Oswald Watt - Post-war Career and Legacy

Post-war Career and Legacy

Watt was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1919, in recognition of his war service. He returned to Australia on 6 May with the rest of 1st Training Wing's personnel, aboard the troopship Kaisar-i-Hind, on which he was the ranking officer. Leaving the AFC soon afterwards, he was elected president of the New South Wales section of the Australian Aero Club. He also served as senior delegate on a committee of veteran military pilots examining applications for appointment to a proposed independent Australian air service. Watt was esteemed as a man who did not forget old comrades, providing former AFC members with financial aid and helping them re-establish themselves in civilian life. He maintained an interest in commercial flying but refused an offer to take up the position of controller of civil aviation in 1920 due to his business interests, which included partnership in the family shipping firm of Gilchrist, Watt & Sanderson Ltd, and directorships of mining, rubber, and art corporations. He also turned down invitations to stand for parliament, and to join the fledgling Royal Australian Air Force.

Oswald Watt drowned at Bilgola Beach, near Newport, New South Wales, on 21 May 1921. Cuts and bruising on his body indicated that he had slipped on rocks, struck his head, and rolled unconscious into relatively shallow water. Survived by his son, he was accorded a military funeral two days later at St Jude's Church, Randwick. Members of the AFC, Royal Air Force, and Australian Aero Club formed a guard of honour at the service, one of the largest in the suburb's history, which also included representatives of the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Army. Among the tributes was a floral wreath from an anonymous group of French admirers, and another that was dropped by parachute from a low-flying plane. On 31 May, Watt's body was cremated and his ashes interred in the family vault at St Jude's.

In his will, Watt left two bequests to the Australian Aero Club, one of which was used to establish the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for outstanding achievement in Australian aviation. Winners of the award have included Charles Kingsford Smith, Bert Hinkler, Henry Millicer, Ivor McIntyre, Jon Johanson and Andy Thomas. He also bequeathed a sum to the Royal Military College, Duntroon, to award annually a set of binoculars for the best cadet essay on military aviation or aeronautics. The award was founded as the Oswald Watt Prize later in 1921. Most of the residue of Watt's estate went to the University of Sydney. Considered one of the university's great benefactors, he was commemorated by the Oswald Watt Fund. In May 1923, the Oswald Watt Wing of the Havilah Home for Orphans, Wahroonga, was opened by the Governor-General of Australia. Watt was acknowledged as both a source and a reviewer by F.M. Cutlack in the latter's volume on the Australian Flying Corps that was first published in 1923 as part of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. During World War I, Oswald Watt had been the only AFC officer to command a wing apart from Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, who was later to become known as the "Father of the RAAF". In 2001, military historian Alan Stephens noted that "had fate drawn him to a post-war career in the Air Force instead of to business and an untimely death, 'Toby' Watt might have challenged Richard Williams as the RAAF's dominant figure in its formative years".