VALUE OF AIR FORCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 9

VALUE OF AIR FORCE

IN DEFENCE OF NEW ZEALAND. The first line of defence for New Zealand, stated Mr. L. S. Swan, secretary of the Auckland Aero Club at the annual meeting of the Royal New Zealand Aero Club, must undoubtedly be defensive aircraft. New Zealand had a number of such aircraft already and more were on the way. but the problem was what steps were being taken to train pilots to fly them and who was responsible for the training. The train - ing of a pilot was a very much more lengthy business than the training of an infantry man.

“The average citizen vaguely assumes that the Government is doing it through the Defence Department,” said Mr. Swan, “but it is not popularly known that the Air Force in New Zealand has no facilities for the initial training of pilots and it has not, as far as my knowledge goes, been contemplated by them up to the present time. The Government supplies advanced training only, and that to pilots who have had their initial training with an aero club. “This initial training occupies something like three months of comprehensive course before the pilots are in a position to commence their advanced training which embraces the training on aircraft capable of defence. The aircraft on which the ab initio training takes place is not in any way suitable for defensive purposes, nor it is practicable for primary trainees to be taught on the larger aircraft used for bombing and defensive purposes. “Boiling this all down it means that there are no facilities in New Zealand for the initial training of pilots other than those possessed by the various aero clubs. With this in view let us examine the training facilities for our first line of defence in the Auckland Province. There are two aero clubs, Auckland averaging not more than four or five planes airworthy, and Waikato probably two. Now we have in a nutshell the aircraft available fori the initial training of air pilots, from, the North Cape until we strike New Plymouth on the west coast and Hastings on the east. , “There are something like six to seven aircraft for pilots to be trained in the whole of this area. If. in con • sidering this apparent weakness we visualise the extent of this territory and the population, there will be no necessity to paint the picture any more black than it is by talking about unpreparedness.”

An aero club, he said, was not a limited liability company with capital behind it, but was merely a society which, not carrying on for profit or gain, was nevertheless an enterprise of vital importance to the country. The only capital it had had in recent years had been derived by scratching for a few pounds from dances or art unions at considerably below cost —and that to and by selling flying to its members fulfil its function of training pilots and increasing airmindedness.