Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Wars and ConflictsΒ  permalink

NATO Flying Training.

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Frank Parker (U7843825) on Monday, 29th December 2008

  Hi,
  I've just been reading "Miracles of Life" - JG Ballard's autobiography. He mentions training at Moose Jaw in the 1950's and goes on to state that "it closed the following year" (this would have been 1955).
  In the late 1990's I worked on a project which was producing aircraft for use at the NATO Flying Training Centre in Moose Jaw. So, does anybody know is JGB correct - did it close in the mid 1950's? If so, when did it reopen?

  Link to this forum: NATO Flying Training.

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Tuesday, 30th December 2008

  Plotinlaois
  
  The NATO Air Training Plan was essentially the wartime Empire Training Scheme reinvented for NATO, and allowed flying training to be carried out away from crowded European skies and in more predictable weather (although trainee pilots then had to be acclimatised to European weather on return). As well as participating in the NATO scheme, the RAF also continued to use training bases in Southern Rhodesia.
  
  Ballard was at Moose Jaw for his basic flying training. I believe this element moved to RCAF Centralia in 1956, which may be what he was referring to. Alternately, at about the same time the RAF withdrew trainee pilots from the Canadian scheme (as the RAF was moving to all-jet pilot training, and possibly to make room for the reborn Luftwaffe), so that may be what he meant.
  
  As far as I know, RCAF Moose Jaw as a base did not close, although the role of training units there has changed.
  
  Ballard first wrote about his experiences at Moose Jaw in his autobiographical novel "The Kindness of Women", including a strange episode involving a homesick Turkish trainee. He is not, and never pretended to be, entirely accurate in his recollections in that book (or in "Empire of the Sun"), as he admits in his autobiography, so how accurate those episodes are isn't clear.
  
  Interesting insight into a little-known element of 1950s RAF/NATO training, though.

  Link to this forum: NATO Flying Training.

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Frank Parker (U7843825) on Tuesday, 30th December 2008

  Thanks for that LW. I have yet to read "the Kindness of Women". The Moose Jaw tourism website boasts that the town is host to NFTC (Nato Flying Training Canada). And I know this does now include fast jet training using Hawks built at Brough in East Yorkshire.
  Cheers,
  PiL

  Link to this forum: NATO Flying Training.

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 2.

  This posting has been hidden during moderation because it broke the in some way.

Back to top