Frederick Scherger

Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Rudolph William Scherger, (18 May 1904 – 16 January 1984) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

Born on 18 May 1904 in Ararat, young Fred was educated to junior certificate level at his local high school.

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.

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.

On 21 January 1925, he received a permanent commission in the RAAF as a pilot officer (temporary flying 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 (No. 1 FTS), 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."

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 (CFI) 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.

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.

By the 1930s, as a flight instructor and test pilot, Scherger was, according to historian Alan Stephens, "perhaps the RAAF's outstanding aviator".

In October 1931, he won an Aero Club derby at Adelaide in a Bulldog, clocking a top speed of 160.98 mph.

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.

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.

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 (later the Australian First Tactical Air Force), 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.

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.

In 1957, he was promoted to air marshal and became Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), 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 (COSC).

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.

Frederick Rudolph William Scherger was the third child of farmer Frederick Scherger and his wife Sarah Jane, née Chamberlain, both native Victorians.