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101number of other bidders for an annual allocation of places, which made long8term planning difficult. Other difficulties arose from the RAF%u2019s policy of training National Servicemen as aircrew, which did not sit well with NATO, especially the USA. The Americans were contributing, free of charge, large numbers of very expensive aeroplanes in order to create a much stronger front8line. The Europeans were expected to play their part by providing combat8ready aircrew; ex8conscript reservists were not considered to be a good fit. These reservations were overcome, however and between 1951 and 1958, when it wound up, the NATO Air Training Plan produced 3,218 aircrew for the RCAF plus another 5,299 for other NATO nations, more then half them, approximately 1,800 navigators and 2,000 pilots, for the UK and, incidentally, permitting the RAF to shut down the Rhodesian schools, this time for good.29 All that was more than half8a8century ago, of course, and it was more or less the end of the overseas game. Ever since the 1957 Defence White Paper, the RAF has been in a progressive state of quantitative, which is not to say qualitative, decline, although there was a brief flirtation with both the Australians and the Canadians at the turn of the century. The RAAF link was relatively brief and came about as a result of an engineering defect with the Tucano fleet in 2000; in order to sustain the flow of pilot training, we sent a few The Nene?engined, Canadair?built CT?133 as used by the NATO Air Training Plan in the mid?1950s.