Author Preface

In 1991 I felt it would be appropriate to write a history of the RAN Radio Mechanics who were recruited in the immediate post war period late 1945 through mid 1947. The research necessitated me making personal contact with many whom I had not seen for over 40 years. The outcome of completing and publishing the history was a strong move to hold a reunion, which did occur at what was HMAS Torrens at Birkenhead near Adelaide in November 1992. This was successful and led to the formation of the RAN Radio Mechanics Association in 1993.

Since 1992 there have been biennial reunions ra 2000, Perth 2002, and Caloundra 2004. Over these years the membership has been swelled from the ranks of those who joined the service after 1947 and who were trained at HMAS Cerberus. As well, some known as HOs, (Hostilities Only) who underwent their basic training in the early 1940s at the Melbourne Technical College, later RMIT, have joined our association, bringing the present membership in 2005 to over 550. 

For the 1994 reunion, a booklet outlining the history of HMAS Watson, at Sydneyouth Head, was produced. This added to our little store of recorded history, because . At that 1994 reunion I persuaded a colleague, PRH (Lofty) Watson, to create a history of the development of radar in the RAN. Lofty did an astonishing amount of research, and for our 1998 reunion, released his excellent book o Do With Me, I So, we then had a third chronicle of our recorded history.

In thinking about all this while planning to attend the 2004 reunion, it suddenly hit me that there was, as yet, nothing recorded about the HOs. These were the men who were recruited into the RAN late 1941 through 1945, and who struggled to come to grips with the knowledge explosion of complex electronic circuitry surrounding the various radar equipment types variously known as 281 and 960 Air Warning, Sugar George and 293 Navigation , 282 and 285 Gunnery Control, and others. 

As well, there were other devices such as LORAN, a long range radio (not radar) navigation system, IFF or Identification Friend and Foe, Type X a cryptographic machine, High Frequency and Very High Frequency Direction Finding (HF & VHF DF), and the Radio Compass. To add to this seemingly never ending list of equipment to be studied and understood, there was also the range of W/T, Wireless Telegraphy transmitters and receivers for radio morse and voice communication.

The surviving members of this group of war time technicians are, in the year 2005, mostly over 80 years of age. The oldest at the time of writing this foreword is 93. It is inevitable that their remaining time with us is short. Therefore now is the time to capture some of the personal history of these men, hence, this history of the RAN

Despite all the considerable research which has been done to create this HO history, it is inevitable that there will be omissions and errors. One reason is that if all the available material had been included, this history would have run to volumes t digging into human memories that are 60 years old is a not entirely accurate process. This has been illustrated many times over in the arguments about class numbers, and for this reason class numbers have been omitted from the master list of names as being quite unreliable.

Further to this, researching into official documents names by which individuals were known, has proved frequently to be misleading. Here are a few examples.  Dinham (Charles Anthony), , Stan Powell was in fact Ernest Stanley Powell, not Stanley Alfred Powell, this latter being a Joiner III.

Nevertheless, I feel that what follows in this recorded history is for the most part true and as accurate as I could achieve.



George Stevens
Berowra Heights, June 2005.