SPEEDED UP

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 121, 18 November 1940, Page 5

SPEEDED UP

EMPIRE AIR PLAN

SCHOOLS IN CANADA

MACHINES FROM THE U.S.A.

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, October 20.

The Empire Air Plan has been speeded ■up and radically modified since its inception nine months ago. Originally designed for a long war, each candi date was to receive eight months' training, whether as pilot, gunner, or observer. Almost two months have been taken off the period of training by allowing candidates to specialise earlier in their courses. It is believed that the period- may be further reduced, and that trainees may go overseas after four months' topping-off in Canada.

The number of schools to be in use shortly has been increased from eighteen to twe .ty-five, with an eventual goal of seventy. By next spring nearly all the aerodromes, barracks, and school buildings necessary for the plan will have been completed, whereas the original intention was to reach this stage only in 1942. As a result of the collapse of France, the British authorities ceased' sending planes and instructors. Long before the announcement of the Canadian-American joint defence scheme, the Empire Air Plan had been, to a large degree, co-ordinated with the production facilities of the United States. ,

Within the next three months, 3000 Canadian airmen, trained under the plan, will be at the disposal of the Royal Air Force. This number will be immediately augmented by trainees from Great Britain, who are here already and from Australia and New Zealand. It was announced last month that 172 United States aviators, nearly all of whom have had flying experience, are now in the Royal Canadian Air Force. They refer to themselves as the "Royal North American Air Force." Many of them were transport pilots, and are crack flyers who need little in the way- of training to make them efficient fighter pilots. Hundreds more are on the lists, waiting to be absorbed. For elementary flying instruction. Fleets and De Havilland Moths are used. Both are being fitted with American engines. For basic training. a modified Avro-Anson two-engine monoplane is now being manufactured in Canada, instead of being procured, as originally intended, from Great Britain, and is powered with an American engine. American-made Harvard training planes, which had been ordered in the United States by France, have also been taken over. Douglas bomb ers and Lockheed Hudsofis are being bought, . and the huge PBYs, made by the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation (United States), will eventually replace the Stranraer flying-boats now being used for sea patrol purposes. Flyers are enthusiastic about the performance of the American planes. Of one fighter type, a British instructor remarked, after a test, "She climbs like « homesick angeL" ,