Where possible, plans were made to place the existing direct services to manufacturing, commercial and other interests on a wartime basis, through authorised subscribers, postmasters and so on. Special attention was given to continued provision of meteorological safeguards to life and property through flood and storm warnings.

Though censorship was modified from time to time, the organisation for fuller restriction was required by December 1941. Similar activity was, of course, experienced in the other States of Australia, but the advance of the Japanese forces on Australia brought meteorological services in Queensland integrally into association with organisation to meet actual fighting operations, with a possible enemy landing on the Queensland coast.

With the establishment of the Directorate of Meteorological Services within the RAAF, most of the existing staff at the Brisbane bureau were commissioned or enlisted in the Air Force, with Wing Commander A. S. Richards, Divisional Meteorologist, as officer in charge. Direct cooperation was established with fighter sector headquarters, and service included regular forecasts for day and night operations and immediate contact to check meteorological conditions whenever called for by radar units. As in the other States, an organisation was instituted for the collection and distribution of reports from volunteer air observers' corps units, and for reception of information on cloud heights from searchlight parties. Ballistic calculations for artillery batteries, together with service and instruction to Army units providing upper wind information by means of a radar device, also, were numbered among the special wartime duties of the bureau.

Bureau of Meteorology