IN BRIEF

RAAF Museum pageant

THE RAAF Museum will host a free air pageant on Sunday, February 29, to celebrate 90 years of flying at Point Cook.
The pageant will pay tribute to the Air Force’s beginnings as the Australian Flying Corps, prior to World War I.

It will feature handling demonstrations by some well-known aircraft types – Spitfire, Vampire, Mustang, Sopwith Pup and Yak 50 – with a display by the Roulettes. Australia’s only airworthy Boomerang fighter will make an appearance along with a Catalina Flying Boat.

Gates open at 9am and the flying program begins at 2.30pm. The RAAF Central Band will provide entertainment and the RAAF Balloon will be present.

The RAAF Museum was also the meeting place for about 40 vintage aircraft operators on December 17 last year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight by the Wright brothers.

Memorial to WWII aircrew

A MEMORIAL to the memory of thousands of Australian and New Zealand aircrew that trained in Canada during World War II under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan is to be erected in Calgary, Canada.

The memorial will be erected in the city’s Memorial Park and will be unveiled on Anzac Day.

Representatives from the Australian and New Zealand Governments will attend and the memorial committee is inviting members of the Air Force, RAAF Association and RSL to attend.

Some 15,000 servicemen trained in Canada. Sixty-five Australians and 31 New Zealanders died during training and hundreds more were to die in the bloody aerial conflicts over Europe and the Pacific.

The committee is seeking donations to assist the completion of the memorial and can be contacted on +1-4-3-253-0515 or visit the web site www.anzaircrewmemorial.com.

Night flyers

TWO Caribou aircraft from No. 38 Squadron attracted the interest of residents near Toowoomba airport in the last two weeks of January when they conducted vision-only touch downs at the airport during night training.

The aircraft, which deployed from Oakey, conducted their flights on January 21 and 28. The flights were part of the pilots’ night flying training program.

They only touched down briefly and then returned to Oakey.

The Caribou are much larger than the aircraft that normally fly from Toowoomba and generated considerable local interest.

Chaplains in training

FORMER Squadron Leader Helen Dinsmore was ordained as a Deacon in the Anglican Church at a special ceremony at All Saint Anglican Church in Bathurst last year.

She joined former Lieutenant Commander Clyde Appleby in this new calling.
Both deacons will now commence two years’ parish ministry training and duties before returning to the ADF as military chaplains.

The ordination is the first time ADF-trained personnel will fill military chaplaincy billets. Until now military chaplains have been recruited from the ranks of mainstream civilian parish ministers.

Bishop of the Bathurst Diocese, Richard Hurford and Armed Forces bishop, Tom Frame, conducted the ordination.

Anglican Principal Chaplain to the Air Force, Archdeacon Royce Thompson, presented the Cathedral with the plaque of the Bishop of the Defence Forces and a decanter to Bishop Hurford.

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