OCU in Canada?
Whilst this thread has temporarily gone back to it's routes to discuss pilot training in the US and Canada, may I ask the great and good a question about continuation training in Canada?
Sadly, a friend of mine died last year and I cannot get my answer from the horses mouth. He trained as a pilot in Canada in late 1944 and, whilst there, went on to train as a bomber pilot on B24 Liberators. Just as he finished his training, the war in Europe finished so he was quickly retrained for operations over Japan. That war finished before he completed that training so he never got to fly on operations. When he got back to the UK all they would let him fly was a Tiger Moth.
One of the stories he related to me described a formation training sortie which was led by the CO. They crossed the border into the USA near Seattle and were fired upon by AA. Apparently, the CO left the formation to proceed on its way and dived down and dropped his practice bombs near the AA guns.
To the CO's subsequent relief, the American senior staff took the view that the gunners deserved what they got for poor aircraft recognition.
One doesn't seem to hear much about UK pilots being trained in operations while in the US or Canada so I wondered if anyone here had any details.