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Table of Contents

Memories of the Bureau, 1946 to 1962

Foreword

Terminology

Prologue

Preface

Chapter 1: The Warren Years, 1946 to 1950
Warren the Man
Warren Joins the Bureau
Wartime Perceptions and Attitudes
Return to Civvy Street
Frosterley
People in the Bureau
Re-establishing and Reorganising the Bureau
Reorganisation of Central Office
The Position of Chief Scientific Officer
Post-War Reorganisation
The Haldane Story
Public Weather Services
The New South Wales Divisional Office
The Victorian Divisional Office
The Queensland Divisional Office
The South Australian Divisional Office
The Western Australian Divisional Office
The Tasmanian Divisional Office
Pre-war Services for Civil Aviation
Post-War Meteorological Service for Aviation
Indian Ocean Survey Flight
The Aviation Field Staff
Synoptic Analysis, Prognosis and Forecasting
Antarctic and Southern Ocean Meteorology
A Wider Scientific Horizon
Research, Development and Special Investigations
Analysts' Conference, April 1950
Instruments and Observations
Radiosondes
Radar Winds and Radar Weather Watch
Telecommunications
Climate and Statistics
Training
Publications
CSIRO
The Universities
Achievements of the Warren Years

Chapter 2: International Meteorology

Chapter 3: The Timcke Years, 1950 to 1955

Chapter 4: A Year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chapter 5: The Dwyer Years, 1955 to 1962

Chapter 6: A Springboard for the Future

Appendix 1: References

Appendix 2: Reports, Papers, Manuscripts

Appendix 3: Milestones

Appendix 4: Acknowledgements

Appendix 5: Summary by H. N. Warren of the Operation of the Meteorological Section of Allied Air Headquarters, Brisbane, 1942–45

Endnotes

Index
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People in the Bureau (continued)

The members of the second forecasters' training course in 1937 are described by John Lillywhite in Metarch Papers No 4 (1992). All who remained with the Bureau had university degrees in science with majors in mathematics and physics.

Another group were those who undertook the first training school for observers in 1938. These people, who had secondary school education, were trained to make surface and pilot balloon observations and plot charts.

These three groups were the vanguard of those recruited for service at the field offices newly established in 1937 and with the graduates of subsequent training courses formed the bulk of the RAAF Meteorological Service.

Bryan Rofe

Figure 4 Bryan Rofe, one of the wartime heroes from the RAAF Meteorological Service. Bryan transferred to Weapons Research Establishment after the war and was involved in weapons trials at Woomera, where George Trefry was in charge of the Meteorological Office. Bryan later became Director of the Antarctic Division.

During the war the availability of suitably qualified people for training as forecasters became depleted and some without university degrees were accepted because of the urgent need to meet the increasing demand for services. They, and other forecasters without university qualifications (such as those from the first of the two 1937 forecasters' courses) were able to produce useful forecasts using the training they had received.

In 1946 Warren had to devise an interim solution to the problem of meeting the urgently needed services for aviation and other requirements.

One source of intake was young airmen who were undergoing training as aircrew in the Empire Air Training Scheme when the scheme was abandoned in 1944 with the end of the war in sight. One such intake was Don Handcock who remustered as a meteorological assistant in the RAAF Meteorological Service and after demobilisation and a period as a cadet meteorologist became a professional meteorologist and had a distinguished career in the Bureau. An article in Weather News No 315 tells some of Don's story (Handcock, 1997).


People in Bright Sparcs - Handcock, Don; Lillywhite, John Wilson; Warren, Herbert Norman

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Gibbs, W. J. 1999 'A Very Special Family: Memories of the Bureau of Meteorology 1946 to 1962', Metarch Papers, No. 13 May 1999, Bureau of Meteorology

© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
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