CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 64, 17 August 1944, Page 4

CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

BACKGROUND OP EDUCATION.

This article is the second of the series written by Captain R. T. Miller, Official New Zealand Correspondent, who has now returned to the United Kingdom. Thanks to their generally excellent background of education, their now traditional resourcefulness and keenness, and their sound basic training in the elementary air schools in their own Dominion, New Zealanders are among the most successful trainees graduated by the Commonwealth Air Training Plan in ‘Canada. The high standards set by the first classes in 1940 have been consistently maintained.

Landing from New Zealand on the west coast they find themselves set down amid the best of the youth of Canada, Britain, Australia, and other nations. Competition —although there seems to be no consciously competitive spirit as between the men of one country and those of another —is stiff, but New Zealanders have proved themselves capable of holding their own. They win a pleasing proportion of highest marks in tests and examinations, their general average is good, and the percentage of failures very small. The rate of casualties through flying accidents is also remarkably low. These are some of the iDepressions left with me after travelling from Ottawa in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west, meeting trainees undergoing courses at a dozen schools and stations and speaking with their instructors and commanding officers. There are more than one thousand New Zealanders training or instructing in Canada at the present time, nyistly at stations dotted over the broad western, prairie provinces that slope up gently to the foothills of the Rockies. They are a part of the more than 7500 airmen the Dominion has sent to Canada since the common training plan began. What) struck me in Canada, particularly its middle and western provinces, was that it was an ideal choice as the

location of a great • Enjpire scheme. It is conveniently close to Britain, the most important operational airbase in the war, yet far away enough to be unhampered by restrictions of space and building materials and labour that were needed to establish the plan. Its extra ordinary range of temperature and climate apparently does not seriously interfere with the flying training programme. On the other hand, the weather provides experience in flying under a wide variety of conditions. Not so important, but still very much in Canada’s favour, are the comparatively abundance of food and the warm-heart-ed hospitaliity of the Canadian people. When they are in Canada, New Zealanders are attached to the Royal Canadian Air Force, which administers the training scheme. To all intents and purposes they become members of the R.C.A.F. At the same however, their country keeps a fatherly eye on them through the New Zealand Air Mission in Ottawa, whose senior officer, Group Captain T. W. White, is most popular among our trainees and highly esteemed by the Canadian authorities. “Tiny” White, as they all know him, and his officers travel as often as they can among their scattered charges, bringing them up ’to date on service matters and hearing their training and personal problems. The men are invited to take their troubles freely to the Ottawa Mission staff, which, like a company or battalion headquarters in the Army, finds itself concerned With many other things besides routine administration. It can be, and often is, anything from a legal advice bureau to a deputy father-in-law of the airman’s wife.

I gathered fromj the men I met on my tour that they are generally well satisfied with food, quarters, and facilities. If therei were any complaints or grievances, they were overshadowed by our men’s impatience to know “Where do we go from here?” Good news as it may be from a broader point of view, the fact, as I explained in my first article, that new aircrews are no longer so urgently needed and training is being slowed down, is rather galling to the men who “Want to get to the war before it’s all-over,” many of them beginning to think they will never see Europe. Some are even wondering a trifle gloomily whether Japan will be able to hold out long enough—and that is the most peculiar brand of pessimism 1 ’ve yet encountered.