Page 104 - Demo

104was to cease training and conduct operational patrols. 13 This circumstance was not considered to have arisen until the start of the East African campaign in June 1940, and even then the SAAF was confined to operations on the African continent until mid81943 when it was eventually permitted to cross the Mediterranean to fight in Italy. Despite these constraints, a number of SAAF personnel on secondment to the RAF did fly on operations elsewhere, in theatres as remote (to South Africa) as North West Europe and Burma. 14 This agreement was named after the chief negotiators for each side, General Sir Pierre Van Ryneveld for the Union of South Africa and Air Chf Mshl Sir Robert Brooke8Popham for the UK. 15 During 1940 sufficient resources were despatched to South Africa to establish a Combined Air Observers Navigation and Gunnery School, two Air Observers Navigation Schools (these became Nos 42, 45 and 47 Air Schools in November 1940) and a General Reconnaissance School (later No 61 Air School) and in 1941 a Combined Air Observers School was set up in Rhodesia. 16 To be pedantic, Southern Rhodesia actually had the constitutional status of a self8governing colony. This gave it such a degree of autonomy, however, that in practical terms it tended to regard itself (and it was often treated) as %u2018the fifth white Dominion%u2019. 17 For example, F J Hatch%u2019s officially sponsored history of the Canadian enterprise, Aerodrome of Democracy (Ottawa, 1983), does not even include %u2018EATS%u2019 in itsglossary. 18 The AHB total (in which notionally RAF figures actually include FAA personnel) reflects all aircrew trained in Canada during WW II, ie between 3 September 1939 and 15 August 1945; the Canadian figure is strictly confined to the output of the BCATP and thus excludes 171 RCAF pilots who qualified before the first EATS course graduated in October 1940, 5,296 aircrew trained by the RAF %u2018transferred schools%u2019 prior to their absorption into the BCATP in 1942 and 890 who graduated after the formal closure of the BCATP in March 1945. 19 Resembling the RAFVR, to the extent that it was run by civilian contractors and set out to produce a national pool of part8trained pilots, the US Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) was instituted in 1939. Its graduates were certified as %u2018restricted commercial pilots%u2019, a standard that equated to completion of the primary phase of the contemporary US military flying course, and were qualified for further flying training, although (other than by enlisting in one of the armed services) this was not publicly funded. 20 The four Refresher Schools were at Tulsa OK, Dallas TX, Glendale (later Lancaster) CA and Bakersfield CA. 21 Like the RAF, the USAAC had relied on pilots to handle navigation between the wars and, again like the RAF, albeit rather later, when it began to expand it concluded that it would need to employ dedicated non8pilot aircrew, hence PAA%u2019s being contracted to train navigators. The first class graduated in November 1940, still as cadets, because it had not yet been decided what the status of navigators was to be. It was July 1941 before they were commissioned in the rank of lieutenant, formally establishing in the process the category of the %u2018aircraft observer (aerial navigator)%u2019. See Air Force Navigators Observers (various contributors, Turner Pub Co: Paducah,