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Show Pilot Teachers Have Quiet Task Training Bombers Important Impor-tant Part of Preparatory Work in England. : WITH THE R. A. F. TRAINING COMMAND. Flying instructors at j this and a score of other training schools dotted behind the front line j about the English countryside may bask in some glory but it's only re-. re-. fleeted glory. Prime Minister Winston Churchill wasn't thinking of them when he described Britain's young airmen as "knights of the air." They get none of the glamour which surrounds the fighter and bomber pilots. They never swoop over Berlin. They never get the chance to shoot down a Dornier, a Heinkel or a Messerschmitt. In fact, they never even see a Nazi. "When Jerry comes, we make for Iiome," one said. "It's our job to get our pupils safely back and live to fly another day." Force Expanding. After all, they are doing their bit .just the same. Britain's bomber force is expanding rapidly, helped by an increasing number of machines ma-chines from the United States, and the instructors must have ready the men to fly them. The chief flying instructor at this station, a South African squadron leader whose first pupil was a fellow fel-low South African who recently won iis distinguished flying cross, explained ex-plained how the instructors work: "First of all, we have to find out just how a pupil ticks. We watch the speed of his reactions and often can tell almost at once just how good or bad a pilot he will be. Then we must gain his confidence. That is the most important thing of all. After that well, we just try to pump into him all we know. And here it's not always the best pilot who makes the best teacher." Reflected Glory. Most instructors, he added, take it almost as their own failure when a pupil lails to reach the required standard and is "grounded" as unsuitable un-suitable to be a pilot. But they share in the reflected glory of an old pupil's triumphs. "In fact," sighed one, "it's the only sort of fun, we get." There are many pupils in this school with an establishment a great deal larger to insure they have the best training that can be devised for them. As all the pupils here will graduate gradu-ate as bomber pilots after their course, the training is carried out on twin-engined airspeed Oxford monoplanes. They come here from the elementary ele-mentary flying training school, where they have learned the routine business of flying aircraft on a lighter light-er single-engined machine. In the dual-control Oxfords the pupil pu-pil sitting side by side with his teacher, faces for the first time the imposing mass of instruments carried car-ried by a service aircraft, learns how to use his trimming tabs, stars for night flying, formation work, cross-country navigation, blind flying, fly-ing, signals, elementary bombing. |