The Empire Air Training Scheme: Identity, Empire and Memory

Chapter OutlineThere are several themes in this thesis and I have tried to weave them throughthe chapters that advance chronologically. The first is the ongoing rapid change ofsociety and culture that reshaped national and individual response to conceptssurrounding EATS. Second and linked to change is the interaction between public andprivate responses to EATS and the reaction each had to surrounding culturalinfluences. The third, and also linked to change, is the selective nature of the identitieswe create, the stories we choose at particular times.Chapter 1 places the concept of the Empire Air Training Scheme within thecomplex cultural fascination held in the 1930s with the concept of flight. The miracleof the conquest of the air appeared to guarantee the coming of a New Age. 68 Yet theexperience endured by the aviators during World War II illustrated the gulf betweenhopes and realizations as dreams were shattered. The institution of EATS wassupported by the Australian visions and values of Empire and masculinity and each, inits own way, would be challenged by the rapid changes confronted during this period.The advances in aerial technology established important influences in three crucialareas that would have a subsequent impact on future images of EATS. First, was thedevelopment of new aerial power accompanied by strategies designed to maximizeeffectiveness that revolutionized the nature of combat in World War II. Second, thefailure of Britain to upgrade airpower necessitated urgent action when war began andthe result was the establishment of EATS. Third, the use of technology in aerial powerled directly to unique and horrific experiences for the individual aviator for whichthere had been no previous concept directly questioning the glory of war by adding anew perspective to the destructive power of war. For both the Australian nation andthe individual airman the impact of these experiences would create deep anxieties andcontradictions that would manipulate future images.68 Robert Wohl, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination 1908-1919 New Haven,London: Yale University Press 1994, 1.19