Glimpse of the RAAF Meteorological Service
Preface
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Growing Up
Chapter 2: Port Moresby Before Pearl Harbour
Sydney to Port Moresby by DH-86
First Impressions of Port Moresby
Meteorological Office Routine
Flight to Kokoda
Tropical Meteorology
John (Doc) Hogan
Setting up House
We Join the RAAF
A Contrast in Attitudes
Some RAAF History
RAAF No 10 Squadron
RAAF No 11 Squadron
The Catalina Story
Construction of the Seven-mile Airstrip and Reclamation Area
Meteorological Service for the RAAF
Unexpected Vistitors
Our State of Readiness
Our Domestic Situation
A Japanese Surprise Packet
What Had We Meteorologists Achieved?
Chapter 3: Port Moresby After Pearl Harbour
Chapter 4: Allied Air Force HQ and RAAF Command, Brisbane
Chapter 5: Japan Surrenders and We Are Demobilised
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Appendix 1: References
Appendix 2: Milestones
Appendix 3: Papers Published in Tropical Weather Research Bulletins
Appendix 4: Radiosonde Observations 1941–46
Index
Search
Help
Contact us
John (Doc) Hogan
As I became better acquainted with Doc Hogan, who had been the meteorologist in Port Moresby for two years or more, my liking and respect for him increased. In retrospect, fifty years later, with a more mature viewpoint, my affection and respect remain undiminished. At times he could be brusque and fiery tempered, but I have always had an affection for hard-headed practical battlers of Irish descent. I had never been able to share the prejudice against Roman Catholics of my dearly beloved and respected paternal grandmother Gibbs. This may have been because my maternal Booth grandparents were nominal Roman Catholic, or perhaps because my grandfather Gibbs embraced that faith as a young man only to resume as a Presbyterian to become an acceptable suitor for my grandmother Gibbs. Another ancestral Irish link is my great-great-grandfather Edward Reilly, who was transported to Australia from Ireland in 1819 for forgery, arriving in Sydney on the ship Baring II. I believe this divided religious ancestry led me to believe, from an early age, that men and women should be respected for their achievements, without regard for their religion, race or position in life.Doc Hogan told me that he had acquired his nickname because as a youth at school in Kalgoorlie he had been keen to treat injuries of schoolmates in the playground or on the sports field. He had been an athletic young man, a skilled footballer and a hard worker, delivering meat from his father's butcher's shop in Kalgoorlie. Because of the economic depression of the late 1920s he found difficulty in finding employment when he graduated in Science in the University of Western Australia. He worked for a time in the Carnegie astronomical observatory at Watheroo, in outback Western Australia, before joining the Weather Bureau.
People in Bright Sparcs - Hogan, John (Doc)
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© Online Edition Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre and Bureau of Meteorology 2001
Published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, using the Web Academic Resource Publisher
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