RAAF Operations Building Site is a heritage-listed command post at Green Street, West End, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1942. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 February 2005.
History The former RAAF Operations building was constructed in 1942 as an operation and signals building for the Royal Australian Air Force. The building was operated in association with RAAF Base Townsville established at Garbutt some kilometres to the west, and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Base. The lower section was constructed of reinforced concrete with a flat concrete roof, while a timber "residence" was built on top of the operations building to conceal it from the air.
Townsville was established as a port in 1864, in association with pastoral expansion of the time. Pastoralists had pushed the frontier of non-Indigenous settlement north as far as Rockhampton by the late 1850s. In search of additional productive runs, pastoralists continued moving north along the Queensland coast and inland. The Townsville site was recommended to the Queensland Government as a suitable port by two pastoralists, Robert Towns and John Melton Black, being part of Black's pastoral holdings. Land was sold from 1865 when the town was proclaimed a port of entry and a small settlement developed. By 1866, Townsville supported banks and hotels, wharves and stores and a local newspaper.
By the late nineteenth century, Townsville had established the necessary infrastructure to be the dominant city of the north. Apart from the port, the railway head and the location of the Supreme Court in the north, there were other things in its favour, and the town was proclaimed a city in 1902. In the early 1920s, the North Coast rail line from Brisbane to Townsville was completed, prompting further development within the town fuelled by these transport links. By 1940, when the Second World War was being fought predominantly in Europe and North Africa, Townsville had a population of about 30,000. With the entry of the Japanese and Americans into the war in late 1941, the population of Townsville swelled with a huge influx of both Australian and American troops. Military personnel outnumbered civilians by more than three to one as the population headed towards 100,000.
The Australian Air Force (AAF) was established on 31 March 1921, becoming the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) on 31 August of the same year. Prior to that, the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) had begun in 1914 and was based at Point Cook in Victoria, where aviation training was carried out. Administratively, however, the AFC was part of the existing armed forces, and it was not until the formation of the RAAF that an independent air force was established as part of the Australian armed services.
An airfield for civil aviation was established at Townsville by the city council in the late 1920s. The site of this field was quite poor, however, and an alternative site at Garbutt, west of the city centre, was chosen for a new airfield. This site was part of the large reserve of low-lying land known as the Town Common, used primarily for grazing. Land was cleared and the airfield prepared, opening in January 1939 and operated by the Townsville City Council. Facilities were almost non-existent, with a single runway consisting of a gravelled path.
The increase in Japanese military activity in the Pacific in the late 1930s led the Australian Government to establish air bases in the north of Australia. The Department of Defence began negotiations with the Townsville City Council to transfer the Garbutt aerodrome to the Commonwealth in early 1939. The acquisition was completed on 12 December 1940 and construction of a series of buildings began for the RAAF on site, including hangars, workshops, accommodation buildings and mess rooms. The existing lightly gravelled runway, originally wide, was upgraded to RAAF status to and lengthened. By mid-1941, 24 Squadron of the RAAF were based at Garbutt. Civil aviation also continued at the site during this period.
The base was further developed by the Americans in late 1941. War was looming in the Pacific in the early 1940s, as it had in Europe in the late 1930s. The Americans required bases in the region to maintain supplies to their forces in the Philippines, and by late 1941 the USAAF was in Townsville to develop its own facilities at the RAAF base. The American base, United States of America 4th Air Depot, Garbutt, was planned for aircraft repair and assembly. A large camp was constructed with 35 "igloo" type buildings used as repair shops, stores and office accommodation.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 the Americans had been brought into the war. The Japanese advance south was swift and successful, taking the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya and Rabaul in January and Singapore in February 1942. In the same month Darwin was bombed. Faced with the threat of invasion, (Townsville was put on invasion alert on 1 May 1942), the Australian and American Governments began to develop a major military base in the Townsville region. As a result, the air base at Townsville was further expanded as thousands of troops descended upon the city. Further air fields were developed west of Garbutt, and further west again at Charters Towers and Macrossan. The sphere of influence of the Townsville base was much wider than before. Townsville became the base for North East Area Command, with its major responsibility the protecting of sea lanes to the north to Port Moresby.
