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Canada
had plenty of room for flight training,
good flying weather, and was beyond the
reach of enemy forces. The B.C.A.T.P.,
created by an agreement in December 1939
between Canada, Britain, Australia, and
New Zealand, called for Canada to train
these countries’ air crews. It
was an enormous undertaking. Ottawa administered
the Plan and paid most of the costs,
although the majority of graduates, eventually
drawn from many Allied countries, went
on to serve in Britain’s Royal
Air Force.
At
its peak, the Plan maintained 231 training
sites and required more than 10,000 aircraft
and 100,000 military personnel to administer.
It trained pilots, navigators, bomb aimers,
radio operators, air gunners, and flight
engineers. More than half of its 131,553
graduates were Canadian.
See also :
Canadian
Newspapers and the Second World War : The British Commonwealth Air
Training Plan
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