AIR FORCE FIGHTERS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20088, 7 November 1939, Page 2

AIR FORCE FIGHTERS

WESTERN FRONT PLANES KEENNESS OF PILOTS LONDON, Oct. 25. One of the journalists on the Western Front learned that the task of finding the Royal Air Force Fighting Squadron “somewhere in France” was not the, easiest job, and pelting rain did not enhance the pleasure of searching.

“A guide,” he said, “eventually landed us at the orderly room, and announced that we wished to proceed to the squadron's dispersal point. With a smile, the quartermaster equipped us with oilskin coats and gumboots, and escorted us to the fighters—slim-fuselaged, business-like machines, ready to roar across the sky at a minute’s notice.

“The commanding officer —a tall, tough, genial Australian—explained the machine’s crowded instrument board, and demonstrated the ingenious sighting apparatus and mechanism whereby the eight guns that each of these machines carry can be fired simultaneously at the one target.

“We discovered the personnel of the aeroplanes in a nearby unpretentious hut. All appeared to be in about the middle twenties genial, healthy youngsters, engaged in reading, writing and talking, and all dressed in their flying kit, ready and waiting.

“ ‘The boys are just dying to have a crack at them,’ said their commanding officer. Later, when again looking over the aeroplane’s sinister battery of guns, he said, ‘They are grand war instruments, but how monstrous it is that all this should be necessary.’

“That seems a typical viewpoint among the British Air Force. They are all very keen, but I have not met one unthinking fire-eater among them.”

Trim, grey-uniformed nurses in the B.E.F. sector are the only representatives of the women of Britain within the war zone. In a casualty clearing station in an old chateau they preside over wards in which there are no war casualties, but various cases of civilian ailments —influenza, appendicitis, fractures. Some tank drivers were injured in recent tank manoeuvres.