were taken of the crash site. Police investigators were excluded by RAAF ground crew who secured the site. As a result, findings that the crash was due to simple pilot error are questionable.

An alternative explanation is supported by some evidence. The key question is: Who was flying the plane? Did the pilot, Bobby Hitchcock, let the person sitting in the co-pilot’s seat take the controls? And who was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat? Was it perhaps not the assigned RAAF co-pilot but Australia’s First World War flying ace Jim Fairbairn, who was licensed to fly many types of planes but not the Hudson?

Tink’s book documents a speech Fairbairn gave describing the stalling characteristics of Hudsons. A week before the accident, Fairbairn told an Adelaide headmaster:

Hudson bombers have a rather nasty stalling characteristic … From what I have been told, a pilot coming in to land can find himself, suddenly and without warning, in a machine that is no longer airborne, heading straight to the ground … Personally, I think it’s only a matter of handling your throttles wisely.

Relatives of Hitchcock, Fairbairn and the others attended a seventy-third anniversary commemoration at the crash site on August 13 this year. What was most moving was the human toll on those left behind. Some widows remarried. The sadness of brothers and sisters has been followed by inquisitive children and grandchildren intent on commemorating this black day in our history.

Andrew Tink’s book engagingly tells the story. His legal background as a solicitor enables him to set out the evidence carefully. His political background as New South Wales state Liberal frontbencher gives insight into Menzies’s supporters and opponents on his own side. The biographer of Lord Sydney and W.C. Wentworth has given us a formidable story which surely one day will be made into a film. And Cameron Hazlehurst has an ANU ePress book on the same subject, Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm, out soon.

Sheila would be amazed.