Fifty fulfilling years in the RAAF
On 26 June 2022, Squadron Leader Alan Croft will celebrate 50 years in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
He joined in 1972, three years after emigrating with his parents from Manchester in England. Alan had family who had served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force and felt a strong desire to follow in that tradition. The decision over which service to join was made for him. Being only 17, he needed his parents’ formal permission and they considered the Navy to be ‘too traditional’. So the RAAF it was.
He enlisted as an adult trainee and was posted to RAAF Base Edinburgh for training.
‘It took me two hours to realise joining the RAAF was the right choice,’ he says. ‘There was this freedom I didn’t have at home, you were treated like an adult and we were all in the same boat.’
Having trained as an electrical fitter he later became an avionics technician. Over the next few years, he enjoyed having responsibilities not usually accorded to a civilian that young. There was also the satisfaction that comes with overcoming technical challenges and improving the performance of aircraft.
‘At one point, we were working on an old Dakota that had lasers fitted for depth-sounding to chart the Great Barrier Reef. Its power system wasn’t sufficient so we needed to remedy that.’
Most of his service has taken place in Australia along with a posting to New Zealand and another to the Philippines.
After 29 years on the tools, he was commissioned as an Education Officer, having completed two education degrees. He retired from the full-time Air Force in 2015 but remains a reservist working 90 days a year. He is currently based, once again, at East Sale. There he works for the Air Academy, helping subject-matter experts redevelop the curriculum.
He plans to leave the RAAF at the end of the year.
Fifty years is a long time to spend in any job.
‘It was a case of re-inventing myself every so often,’ says Alan. ‘In the RAAF, you’re posted on a fairly frequent basis. I was fortunate in that my postings have always been quite long. I could progress on a given airplane and achieve a certain mastery.’
There have been several moments that linger in Alan’s memory: seeing the father of the RAAF, Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams; towing the stairs away from the Queen’s plane; seeing Prince Charles and Princess Diana land at RAAF Base Edinburgh. There was also quite a bit of cricket and AFL over the years and simply ‘touring Australia in airplanes and getting paid for it’.
But the real highlights have been the camaraderie and the people.
‘I see a lot of the people I taught in the 80s and 90s getting higher positions, making wing commander and so on. To have had some influence on their development, I look on with pride.’
