RAAF area commands
The same year, the RAAF formed two functional groups that assumed the maintenance role of the area commands; the latter focussed on operations until the end of hostilities.
The area command structure was no longer considered appropriate for delivering the concentration of force necessary for combat, and the Federal government decided to replace it with a functional command-and-control system.
On the eve of World War II, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) comprised twelve flying squadrons, two aircraft depots and a flying school, situated at five air bases: Point Cook and Laverton in Victoria; Richmond and Rathmines in New South Wales; and Pearce in Western Australia.
[1][2] An air force of this size did not require large-scale operational formations such as wings, groups, or commands, as all units could be directly administered and controlled by RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne.
With the onset of war in September 1939, the Australian Air Board decided to implement a decentralised form of command and control, commensurate with an envisioned increase in manpower and units.
[8] The static area system was primarily defensive in nature, but considered well-suited to training new pilots, who could be instructed at flying schools and mentored through their initial squadron postings, all within the same geographical region.
[7][10] By mid-1941, RAAF Headquarters had determined to form training units in the southern and eastern states into semi-geographical, semi-functional groups separate to the area commands.
[16] Further convergence of command-and-control responsibilities along semi-geographical, semi-functional lines took place between June and September 1942, when authority over maintenance units was transferred from the area commands to the newly formed No.
[23][24] In August that year, RAAF Headquarters proposed disbanding the training and maintenance groups formed in 1941–42 and return their functions to the control of the area commands, but no action was taken.
This proposed Central Area would have been responsible for units in southern Queensland but the War Cabinet deferred its decision, as it had when a similar concept was raised in October 1943.
11 Group was formed on Morotai in the Dutch East Indies, using elements of Northern Command and the First Tactical Air Force; this freed the latter from garrison duties following the liberation of Borneo.
[27] In recommending the Morotai garrison's establishment, Bostock explained that while it shared the static characteristic of an area command, it differed in that the area commands were part of the permanent structure of the Air Force and situated within the borders of Australia's mainland and overseas territories, whereas the new formation was a temporary wartime measure, headquartered on foreign territory.
[28] Following the end of the Pacific War in August 1945, SWPA was dissolved and the Air Board again assumed full control of all its operational formations.
[31] Bostock, who found the area boundaries "arbitrary", proposed a functional structure consisting of operational, maintenance, and training commands.
He was persuaded by his staff to set up a conference to discuss the possibility of change, but participation by the CAS, who had been satisfied with the wartime system, and the area commanders themselves, whose positions were on the line, was half-hearted at best.
[34] The Federal government retired Jones in February 1952 and replaced him with an RAF officer, Air Marshal Donald Hardman, who was well versed in the functional command system employed in Britain.
[35][36] Hardman believed that restructuring the Air Force would remove inefficiencies and duplication, and permit commanders greater autonomy, allowing more effective concentration of strength in a potential combat situation.
[36] To this end he proposed reorganising command and control of the Air Force according to three major functions: operations, covering home defence and mobile task forces; training, including all permanent, reserve and national service recruitment and instruction; and maintenance, responsible for supply, equipment and other logistical services.
