Page 153 - Demo

153the training spin8off goes elsewhere. %u0001%u0015&*(%-%u0006%u0005(%u00140%u0017%%u0016?%u0006%u0006Going back to the WW II training arrangements %u2013 did these include the Fleet Air Arm or was the Navy quite separate? %u000e%u001799%u0013%-?%u0006%u0006It was essentially a joint affair, certainly in North America. Within the Canadian system, naval pilots were trained alongside those of the RAF and the figures in the table that I showed you embraced both, although there was an exclusively Naval Air Gunners School at Yarmouth, NS. In the United States, the Towers Scheme was primarily concerned with FAA pilots, although it did train flying boat pilots for the RAF as well.1%u0001%u0015&*(%-%u0006%u0019(%u0016%u0017)%u0013/?%u0006%u0006Could anyone say anything about the re8training of former Luftwaffe pilots in the late 1950s %u2013 and, more recently, there has been no mention of the Tornado Tri8Service Training Establishment at Cottesmore.%u0006%u0006%u000e%u001799%u0013%-?%u0006%u0006True, because time constraints meant that I had to confine my pitch to basic flying training %u2013 taking recruits off the streets and turning them into pilots, or other categories of aircrew. That wasn%u2019t the case with already8badged Tornado crews who were converting to type, nor to the training of ex8Messerschmitt pilots, some of them with 200 victories to their credit, who were merely in need of a refresher course. The RAF did handle some of that but not the ab initio training of pilots for the new Luftwaffe; they would probably have been trained under the early post8war NATO scheme in Canada or in the USA. %u0019%%u0015/-+%u0017?%u0006%u0006We certainly did some refresher flying. I recall an anecdote told by a colleague who had been a gunnery instructor with one of the Sabre wings in Germany. He said that a German pilot he was flying with began to draw a bead on the Mosquito target8tug at which point Joe took over and remonstrated with him. The German apologised, explaining that it was force of habit! %u0017+%u0017)?%u0006 %u0006 When I was Station Commander at Linton8on8Ouse in the early %u201890s we were still training German Navy pilots. Because the Germans were flying the same helicopters as the Fleet Air Arm, the 1The figures tabulated for notionally RAF pilots and air gunners trained in Canada actually include 3,088 naval pilots and 704 gunners. The Towers Scheme produced 2,081 pilots for the FAA and 1,784 for the RAF. -