AIR DEFENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 127, 31 May 1937, Page 7

AIR DEFENCE.

CANADA'S PROPOSALS. £2,000,000 Base Planned for Pacific Coast. LINK WITH ANTIPODES. VANCOUVER, May 28. Canada has inaugurated an extensive programme of naval and especially air defence on the Pacific coast, and construction has already started at English Bay, on the west side of Vancouver city. Plans are in hand for the immediate expenditure of £2,000,000 in the construction of the most extensive air base on the Pacific, with the exception of San Diego. Fifty 'planes, half of them equipped as fighting craft, will be based here in the most ambitious military programme ever undertaken by this Dominion. Details of the scheme will not be announced until the return of the Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, from London, but it is assumed here that Canadian military experts are now working in conjunction with British builders who visualise something like a second Singapore base on this sTiore of the Pacific. It is known that an outlying air base will be established in the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are 400 miles nearer Japan and Alaska than is Vancouver. Two ships are to-day being outfitted at Vancouver for the greatest hydrographic work ever attempted in these waters. They will spend the next six months, making complete photographic maps of the entire British Columbia coast, from the United States boundary line to Alaska, mapping and charting the route in a manner never before attempted, while the United States is finishing the same sort of job with their coastline. Civil Works. Mr. Pattullo, Premier of British Columbia, recently announced the annexation of the Yukon by the British Columbia province, and there is a renewal of plans for the construction of a great highway across this province, and the Canadian and Yukon, joining the United States and Alaska. The Canadian Government this week announced that Major Don McLaren, D.5.0., has been appointed general manager of the trans-Canada Airlines. This service will be operated in connection with Canadian National Railways, and by the end of 1938 it will join Vancouver and Montreal with an overnight service of 200 m.p.h. twinengined 'planes. Beacons are being erected across the British Columbia mountains on the same system as is used in the United States Airlines. For a transatlantic service, test hops are scheduled for July between Newfoundland and Southampton. By 1939, transatlantic passengers will jump from Newfoundland to Vancouver within 30 hours, and the understanding here is that a connection for Australians may be worked out from Vancouver to I Honolulu, and then Honolulu to Sydney.