“Unlike artillery, an air fleet can conduct extensive operations far from, and independent of, both armies and navies. As far as can be foreseen, there is absolutely no limit on the scale of its future use, and the day may not be far off when aerial operations, with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centres on a vast scale, may become the principal operations of war…..”
The Smuts Report August 1917
Frazer Apsley Harte educated King Edwards in Johannesburg and Wits University arrived in England in 1936 armed with an engineering degree and South African Air Force service. He joined the Metro Vickers Company and was 26 years old when he commissioned as a Royal Air Force Reserve Flying Officer in 1938 shortly before the company contracted to build Avro Manchester’s under licence.
The SAAF Development Programme’s prewar demise influenced many young South Africans including WI Deas, PG Dexter, GJ Drake, J Falkson, AC Hamman, PH Hugo, O Hume, J Ing, AG Lewis, N Lewis, LA Lynn, Spencer Peacock -Edwards, SR Whiting and GM Wright while 26-year-old Michaelhouse educated Guy Paul Wentworth Austin arrived in England on the day war was declared, commissioned as an “acting Pilot on probation” in January 1940 and lost his life 10 months later in a No 9 Squadron Wellington shot down over Germany.
John Clive Dawson-Squibb a year behind Austin at Michaelhouse, interrupted his Oxford studies, commissioned in September 1940 and lost his life in November 1942 when his No 155 Squadron Mohawk was shot down by Japanese fighters.
Twenty-five– year- old Pretoria Boys High educated William Inglis Deas and Michaelhouse educated Spencer Whiting who was eighteen, commissioned a few weeks apart in October and November 1940 after Bill Deas’s uncle, Brigadier Kenneth van der Spuy who was Military Attache at the time had enabled their joining the RAF.
Lionel Leon, educated at King Edwards volunteered from America when war was declared and had just turned twenty when he commissioned in November. Harte was a Royal Air Force Reserve Flying Officer while Austin, Dawson-Squibb, Deas, Leon and Whiting would have received standard notifications after their Recruiting Office “Air Crew Selection Board” interviews, “You will be taken on strength from the date you report for duty and will also be issued with uniforms etc. as soon as possible thereafter. You should therefore bring with you the minimum of personal requirements” which translated as arriving at their designated “Receiving Wing”, a 90 second regulation haircut, health check, identity documentation issue and a few weeks of “square bashing”.
From “Links of Long Standing”, chapter 3 of Jon Eagar's book. About the book.