The RAAF Meteorological Flight (continued)

'One Monday, I took off into the prevailing south-east wind that was accompanied by low cloud and drizzle. I broke out at 2,000 feet and was in a clear layer that extended up to 3,000 and from then in solid cloud right up to 16,000 feet. On descent and on reaching the clear layer, I carried out the customary figure eight turns with full throttle. This was done to warm up the engine after the prolonged descent, so that on breaking out of cloud you were assured of instant response to application of the throttle if you found yourself in a situation which you had to get out of pronto. This flight for me ended rather abruptly, as I was flying in a cloud that was stuffed with a mountain—Mt. Wallace—situated approximately ten miles south-west of Bacchus Marsh. I was found after 36 hours trapped in the cockpit, nursing seven fractures. Ironically, I was not found earlier due to the weather I had set out to observe and record.'[33]

Wing-Commander Richard Kingsland, then Flying Officer Dick Cohen, who also flew meteorological flights, took part in the search for Read, who had hung upside down in his harness in his wrecked 'plane for two days, and wrote a diary in his own blood. Kingsland announced that he had lent Read his watch and was anxious to be first on the scene to retrieve it. He commented that the victim was good-looking before the accident, but that his face 'got a little bit squashed' when it hit the instrument panel. Kingsland was later best man at Eric Read's wedding.

In 1937, as Flying Officer Dick Cohen, the present Sir Richard Kingsland was a member of a Bureau of Meteorology forecasters' training course. He won his DFC for his exploits in flying Viscount Gort, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Rt Hon Alfred Duff-Cooper, British Minister for Information in his RAF 10 Squadron Sunderland flying boat from Britain to Morocco for discussions with French military and officials shortly after the French capitulation. He managed to extricate his distinguished charges from impending detention by the French by a series of spectacular manoeuvres. In 1942, as a Squadron leader with RAAF 20 Squadron stationed at Port Moresby, he made some spectacular raids on the Japanese occupied port of Rabaul as the pilot of a Catalina flying boat. In 1947 he changed his name by Deed Poll to his mother's remarried name of Kingsland, joined the public service, and in 1962 became Permanent Head of the Department of the Interior, in which department the Bureau of Meteorology was located at that time.

Meteorological flights were instituted in Sydney in 1936 using Demon aircraft and continued for four years. There, there was only one forced landing, also caused by a deterioration in the weather. In this case, the pilot became lost and landed on a beach near Gosford. The machine was wrecked but personal injuries were slight.

Bureau of Meteorology