AIR DEFENCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 158, 5 June 1937, Page 9

AIR DEFENCE.

CANADA’S PROPOSALS,

BASE FOR PACIFIC COAST. Canada has inaugurated an extensive programme of naval and especially air defence on the Pacific, coast, and construction has already started at English Bay, on the west side of Vancouver City. Plans are in hand for the immediate expenditure of £2,000,000 in the construction of the most extensive air base on the Pacific, with the exception of San Diego. Fifty planes, half of them equipped as fighting craft, will be based there in the most ambitious military programme ever undertaken by this Dominion, says a Vanconver report. Details of the 6clieme will not be announced until the return of the Prime Minister (Mr Mackenzie King) from London, but it is assumed that Canadian military experts are now working in conjunction with British builders who a.re visualising something like a second Singapore base on this shore of the Pacific. . It is known that an outlying a.ir base will be established in the Queen Charlotte Inlands, which are 400 miles nearer Japan and Alaska than is Vancouver. Two ships are to-day being outfitted at Vancouver for the greatest hydrographic work ever attempted in these waters. They will spend the next six months, making complete photographic maps of the entire British Columbia coast, from the United States boundary 7 line to Alaska, mapping and charting tlie route in a manner never before attempted, while the United States is finishing the same sort of job with their coastline. . CIVIL WORKS. Mr Pattullo (Premier of British Columbia) recently .announced the annexation of the Yukon by the British Columbia province, and there is a renewal of plans for the construction of a great highway across this province, and the Canadian and Yukon, joining the United States and Alaska. The Canadian Government has announced that Major Don McLaren, D. 5.0., has been appointed general manager of the trans-Canada Airlines. This service will be operated in connection with Canadian National Rajlw 7 ays, and by the end of 1938 it will join Vancouver and Montreal with an overnight service of 200 m.p.h. twinengined ’planes. Beacons are being erected across the British Columbia mountains on the same system as is used in the United States Airlines. For a trans-Atlantic service, test hops are scheduled for July between Newfoundland and Southampton. By 1939, transAtlantic passengers will jump from Newfoundland to Vancouver within 30 hours, and the understanding here is that a connection for Australians may he worked out from Vancouver • to Honolulu, and then Honolulu to Sydney. •

Such of the cable news an this page as is so headed, has appeared in the London Times and sent to this paper by special permission. It should be understood that the opinions are not those of the Timet unless expressly staled to be to.