Frederick Scherger
Sir Frederick Rudolph William Scherger, was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force. He served as Chief of the Air Staff, the RAAF's highest-ranking position, from 1957 until 1961, and as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, forerunner of the role of Australia's Chief of the Defence Force, from 1961 until 1966. He was the first RAAF officer to hold the rank of air chief marshal.
Born in Victoria of German origins, Scherger graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, before transferring to the Air Force in 1925. He was considered one of the top aviators between the wars, serving as a fighter pilot, test pilot, and flying instructor. He held senior training posts in the late 1930s and the early years of World War II, earning the Air Force Cross in June 1940. Promoted to group captain, Scherger was acting commander of North-Western Area when Darwin suffered its first air raid in February 1942. Praised for his actions in the aftermath of the attack, he went on to lead the RAAF's major mobile strike force in the South West Pacific, No. 10 Operational Group, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in September 1944 for his actions during the assaults on Aitape and Noemfoor in New Guinea.
After the war, Scherger served in senior posts, including Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Head of the Australian Joint Services Staff in Washington, D.C., and commander of Commonwealth air forces during the Malayan Emergency. In 1957, he was promoted to air marshal and became Chief of the Air Staff, presiding over a significant modernisation of RAAF equipment. Completing his term as CAS in 1961, he was the Air Force's first appointee to the position of Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. As Chairman of COSC, Scherger became Australia's first air chief marshal in 1965, and played a leading role in the commitment of troops to the Vietnam War. Leaving the military the following year, he was appointed chairman of the Australian National Airlines Commission and, from 1968, of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. Popularly known as "Scherg", he retired in 1975 and lived in Melbourne until his death in 1984 at the age of seventy-nine.
Early life and career
Frederick Rudolph William Scherger was the third child of farmer Frederick Scherger and his wife Sarah Jane, née Chamberlain, both native Victorians. Born on 18 May 1904 in Ararat, young Fred was educated to junior certificate level at his local high school. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Germany, and his family was the object of xenophobia in his childhood during World War I. This carried on into the early part of his military career and beyond; as late as 1941, the author of an anonymous letter from RAAF Station Wagga to Prime Minister Robert Menzies stated that his "blood ran cold" at the notion of someone called "Scherger" commanding trainee Australian pilots.1920s: Duntroon to Point Cook
Scherger entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1921 and graduated as a lieutenant in 1924, winning the King's Medal. Two days before graduation, he volunteered for an Air Force secondment, which was later made permanent. On 21 January 1925, he received a permanent commission in the RAAF as a pilot officer, and commenced his flight training at RAAF Point Cook, Victoria. He was promoted to flying officer with seniority from 21 January 1926.Scherger quickly took to the art of flying open-cockpit biplanes and gained a reputation as a skilful if occasionally reckless pilot, being berated early in his career by his flight commander for "inverted and very low flying". He was one of the Air Force's first volunteers for parachute instruction, under the tutelage of Flying Officer Ellis Wackett at RAAF Station Richmond, New South Wales, and made the first public freefall descent in Australia, at Essendon, Victoria on 21 August 1926. In February 1927, he was asked by the commanding officer of No. 1 Flying Training School, Wing Commander Adrian "King" Cole, to drop a message to a woman at Port Melbourne before she departed on a steamer. After doing so, Scherger illegally flew his S.E.5 fighter between ship and wharf before heading back to Point Cook, only to be hauled into Cole's office the next morning to find the CO brandishing a photograph taken by a member of the public, catching the young pilot in the act. Sent for a dressing down to the Air Member for Personnel, Group Captain Jimmy Goble, Scherger was forced to admit it was not the first time he had engaged in such stunts. Goble responded, "Good, I'm glad to see we've still got a few in the Air Force with spirit."
