SUPPLIES BY AIR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21753, 30 June 1945, Page 6

SUPPLIES BY AIR

R.A.F. SERVICE IN BURMA

N.Z. SQUADRON’S RECORD

(It.N.Z.A.F. Official News Service) BURMA, June 27

Supply-dropping squadrons of the Royal Air Force can claim a tremendous share of the credit for the Allied successes in Burma. Few people realise that when the Japanese over-ran the Far East there were no roads and railways into Burma from India and everything went by sea. The 14th Army had to be supplied by dir and even eggs, an infrequent luxury, packed in ata, which is a kind of Indian flour which seals them if they crack, where flown in and dropped by parachute. A forward supply squadron in which Warranl Officer W. W. Gifford, of Napier, pilots a Dakota, in a recent month, flew more than 8,000.0001 b. of freight, 2131 passengers and 536 casualties. In nine months of operational flying, the squadron has carried 13,000 long tons of freight, 21,000 passengers and many casualties. The all-Dominion crew in which fly Warrant Officer J. F. Pirie, of Christchurch, and Flight Sergeant J. H. Stent, of Nelson, has put lip a record. It flew 190 operational hours in 24 days on February, an average of eight hours a day. Although Japanese fighters have been driven from the skies, the pilots have to face “flak” from concealed ground defences and perform heavy work in the jheat of low-level flying.