@EmuGod:
TG is somewhat right. The RCAF was deploying in the British isles while hte RCN was hunting u-boats and sending convoys. A cosntant supply could have helepd the British. Don’t forget that the British spitfires were better than almost every German plane available and the British invention of radar proved very useful in thwarting the Luftwaffe. The Kriegsmarine was inferior to the Royal Navy throughout the war.
Good point. The British included the Commonwealth which by extension included a growing industrialized nation across the ocean. By the end of the Second World War the Royal Canadian Air Force had become the world’s third most powerful air force. Over 100 Canadian pilots flew on fighter operations during the Battle of Britain. Another 200 fought with the RAF’s Bomber and Coastal Commands. Joining the British and Canadians, were pilots from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, from Czechoslovakia, France and Poland, and from the United States.
The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) was the RCAF’s paramount undertaking on the home front in World War II. Without substantial numbers of available, trained aircrew and groundcrew, the Allies could not have wielded the massive air power they did in the successful struggle to defeat the enemy.
The BCATP’s purpose was to produce a large, steady output of aircrew for the war in Europe. The Plan trained 131,553 aircrew for the Commonwealth and Allied Air Forces. Of these, 72,835 were RCAF pilots, navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers and wireless operator/air gunners. This airfield (Mount Hope) served at one time as an Elementary Flying Training School.
The BCATP was largely a Canadian training program, much of it run out of my home province of Manitoba.
http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/RollofHonour/TrainingCourses/BCATP_index.html
I believe that this program might well have provided a steady supply of pilots as the Commonwealth provided aircraft (Canadian factories provided aircraft to both its own air force as well as the UK’s, as well they provided for the American war effort as well).
