Qantas: Historic Darwin dedication is also reminder of what Australia risks losing
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This Wednesday in the Qantas hangar in Darwin there is a dedication ceremony, as part of the 70th anniversary remembrances of the bombing of the city on 19 February 1942, to the support and often sacrifice that aviation workers and their flag carrier has given Australia in times of war, and in major peace time crises.
To mark the occasion the Qantas pilot union, AIPA, will be distributing a superb but short document summarising these events, and quietly, respectfully asking all Australians to be mindful of the role Qantas has been able to perform immediately and on a large scale in such times.
It is understood it will be made available online.
But here are some extracts, from an introduction by Captain Barry Jackson, the president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, and photos and accounts of the events, quoting staff, historians, and past managements.
The quick thinking heroism of Qantas Empire Airways’ Darwin staff when the port was massively attacked in a large Japanese bombing raid is recalled in detail in several Qantas histories, including Qantas at War by Hudson Fysh, one of the Q.A.N.T.A.S founders.
By saving one of its Catalina flying boats under direct threat in the raid, Qantas kept a vital strategic asset intact for its destiny of playing a major role in Australian evacuations from what is now Indonesia to Broome as SE Asia fell to the onslaught of Japanese forces.
Less well lodged in the minds of Australians today were the subsequent Korean War and Malaya campaigns.
For earlier generations, Qantas in WWII and Korea and Malaya was synonymous with airlifts in the national interest, in times when air travel was rarely used in everyday life, and coastal liners carried more passengers between the more distantly separated city pairs than airliners, and the Adelaide Steam Ship Company and Burns Philp were until the early 50s more relevant in terms of price than TAA or Australian National Airways.
In more recent times Qantas as an instrument of urgent national airlift needs has come back into focus in relation to peace keeping roles in Somalia and Rwanda, and various missions in East Timor, Egypt and Libya, among others.
But two crises stood out above all others in the modern era, when Cyclone Tracy struck in 1974 and the Bali bombings killed or maimed in 2002.
This is part of a raw account of the aftermath of the Bali atrocity recounted by a Qantas staffer.
Whatever happens to Qantas in the present, and however much people choose to discuss it as a business or a national icon or a service that is supposed to always be available on demand, losing a high capacity fast response airlift by a national carrier would be an act of senseless folly.
We must remember these things. Change is one thing, but so is the national interest.
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Jenny Crocker rocks!
Interesting that AIPA is selling Qantas in a really strong way while the management has gone for the abstract and vaguely ethereal “you’re the reason we fly”, the second hand epithet of a failed US airline. And I can’t get over the feeling of being manipulated in the change from “the Spirit of Australia” – what is the message supposed to be?
The Qantas flights to & from Saigon (Tan Son Nhut) during the Vietnam war were memorable and surreal. I kissed my pregnant wife goodbye at Brisbane airport, climbed aboard a normal QF B707 with its hosties and beer and almost-decent airline food, and climbed off a few hours later via Singapore into a shooting war.
Talk about a culture shock, albeit one we had planned for, as we left the Qantas cocoon and entered an incredibly noisy world of F4s and helicopters and C123s. Meanwhile, the hosties just kept on smiling and wishing us well and doing what hosties do before welcoming our predecessors aboard for their flight home. To say that the situation was surreal does not do it justice.
Qantas is a hugely valuable strategic asset. We run it down at our peril.
Interesting that the AIPA once again draws upon jingoism.
Strange no-one makes mention of the role of both Ansett and TAA (Australian) as part of Australia’s strategic airlift. There was a lot more capacity with these two carriers than at Qantas and they uplifted more people out of Darwin after Cyclone Tracey than Qantas.
Be interesting how the safety regulators today would look at Qantas’ record uplift on a B747 out of Darwin after Tracey. If they had an engine failure on take-off with that load it may have really gone down in history.
With domestic airlines in Australia now being able to be 100% foreign owned, not sure what the Federal Government’s legal position is with strategic airlift in time of war. They were able to requisition Qantas, Ansett and TAA’s fleets if they wished to.
For example, does any one on this blog know whether they can do this with Virgin which is already majority foreign owned?
Good point, well put, Ben!
The emergency powers held by the G-G and government of the day are very broad. I’ve heard, way back, that in an emergency a federal government could do anything it saw fit, and the last time I heard them discussed in another place was in relation to sealing the borders in the event of a lethal and fast moving mutation of the bird ‘flu virus.
The scenario was that sea borders were immaterial, as the virus would kill faster than the boats could arrive, but closing the airports no matter how many Australians this condemned to die abroad was going to be a matter of acute urgency once certain patterns and occurrence rates were detected.
We once had a merchant navy.
It, too, served Australia in war and peace.
It was smashed by the Howard Government, who were more than happy to let el-cheapo and sub-standard foreign flag ships in.
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