AIR TRAINING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1941, Page 2

AIR TRAINING

ENORMOUS STRIDES MADE IN CANADA. CO-OPERATION WITH UNITED STATES. OTTAWA, September 25. Air Vice-Marshal G. O. Johnson, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, broadcasting, predicts large increases in the number of air training . schools 1 in Canada and in the output of existing schools. “We are approaching,” he said, “the point of all-out production of pilots, observers and gunners as set forth in the original agreement of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. You could count on the fingers of one hand the schools which that plan provided for which remain to be opened. Yet today we are very • nearly as busy on the construction of new air-fields and new schools as we were when we swung into peak construction under the original plan. By reason of close cooperation with the United States for defence of this hemisphere, steps are in progress for joint action in the event of an attack on Alaska or the Pacific coast. A chain of staging aerodromes is under construction in the North West so that fignter squadrons both from the United States and Canadian bases may be moved to northern British Columbia or Alaska from the centre of the continent without delay.”