NEW AIR BASES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25306, 17 August 1943, Page 2

NEW AIR BASES

CONSTRUCTION IN AFRICA WORK OF NEW ZEALANDERS (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent) (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) CAIRO, Aug. 15. New Zealand engineers, whose work on harbours, roads, and railways contributed largely to our advance by land and sea along the North African coast, are now sharing in the success of yet another Allied offensive —the air attacks on Southern Europe. The Allied ' heavy bombers which attack Italy and the Balkans and the squadrons of fighters guarding our Mediterranean convoys to-day operate from landing grounds either constructed or improved by the New Zealand nondivisional engineers. Instead of ploughing their way m clouds of dust across dry, brown fields, as our aircraft did in the two previous years, many British and American bombers and fighters now take on from permanent sealed surfaces, some of them ' nearly two miles long and a furlong wide. Scores of the American heavy bombers that attacked Ploesti recently roared away from one of the first and largest runways our engineers built. Middle East Record Operating huge machines of the same type as many of them used in constructing New Zealand aerodromes before the war, these New Zealand sappers completfd the surfacing of two of the largest landing grounds in a matter of weeks. Their experience on the first enabled them so to- improve their organisation that they completed the surface of a second aerodrome in time which halved the previous Middle East record. Spreading over 1200 yards of sealing a day, they covered the whole area in less than a fortnight. , , True to the traditional resourcefulness of New Zealand engineers, they improvised a number of barrows to quicken the work. Between Tobruk and Benghazi and even further across Libya, they combed the hills and the desert plains for the wheels of crashed German and Italian fighter aircraft. They also found 44-gallon drums and piping. Mass production gangs halved the drums, mended the aircraft tyres, and cut the pipe into lengths, the result being that 150 barrows were ready for the job. An equally ingenious improvisation was the use of larger wheels from abandoned Axis bombers to provide improved roll-ing-equipment for smoothing the surfaces. Yet another New Zealand salvage expedition found an Italian gun tractor with which to drag the roller. Then, leaving the coastal desert plains, these mechanical equipment sections took their bulldozers, carry-alls, tractors, and graders to more landing grounds in an entirely different country—the brown rocky hills of Cyrenaica. They moved trees and shifted countless tons of rock and earth until the new, enlarged, and levelled aerodromes were hardly recognisable for the same areas as they were a few months ago. Then came one of the largest assignments they had yet been given. High 'in the hills they began some weeks ago the construction and sealing o-f one ot the new R.A.F. bases for coastal fightpr patrols. Scenes Resemble New Zealand

Already, while Hurricanes and Spitfires sweep in from the sea to land on one of the finished runways, rollers and levelling machines are preparing a second landing surface.: Surrounded by a low ridge of hills, this new aerodrome has provided our engineers with the only set of circumstances they have found in two years actually resembling New Zealand conditions. They had to make drainage surveys and cut deep channels to carry the winter rainfall, which is heavier in this section than in most parts of the Middle East. • , . Generally, the scenes in this countryside closely resemble scenes common throughout New Zealand a few years ago. One difference, however, is that here almost all the New Zealanders, apart from the men operating the big machines, are supervising the work of men of the West African Pioneers. In this aerodrome construction work our engineers have control of native pioneers from East and West Africa and India. One usual occurrence here which still seems strange for this pieceofltaUa farmland thousands of miles from home is to see a New Zealand Pilot- th e re are three operating here—climb down from his fighter, stroll across to a bulldozer, and discuss with the driver the latest news they have from some town in New Zealand. ,