Young at heart

His is a storied journey that has seen him serve on no fewer than nine combat, training and transport types in the RAAF inventory over the last 35 years, along the way treating both his trials and good fortune with his trademark amiable equanimity.

In The Beginning

For such an accomplished pilot, it may seem odd that SQNLDR Frawley joined the RAAF as a technician. In 1969 he became an apprentice instrument fitter before working on Mirages and Macchis. There was a logic to his decision, as he reveals. “I always wanted to be a pilot but in a rare moment I followed my father’s advice – he was trained to be a pilot during WW2 and he was demobbed- he said not everyone is successful getting through pilot training so it’s best to have a backup plan.

“I did my apprenticeship and that was going to be my back up if the pilot training didn’t go well.”

As per his career roadmap, Frawley duly applied, and was accepted for pilot training at Point Cook, Victoria, spending 70 hours on the CAC Winjeel. SQNLDR Frawley recalled that a much different training ethos prevailed at Point Cook in the early 1970s. “You had to solve your own problems – they told you what they were and you had to solve them. In those days it was pretty harsh, there was no mucking around, no warm and fuzzies about anything. If you didn’t get it right you knew about it in no uncertain terms.”

Despite this environment, or because of it, SQNLDR Frawley passed his initial pilots course and was sent to Pearce, WA, for further training on the Macchi MB-326. His logbook shows over 1,200 hours on the type, which he describes as “powerless, but nonetheless a great machine.”

SQNLDR Frawley’s dreams of posting to Mirages was derailed, however, when he failed fast jet pilots course In 1977, the result not any particular deficiency, but due a accident of geometry: “In my case, the ability and maturity graph didn’t cross anywhere.”

Instead he was posted to 36SQN at Richmond, flying the Lockheed C-130A Hercules. The squadron was in the process of transitioning to the (then) new H model, and the young Pilot Officer Frawley was sent to Marietta, Georgia for the first of three delivery flights on the brand new Hercules.

Thirty-five years later, he is no less excited recalling the experience. “We got on board these brand new aeroplanes and they still had plastic on the seats. Everything was new and in magnificent condition – the step up to INS, rather than navaids solely, was just an amazing jump in technology- we loved it.”

Noise insulation on the A model Herc left something to be desired, as 36SQN’s American instructors discovered.

“The A was so much more noisy, from time to time the props (on the new H models) would go out of sync and the USAF guys would be standing up behind us wondering what we were going to do about it and we didn’t even notice it!”

SQNLDR Frawley spent five years on the Hercules, flying SAR, special ops flights, Medevac and air drops, before a chance meeting with AVM Jim Flemming was to alter his career trajectory dramatically. “I was the captain on a Herc on our way to Butterworth. He asked me if I wanted to get back to fast jets and I said of course I did, and six months after that flight I ended up being posted back to fighters.”

A second shot at a fast jet posting was unheard of in the RAAF of the early 1980s, and Frawley believes he is the first such airman to have been given the ‘double chance’.

Fast Times

After completing a Mirage conversion course at 2OCU at Williamtown, SQNLDR Frawley was posted to 77SQN for 18 months and thereafter, to 3SQN in Butterworth. Maintained as part of Australia’s commitment to the Five Powers Defence Agreement, Butterworth offered unique challenges and opportunities to Mirage pilots. “The threat of thunderstorms was the main thing,” SQNLDR Frawley remembers. “We’d be flying at 35,000ft and they’d be well above us.” Close cooperation with the Royal Malaysian Air Force offered invaluable dissimilar air combat training with RMAF F-5E Tigers.

On the joys of flying the French delta, SQNLDR Frawley recalled ‘It wasn’t the greatest dog fighter in the world, once you get the aircraft turning, it tended to dive, being a delta. Energy would bleed very quickly in the turn. It had a very good instantaneous turn rate, but very poor sustained turn rate. Though it was designed as an interceptor, we tried to use it as a multirole aircraft. So in ground attack, it was manual bombing. It was pretty tricky stuff. It was pretty much just manual bomb sight, you’d put in your compression angle and allow for wind, by yourself, it was all pretty much guess work but we got very skilled at it. Towards the end of its career, the laser guided bomb came in and took all of that out.”

At the end two years of “fantastic flying, with a lot of freedom of operation” in Butterworth, SQNLDR Frawley was posted back to Australia. It was something of a shock. Having flown the supersonic Mirage in the steamy climes of Malaysia, Frawley now found himself in Point Cook in the middle of winter, instructing on CT-4s. The transition to the docile, piston engined trainer took some adjustment. ‘The first time the student flew from the left hand seat on take off, I thought we were going to die. It was just too slow to fly. The Mirage landed at 180kt, and the CT-4’s Vne (never exceed speed) was about 145kt!”

