MacKenzie King and No. 6 AOS continued from page 1
Under the regulations for the management of air observer schools, which were very similar to those for elementary flying schools, the first step for M. and C. was to reorganize itself as a Crown Corporation with paid up capital of at least $50,000. This presented no problem. The capital was readily subscribed by residents of Prince Albert and the new company was called the Prince Albert Air Observer School Limited. J.W. Sanderson was named president and Mayson was the natural choice for manager with overall responsibility for the operation of the school. The staff of three hundred or so was made up largely of residents of Prince Albert and vicinity. There was no difficulty in finding men and women qualified to fill executive and administrative positions, but getting a good tehnical organization together was another matter. The applicants, including women, were eager enough, but few had even so much as touched an aeroplane. They were given some basic instruction in aircraft maintenance at a local branch of the Dominion Youth Training Programme with further training on the job under the supervision of experienced members of M. and C. who formed the nucleus of the maintenance staff. Practically all those who were accepted were either too old or too young or otherwise ineligible for military service, a regulation imposed by Government.
No. 6 AOS was an average-size school. It had accommodation for slightly more than two hundred pupils with a maximum intake of forty-two pupils every four weeks. As the course lasted twelve weeks, there were usually three courses running concurrently and another about to graduate. The unit had an initial establishment of twenty-four twin-engine Avro Ansons, but owing to the shortage of these machines it started off with nine or ten and gradually worked up to full strength. The Ansons, which came from the United Kingdom, had been used on operations before being relegated to a training role and the first batch to arrive at Prince Albert were scarred with bullet holes in the wings and fuselages Although an air force detachment carried out the instruction, the aircraft used by the student navigators were flown by civilian pilots under the employ of M. and C. Most of them were obtained from the United States and recruited and trained with the help of the RCAF.
The school was opened on schedule on 17 March followed by in official opening in July by Prime Minister King on one of his very rare appearances in Prince Albert. At that time training activities were in full swing. Three classes, composed almost entirely of New Zealanders, were under instruction, providing a suitable occasion for King to extol the virtues of the air training plan and comment on the merits of civil and military co-operation. The relationship between the RCAF and the civilian operators of its air observer and elementary schools was, on the whole, surprisingly good. But there were exceptions, as is unfortunately demonstrated by the history of No. 6 AOS. From the beginning, there was evidence of antagonism between the Prince Albert Air Observer School Limited and the Headquarters of No. 2 Training Command at Winnipeg responsible to Air Force HQ for all the air training schools in Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan. At the ceremonial opening Mayson complained of being slighted by air force officials from Winnipeg, and some time later, during a visit to Command Headquarters, was,'very rudely dealt with". This ill-feeling can be traced back to three main causes. One was air force resennnent over the lobbying done on Mayson's behalf. Another was that Command Headquarters, rightly or wrongly, felt that M. and C. was too small a company and too lacking in expertise and managerial skills to operate an air observer school which in some ways was similar to running a large airline. A third contributing factor was that Mayson, besides being responsible for No. 6 AOS, was operating the M. and C. Repair Depot and from time to time provided assistance in the direction of No. 6 EFTS. Because of his varied activities he was unable to give full attention to the air observer school. Decision making was occasionally left to his business associates, which caused some disaffection among the employees, led to the resignation of one of his senior subordinates, and at one point had the pilots on the verge of walking off the job.
The situation came to a head in the spring of 1942, when the school encountered a series of maintenance problems resulting in a loss of valuable time. Allegations of inefficient management were now levelled against Mayson who countered by accusing Command HQ of lack of co-operation. He complained particularly, and not entirely without reason, about the failure to lay hard-surfaced runways at No. 6, the only air observer school flying twin-engine Ansons from a sod-covered field, which added to the problem of aircraft maintenance. At the time these troubles came to a head the RCAF, in order to meet a demand for more navigators for overseas operations, was planning to increase the size of most of the air observer schools and, if necessary, to separate them from the elementary schools. Earlier it had been given out that No. 6 was to be expanded, but in June Mayson was told that it was to be closed. In an effort to keep it open he now offered to resign as manager in favour of someone else to be appointed by the RCAF, but this proposal fell on deaf ears.
These events were given a strange political twist as a result of an announcement by the RCAF that a new air observer school was to be formed at Davidson, a village about half-way between Saskatoon and Moose jaw. On the surface this was innocent enough, but Davidson happened to be in the constituency of Lake Centre, represented in Parliament by John Diefenbaker, a political foe of Mackenzie King. The popular prairie lawyer, destined in his time to be prime minister, was sitting in his first Parliament and rapidly rising to prominence on the Conservative side of the House as one of the chief critics of government policy. Claiming that the allowances paid to the companies were too generous, he had included them in his list of targets. Although he represented Lake Centre he had lived in Prince Albert since 1924 and had played an active, if not altogether successful, part in politics at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, even running against King in 1926. On a recent visit to Prince Albert he had taken time to criticize Mayson's management of the air observer school, and the news that a new school was to be formed at Davidson caused a stir in local political circles.
After officially opening No. 6 AOS in July 1941, Prime Minister King had been much too pre-occupied with affairs of state to pay much attention to what was going on in Prince Albert, and it was not until Mayson and Sanderson paid him a visit in Ottawa that he was brought into the picture. "Some time was taken up tonight discussing ... the question of the Air Training School," King recorded in his diary on 15 June 1942. "It is hard to tell the right and the wrong of the situation." A few days later, 23 June, he wrote to C.G. Power, the Minister of National Defence (Air), referring to the closing of the school and asking "to be fully advised of the circumstances that led to this decision." His long letter clearly indicated that while there were indeed rights and wrongs on both sides, he was ready to fight for his constituents, whose interests he naturally identified with his own: ". . . I am informed that the reason given [for closing the school] ... is that it is inefficiently managed, that the operating costs are too high, and that the flying time is much lower than in other schools. "The management does not deny that operating costs are high or that flying time is too low. They contend that both these circumstances result from a single cause, namely, that the Prince Albert Air Observer School is the only school with- out hard-surfaced runways, and that their absence hampers flying operations during wet weather and increases maintenance costs at all times. it is further contended . . . that the development of hard-surfaced runways which would have eliminated both these difficulties has been considerably obstructed by responsible officers who have given no good reason for such obstruction.