page_title: John Wilton (general)
section_title: Joint defence aspirations
hierarchical_section_title: John Wilton (general) / Post-war career / Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee / Joint defence aspirations
caption_attribution_description: During his visit to South Vietnam, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General (Lt Gen) Sir John Wilton, visited the RAAF Contingent Headquarters at Vung Tau. He was accompanied by the Commander of Australian Armed Forces, Vietnam, Major General (Maj Gen) Kenneth MacKay and the Officer Commanding RAAF Contingent Vung Tau, 33113 Group Captain (Gp Capt) Peter Frank Raw, of Ipswich, Qld, on the tour of the Air Force installations at the Vung Tau airfield. After his visit to Vung Tau, a No 9 Squadron, RAAF, Iroquois B Model helicopter flew Lt Gen Sir John Wilton to the Free World Headquarters of the Allied Forces in Saigon. Here, Gp Capt Raw (left), Maj Gen MacKay (centre) and Lt Gen Sir John Wilton (right) are at Vung Tau Airfield prior to leaving by RAAF helicopter to Saigon.
context_page_description: General Sir John Gordon Noel Wilton, KBE, CB, DSO was a senior commander in the Australian Army. He served as Chief of the General Staff, the Army's professional head, from 1963 until 1966, and as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, forerunner of the role of Australia's Chief of the Defence Force, from 1966 until 1970. His eight-year tenure as senior officer of first the Army and then the Australian military spanned almost the entire period of the nation's involvement in the Vietnam War.
  Born in Sydney, Wilton entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1927. Owing to lack of opportunity in the Australian military at the time, he took a commission in the British Army following his graduation in 1930. He spent most of the remainder of the decade with the Royal Artillery in India. Wilton returned to Australia on the eve of World War II and was commissioned into the Royal Australian Artillery. He saw action with the 7th Division in Syria and the 3rd Division in New Guinea, earning a mention in despatches in the former campaign and the Distinguished Service Order in the latter.
context_section_description: Wilton's position as CCOSC had no statutory authority over the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force, nor a direct line of command to Australian Forces Vietnam. David Horner noted that in an emergency, Wilton "had to issue directives and then seek retrospective endorsement of them by either the minister or the Chiefs of Staff Committee." According to historian Eric Andrews, Wilton "chaffed over his lack of command over the services and the need for organisational reform". While CGS, he had joined Scherger in calling for a single Australian Defence Force organisation with one Minister of Defence, in contrast to the existing arrangement where each service operated with virtual autonomy, supported by its own minister and department.  In July 1967, he became a member of the Tertiary Education (Services' Cadet Colleges) Committee to plan a tri-service military academy, which was eventually opened as the Australian Defence Force Academy in 1986. He was also able to push through a plan to establish, in 1970, the Joint Intelligence Organisation to replace the former Joint Intelligence Bureau and three single-service intelligence groups.
  In 1967, and again in 1970, Wilton recommended the creation of a single Defence Board of Administration, consisting of the Defence Minister, the Defence Secretary, CCOSC, and the three service chiefs, to take over the functions of the Air, Military, and Naval Boards, along with those of their separate ministers. While nothing came of this at the time, Wilton was consulted by the Labor Party prior to its reorganisation of the Defence Department, which it commenced soon after defeating the Liberals in the December 1972 Federal election. The following year, the single-service ministries were abolished in favour of an all-encompassing Department of Defence; by 1984, the CCOSC position had evolved to become the Chief of the Defence Force, directly commanding all three armed services through their respective chiefs.
caption: Lieutenant General Wilton as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, with Group Captain Peter Raw (left) and Major General Kenneth MacKay (centre) at Vung Tau Airfield, South Vietnam, in 1966
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