The Haldane Story

One of his individual contributions to the history of the RAAF Meteorological Service was his four page summary of the history of a RAAF Meteorological Service unit attached to the headquarters of the Allied Air Forces (A.A.F.), a part of General MacArthur's headquarters which moved from Melbourne to Brisbane in July 1942. Ralph Holmes and I were the original members of this unit, having been posted to Allied Air Headquarters at that time.

Warren's four-page summary dated 5 December 1945 is reproduced in Appendix 5. It is written in the Warren style and seems likely to be based on information provided by Ralph as the former OIC of the unit.

During an examination of Bureau material in the Commonwealth Archives (then located in Brighton near Melbourne) in 1980, I came across Bureau correspondence file 60/2525 (formerly 44/2525) which contained information on the history of the RAAF Meteorological Service. Folio 70 of this file, dated 29 April 1946 indicates that Thomas Haldane (formerly an observer in the RAAF Meteorological Service) had been assigned to organise material for the preparation of a war history of the RAAF Meteorological Service. The file indicates that Haldane was given the task of gathering material from a wide range of former members of the RAAF Meteorological Service both by correspondence and personal interview. I clearly remember him interviewing many people in the Central Office in 1946–47, It seems that Warren had the idea of arranging the preparation of the history as early as 1944 and that Haldane's assignment had the effect of accelerating the preparation of the history.

Haldane resigned from the Bureau in June 1947 with the draft of the history still unfinished, although by that stage considerable progress had been made. He had obtained a considerable amount of information which had been incorporated in the draft.

Bureau of Meteorology