APPOINTED TO AIR DEPARTMENT

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27368, 5 June 1954, Page 8

APPOINTED TO AIR DEPARTMENT

POSTING OF SQUADRON LEADER A. L. PARTELOW

Squadron Leader A. L. Partelow, A-NLBrit LR.E., for three years officer commanding No. 2 Trade Training School at the Royal New Zealand Air Force, Wigram, has been posted to the Directorate of Radio Engineering within the directorate of Technical Services at Air Department, Wellington.

Bom at Waihi on November 25, 1911, and educated at the Auckland Grammar School, Squadron Leader Partelow joined the New Zealand Permanent Air Force iri 1930 and became the first wireless operator in the service. “In those days I was doing a lot of flying and we had to borrow men from the Navy to operate ground equipment” That was in 1937, the year that the Air Force as such was formed. In that year the first signals officer was appointed from the United Kingdom on loan from the Royal Air Force, an officer by the name of Bill Grundy. After a course at the Electrical and Wireless School of the Royal Air Force at Cranwell, Squadron Leader Partelow returned to New Zealand in 1939 to be commissioned as a signals officer. For the war he became chief signals officer for the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the Pacific and then, in 1946, was appointed Deputy Director of Signals. He was granted a permanent commission in the signals branch in 1947. By 1948 he was back in London as signals representative on the New Zealand Joint Services Liaison Staff. He returned to New Zealand in 1950 and shortly afterwards was posted to Wigram. During his residence in Christchurch Squadron Leader Partelow has been a

Srominent member of the Christchurch ranch of the New Zealand Electronics Institute. He was bidden farewell by branch members at the recent annual meeting of the institute.