People in the Bureau (continued)

Another group were those who undertook the first training school for observers in 1938. These people, who had secondary school education, were trained to make surface and pilot balloon observations and plot charts.

These three groups were the vanguard of those recruited for service at the field offices newly established in 1937 and with the graduates of subsequent training courses formed the bulk of the RAAF Meteorological Service.

Figure 4 Bryan Rofe, one of the wartime heroes from the RAAF Meteorological Service. Bryan transferred to Weapons Research Establishment after the war and was involved in weapons trials at Woomera, where George Trefry was in charge of the Meteorological Office. Bryan later became Director of the Antarctic Division.

During the war the availability of suitably qualified people for training as forecasters became depleted and some without university degrees were accepted because of the urgent need to meet the increasing demand for services. They, and other forecasters without university qualifications (such as those from the first of the two 1937 forecasters' courses) were able to produce useful forecasts using the training they had received.

In 1946 Warren had to devise an interim solution to the problem of meeting the urgently needed services for aviation and other requirements.

One source of intake was young airmen who were undergoing training as aircrew in the Empire Air Training Scheme when the scheme was abandoned in 1944 with the end of the war in sight. One such intake was Don Handcock who remustered as a meteorological assistant in the RAAF Meteorological Service and after demobilisation and a period as a cadet meteorologist became a professional meteorologist and had a distinguished career in the Bureau. An article in Weather News No 315 tells some of Don's story (Handcock, 1997).

Bureau of Meteorology