39 Facts About Stanley Goble

Air Vice Marshal Stanley James Goble, CBE, DSO, DSC was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force.

Stanley Goble served three terms as Chief of the Air Staff, alternating with Wing Commander Richard Williams.

Stanley Goble became an ace with ten victories, commanded No 5 Squadron, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Service Cross.

Stanley Goble stepped down as leader of the RAAF in early 1940, and spent the rest of the war in Ottawa as Air Liaison Officer to Canada.

Stanley Goble died in 1948 at the age of fifty-six, two years after retiring from the military.

Stanley Goble apparently received little schooling, and began his working life as a clerk with the Victorian Railways at the age of sixteen.

Stanley Goble was accepted for flying training with the Royal Naval Air Service in July 1915.

Stanley Goble commenced operations with only three hours' solo flying experience.

Stanley Goble was a founding member of No 8 Squadron RNAS in 1916, during the latter part of the Battle of the Somme, where he flew both Pups and Nieuport fighters.

Stanley Goble earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on 24 September 1916, when he engaged two enemy fighters near Ghistelles in West Flanders, "and brought one of them down on fire in a spiral nose-dive", according to the citation in The London Gazette.

Stanley Goble was promoted twice in 1917, to flight commander in June, then squadron commander in December.

Stanley Goble led No 5 Squadron for the latter part of the year and into 1918.

Stanley Goble's unit supported the British Fifth Army as it bore the brunt of the German spring offensive, and he had to evacuate his airfield when it was shelled by advancing enemy artillery.

Stanley Goble returned to Australia on HT Gaika in November 1918.

Stanley Goble was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 New Year Honours, and made an acting lieutenant colonel in May that year.

Stanley Goble received a permanent commission as a squadron leader and honorary wing commander in the RAF on 1 August 1919, and was seconded to the Royal Australian Navy.

Williams and Stanley Goble would serve as Chief of the Air Staff three times each between 1922 and 1940.

In October 1921, Stanley Goble was posted to Britain for a naval co-operation course; his place on the Air Board was taken by Squadron Leader Bill Anderson.

Stanley Goble married Kathleen Wodehouse in London on Anzac Day, 1922, and returned to Australia later that year.

Stanley Goble developed a plan to establish a small seaplane base at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, but Williams cancelled this shortly after he returned to Australia in February 1925 to resume the position of CAS.

Stanley Goble departed for England to undertake study at the British Army Staff College in Camberley and RAF Staff College, Andover, as Williams had done two years before.

Stanley Goble served as Air Liaison Officer with the Australian High Commission in London from May 1926 to September 1927.

Stanley Goble was promoted to group captain on 1 April 1928.

On secondment to the RAF from 1935 to 1937, Stanley Goble was attached to the British Air Ministry as Deputy Director of Air Operations.

On 28 February 1937, Stanley Goble was raised to temporary air vice marshal.

Stanley Goble succeeded Williams as Chief of the Air Staff for the last time in February 1939, when the latter was dismissed from his position in the aftermath of the Ellington Report criticising the standards of training and air safety observed by the RAAF.

When he replaced Williams, Stanley Goble was Air Member for Personnel and might therefore have been considered more closely responsible for such standards; he maintained that Williams had personally overseen the service's air training since 1934.

One of the most notable was made by Stanley Goble and Flying Officer Ivor McIntyre in 1924, when they became the first men to circumnavigate Australia by air, in a single-engined Fairey IIID floatplane.

The English-born McIntyre, who was lead pilot while Stanley Goble acted as commander and navigator, was a World War I veteran of the Royal Naval Air Service.

The Federal Government abandoned his concept of an autonomous Air Expeditionary Force in favour of full commitment to the Empire Air Training Scheme, which Stanley Goble considered detrimental to local defence.

Stanley Goble came into conflict with his deputy, Air Commodore John Russell, an RAF officer on exchange in Australia.

Prime Minister Robert Menzies had in any case been looking for a British officer to head the RAAF and confided to the UK High Commissioner, Sir Geoffrey Whiskard, that Stanley Goble's resignation was "undoubtedly very convenient".

Stanley Goble had offered to submit his resignation from the RAAF as well as from the position of CAS, and was considering a return to Britain for service with the RAF.

In January 1946, Stanley Goble presided over the court-martial of Australia's top-scoring fighter ace, Group Captain Clive Caldwell.

Stanley Goble was himself forced into retirement in February 1946, despite being five years below the mandatory age of sixty.

The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal George Jones, in recommending Stanley Goble's dismissal, wrote that "this officer has a sound Service knowledge and an alert mind, but suffers from certain nervous characteristics which make continuous application to a task impossible".

Stanley Goble suffered from hypertensive cerebrovascular disease and died in Heidelberg, Victoria, on 24 July 1948.

Stanley Goble was cremated, leaving his wife Kathleen, and three sons.

Stanley Goble's son John was born on 1923 and joined the Royal Australian Navy and qualified as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, rising to the rank of commodore and commanding 817 Squadron, the naval air station HMAS Albatross, and the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne.