|
European Tensions |
War |
Mobilization | Poland -
France | Battle of
Britain | Dieppe |
North Atlantic |
Training the Empire |
The Pacific |
Quebec Conference |
Hong Kong |
Home Front |
Sicily |
Italy | Conscription
| Normandy |
France |
Netherlands |
Germany
As war approached in 1939, Canada began
to realize that it would in fact be pulled back into
European politics and throw its weight behind Britain.
With the outbreak of hostilities on September 1st, 1939
the Canadian government debated about what the Canadian
contribution the war effort would be. With the success
of the Blitzkrieg in Poland, the allies realized how
important air power had become as an instrument of war.
Britain and Canada set to work planning a
training program for new pilots which would be outside
of the range of German forces and have the vast
territory to set up large training facilities. Canada
was the ideal location for what was to become known as
the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. An
agreement was reached on December 17, 1939 between
Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand which would
centralize most pilot and aircrew training in several
bases in Canada.
Canada was located
beside the United States which although not directly
involved in the war at that point, would become an
industrial supplier of planes and parts. crew could be
quickly shipped to England from Canada and conditions in
many parts of Canada were ideal for training. King was
also hoping that the huge manpower requirement of
training the Commonwealth forces would negate demands on
Canada for fighting forces in Europe. This would enable
the Liberals to be able to avoid conscription and the
conscription issue.
The British wanted to be able to
incorporate Canadian airmen in whatever British units
would require them but as with the ground forces in the
First World War were kept as Canadian units, King wanted
the Canadian airmen to remain in RCAF units. This proved
to be impractical due to the different logistics and
Canada had to settle for having Canadian identification
badges on their shoulders.
The training program began on April 29th,
1940 and lacked airfields, trainers and planes but the
quick expansion of the program quickly overcame these
problems. The overall training was operated by the RCAF
with support from many of the flying clubs in Canada.
The organization expanded to 231 sites with 107 schools
and 184 ancillary units. Over 104,000 men and women
formed the ground support for the program with another
11,000 involved with the direct aircraft operations. The
cost of the program during the war ended up being over
$1.6 Billion which produced almost 132,000 pilots and
air crew from Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand,
the U.S., other commonwealth countries and occupied
European countries.
This program made it possible for the
allies to wrestle control of the air from Herman
Goering's Luftwaffe and take the war to the heart
of German. Although the program officially ended on
March 31st, 1945 some air bases such as Camp Borden
continued to train Commonwealth pilots well into the
late 1960's |
