Word: britain
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Britain intends to turn out some 3,000 new R. A. F. officers each month, and if real air war starts, 36,000 a year will be none too many for replacement. That the cramped, foggy British Isles are no place to train fliers was suggested by casualty figures released last week: killed in action, 122; killed in training...
Canada is to be Britain's air-training ground. Turning out 12,000 pilots every 28 weeks is to be Canada's big contribution to the war, and this, in the opinion of Anthony Eden, "might well be the decisive factor." The so-called Empire Air Training Plan went into gear last week with the arrival in Ottawa of commissions from Australia and New Zealand. Preparatory work had been done by a committee headed by Arthur Balfour Baron Riverdale of Sheffield, 62, one of Britain's biggest, baldest, blondest, bluffest steel tycoons. Heading the Australian delegation...
...train 12,000 pilots, Canada will need 1,500 ships over & above Britain's war needs. Her infant air industry, though encouraged by a $10,000,000 "educational" order from the mother country last year, is by no means equipped to supply such a quantity. Last week the Empire Training Planners waited only the embargo-lifting vote by Congress to place $100,000,000 worth of orders in the U. S., for 600 light trainers, 900 fighters and bombers. Of this cost, Britain will pay half, Canada onequarter, Australia and New Zealand one-eighth each...
...used to be-age limits have been dropped three years to 18, pushed up two years to 27. What used to be a ten-month elementary course has been telescoped into 16 weeks. (Many of the men will get this part at home in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain.) They know that now when they come out full-fledged, they will be given the best ships to fly that money can buy. Especially in fighters, Britain is satisfied that she is the Nazis' match, her Hawker Hurricanes being nearly as fast and twice as manageable as Germany...
Even better are the Curtiss fighters bought and proved by France, for many more of which both Britain and France were ready to bid last week (see p. 16). A story in London's Sunday Pictorial last month was certainly calculated to put into the R. A. F. any heart it may not have derived from its proved ability to handle the Germans to date. This story told of "mass executions of some of Germany's best pilots" following their refusal to fly for fear their planes had been sabotaged or because there were not enough Messerschmitts fighters...