It was to be an enjoyable, but nonetheless brief, two year interlude, before returning to the fast jet world as Macchi Flight Commander at 2OCU. A year later, SQNLDR Frawley began his conversion to the Mirage’s replacement, the F/A-18A Hornet. Remembering his first flight in a fourth generation fighter prompts a torrent of superlatives. “It was mind blowing. The power of the thing was fantastic. The avionics suite was amazing, and the problem is you were overwhelmed with information and that still remains a problem for new people going onto the aircraft today.”

Such was the leap in technology between the Mirage and Hornet, SQNLDR Frawley effectively had to start from scratch and relearn tactics and procedures. After converting, he was posted back to 2OCU to teach new pilots how to fly the Hornet. “They were short of instructors. I came straight off the (Hornet) course and instructed. So I didn’t get a chance to operate it, and I hadn’t used the aircraft operationally, and now I was trying to teach young kids how to fly it tactically without having done it in a squadron. Of my 4,000 hours, I only had about 70 on Hornets. It was a huge learning curve.”

After a year spent instructing, SQNLDR Frawley found himself at 77SQN, not only as an operational pilot, but as the squadron’s XO. “Being the 2IC was a fantastic honour for me,” he recalls, and under his command at that time was the future Chief of Air Force, and Vice Chief of the Defence Force, and these days occasional dinner companion, Air Vice-Marshal Mark Binskin.

A Fatal Loss

There is no starker illustration of the dangers inherent in low level flying than the loss of an aircraft and the death of its crew, as happened on May 19 1992 when a 77 SQN F/A-18B A21-106 crashed in a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area, north of Rockhampton, Queensland. Both pilot FLGOFF Robert Jepsen (just 23), and his passenger, DSTO scientist, Michael Howlett (aged 36), were killed.
“It was very, very sad. It really drained everyone. FLGOFF Jepsen was being groomed for FCI when it happened. But to the credit of the CO at the time, WGCDR Bill Johnson, we got back into the jets the next day and went flying. But it was a very tough period to go through.”

As undeniably tragic as the crash of 106 was, the relative rarity of such events, when compared to much higher loss rate of the Mirage, does point to a more solidly entrenched safety culture in the RAAF and ADF as a whole. As SQNLDR Frawley explains, this is an outcome in which leadership, technology, economics and considerations of morale have all played their parts.

Post 77sqn

In 1992, SQNLDR Frawley was posted, “kicking and screaming”, to the ADF Warfare Centre at Williamtown, a desk job that saw him lecturing on doctrinal theory to mid level commanders and educating them on the capabilities, and tactical limitations, of the F/A-18. “It was about making commanders aware of what we could and couldn’t do with fighters. They’re not a limitless capability, but people think they’re a panacea for many things.”

His time as an operational fast jet pilot was not over, however, and SQNLDR Frawley found himself as XO of 76SQN in late 1995, and was to eventually be promoted to Wing Commander and become the unit’s Commanding Officer. He was now at the apex of his Air Force career and in a move aimed at securing his retirement, he resigned from the RAAF to join BAe Systems as a Hawk instructor pilot with the Royal Saudi Air Force. Initially based at Dahrain, Frawley and his wife Kerry moved to Tabuk, where he flew until the company’s policy of mandatory retirement for employees aged 50 saw their return to Australia.

In 2002, Frawley approached the RAAF Reserve and offered his by now considerable experience on Hawks. Rejoining uniformed service as a SQNLDR, after six months on a desk, he was brought on as a Reserve instructor on the Hawk 127. This job requires him to serve 150 days per financial year, and sees him accrue 15-20 hours a month of flight time.

As an indication of how training in the RAAF has evolved, SQNLDR Frawley rates the Hawk course as tougher for students than his Hornet conversion course of the mid 1980s, and the demands placed on instructors are no less exacting.

“Even after my week off, your brain goes back to idle, so there’s catch up to do. But these days instructors are a lot more professional in terms of airborne instructional technique, and how they impart knowledge while you’re airborne. It’s a very difficult environment to talk to somebody in – it’s dynamic, it’s noisy, it’s scary and you’re involved with other aeroplanes. And there’s a time limit to it all as well.”

When not flying for the RAAF, he indulges in the more sedate pastime of warbird flying, having piloted a mouthwatering variety of vintage aircraft including the MiG-15, MiG-21 (a personal favourite he displayed at Avalon), T-28 Trojan, P-40, Sea Fury, Grumman Avenger, Sabre, Strikemaster, Fiat G-59 and Harvard. For the past 18 months, he’s been paid to take passengers on joyflights in an Aero L-39 Albatros out of Cessnock.

Thankfully for SQNLDR Philip Frawley, the retirement age for reservists is five years later than for active pilots, which will see him, health permitting, in the cockpit and the classroom for another five years.

After reflecting on a lifetime at the cutting edge of military aviation, SQNLDR Frawley simply reflects, “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it.”