MAKING AIRMEN-GUNNERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 247, 6 July 1918, Page 10

MAKING AIRMEN-GUNNERS

SJCY-Fl OUTERS AT SCHOOL, (By W.P., in the "Daily Mail-.") "iS'ow you, sir, please come and toll the squad all you know about Hie care- and clenning of the Vickers gun," says (ho sergeant-instructor. An officer gets up from his Boat on tho wooden form, stands by the U-inod-wounted gun, and begins to talk. The sergeant ia at his side in the capacity of prompter and critic. All around other sergeants avul other officers, cadets, or non-commissioned officers are doing tho I Pamo tiling. Half-a-dozen little lectures are going on in tho hangar; half-a-dozen litth squads are "examining aerial gun. nery." In one corner observers are firing off round after round of imaginary ammunition _at model linn flying machines, I pausing to clear prepared stoppages or | get their gun into action again. In another corner cadets are stripping and assembling guns; everywhere work i« in full swing and tho talk is of firing in tho air or of bombs. Only a few months old, and by no means completed yet, this 6chool of armament is already setting tho standard of gunnery and bombing in the Royal Air Force. It is Hie official "university" of the Forco in this re- I 6peet, the graduating-place of all whoso , business it is to fight the Hun in the air or bomb him, and also of those chosen to instruct in these matters. t Tlio instructors qualifying, both commissioned and noncommissioned, are drawn from all sources and are mostly "crocks." There are pilots and observers who have crashed and who are no longer fit for flying, men from the Navy and men from the Army, second J ien tenants and majors, chief .petty officers and corporals. Chevrons abound; medal ribbons are quite common j the red, white, and blue of the Mons Star is in most of the squads. Already, with the administrative officers who "run" the non-technical side of things, the strength of this new university of aerial gunnery amounts to many hundred, and soon it is expected to be three times as great. Gunnery and bombing are to be of supreme importnneu in the Royal Air Force. It is no good sending up bombs if the pilot and observer do not properly understand bombing. It is useless having gnns if the men in the machine do not know howto use them or the men on the ground do not know bow to prepare them. The days when armament and the proper understanding of it in the air were of secondary importance nrc Armament is now as important as engines. The system of teaching is splendidly thought" nut. Demonstration, explanation, imitation, interrogation—these are tho never-varying principles of it. Evenseparate bit of mechani3m, every movement, is so dealt with that the whole working of gun or bomb is at last laid bare in such a way that anyone with the least mechanic bent must grasp its mys- . teries and become more or less expert. In a: fortnight a person with but tho 'vaguest ideas on machine-guns can discourse quite learnedly on the Lewis orthe Vickers; in another fortnight he may know every kind of bomb dropped from the air and how each one "works." In seven weeks he can qualify as a gunnery instructor or an armament officer. Evsn a year ago such speedy specialised training would have been considered impossible. And not only must all who have to do with armament in the R.A.F. pass their tests at this remarkable new university, but henceforth every gun to be used in the air must "prove" itself here. All day long the rattle of machine-gun fire goes on. On the ranges instructors are'putting squad after squad through their tests; in the gun-testing section, accommodated in the grounds of what used to" be a pretty private park, gun "candidates" for the Air Force are being tried out. Altogether, about half a million rounds are fired off every week in tests.