Features

Aircraft’s role in family’s history

Air Commodore Trevor Owen (r'td) is standing at the left of this group taken after the first six F-111s arrived at Amberley on June 1, 1973. The then Wing Commander was navigator on the lead aircraft piloted by then Group Captain Jake Newham who went on to become Chief of the Air Staff. Another pilot in this group, Wing Commander Ray Funnell (just left of cameraman) also became Chief of the Air Staff.

The Air Combat Group Chief-of-Staff, Group Captain Rick Owen.

By Richard Hogan

It’s not uncommon for sons and daughters to follow their parents into the services or even to follow their father as an aviator but the odds of a father and son both flying the same type of military aircraft are fairly remote.

Air Commodore Trevor Owen, now retired on the Gold Coast, and his son Group Captain Rick Owen have both had the honour of flying in F-111s and being part of Australian aviation history in the process.

AIRCDRE Owen was the navigator in the first F-111 aircraft to be ferried from the United States in 1973 and, 20 years later, his son was a navigator in the first of the newly acquired F-111G models to arrive in Australia in 1993.

To this day, they are still the only father-son combination to have flown F-111s during the 30 years since AIRCDRE Owen and his pilot at the time, Air Marshal John Newham, a retired former Chief of the Air Staff, touched down at Amberley with Australia’s first F-111 on June 1, 1973.

The Owen family’s link with Australian military aviation dates back to World War II when Rick’s grandfather, also named
Trevor, migrated from England in 1940 to work as a test flight engineer with the then Government Aircraft Factory.

There had been some unexplained crashes of Beaufort bombers in Australia and as Trevor Owen Snr settled his family in a new country and flew on Beaufort test flights he established the link with the Royal Australian Air Force.

When Trevor Owen Snr died in 1978 his son was flying F-111s and his grandson was on his navigator’s course.
Now Chief-of-Staff at the Air Combat Group, based at Williamtown, GPCPT Owen, recalls he had a day off from high school at Ipswich when his father and 11 other airmen landed the first six F-111s on Australian soil.

GPCAPT Owen went to James Cook University in Townsville before deciding to follow his father’s flightpath but he had no idea that he and pilot Flight Lieutenant Andy Seaton would be doing the same long distance ferry flight almost 20 years later.

Rick and his father also have other common links in their Air Force careers. Both flew the Canberra bomber before graduating to F-111s and both went on to become qualified navigator instructors.

And, as for continuing the family tradition, GPCAPT Owen’s son Jacob, 21, is also considering a career in the Air Force.
His 2m-plus height will probably preclude him from the cockpit but his dad says he is seriously thinking about being an air traffic controller. Perhaps another generation of the Owen family will be guiding F-111s sometime in the next 20 years, albeit in an advisory capacity.