FAILURE TO ENROL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 198, 21 August 1943, Page 7

FAILURE TO ENROL

YOUTHS REACHING EIGHTEEN

Stating that there was reason to believe that a number of youths who had reached 18 years of age had failed to enrol under the National Service Emergency Regulations, the Minister of National Service, Mr. McLagan, has issued a warning to both youths and those employing them, as it is an offence not to enrol and also an offence to employ a person who is not enrolled. Proceedings would be taken against the youths and employers in cases of continued default, stated the Minister.

the same direction as the sun—the length of daylight that day was artificially extended for them by two hours. They actually had 14i hours of daylight.

At one of the stations where they stopped to refuel the commander of the fighter squadron there told them that their arrival meant that the station would be bombed that night. Whenever a big plane came in there, he said, the Japs, seemed to stage a raid . . . apparently they thought it meant the arrival of some important personages. Checking later, the crew found that that station was raided that night! But they were then well on their way. At another Pacific station, where normally they would have stopped, they were given permission by radio to proceed. "Good luck. . . . When are you going to stop?" they are asked. Dirty Weather Landing Most of the time they had a slight tail wind, and average to good weather, but they encountered four spells of bad weather (."fronts" in the aviation term). At the height they were travelling they avoided most of it, but they were in for a bad spell over the last 50 miles. It was a night landing that had to be made, and bad weather had come up only two hours before. So bad was it that all flying at their destination station had been cancelled that evening. There was thick cloud down to 200 ft and 300 ft, and steady rain. Visibility ranged from 200 yards to half a mile. It took them a quarter

of an hour to land, as they could not get low enough to see the runway on which they had been directed to "land. Eventually the captain took the craft out to" sea again, and searched for a landmark which he knew from previous flights was in line with the runway. He found it and was able to make a successful and uneventful landing. Previous to that they had had a call from the directing tower . . . "Swell show." The take-off had been im the dark, and there had been one landing in the dawn. The other two landings were both in the dark. The navigation was entirely astronomical. It Was "Team Show" When he was asked about the flight the captain paid a tribute to his crew. It was a "team show," he said, made possible because of the versatility of the crew. Each of them in turn was able to take a sleep. The navigator was a qualified wireless operator and was abie to relieve the W.O.A.G. the flight-engineer was able to relie\ 2 the second pilot, and the captain was able to replace the navigator, the second pilot taking his place. Even the navigation was a team job. The navigator took the "shots," the W.O.A.G. noted the times, and the captain worked out the positions. By this system the navigator was able to take a large number of "shots," and the time of working out position was reduced by about half.