In anticipation of increased demands for forecasting facilities by the services, and of the establishment of a RAAF meteorological organisation, another class for officers was commenced in March 1940, with instructional duties in the hands of Mr Dwyer and Mr (later Sqn Ldr) H. Newell BSc. It produced 22 forecasters. This was followed by what was officially known as RAAF Meteorological Officers' Course No 1, comprising science graduates and former teachers, with Mr Newell's place on the instructional staff being taken by Mr Hogan (1896–1970).

Meteorological Officers' Course No 2 was a conversion class for meteorological assistants, who were already experienced weather observers in the field, so its duration was shortened, but the next course—commencing in March 1942—was again for personnel new to the Directorate and included the first member of the WAAAF to be trained as a forecasting officer. Thereafter, until the cessation of hostilities, classes for training of forecasting officers continued at intervals.

In the same way, training of meteorological observers, whose main duties comprised ground and upper air observations and plotting of synoptic charts, commenced late in 1938, when 29 men were trained to take up positions in civil aerodromes to assist weather officers. Seven more were trained in 1939 and an additional 19 in the following year, while a succession of instructional courses followed the transfer of the organisation to the RAAF and the creation of the Group 1 mustering of meteorological assistant. Trainees on Courses 1 to 6 were chiefly new to the meteorological service, including some airmen who had remustered from other sections, although a few were members of the permanent weather service, but thereafter the method of selection of personnel for meteorological assistants' courses varied. For instance, Courses 7, 8, 11, 12 and 13 were composed chiefly of suitably qualified meteorological charters, both RAAF and WAAAF; Courses 9 and 10 mainly of ex-aircrew trainees. Course 13 finished in March 1944 at which stage training of meteorological assistants was suspended for the rest of the year, although some airmen remustered from charter to assistant by successfully completing trade tests on their stations.

Early in 1944 the need for assistants became acute, so that a some selected charters were given trade tests on various stations rather than bringing the men in for a full meteorological assistants' course in Melbourne. In May 1944 12 airmen were thus remustered and, in July, six more.

So far as the training of charters was concerned, this was commenced in August 1941 after the new mustering of meteorological charter had been established in April of the same year, as a Group III trade. WAAAF charters were first trained on Course 5, in March 1942, and subsequent classes up to Course 22, in April 1944, comprised both RAAF and WAAAF personnel.

Bureau of Meteorology