How a flat tyre helped get our flying padre service off the ground

deansimpson7
Sep 15
2 min read

A clipping from a 1945 edition of the War Cry telling the story of how The Salvation Army acquired its first plane for the outback flying service.

BY BARRY GITTINS

Serendipity is defined as the occurrence of things that make you happy and benefit you. Christians, Jews, Muslims and Zoroastrians, etc., folks who historically have been described as ‘People of the Book’, tend to see serendipity more sharply as the hand of providence, dishing out God’s blessings.

However you define it, Salvos can be grateful for what other folks might dismiss as a coincidence – an accident – that helped lead to the start of the Salvos’ flying padre service.

It all started with a leaking tyre that needed attention.

It was early 1945, and Commissioner W.R. Dalziel, Territorial Commander of the Australia Southern Territory, was having a punctured tyre fixed.

A wealthy woman happened by and asked, “Are you in need of anything in particular?” “I’d like an aeroplane,” joked the commissioner, adding that The Salvation Army “could use it well around the north, where the men are so scattered.”

For some time, it turns out, the commissioner had been corresponding with a young Salvation Army officer and pilot by the name of Vic Pedersen.

At the outbreak of World War Two, Vic had joined the Royal Australian Air Force and became a qualified pilot. As the Army’s Red Shield Representative (Sallyman) with the RAAF Operational Base Unit, based in Truscott, Western Australia, Vic had served as the unofficial chaplain.

Commissioner Dalziel films Captain Vic Pedersen and the new plane ready for service.

But back to that punctured tyre and the wealthy woman … On the spot, the socialite promised to pay for the plane (costing at least a thousand pounds).

And who, you might say, was this generous socialite? It was Mrs J Fitzgerald, head of a women’s auxiliary called ‘Red Shield Units of Service’.

The auxiliary was seeking a new fundraising project for The Salvation Army’s war work. Commissioner Dalziel’s suggestion of an aircraft to more easily facilitate contact with small groups of servicemen isolated in the north-west region of Australia spurred Mrs Fitzgerald and her ladies into action.

Hence, The Salvation Army Flying Padre Service was born, with Captain Vic Pedersen serving as the first aviator in that role, with an ex-RAAF Tiger Moth.

“With every display of confidence in the Red Shield activities of The Salvation Army,” the Army’s War Cry reported, “the RAAF has decided to service [the plane]. With the least amount of delay, the plane will be on its way to the wide North West. May God prosper the venture!”

God has indeed prospered the venture, with the service still going strong 80 years later.