Remembering Wamira

The plot unfolds

In retrospect the entire Wamira saga was born of blighted parents.

The need for the aircraft, a new RAAF basic trainer, was in reality not required but during the mid seventies was envisaged by a group of obviously misguided individuals who believed that the RAAF’s New Zealand Aerospace Industries CT-4 Airtrainers were rapidly running out of airframe life. At the time of Air Force Staff Target 5044 being issued in 1979 it was thought that the little CT-4s would not soldier on past 2500 flight hours, a figure that would be reached by the mid to late 1980s.

The initial plan for the new A10 Wamira was that it would replace just the piston engined CT-4 primary trainer and not the jet powered Macchi MB-326s that performed the advanced segment of the pilot training curriculum. The Macchis would be replaced under a separate program which had begun several years earlier.

Long time readers of Australian Aviation might remember that in the very first edition back in 1977 we ran major features on the Caribou replacement, AEW&C for the RAAF and yes, you guessed it – the Macchi replacement! Into this absurdity of ongoing project delay was born the ill fated Wamira, which in a convoluted way would ultimately also by default become the replacement for the Macchi.

It was consequently in December 1981 that the Wamira project was given ‘authorisation to proceed’ with an initial $36 million investment to design and deliver two prototypes for testing by early 1985 for an entry into service in 1987. What had happened in the meantime, however, was that there had been a considerable change in thinking on just how we should be training our future ADF pilots. Indeed, even before the Wamira was launched the RAAF was not keen on the concept and so we had yet another situation where one government entity was selling a major project to another government entity that had about as much enthusiasm for the task as standing in cold rain. Not a good picture! It was also discovered, after extensive fatigue testing by Defence’s Aeronautical Research Laboratories, that the CT-4’s actual airframe life was well beyond 5000 hours and more in the region of double that number.

The fact that dozens of privately owned ex RAAF CT-4As today continue to log hours each weekend right around Australia is testament to the structural integrity of what was one of the RAAF’s most loved aircraft. And just to add an ironic twist, today ADF pilots still perform their initial flight training on new build civilian operated CT-4Bs, three and a half decades after the type first entered RAAF service, and are likely to be doing so for a number of years to come!

Birth of the AAC

To maximise the benefits of the program in industrial terms the government decided to spread the work through a new company called the Australian Aircraft Consortium.

This was made up of government owned Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, the dreaded Government Aircraft Factory (then busy killing off its Nomad program), and privately owned Hawker de Havilland, with each having a third share.

Ultimately it was planned that CAC would be responsible for the manufacture of the empennage and engine system, GAF the fuselage, final assembly and testing, and HdH would design and build the wings and landing gear. Though this basically followed the specialities of each player, to say that they were inspired by the task ahead was a gross understatement. Indeed, in those days, the union dominated and trouble plagued GAF was uninspired by anything other than a shorter working week (in the end this organisation was deemed so dysfunctional and industrially pointless by the government that it was later corporately dissolved to be reborn as Aerospace Technologies of Australia).

If by now you are thinking that there are a lot of things that could go amiss with this program then you would be correct.

Through 1983 and ’84 it became clear that much of the initial intent of the program was heading in different directions. Firstly, after launch by Minister Kim Beazley, the Defence hierarchy seemed to lose interest in pushing the program from one milestone to another, while synergy and day-to-day cooperation between the three partners was something less than serene, and the RAAF didn’t help by constantly demanding numerous design changes.

I visited GAF shortly after the design mockup was unveiled and was amazed by the sheer size of the aircraft. Standing alongside it my head came up to the wing while it needed a ladder to get into the cockpit. Rather than an agile, small trainer this thing reminded me of something akin to the bulk of a Twin Otter.

I remember coming away from the visit shocked and somewhat disappointed that the best Australia could do was something comparable to Frankenstein’s Monster in comparison with what the rest of the world was producing.

By now it was obvious the prototype would not be delivered on time and taxpayer dollars were disappearing at a great rate of knots with little return. When launched in 1981 it was budgeted that the total Wamira program would cost $155 million, but by early 1985 the Commonwealth Auditor-General had already reported that the project cost would exceed $280 million.

