AIR FORCE EXPANSION

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20825, 2 July 1942, Page 2

AIR FORCE EXPANSION

INCREASE IN STRENGTH MACHINES & BOMB POWER The Royal New Zealand Air Force now has seven times as many air squadrons, as distinct from training schools, as it had when Japan, entered the war seven months age* * said Air Commodore R. V. Goddard, C.8.E., R.A.F., Chief of the Air Staff, in an address ir. Auckland. It can also carry into the air 10 times the weight of bombs it could lift last December and 16 times as many guns. A.t the beginning of the war with Japan, New Zealand still had few air squadrons. Until then, they had been needed in New Zealand only to search out and destroy Axis submarines and raiders which, at the worst, were unlikely to come within range more than once in' a while. Since then, considerable events in the matter of air power had been happening in New Zealand. But, he emphasised: “If you find .these facts satisfactory, please do not suppose that I am feeling satisfied. Nothing of the kind; there is a lot to be done yet. / “I have given these figures,” added Air Cotnuiodoife Goddard later, “partly to show that by no means all the airmen we are .training hete are going overseas; partly to show that your Air Force has not been letting the grass grow under its feet. “In recent times many of you must have come to recognise the sonorous roar of high-speed, modern machines over your cities,” he said. “When all our squadrons are modernly equipped, I trust we shall have moved out of .this dim period of defence.”