War & conflict · People & lives

He kept RAAF aircraft airworthy — after jumping out of one first

Wackett spent 24 years as the RAAF's chief engineer, which sounds like a desk job until you learn how he began: he set up the air force's parachute training by throwing himself out of a military aircraft in 1926, Australia's first freefall descent. He started in the navy, switched services mid-course in Britain, and picked up a pilot's qualification before finishing his engineering degree. The career that followed was quietly structural — he built the Technical Branch into its own department and sat on the Air Board for a record seventeen years, shaping the standards that everyone else flew under.

His nickname "EC" existed to tell him apart from his brother "LJ" — Lawrence Wackett, the aircraft designer. A second nickname, "Punch", came from his chin and nose.

Read the whole of Ellis Wackett on Wikipedia

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