NAVAL RESERVE EXERCISE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27472, 5 October 1954, Page 16

NAVAL RESERVE EXERCISE

SECOND OF SERIES HELD

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, October 4. New Zealand’s four Naval Volunteer Reserve Divisions will combine tonight in the second of a series of Dominionwide communications exercises. The Navy Office announced this today. If sufficient progress is made in this series it is hoped to broaden them by including overseas divisions so that New Zealand reservists may eventually exercise with their equivalents in the United Kingdom and such Commonwealth countries as Australia, Malaya, and Ceylon. In the first exercise of the series in September, the naval communications centre in Wellington transmitted to the four divisions at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, where communications ratings both received the messages and transmitted the replies. Tonight the Auckland division will conduct the exercise with the communications centre monitoring. The exercises are a result of changes in the methods by which the Navy trains its reservist communications ratings.. These'make it possible to bring reservists to a traffic speed of 18 words a minute—the minimum at which exercises can be held—during their period with the divisions. At present, the exercises are restricted to the communications sections of each division. Eventually, it is intended to broaden them until they include all departments.