1930s: Flying instructor to Director of Training
By the 1930s, as a flight instructor and test pilot, Scherger was, according to historian Alan Stephens, "perhaps the RAAF's outstanding aviator". He married Thelma Harrick on 1 June 1929; they had a daughter. Promoted to flight lieutenant on 1 June 1929, Scherger became chief flying instructor at Point Cook that August. He also flew with Fighter Squadron, a unit of No. 1 FTS operating Bristol Bulldogs. As one of the leading pilots of the Bulldog, then regarded as the peak of military technology, and in what was generally thought of as the RAAF's elite formation, he gained popular exposure that may have helped his later rise to senior leadership. In October 1931, he won an Aero Club derby at Adelaide in a Bulldog, clocking a top speed of.In August 1934, Scherger was posted to England to study at RAF Staff College, Andover. Just prior to departing, he was involved in a notorious incident at RAAF Station Laverton. A squadron leader arrived home early from a mess function to find his wife sleeping with another officer, who escaped by crashing through the bedroom window. The squadron leader then pursued his wife with a loaded revolver, the pair eventually arriving at Scherger's quarters. Faced with the frightened woman and the enraged husband crying that he would "shoot the bitch", Scherger knocked the man down with a poker. The unconscious husband was placed in the guardhouse, and the woman given shelter off the base; the officer she had slept with promptly resigned his commission.
Scherger graduated from Andover in December 1935 and subsequently completed courses at the RAF's School of Air Navigation and Central Flying School. He was promoted to squadron leader on 1 July 1936. Returning to Australia, he resumed his position as CFI at Point Cook in May 1937. As directed by the Federal government, he was responsible for training the Treasurer, Richard Casey, to fly; the use of Air Force facilities for his own benefit by an elected official led to adverse publicity when it was revealed by the media. In September, Scherger test flew the North American NA-16 at Laverton; the evaluation program led to the design being adapted as the CAC Wirraway the following year. He was appointed Director of Training at RAAF Headquarters, Melbourne, in January 1938, and promoted to wing commander on 1 March 1939.
World War II
1939–1942: Outbreak of war to raid on Darwin
As Director of Training at the outbreak of World War II, Scherger's main challenge was to expand the RAAF's pool of flying instructors. Central Flying School, Australia's first military aviation unit, was re-formed for this purpose in April 1940. Awarded the Air Force Cross in June 1940 for his "outstanding ability" as a pilot and instructor, he took charge of No. 2 Service Flying Training School near Wagga the following month, and was promoted to temporary group captain on 1 September. In October 1941, he was made commanding officer of RAAF Station Darwin, Northern Territory. Described by Major General Lewis H. Brereton, commander of the US Far East Air Force, as "energetic, efficient and very impatient", Scherger started improving the operational readiness of the base and its surrounds without waiting for specific orders from RAAF Headquarters. The following January, he was appointed senior air staff officer to Air Commodore Douglas Wilson, Air Officer Commanding of North-Western Area Command, which administered RAAF Station Darwin and other airfields in the Northern Territory and north-west Western Australia.In Wilson's absence at ABDA Command Headquarters in Java, Scherger was acting AOC NWA on 19 February 1942 when Darwin suffered its first aerial attacks by the Japanese. Driving into town to meet Air Marshal Richard Williams, who was in transit on his way to England, Scherger first became aware of the assault after he heard anti-aircraft fire and counted twenty-seven enemy aircraft in the distance. He arrived at the civil airfield to witness a Curtiss P-40 crash land on the runway, before his car was strafed by fighters. In a lull after the initial attack that day, he made contact with Williams before the two men were forced to take shelter in a makeshift trench that was straddled by falling bombs as a second raid got under way. Afterwards, Scherger began to restore order and launched a Hudson light bomber on a reconnaissance mission, though there was no further contact with Japanese forces.
As well as the loss of civil and military infrastructure, twenty-three aircraft and ten ships, and the death of some 250 people, 278 RAAF personnel had deserted Darwin in an exodus that became known as the "Adelaide River Stakes". "There was", in Scherger's words, "an awful panic and a lot of men simply went bush". Praised for his "great courage and energy", he was one of the few senior Air Force officers in the region to emerge from Commissioner Charles Lowe's inquiry into the debacle with his long-term career prospects undamaged. In the immediate aftermath, though, his outspoken criticism of the RAAF's state of preparedness alienated members of the Air Board, the service's controlling body that consisted of its most senior officers and which was chaired by the Chief of the Air Staff. He was relieved of his position at NWA by the CAS, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett, and shunted through a series of postings for the remainder of the year, including commanding officer at RAAF Station Richmond, supernumerary at RAAF Headquarters, Director of Defence at Allied Air Forces Headquarters, South West Pacific Area, and Director of Training at RAAF Headquarters. Seeking restitution, he boldly went over the heads of the Air Board and successfully appealed to the Minister for Air, Arthur Drakeford, supported by Commissioner Lowe.