“RAT RACE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 January 1943, Page 4

“RAT RACE”

ROUTINE AIR OPERATION IN PACIFIC NOTHING TO DO WITH RATS OR RACES. LONG HOURS OF OCEAN PATROLLING. (Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) AN ADVANCED PACIFIC BASE, December 16. I went out on a “rat race” today with a reconnaissance-bomber crew of the Royal New Zealand Air Force operating from this United Nations base in the Pacific. It had nothing whatever to do with rats or races —but neither did those famous, ceaseless raids on Benghazi and Tobruk, the “mail run" and the “milk run,” have anything to do with mail or milk. Any ail - force operation that develops into something approaching monotonous routine earns itself a nickname. And so the “rat race,” a never-ending search for the lurking submarine and the bold surface raider that may sooner or later strike across the war supply routes of the South Pacific, takes a modest yet important place in history on the list which perpetuates the mail and milk deliveries of the Middle East Command.

WATCH OVER SHIPS. New Zealand air units spend hour after hour, day after day, in rat-racing over the Pacific, weaving intricate webs of vigilance and protection above the routes along which the freighters and troopships hustle their cargoes of war. Their work is deadly monotony nine-tenths of the time, and the other tenth is usually a hope suddenly raised and just as. suddenly dashed—an “enemy raider” scare, a whale mistaken for a submarine.

All of them long for the sound of “Bomb doors open!” to come crackling through their inter-communication phones, for the sight of their bombs and depth charges bursting like white flowers in the dark water. Instead, they look down at big ships and little ships, war vessels and freighters, in convoy and alone, ploughing serenely and safely and confidently in and out of port. The picture they see is tremendously important, and yet the satisfaction they get out of knowing they have as big a part as anybody in the safety and confidence of those moving ships is small. But yesterday’s whale may be a Japanese submarine tomorrow, and it is this continuing possibility of positive action that spices their daily task. In the meantime, monotonous though it may be, the “rat race” goes on day in and day out, in fair weather and foul —as essential an activity as the movement of the ships it protects. LINKED AS ONE. Still less spectacular on the surface is the ground organisation that keeps their bombers in the air. Ground staff at this R.N.Z.A.F. station work alternately in a fog of dust and a sea of mud. They pore over delicate instruments and radio equipment, and grope under the cowlings of the bombers’ engines. They work at lathes and battery chargers and armourers’ benches. They swarm over the aircraft on daily and 30-hpur and 60-hour inspections. They locate defects reported by the air crews, and rectify them. Their responsibility is great, and their work is signed for, countersigned, checked and rechecked.

The ground organisation stretches back from the airfield to the operations room and the wireless hut (the signals section listens constantly for messages from machines in the air, maintains a link with New Zealand and conducts the station’s telephone system), to the administrative offices, the meteorological service, the motor transport section, the stores, the hospital and the cookhouse. All these and the aircraft themselves are bound together as one, for it takes all these to keep them flying.