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89units were not, strictly speaking, embraced by the terms of the Riverdale Agreement, they were obviously heavily reliant upon Canadian goodwill and infrastructure. Exploiting their %u2018visiting forces%u2019 status, they soon became de facto elements of the Canadian8run organisation in that they were subject to the administrative and operational control of one of the four regional RCAF Training Commands whose AOCs could alter their training programmes, post personnel between units and so on.12 Although the Canadian enterprise was far and away the largest, the British developed other joint overseas training facilities, notably under bilateral arrangements with Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. In addition, while they were chiefly concerned with IAF personnel, some of the capacity of training schools set up in India was also used to train RAF aircrew while others, notably significant numbers of air gunners, were trained in the Middle East. The concept of the Rhodesian Air Training Group (RATG) was broadly similar to that of the Canadian undertaking, which it actually pre8dated, in that it provided both for the training of British aircrew and for the supply of Rhodesian personnel to fly in the RAF. The South African arrangement was somewhat different because, although (after a hasty change of leadership) its government had declared war on Germany in September 1939, Pretoria was not prepared to participate actively until the Union itself was directly threatened.13 In anticipation of that event, however, the South Africans recognised that A Master II of No 25 Air School, Sanderton %u2013 a unit of the JATS.

