Aviation Medical Unit To Move To N. Island

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31082, 10 June 1966, Page 8

Aviation Medical Unit To Move To N. Island

The aviation medical unit at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base at Wigram—the only one of its kind in the Dominion—is to be moved to Auckland in August

Squadron Leader J. R. C. McLaurin, the officer commanding the unit said yesterday that as a greater amount of Air Force flying took place in the North Island it was only logical for the unit to be moved there.

“The bulk of the Air Force’s most recently acquired aircraft operates from North Island airfields and the problems associated with flying these machines are the ones which provide the unit

with its biggest headaches,” said the squadron leader. “We will be part of the Auckland establishment Our new home will be in an old existing building about halfway betwen Whenuapai and the city. The aviation medical unit will eventually be larger in the physical sense and in the equipment potentiality than it is at present” said Squadron Leader McLaurin. Decompression Chamber

A new decompression chamber is part of the new equipment, and Squadron Leader McLaurin said that one due out from the United States was considerably larger than the one now at 'Wigram. It

was hoped to install it about the end of the year.

The old decompression chamber will remain at Wigram until tiie new one is working. This will mean that certain training will be carried out in the one at Wigram until the end of the year, he said. The basic work of the unit is concerned with “the protection of man in a hostile environment,” said Squadron Leader McLaurin. “This hostile environment could be high altitudes, survival situations or high speeds, and the related effects on man.” The unit provides assistance to the civil, as well as the

military aviation field, aids aircraft accident investigations where possible medical factors may be involved, and offers advice and assistance to any aircraft operator who may have problems which comes within the unit's field of endeavour.

Squadron Leader McLaurin said the present unit strength was four—himself, two non-

commissioned officers, and a typist In July there would be a fifth member of the staff —Squadron Leader L. J. Thompson, the former unit commander, who has been specialising in aviation medicine at the Ohio State Uni- , versity.