Defending the Nest

The respect which we, the senior leaders of Air Force, hold for aviators who put themselves between an airbase and a threat is immense, and unwavering.' â" Air Vice-Marshal Harvey Reynolds AM, Air Commander Australia

Aircraft are formidable in the sky â" but on the ground, they are fragile concentrations of national investment. The defence of those aircraft, and the airfields from which they operate, has shaped the RAAF's operational effectiveness in ways that have rarely been examined â" until now.

Defending the Nest traces RAAF airfield defence from the Serviceâs formation in 1921 to the end of the Vietnam War. Drawing on extensive archival research and firsthand accounts, Sean Carwardine reveals a recurring institutional cycle: crisis prompts improvisation, improvisation generates specialist capability â" and then, once the threat recedes, that capability is dismantled, diluted and forgotten. Until the next attack.

From the bombing of Darwin and jungle airstrips across the Pacific, to Cold War radar stations to the contested perimeters of South Vietnam, the men and women tasked with defending the nest served with courage, ingenuity and professionalism. Their stories have remained largely absent from official histories. This book restores their voices.

Former Airfield Defence Guard and the author of the first doctoral study devoted to the subject, Carwardine uncovers themes that are not merely historical. Complacency, bureaucratic inertia, unclear priorities, cultural friction and the vital relationship between purpose and morale â" they endure.

As global conflicts once again expose the vulnerability of air bases to ground attack, Defending the Nest carries urgent contemporary weight.

Some lessons are simply too costly to relearn.

'Should now become required reading for many scholar researching RAAF organisation and command.' â" Michael Molkentin, historian of armed conflict