AIR FORCE GOODS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 May 1944, Page 6

AIR FORCE GOODS

PILFERED IN AUSTRALIA. i ' SYDNEY, February 3. Condemning the pilfering of Air Force equipment, the official R.A.A.F. journal, “Wings,” discloses that £5OO worth of tools were missing when a •consignment intended for the maintenance of aircraft reached an 'Air Force station in Central Australia. Recently £3OO worth of equipment vanished from a stores depot. In another case 11 steel helmets, Dutch type, 'g?. rs hissed from a consignment.' At Alice Springs, 8,730. razor blades disappeared from a single consignment. Even belongings of dead airmen have been “souvenired” while rh transit from New Guinea and Darwin to base depots, causing great embarrassment to Air Force Headquarters and pain to relatives. . Large quantities of beer have vanished at Darwin before the troops could buy it. Other articles favoured by pilferers are shirts, shorts, tumblers, lamps, lamp wicks, water bags, brushes, combs, respirators, shoes and stockings. J “Wings” sums up the logic of the] souvenir hunter and pilferer in the ! words: “What does it matter? The: Government [jays for it. There is plenty*more where it came from. Another £125,000,000 Victory Loan will pay that off.” I The journal states that a good deal | of the looting is done by persons • in l the R.A.A.F. |