Summary

Family circumstances dictated that Alan Reed leave school before his sixteenth birthday. He was employed in a Chartered Accountants office until 'called up' for National Service Training in the RAAF. Becoming airborne for the first time in a Dakota DC3 changed his life forever and he applied for and was accepted by the RAAF as a Trainee Pilot. Graduating as a Sergeant in 1954 he progressed through the ranks completing his career as an Air Vice Marshall leading RAAF Support Command, an organisation of more that twelve thousand people: one of Australia's largest institutions at the time.