AIR FORCE TRAINING

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26122, 26 May 1950, Page 5

AIR FORCE TRAINING

Sir, —We hear a lot of the Army side of the compulsory military training scheme, but what of the Air Force? What is being done to build it up? An army is useless against an organised air attack and practically useless without a strong air cover, as modern warfare has shown us. Apparently from the vague Ministerial statements regarding this scheme the Army is to use the bulk of the £17.000.000 of the taxpayers’ money for its needs. Surely the lessons of the last war have been driven home to the defence authorities by now. Or are we to be caught like Britain was in 1940 with a standing army 150.000 strong, but with outdated equipment and a pitifully small supporting air force?—Yours, etc., M. May 11, 1950. [The Minister of Defence (Mr T. L. Macdonald) says in reply to this letter: “The Compulsory Military Training Act provides that all youths on reaching the age of 18 must register for military training and allows the individual youth a choice of serving in the Navy, Army or Air Force, providing always that, in the case of the Navy and Air Force, vacancies exist in the establishments of these two services. Any youth who may choose to serve in the Navv or Air Force, but who cannot be accepted by either of those two services, has no alternative but to serve in the Army for the period of his C.M.T. obligation. The size of any forces which New Zealand may raise in time of war is related to the manpower available; and as the smallest Army formation is the division, the majority of the available manpower must therefore be available to the Army if the division is to be self-contained and effective and to maintain its national identity. On the other hand, both the Navy and Air Force find it possible to design functional operational units and formations numerically much smaller than the Army, and the training of their reserves is therefore in proportion to their planned initial requirements in manpower.”!