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85intended to spend the winter of 1918819 in Canada. By the time of the Armistice RFC/RAF (Canada) had enlisted 9,200 flight cadets, 3,135 of whom completed their training as pilots, 2,539 of those subsequently being sent overseas. Observer training did not begin until later, the first cohort graduating in July 1918, but 137 observers had also qualified and 85 of them had been sent to France.2 So how did all this overseas activity stack up against the global picture? One has to grope about a bit but some idea can be gained from the Air Force List for January 1919 which names 15,817 pilots (ranked as lieutenant8colonels or below) and 5,513 commissioned aircrew other than pilots (observers and kite balloon officers), to which we must add more than 5,500 who had died3 %u2013 something like 26,500 in all. Of these perhaps 1,500 had been trained in Egypt and 3,300 in Canada. So the overseas schools had contributed a shade under 20% to the overall total. Between the wars, to supplement the much reduced home8based facilities, and to take advantage of the better weather factor, the RAF retained a school in Egypt, No 4 FTS at Abu Sueir, which turned out about 80 pilots per year until 1936 when its output was roughly doubled. With war becoming increasingly likely, however, it was clear that the existing arrangements would not suffice and the training staffs had begun to talk about setting up additional schools overseas, certainly in France and possibly by re8instating the WW I organisation in Canada. An Avro 504K of the inter?war No 4 FTS at Abu Sueir.