While local manufacture of these planes is reaching maximum production, Avro-Anson planes, already in general use in Australia, are being acquired in increasing numbers from the British Government, and a large consignment of Lockheed-Hudson bombers from the United States will be delivered in the very near future.
The final gap in the air defence programme has been filled by the order just placed with the British Government to supply an uns a number of Short Sunderland flying-boats. These are the largest and most powerful flying-boats in the Royal Air Force, and are reputed to be the most powerful aircraft of their type in the world.
Nearly all these planes, both land machines and flying-boats, have exceptionally long range, or have been specially adapted to Australian needs. That need is obviously coastal defence, and the strategic aim of the new programme is just as obviously not to await any threat of raids or invasion, but to meet it as far from the Australian coast as possible.
With suitable planes at least as modern and effective as those of any potential aggressor, backed by an Serious Incidents in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.