CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 63, 14 August 1944, Page 2

CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

TRAINING THE CONQUERORS. This is the first of a series of articles by Captain R. T. Miller, Official New Zealand War Correspondent, who has just returned to Britain from Canada after visiting schools and stations which form part of the British air training plan. The chief object of the tour was to nyeet New Zealand trainees and to tell them of the recent exploits of the Dominion Forces on the fighting fronts. Captain Miller is now engaged as liaison officer with New Zealand airmen in the United Kingdom. There is something in the nature of a bottleneck at the end of one of the most important assembly lines in the war production activities of the nations of the British Commonwealth. But it is a bottleneck that is gratifying rather than disturbing, for this assembly line uses men as its raw materials and turns themi out as pilots and air crews for the battle of Europe. Its rate of production is slowing down, and this is good news—because it is one way of saying we are winning the war against Germany and we are building ample reserves.

This is the production line with its famous name: British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. The name means much to New Zealand, since the Dominion is one of the four partners who established it and are paying the cost, and also, since the Dominion has contributed raw material to it in the form of more than 7000 of her young nym — by no means all, but a substantial part of her total overseas strength in the air. Roughly, half of our pilots are flying from bases in the United Kingdom, and nearly all our navigators, bombers, and wireless operator-airgunners are graduates of the plan. The great aircrew production line stretches all the way across Canada from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic. At full strength it was the network of more than 150 air schools and training stations, some of which are closing down this year. Its ten thousand training planes flew 2,000,000 miles a day. It drew young men in great numbers from almost every corner of the globe. Britons, Australians, New Zealanders, Belgians, Czechs, Dutchmen, Norwegians, Poles, and Americans joined the youth of Canada on their homp ground. Well over 100,000 of them have already gone out from its schools wearing wings that stamp them as men ready after a brief operation training period to fly against the enemy as pilots and aircrews.

It was partly to give them the news of our njen on the fighting fronts and partly to report back to New Zealand on what I saw that I have just travelled over 4000 miles through Canada from school to school where the New Zealanders are training. It was a fascinating journey. It opened up scenes and activities that would surely have brought envy and dismay to enemy eyes. It uncovered a picture of what has been called the aerodrome of democracy, the greatest single factor in the defeat of Germany and certainly one of the primary causes of the downfall of the Nazi air force.

We take the air training plan very much for granted now, but it has been an extraordinary feat of organisation and combined effort.

To those who understand its potentalitics it was an exciting dream in September, 1939, when a compion air training system was first proposed. The transition of the dream to reality, however, was too immense a task to be carried out overnight. The inward flow of trainees and the outward flow of trained airmen was only a trickle in 1940 with a mere 169 pupils in the first classes. There were landing fields to be mapped and laid out, classrooms, barracks and station facilities to be built, training and equipment to be delivered, and instructors to be assembled. All this took time, even though near miracles were worked, and •the programme continually brought ahead of schedule.

Through 1941 and 1942 the construction and expansion went on, with the scheme itself steadily outgrowing its originally intended dimensions, and all the time the flow of trainees through it kept swelling into a stream. Last year brought the full production into sight. By the middle of the year the total number of airmen graduated had exceeded 50,000, and every month the scheme was producing twice as manytrained men as the number of flyers who won the Battle of Britain. It was a mighty river then, pouring from Canada into Great Britain, the Mediterranean, and the Far East, and merging with the vast output of the United States and the separate production of Great Britain and the individual dominions, and still growing in volume. It seems more than a coincidence that in that year the enemy lost his place in the air on every front. When they signed the joint t: agreement nearly five years ag . .

four partners in the scheme—Canadt, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand—saw as its purpose the supplying of crews for all the aircraft we could produce, so that men and machines together might win as speedily as possible air superiority over the enemy. With Russia and the United States in the fight as well we have gained that superiority earlier than we had dared to hope. While the enemy has grown weaker in the air and less able to make up his losses, our own strength has been proved almost unlimited and our casualties have beconije proportionately less —indeed, considerably less, particularly in the case of pilots—than we felt it wise to make allowance for two or

three years ago. It is because the air war has thus gone better for us than expected that a kind of bottleneck has arisen at the end of the air training plan. The supply of trained airmen has caught up with the demand and they cannot be absorbed into operational flying at the same rate as before. Production may now at last be slowed down instead of being speeded up. This is being done gradually by the closing of some of the schools and extending the periods of training in some of the courses.

When this curtailment was announced a few weeks ago, it was stated that there were enough trained frontline aircrews in Great Britain for the expansion of all the squadrons required by the British Commonwealth. Behind them were all the needed replacements and with those graduated this year and 1945 there would be an accumulated backing for even 1946. This is gratifying news, because of its significant reflection of our strong position in the air, but it must still be taken with a grain of caution. It is merely the slowing down, not the stoppage of training. Unpredictable emergencies may* call for a swing back to a full rate of production. Similarly, it remains to be seen how far the output of this great production line may have to be turned towards the defeat of our other enmy, Japan.