page_title: Royal Australian Army Dental Corps
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Australian Army Dental Corps / History / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: An Australian dental team working on a patient during the Siege of Tobruk, 1941
context_page_description: The Royal Australian Army Dental Corps is a corps within the Australian Army. It was formed on 23 April 1943 during World War II as the Australian Army Dental Corps, before being granted the 'Royal' prefix in 1948. Prior to its formation dentists were part of the Australian Army Medical Corps. The role of the RAADC is to provide dental care to army personnel in order to minimise the requirement for the evacuation of dental casualties, to conserve manpower and to reduce the burden of casualty evacuation. In the post-war years, the corps has provided personnel to deployments in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. It has also contributed to peace-keeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Bougainville and East Timor.
context_section_description: Following the outbreak of World War II, the small number of full-time dental personnel were augmented by Militia officers and civilian volunteers. Although early enlistment was low, as part of the mobilisation process, in October 1939 provision was made for the establishment of dental units consisting of one dental officer, two dental mechanics and one clerk orderly, who were to be placed within three field ambulances, one casualty clearing station, two general hospitals and one convalescent depot. Initially, dental equipment and supplies were insufficient for the tasks required, with a single division requiring an estimated 50,000 fillings, 40,000 extractions and 10,000 dentures, however, personnel managed to overcome this through the acquisition of stores from local areas.
  On 23 April 1943, authorisation was given for the service to split from the Medical Corps and for the formation of a separate corps known as the Australian Army Dental Corps.  Upon the new corps' establishment, it was assigned a "burnt orange" hexagonal colour patch, however, this was later changed to a rectangular shape in November 1945. By 1944, the corps consisted of 435 dentists. Throughout the war, dental units were deployed alongside fighting troops into all theatres of operation in which Australians were deployed, including the Middle East and the Pacific, where they provided emergency treatment as close to the front line as possible, taking part in beach landings and also trekking overland on the Kokoda Track during the New Guinea campaign. On occasions dental supplies were dropped by parachute to forward units in the field. Within the operational setting the focus was almost exclusively on emergency treatment, however, and routine or preventative work was undertaken "only when the situation allowed".
  By October 1945, the corps had personnel spread across the gamut of organisational structures within the Army, including at formation, corps, line of communication, base and depot levels. Dental officers were also placed on the hospital ships, Manunda and Wanganella. Following the end of the war, the corps was slowly reduced as the demobilisation process took place, however, their status as service troops meant that they were retained for longer as there was a requirement for demobilising soldiers from other corps to receive dental treatment prior to discharge. A number of advances in clinical practice occurred during the conflict, with the development of acrylic resin for the manufacture of dentures, the involvement of dental surgeons in facio-maxillary surgery as part of the treatment of soldiers suffering from facial trauma—including plastic surgery and the fitting of moulds for epithelial inlays and skin and bone grafts—as well as developments in the manufacture of artificial eyes.
caption: An Australian dental team works on a patient during the Siege of Tobruk, 1941.
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