Air Vice Marshal Stanley James (Jimmy) Goble, CBE, DSO, DSC (21 August 1891 – 24 July 1948) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He served three terms as Chief of the Air Staff, alternating with Wing Commander (later Air Marshal Sir) Richard Williams. Goble came to national attention in 1924 when he and fellow RAAF pilot Ivor McIntyre became the first men to circumnavigate Australia by air, journeying in a single-engined floatplane. During World War I, Goble flew fighters on the Western Front with the British Royal Naval Air Service. He became an ace with ten victories, commanded No. 5 Squadron (later No. 205 Squadron RAF), and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Service Cross. Returning to Australia, Goble assisted in the formation of the RAAF as an independent branch of the Australian armed forces. On an exchange posting to Britain in the 1930s, he led No. 2 (Bomber) Group RAF. As Chief of the Air Staff at the onset of World War II, Goble clashed with the Federal Government over implementation of the Empire Air Training Scheme, which he believed would be detrimental to the defence of Australia. He stepped down as leader of the RAAF in early 1940, and spent the rest of the war in Ottawa as Air Liaison Officer to Canada. Goble died in 1948 at the age of fifty-six, two years after retiring from the military. Early career Born in Croydon, Victoria, Stanley James Goble was one of four sons to an Australian father, George, and an English mother, Ann. He apparently received little schooling, and began his working life as a clerk with the Victorian Railways at the age of sixteen. By twenty-three he was, like his father, a stationmaster, and a footballer with Brunswick in the Victorian Football Association. Goble was prevented from joining the Australian Imperial Force at the beginning of World War I after failing the stringent medical criteria; he wrote later that "only applicants of the finest physiques were considered suitable for the first contingent of Australian troops". With his three brothers already on active service, he decided to travel to England at his own expense and enlist in the British armed forces. World War I Goble was accepted for flying training with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in July 1915. After graduating as a flight sub-lieutenant on 20 October 1915,