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Frank Headlam

commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (1914-1976)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ14832302 ↗
Source-derived summary

Air Vice Marshal Frank Headlam, (15 July 1914 – 23 December 1976) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born and educated in Tasmania, he joined the RAAF as an air cadet in January 1934. He specialised in flying instruction and navigation before the outbreak of World War II. In April 1941, he became commanding officer of No. 2 Squadron, which operated Lockheed Hudsons. The squadron was deployed to Dutch Timor in December, and saw action against Japanese forces in the South West Pacific. After returning to Australia in February 1942, Headlam held staff appointments and training commands, finishing the war a group captain.

Headlam served as Officer Commanding North-Western Area in 1946, and as Director of Training from 1947 to 1950. In 1950–51, during the Malayan Emergency, he was stationed at Singapore as commander of No. 90 (Composite) Wing and, later, RAF Tengah. He twice served as acting Air Member for Personnel, in 1957 and 1959–60, receiving appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1958.

Editorial summary

“Frank Headlam” enters the record as commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (1914-1976). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frank, Headlam and commander can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914, 1976, 1934, 1941—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1914-07-15. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Frank, Headlam and commander.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Frank Headlam” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Frank, Headlam and commander provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14832302. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1976, 1934 and 1941.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Frank Headlam”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Frank Headlam primary sources, Frank Headlam archive and Frank research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Frank Headlam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.