Australian Military Units

Captain George Hubert Wilkins, MC & Bar

Date of birth  1888-10-31  Mount Bryan East, SA. 
Other  1905  Studied engineering at the Adelaide University and South Australian School of Mines. 
Other  1908  Moved to England to work for the Gaumont Film Company as a 'cinematographic cameraman'. 
Other  1910  Learned to fly with the help of English pilot Claude Grahame-White. 
Other  1912  He left England to report on the Balkan War, becoming the first person to take motion pictures in the front line of a war zone. 
Other  1913 - 1916  He accepted a place on a Canadian Arctic expedition. 
Date and unit at enlistment (ORs)  1917-05-01  Enlisted in the Australian Flying Corps but was prevented from operational flying because of colour blindness. 
Other  1917-07  Was appointed as an official photographer with the AIF and reached the Western Front in time to photograph the Australians during the Passchendaele campaign. 
Other  1918  Now a captain, he was given command of No. 3 Photographic Sub-Section of the Australian War Records unit. 
Date of honour or award  1918-06-03  Military Cross (MC) for helping wounded under fire. He is the only Australian official photographer to have been decorated. 
Other  1919  Entered the Australian to England Air Race, but ended the race on Crete where he crashed into a fence. 
Other  1919-01  Wilkins travelled to the Gallipoli Peninsula as a photographer with the Australian Historical Mission under the official historian, Charles Bean. 
Date of honour or award  1919-06-03  Gazetted Bar to Military Cross for leading a group of inexperienced American soldiers through a dangerous action. 
Date of discharge  1920-09-07  Appointment with the AIF ended. 
Other  1921 - 1922  Chief of the scientific staff and naturalist for the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition. 
Other  1923 - 1925  Commander of the Wilkins Australia and Islands Expedition, which was commissioned by the British Museum of Natural History to collect specimens of animals native to tropical northeastern Australia. 
Other  1926 - 1928  Commander of the Wilkins-Detroit Arctic Expeditions, during which Wilkins developed the first ski-landing gear for aircraft. 
Other  1927-03  With pilot Ben Eielson, forced to crash land airplane in the Arctic. 
Date of honour or award  1928-06-04  Created Knight Bachelor for his services to aviation and exploration. 
Other  1928-12-20  Wilkins and Eielson make the first 600 mile aerial reconnaissance flight over the Antarctic. 
Other  1929-01  Explored the Antarctic by air. 
Other  1931  He unsuccessfully attempted to take a First World War submarine, the Nautilus, under the Arctic ice to the North Pole. 
Other  1933  First of three expeditions to the Antarctic as second in command of the Ellsworth Arctic Expeditions. Wilkins was in charge of bases and the base ship Wyatt Earp. 
Other  1934 - 1935  Second expedition to the Antarctic as Ellsworth?s second in command. 
Other  1937  In charge of the Alaskan-Canadian search for the lost Soviet Polar Expedition, commanded by Sigismund Levanevsky. 
Other  1940 - 1941  Sent to Europe and Far East on special missions for the United States government. 
Other  1942 - 1958  Consultant for United States military, primarily in the areas of hot and cold weather clothing and survival techniques. 
Date of death  1958-11-30  Framingham, Massachusetts. 
Date of burial  1959-03-17  Nuclear submarine, USS Skate surfaced at North Pole and the american crew scattered Wilkins' ashes over the ice.