During the war, particularly in the early part of the Pacific campaign, the Townsville air base was crucial to fighting. Along with Darwin, the base was one of the principal air transport centres in Australia, an important air base of strategic value. It was also one of the few air bases in Australia from which fighter aircraft engaged enemy aircraft.
The operations building at Green Street was constructed in 1942 as part of the rapid development of the Garbutt air base, after the commencement of the war in the Pacific. The site chosen for the building was some kilometres from the air force base, in an undeveloped portion of land that contained one or two sheds and fowl houses. This area may have been part of the Town Common, providing a common area for grazing and tending to animals. The operations building did not need to be located on the air base, and in some respects, it was more appropriately sited off base. The activities carried out within the building were not strictly related to the daily operations at the air base, but were however, quite sensitive and extremely important to the Allied war effort.
Drawings for the building were prepared in April 1942 by engineers in the Department of the Interior. The drawings indicate the sensitive nature of the building. The building's function was not referred to in any construction drawings. It was usually referred to as "RAAF Project No 81" or "Reinforced concrete building No 81", and the drawings for the preparation of the site were stamped "SECRET".
It is likely that the building was constructed by the Allied Works Council (AWC), the organisation established to coordinate the construction of wartime buildings in Australia. The AWC was established in February 1942, and undertook most of the construction of the necessary wartime infrastructure such as buildings like the one at Green Street. AWC records indicate that a reinforced concrete operational control building in Townsville had been completed by June 1942. Its construction had been designated an "A1" priority, and its total cost was . The building described is quite probably the one in Green Street. Designed as a rectangular building of reinforced concrete construction, a "traverse" or protective wall, three metres high, was shown on drawings, constructed around the perimeter of the building to protect it from attack. The external walls and all the internal walls of the operations building were constructed of reinforced concrete. To disguise the building from the air, a separate building was constructed at one end of the flat roof of the building. Of timber construction with a corrugated iron dwelling, this additional dwelling was designed to resemble a typical domestic dwelling, so that when viewed from the air, the complex would be inconspicuous.
Internally, the reinforced concrete building contained a crew room, operations room, a signals office, receiving room, rooms for intelligence, navigations, signals and meteorological offices, an emergency power plant and a telephone exchange. A cypher room and strong room were also provided. The building had its own air conditioning system; a small fan room separate from the main part of the building was constructed to the west of the main building and provided air conditioning plant and servicing to the operations room. Air conditioning ducts were run through the main corridor of the building.
A separate orderly hut, lavatory block and miscellaneous hut were also constructed. The two hut buildings had "dummy" stove recesses to further disguise the nature of the site. The construction drawings indicate that the iron to be used on the roofs of the buildings was to be painted to look older than it actually was. The drawings of these buildings were prepared in August 1942 by ET Doig, the Superintending Engineer of the Department of the Interior.
The building functioned as an overall communications centre for the base of the North East Area command, an area on the north-eastern coast of Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria and up to Port Moresby. The movements of Australian aircraft within this strategic area were controlled from this building. Flight operations were planned and monitored from here, briefing and debriefing sessions with pilots were carried out. In May 1942 the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought, a naval and aerial assault against the Japanese off the north-east coast of Australia. A significant Allied victory, the Battle of the Coral Sea was the first major repulse of the Japanese in the Pacific after their series of successful conquests south since December 1941.
While designed to resemble a residence, the timber building constructed on top of the operations building was a major part of the facility as well. An L-shaped structure, it contained rooms for an adjutant, an orderly's room, and warrant officer and an engineer officer, as well as another strong room. There were no internal links between the buildings, the timber building being accessed by timber staircases to the ground. A flower box, shrubs and an artificial tree were placed around the building to emphasise its domestic appearance. The drawings prepared for the building indicate that "timber" battening and supporting posts were to be painted on the traverse, again, to hide the presence of the operations building. Further camouflage work was undertaken on the remaining section of the concrete roof in the form of garnished netting. Camouflage is an important component of the art of warfare. The term came into use during the First World War and was derived from the French term "camoufler", meaning to "make up for the stage". A general definition of camouflage is the "art of concealing that you are concealing". All manner of war material and personnel can and have been camouflaged.