ADDRESS AT “WINGS" CEREMONY

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23965, 4 June 1943, Page 4

ADDRESS AT “WINGS " CEREMONY

EQUAL IMPORTANCE OF ALL AIRCREW MEMBERS "The Press" Special Service BLENHEIM, June 3. 4 “I should like, to remind you; the* these pilots’ badges, with their double wings, are not the only flying badge*, : said Air Commodore Sir Robert ClW* Hall to-day, during an address to sir* men pilots at a "wings" ceremony, held at a Marlborough aerodrome. "There are other flying badges lor navigators, observers, bomb aimer*.and air gunners, which are earned’at other types of training schools," continued Sir Robert Clark Hall. "For some obscure reason dating from the last war these other badges have only one wing on them. This tends to convey to the ignorant and unthinking that they are in some way inferior. This is far from being the case. Every member of an aircrew is part of * team, of which no one member, i* more important than another. Possibly, on some occasions, one may be more important, and that not necessarily the pilot.” _ Sir Robert Clark Hall added: "For example, on the recent attacks on those dams in Germany I imagine that success depended more than anything on good navigators, capable of accurately working out difficult calculations under very trying conditions, and good bomb aimers making rapid calculations and hair trigger aiming in the culminating 30-second run over the target. Were Mr Winston Churchill suddenly to elect to witness for himself a raid on Berlin (the sort of thing he is quite capable of doing) the crew selected to take him would very probably be the one which had the best air gunner, a man who had proved . himself to be a first-class shot, or quick decision, and lightning quick powers of aircraft recognition."