To achieve a brief review of the progressive instruction received by pilots and observers, it is unfortunately necessary to omit reference to many developments which from time to time built up the system finally secured. This is the more regrettable, since the foundations were laid under strenuous circumstances. Insufficient staffs provided with meagre equipment, much of which they themselves had to evolve, did notable service at a time when the demands upon them were constantly increasing. It is hoped, therefore, that those to whom the brigade is indebted for a vast amount of admirable and constructive effort will realize the impossibility of any descriptive detail concerning it, and will find in the ultimate methods adopted the essential fruit of their early labours.

To the photographic record of training on these pages it is now desired to add certain data concerning the routine of instruction.

The cadet enlisting in the Spring of 1918 proceeded to the Cadet Wing at Long Branch after passing through the Recruits Depot, where he received an initiation into infantry training and buzzing (telegraphic receiving and sending) up to his ability in the period. Here he was clothed, equipped and given lectures on personal hygiene, discipline, and the primary features of the R.A.F. This course did not exceed two weeks.

During the eight weeks at the Cadet Wing the pupil’s horizon broadened. He found also that every inducement was offered to proficiency and hard work, for instruction continued even in hospital, provided he was fit to receive it. Sports and physical exercise kept him in condition, and leave was frequent.

His wireless was carried on to receiving and sending eight words a minute, and instruction was given in such a way that he was untroubled by the presence of the cadet beside him, because that cadet received and sent with a different wave length of transmission current. Panneau (see illustration on page 199) was read at four words a minute and practice alternated with the use of Aldis signal lamps. Ground strips, reproduced electrically in miniature, required correct reading. The method of locating flashes (symbolic of shell bursts) on clock coding target (page 158) demanded special attention to the point of locating ten successive flashes.

Came then aerial navigation, the knowledge of which is essential to all who travel by air. An extremely interesting study this, covering sketching, compass work—both magnetic and prismatic, definitions and conventional signs used—in fact all such information as is necessary not only to read intelligently and quickly any civil or military map and absorb the information often so vitally necessary, but also to construct one which shall be legible for general military and artillery purposes.

It follows, then, that the cadet when he arrived at the School of Aeronautics had already moulted much of the civilian. The plumage of the pilot was beginning to sprout.

At this point his education was carried still further. He applied his map-reading knowledge to an immense reproduction of part of the actual theatre of war, showing whole battlefields in faithful outline. He studied the plotting of an aerial course from point to point, with a given wind velocity and speed of aeroplane. He delved into air and weather conditions in northern France and learned what targets looked like when seen from the air. He began photography, the study of artillery work, zone call systems and those simple yet enormously important and pre-arranged signals between battery and aeroplane. Here, too, he was introduced to the science of bombing.

Moving on to engines of various types, he absorbed their principles of design and operation—with practical work on the engines themselves which were set up on running stands at Camp Leaside and subjected to every temporary indisposition imaginable in order that the pupil might diagnose and remedy the trouble (page 83). With the engines he studied the design of the aeroplane, assembling and dismantling till its structure became simple and familiar (page 172). Coincident with all this was his education as a soldier, with lectures in military law, procedure, the organization of various arms of the service, the internal economy of R.A.F. squadrons, wings, parks and depots and the various phases of active service duty.

Congested as it may appear, there was in actuality no congestion. This was due not only to the fact that instruction was invariably progressive, but also such mechanical inventiveness had been displayed by the staff that whenever practical instruction involving mechanics of any nature was given, there was always produced the relative mechanical device which showed the practical application of the theory and demonstrated quite unmistakably its physical character.

From the School of Aeronautics to which further reference is made (page 162) the cadet proceeded to the Armament School. In the chapter under this heading his course is sufficiently outlined, and by the time he arrived at a flying wing he had mastered the theoretical and mechanical essentials of the principles and appliances which were to control his further development.

It was recognized that if instruction in wireless ceased on arrival at the wings, the pupil at once became rusty in these requirements, and, from the commencement of the Corps, work classes were invariably held in this and kindred subjects at all flying units.

Now came the time to which the cadet had been looking forward since his enlistment. Entrusted to a competent instructor, he embarked on flying tuition. Here also was practice in aerial photography, vertical and oblique, and bomb dropping by wireless, in which the pilot signalled the release of an imaginary bomb, the message being received by an observer in a camera obscura hut, who noted also the position of the machine at the instant of release. Formation and fifty-mile cross-country flights were practised, the former as in active service, the latter giving opportunity for map reading in the air, and the actual collection of a variety of information which paralleled the duty to be performed at the front.

Here, too, the cadet climbed to 6,000 feet and remained at this height for fifteen minutes. He flew through clouds guided by compass, read ground strips and Aldis lamp signals, and in general comported himself exactly as though in the air over enemy country, and when he ultimately reported at Camp Leaside it was as a skilled pilot thoroughly at home in his machine and ready for the two final periods of his instruction.

At Leaside, the 43rd Wing, came final tuition in artillery coÖperation. Here the cadet absorbed to his capacity all that science and a particularly brilliant system of instruction could give him. The picture target of former days was reproduced on a huge scale, and from work on this the pupil took to the air. From an altitude of 2,000 feet he noted bursts presumed to be those of batteries, located them on his map and wirelessed their position to the receiving battery station, correcting and directing its fire. Information was sent down describing the effect of barrage fire, the movement of troops, the location of wire and similar details. Contact patrol work was studied, as was indeed every feature of artillery coÖperation duty, even to the wearing of gauntlets when sending wireless.

All through the period of training his physical condition was regarded as of prime importance; and continual exercises, so arranged as to develop every bodily power, and, in consequence, every mental activity, were faithfully practised. The result was a human mechanism, fit and alert, sound and responsive, and capable of being brought to the highest possible pitch of efficiency.

At the School of Aerial Fighting came the last step in the development of the pilot. Armed with Vickers and Lewis guns he went through a final course of ground gunnery which demonstrated the problems and mechanics of the art of shooting to the last degree. Taking to the air, first with another pilot, he shot at full-sized silhouettes anchored in Lake Ontario a mile from shore. Later, armed with a camera gun loaded with film, he undertook aerial practice on a brother cadet, the developed film showing the accuracy of his aim. Aerial tactics were carried out, and every imaginable manoeuvre of attack and escape has been observable for months at this most interesting of camps. Finally, equipped mentally and physically, with all that the British Empire could do for him, he left for either overseas as the highest product of the R.A.F., Can., or to the School of Special Flying to be tested as an instructor, an equally arduous but more thankless undertaking.