OUR AIR FORCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 113, 3 August 1927, Page 8

OUR AIR FORCE

NEW Zealand has a few flying machines and some air pilots and mechanics at the Wigram Airdrome, Christchurch. This collection has hitherto enjoyed the appellation of The New Zealand Air Force, which has quite a solid sound. But it is by no means as solid as it sounds. In the annual Defence Report submitted to Parliament by the G.G.C., Major-General Young, the “strength” of this Air Force is shou r n to have decreased. The total number of machines is 16, in use or “shortly to arrive.” Of these, one is of a civil type, used for photographic survey work, and five are obsolete, and therefore difficult and expensive to maintain. However, “it is estimated that, v 7 ith care, they can be kept airworthy for another 12 months.” This pronouncement conjures, up an amusing picture. One visualises the five machines kept in action by the use of sufficient string and paint, and handled with the greatest delicacy that they may not fall to pieces during the period indicated. These aircraft must not, of course, be taken up into the air. If any enemy arrives off the coast, the ten allegedly serviceable airplanes could make a threatening gesture and a liretence of strength by following each other in procession several times around the Cashmere Hills to give the impression of great numbers—like the marching of a stage army, or the three soldiers of “Alice in Wonderland.” But maybe things will not always be thus with the New Zealand Air Force. With daily examples under its notice of enterprise in aviation in other parts of the world, the Government may yet awaken to the realisation that the Air Force should really be a force. Major-General Young suggests a scheme of progressive purchase of service and training aircraft, spread over a considerable period, with the expenditure of £35,000 a year until the years 1930-32, when the purchase of flying boats would bring the expenditure up to £50,000 for those two years. The most carping critic cannot complain of lack of caution, or of extravagant expenditure, in this proposal. But if the Government will go even so far it will be doing something. And one of the first works to receive attention should be the laying out of the combined landplane and seaplane station at Hobsonville; for the Government, must give most serious consideration to that portion of the Defence Report in which it is stated: “The time has now arrived when it is of vital necessity that the training of pilots and the technical training of mechanics should be undertaken to provide an efficient territorial air force.”