MOBILE FORCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 40, 17 February 1939, Page 7

MOBILE FORCE

DISPATCH TO DARWIN EARLIER THAN EXPECTED [By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright] SYDNEY, Feb. 16. The Darwin mobile force has been ordered to embark at Sydney for Darwin on March 9. This is almost two months earlier than was expected, although no date of departure had been officially announced. The force, which comprises 250 men, will embark on the ships Montoro and Marelo. It will be the first occasion since the war that such a body of troops has left Sydney bysea. TO BE DOUBLED AIR FORCE PERSONNEL. MELBOURNE, Feb. 16. Under plans which have just been completed by the Federal Government the personnel of the Royal Australian Air Force will be nearly doubled in the next sixteen months. The Minister of Defence (Mr. G. A. Street) announced that the flying personnel of the service at present was 204 officers and twenty-four airmen and pilots. CZECH MACHINE-GUNS LARGE PURCHASES BY AUSTRALIA. Received Feb. 16, .35 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 16. Reuter’s Prague correspondent says it is reliably reported that the Australian Government has purchased considerable quantities of the latestpattern Czech machine-guns, a<o a licence for the manufacture of a new type of machine-gun reputed to be superior to the Bren.