During the year of victory, 1945, a magnificent chapter ended with the closing down of the Empire Air Training Scheme. Probably no other single factor had had a greater bearing on the ultimate defeat of the enemy.
- Australia's commitments under the scheme
were:
- To spend £54,890,000 in three years to March 1943
- To recruit and train 10,400 Pilots,
and
- 15,000 gunners and observers.
- To build numerous training schools.
- To manufacture Wirraway and other elementary training planes.
For a nation Of 7,000,000 people this was a colossal plan. Both Canada and Australia shared one
idea - they called in their greatest aces of the last war to set the plan in motion by recruiting suitable young Australians and Canadians. "Billy" Bishop, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., D.F.C., Canada's (and the Allied nations') greatest fighter ace of 1914-18, led the Dominion's recruiting campaign, and Group-Captain (now Air Commodore) A. H. Cobby, C.B.E., D.S.O., D.F.C., and two Bars, George Medal, led Australia's.
While recruits studied at nights, awaiting call-up, buildings were erected, aerodromes prepared, plans made. The great day was April 29, 1940. The first Initial Training School opened.
In September 1940, the first draft of Australian trainees left for Canada. The first
fully trained draft of aircrew reached Britain from Canada within twelve months of the opening of I.T.S.
To the end of March 1945, the following figures show how overwhelmingly Australia fulfilled her obligations under the scheme.
- There were 10,351 trainees dispatched to Canada for training, of whom
- 4,760 were categorized as pilots,
- 2,282 as navigators, and
- 3,309 as gunners.
- In Rhodesia, where the R.A.F. had training schools in the early days, 674 Australian pilots were trained.
- Within Australia itself,
- the total was 27,387, made up
of
- 10,882 pilots,
- 6,071 navigators, and
- 10,434 air gunners,
- giving a grand total of 38,412 fully trained pupils.
There are still 4,098 in Australia listed as trainees and there have also been
8,604 who have been found unsuitable for flying duties, medically unfit, or discharged. This grand total amounts to 51,114 Empire Air Training Scheme enlistments.
The scheme cost the country about £100,000,000 for her commitments. But in addition to the Empire Air Training Scheme there was a time when Australia trained additional pupils for her own home requirements. She built air training and ground training schools, airfields, elementary flying training schools, service flying training schools, air observers' schools, bombing and gunnery schools, wireless air gunners' schools, wireless operators' schools, and air navigation schools.
The first E.A.T.S. squadron in action was No. 452, the famous Spitfire squadron in Britain with Truscott, Finucane, Bungey, Wawn, and others among its stars. The first in the Middle East were
450 and 451, which, with No. 3 (a permanent R.A.A.F. squadron) went right through the African campaigns. Hudson squadrons, Catalina squadrons, even Wirraway squadrons hurled themselves with colossal effrontery, but impeccable valour, against the Japanese in the Malayan and New Guinea campaigns. Gradually the scheme built up until Australia, under the E.A.T.S., had her own fighter, fighter-bomber, heavy and light bomber, army co-operation, air-sea rescue, reconnaissance, and transport squadrons.
(See diagrams below) |
