EMPIRE AIR SCHEME

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 October 1939, Page 8

EMPIRE AIR SCHEME

EARLY OPERATION PLANNED [BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYKIGHT.] OTTAWA, October 15. Lord Riverdale, the leader of the British Air Mission, which arrived yesterday, will control the Empire air training scheme. It is expected that the participating Governments will pay Canada for the training of airmen. It is hoped that the scheme will be in operation within a month. The peak output will be 25,000 to 30,000 pilots, observers, air-gunners, and radio operators a year. Already the scheme has had a tremendous psychological effect on the Germans, who visualise the prospect of the German forces weakening, while the British are continually being strengthened. The Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand airmen are the world’s best fighters,- and they will like to get their own squadrons. PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT. LONDON, October 16. Discussing, at a gathering of Dominion journalists, the possible course of events in the war, a high authority said that the Dominions’ reaction to the immense air-training scheme had greatly gratified the British authorities. It was difficult to exaggerate the psychological effect of the scheme on the Germans. It was comparable in effect in the last war of their knowledge that waves of American soldiers were joining the Allies’ ranks. They were unable to do anything. It was just the same as now, with Dominion airmen coming from a place where Germany was unable to impede the development of this vast air potential.