Air Force Will Select Recruits For Training In Britain

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 98, 20 September 1950, Page 3

Air Force Will Select Recruits For Training In Britain

Details of the scheme for giving New Zealand youths specialist training with the Royal Air Force have been announced by the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Twenty youths aged 16 or 17 next February i will be enlisted, but exceptional applicants aged up to 171 may be accepted. The course will last four years.

They will be apprenticed as airframe, armament, instrument, ground radio, air radio and electrical fitters. After about a month’s training in New Zealand they will leave for Britain early next year. There they will spend three years at either the No. 1 School of Technical Training, Halton, or the No. 1 Radio School, Cranwell. This period will be followed by a year’s employment on productive work, which will be supervised and organised to provide a wide field of practical and theoretical experience.

Pay rates will range from 6s 4d a day on enlistment (7s 7d a day after six months’ satisfactory service) to 27s lOd a day and allowances for warrant officers. A gratuity of £32 10s a year will be paid those serving for 12 years and a retiring allowance will be available after a minimum of 20 years’ service during which contributions are made to the superannuation fund. Provision will be made for the well-being of the trainees while they are off duty as well as on duty. Applications will close on October 31 at the Air Force recruiting office in the four main centres.