harrym,
(Your #5587)
"....Rattling over the prairie in the last car's open rear vestibule I watched the rails undulate into the distance...." Was it true that the rails were still just "spiked", as they had originally been laid, and not in "chairs" like ours ?
"....were issued did not fill me with confidence; in fact I only recall two, a bonnet-like cap with side flaps for ear and facial protection..." Did the RCAF officers then have those wonderful white-fur "Dr.Zhivago" jobs (with the badge on front) ?
"....we became accustomed to life lived in a perpetual frowst...." Quite right, too. Fug never killed any one yet, but people
have been known to freeze to death !
"....to operate through a Canadian winter....". I believe they just rolled the snow flat , stuck in a few fir tops to mark the sides, and scattered ashes on top for some grip. True ?
"....our initial difficulties were compounded by the crude, pneumatically-operated braking system obviously designed by someone who had never flown in his life...." Be that as it may, we all had to learn to love 'em. In fact, I rather preferred them to toe brakes. What do other people think ?....D.
Chugalug,
(Your #5588)
"....So 'S' stood for Service? Thanks for that, I was trying to work out S words that meant Advanced. Turns out they didn't. Curious nomenclature, as though EFTS's were not Service, but no doubt they reflected the format in use then. Were there none in the UK? Were they all overseas, with OTUs ready to take the strain back here?...."
AFAIK, "Service Flying Training Schools" went far back, at least to the beginning of the war. I think that the idea was that there you'd be trained on the aircraft on which you'd begin your productive "service". IIRC, the student did 60 hrs each on E(lementary)FTS and S(ervice) FTS in the UK up to Wings standard (C.R.P.Graves: "
The Thin Blue Line").
They long predated the Empire Flying Training Schools; when these started up, they simply carried on the old UK syllabus in Canada or wherever, likewise the BFTS in the US. From all of these (plus the "Arnold" contingents) the P/Os and Sgt/Pilots returned (after a month's "UK Familiarisation" at AFS) to their Operational Training Units back home, and at last on to their Squadrons....D.
Cheers, both. Danny.