The way the program was going it was clear that even that figure would ultimately prove conservative, and result in the most expensive primary trainer ever built.

At the time the Air Force was short of funds with a lot on its plate. The Hornet program (though a major success) was an ongoing drain on Defence’s overall budget, while the RAAF also required, as well as new trainers, AEW&C, tankers, more airlift, and advanced weapons for both the Hornet and F-111 as well as a major technology upgrade for the latter. Consequently, through ’84 and ’85 there was developing within Air Force a major anti-Wamira sentiment that would ultimately bring it no good.

Also muddying the waters was the debate within the RAAF as to what it really required of its new pilot training curriculum.

A new breed of fast turboprop trainers had emerged since the initial concept of the Wamira in the late seventies, and the UK RAF was also looking to replace its Jet Provosts with just such an aircraft.

“The project was compromised at the outset by illconsidered and conflicting objectives, bad timing and poor estimates. ”

Interestingly, in pushing to sell its Naval Lynx to the RAN, Westland had offered the AAC a teaming arrangement to sell the Wamira, in tandem seat configuration and known as the A20, to the RAF if Australia should choose the Lynx. But any thinking person appreciated that Westland’s enthusiasm for pushing this unusual Aussie ‘paper’ trainer to one of the world’s biggest air arms would quickly evaporate if its little helo wasn’t chosen for our Navy. Ultimately Australia didn’t acquire the Lynx, and by then the Wamira program was so off the rails that it seemed nothing could save it from implosion.

Shorts had also at this time entered the fray, offering Australia licence build of its Embraer Tucano based Shorts Tucano which was to ultimately win the 145 unit RAF order from the Pilatus PC-9 in what many rumoured was a deal proffered by trade opportunities rather than a technical outcome. Shorts Australia was also offering to build the military version of its Shorts 330 airliner, the Sherpa (recently ordered by the US Army for its European operations) in Australia if the RAAF chose its uprated Tucano. This offer made sense in many ways as the Sherpa was also posed as a Caribou replacement. It was an offer that if anything only helped to make the hulking side-by-side A10 Wamira look even less impressive against the sleek international competition.

a sizeable fiasco Workers lend scale to the massive Wamira prototype.

An End To The Australian Aircraft Industry

With little surprise to most but significant disappointment to many, the axe officially fell on December 16 1985 when Minister Beazley formally announced the cessation of the Wamira program in favour of buying what would eventually be 67 Swiss Pilatus PC-9 trainers, the majority of which would be assembled in Australia.

Following its cancellation, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee audited the Wamira program and found it to be one of the most ineffective military projects of recent history. Covering their report in the May 1986 edition of Australian Aviation, long time defence specialist Max Hawkins reported that “the PAC committee believed the RAAF should take ultimate responsibility for the project’s lack of success.

It said in the first place, the RAAF’s definition and evaluation of its requirements was inadequate with the result that the project was compromised at the outset by ill-considered and conflicting objectives, bad timing and poor estimates.

Secondly, the RAAF project management arrangements were not commensurate with the known risks of local design and development in which industry had no recent experience. It was also noted that the project coordination was made more difficult by the fact that the project was divided between the Air Force Materiel and Technical Services Division with at times no clear guidelines on who was responsible for what outcome. ” Not long after the whole sorry project had been buried I again found myself visiting GAF and noticed in the back of a hangar what looked like an aircraft with a massive plywood sword protruding from its back, complete with oozing blood red paint. I wandered over, much to the mirth of my PR escort, and there it was, the original Wamira mockup! After the sad fate of the potentially viable Nomad the Wamira was one major failure too many, and since that date the Australian ‘major program’ aircraft manufacturing industry has effectively ceased to exist. The only exceptions nowadays are found in the GA sector with GippsAero’s excellent Airvan, and in the sport recreation area with the Jabiru.

Isn’t it amazing what can happen when government agencies are not involved in a major project?