Initially a composite formation of Airco DH.9s and Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5s, it took on a specialist bomber role in the 1930s, flying mainly Hawker Demons but also Westland Wapitis and Bristol Bulldogs, before re-equipping with Avro Ansons on the eve of World War II.

It operated McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II leased from the USAF from 1970 to 1973, as a stop-gap pending delivery of the General Dynamics F-111C swing-wing bomber.

1 Squadron was established as a unit of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) at Point Cook, Victoria, in January 1916 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Reynolds.

[20][21] Flying primitive and poorly armed Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 two-seat biplanes, its primary roles during this period of the Sinai campaign were reconnaissance—including aerial photography—and artillery spotting for the British Army.

[23][24] In September and October, B and C Flights, led by Captains Oswald Watt and Richard Williams respectively, undertook bombing and reconnaissance missions in support of the Australian Light Horse in northern Sinai.

[16][20] The relationship between airmen and ground crew was less formal than in British units; squadron members recalled that "The CO is the only one who is ever called 'sir'" and that officers did not demand "saluting and standing to attention and all that rot".

[26] The unit received the first of several Martinsyde G.100 single-seat fighters to augment the B.E.2s on 16 October; although considered obsolete, the "Tinsyde" was substantially faster than the B.E.2, and armed with forward-firing machine guns.

[16][27] Shortly before the squadron took part in a bombing raid against Beersheba on 11 November, Lieutenant Lawrence Wackett managed to fix a machine gun to the top plane of one of the B.E.2s, using a mount he designed himself.

[21][30] March 1917 saw the heaviest bombing campaign carried out by the squadron to date; short of its regular 20-pound (9.1 kg) ordnance, the pilots improvised by dropping 6-inch (150 mm) howitzer shells on Turkish forces along the Gaza–Beersheba line.

[31] During one such mission on 20 March, Lieutenant Frank McNamara earned the Victoria Cross for landing his Martinsyde in the desert under enemy fire and rescuing a fellow pilot whose B.E.2 had been forced down.

[37] By June, mechanical issues caused by hot summer weather and the threat from new German Albatros scouts were rendering the B.E.2s largely ineffective, and Williams urgently requested newer models.

[48] In September, the squadron began operating a Handley Page O/400,[49] the only Allied heavy bomber in the Middle East and the only twin-engined aircraft flown by the AFC.

[16][20] That month it joined the Bristol Fighters in the final offensive of the Palestinian campaign, the Battle of Armageddon, inflicting what the Australian official history described as "wholesale destruction" on the Turkish Seventh Army.

[50][51] By October, the Bristol Fighters had moved forward from Ramleh to Haifa and by the middle of the month were required to patrol and reconnoitre an exceptionally wide area of country, sometimes between 500 and 600 miles (800 and 970 km), flying over Rayak, Homs, Beirut, Tripoli, Hama, Aleppo, Killis and Alexandretta.

There its members were personally farewelled by General Sir Edmund Allenby, who congratulated them for achieving "absolute supremacy of the air ... a factor of paramount importance" to the Allied campaign.

1 Squadron undertook a range of tasks including civil aid, flood and bushfire relief, search and rescue, aerial surveys, and air show demonstrations.

[83][84] Shortly after midnight, local time, on the night of 7/8 December, the Japanese force started landing on the beaches at Kota Bharu, close to the airfield, and from about 02:00, No.

[78][103] Tasked by RAF Air Headquarters Malaya, the Lincolns generally conducted area bombing missions, as well as strikes against pinpoint targets.

The Lincolns were considered well suited to the campaign, owing to their range and ability to fly at low speeds to search for targets, as well as their firepower and heavy bomb load.

[107] It suffered no casualties during the campaign but two of its aircraft were written off: one that overshot the landing strip at Tengah in November 1951, and another that crashed into the sea off Johore after striking trees on takeoff in January 1957.

[108] Although the original purpose of the bombing campaign in Malaya was to kill as many insurgents as possible, the impracticality of achieving this in operations over dense jungle resulted in a shift towards harassing and demoralising the communists, driving them out of their bases and into areas held by Commonwealth ground troops.

Initially the Canberra's envisaged mission profile was medium-to-high-altitude area bombing but its primitive bombsight and light load made this a dubious proposition, and by mid-1961 crews were training in low-level army cooperation tactics.

[141] Along with its revolutionary variable-sweep wings, the F-111 was equipped with terrain-following radar and an escape module that jettisoned the entire cockpit in an emergency, rather than individual ejection seats.

In its 37 years of service with the RAAF the type went through several upgrades, including the Pave Tack infra-red and laser-guided precision weapons targeting system, Harpoon anti-shipping missiles, and advanced digital avionics.

[126][145] Alan Stephens, in the official history of the post-war Air Force, described the F-111 as "the region's pre-eminent strike aircraft" and the RAAF's most important acquisition.

Both F-111 squadrons were deployed to RAAF Base Tindal, Northern Territory, to support the international forces in case of action by the Indonesian military, and remained there until December; six of No.

From 20 September, when INTERFET forces began to arrive in East Timor, the F-111s were maintained at a high level of readiness to conduct reconnaissance flights or air strikes if the situation deteriorated.

[147] In 2007, the Australian government decided to retire the F-111s by 2010, and acquire 24 Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornets as an interim replacement, pending the arrival of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning then being developed.

[152] Former F-111 aircrew, familiar with side-by-side seating and a different performance envelope, found conversion more challenging than pilots experienced in the RAAF's McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet fighters, which shared many characteristics with the newer model.

1 Squadron commemorated its centenary in 2016 with several events including, on 8 June, a flight over Amberley by Super Hornets in concert with a vintage Bristol Fighter.