page_title: Morotai Mutiny
hierarchical_section_title: Morotai Mutiny
caption_attribution_description: AWM caption: Morotai Island, Halmahera Islands, Netherlands East Indies. 1945-01-08. Two of the most colourful personalities in the RAAF are now serving together. Air Commodore A. H. Cobby OBE DSO DFC and 2 BARS GM of Brighton, VIC (left), who is now Air Officer Commanding, First Tactical Air Force RAAF, and with a "bag" of 29 enemy aircraft and a number of balloons was top scorer of the Australian Flying Corps in World War 1, now has as his fighter chief 398 Group Captain Clive R. (Killer) Caldwell DSO DFC and BAR, Polish Cross of Valour, of Illabo, NSW, who is credited with destruction of 27 1/2 German, Italian and Japanese aircraft.
context_page_description: The "Morotai Mutiny" was an incident in April 1945 involving members of the Australian First Tactical Air Force based on the island of Morotai, in the Dutch East Indies. Eight senior pilots, including Australia's leading flying ace, Group Captain Clive Caldwell, tendered their resignations to protest what they perceived as the relegation of Royal Australian Air Force fighter squadrons to strategically unimportant ground attack missions against Japanese positions that had been bypassed in the Allies' "island-hopping" campaign. A government investigation vindicated the "mutineers", and three high-ranking officers at First Tactical Air Force Headquarters, including the commander, Air Commodore Harry Cobby, the Australian Flying Corps' top-scoring ace during World War I, were relieved of their posts.
  George Odgers summed up the cause of the incident in the official history of the RAAF in World War II as "the conviction of a group of young leaders that they were engaging in operations that were not militarily justifiable—a conviction widely shared also by many Australian soldiers and political leaders."
context_section_description: The "Morotai Mutiny" was an incident in April 1945 involving members of the Australian First Tactical Air Force based on the island of Morotai, in the Dutch East Indies. Eight senior pilots, including Australia's leading flying ace, Group Captain Clive Caldwell, tendered their resignations to protest what they perceived as the relegation of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighter squadrons to strategically unimportant ground attack missions against Japanese positions that had been bypassed in the Allies' "island-hopping" campaign. A government investigation vindicated the "mutineers", and three high-ranking officers at First Tactical Air Force Headquarters, including the commander, Air Commodore Harry Cobby, the Australian Flying Corps' top-scoring ace during World War I, were relieved of their posts.
  George Odgers summed up the cause of the incident in the official history of the RAAF in World War II as "the conviction of a group of young leaders that they were engaging in operations that were not militarily justifiable—a conviction widely shared also by many Australian soldiers and political leaders." Odgers concluded that the ensuing inquiry "made it clear that almost everyone concerned acted from the highest motives, and was convinced that, in the crisis, he acted wisely".
caption: Air Commodore Cobby (left) and Group Captain Caldwell at Morotai in January 1945
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