British Commonwealth Air Training Plan

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), often referred to as simply "The Plan", was a large-scale multinational military aircrew training program created by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the Second World War. The BCATP remains one of the single largest aviation training programs in history and was responsible for training nearly half the pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless operators and flight engineers who served with the Royal Air Force (RAF), Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm (FAA), Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) during the war.

Trainees from many other countries attended schools under the Plan, including Rhodesia, Argentina, Belgium, Ceylon, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, Fiji, Free France, Greece, the Netherlands, Newfoundland, Norway, Poland, and the United States.

Canada was chosen as the primary location for the BCATP's training operations.

The BCATP was one of many wartime training programs undertaken for and by the RAF and FAA. Such training occurred throughout the British Empire and Commonwealth and even extended into the United States.

In some texts, the name British Commonwealth Air Training Plan is erroneously used to denote these worldwide training efforts. The totality of British aircrew training efforts is correctly referred to as the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) or Joint Aircrew Training Program (JATP). The use of "British Commonwealth Air Training Plan" to denote the Canadian program and "Empire Air Training Scheme" to denote the totality of British worldwide aircrew training programs is consistent with the way these terms were used in the wartime London Times.^{[citation needed]} Canadian Prime Minister King coined the expression "British Commonwealth Air Training Plan" to describe the BCATP in his speech of December 17, 1939. In the same speech, he refers to "joint training," "joint air training plan," American air training plans, and prewar British-Canadian air training programs.

Negotiations regarding joint aircrew training between the four governments took place in Ottawa during the first few months of the war. The W.L.M. King government saw involvement in the BCATP as a means of keeping Canadians at home, but more importantly, it eased demands for a large expeditionary force and buried the politically divisive issue of overseas conscription. Negotiating the agreement was difficult. Canada agreed to accept most of the costs of the plan but in return insisted on a British pronouncement that air training would be Canada's primary war effort. Another sticking point was the British expectation that the RAF would absorb Canadian air training graduates without restrictions, as in the First World War, and distribute them across the RAF. King demanded that Canadian airmen be identified as members of the RCAF with distinct uniforms and shoulder badges. On 17 December 1939, the four nations concluded the Air Training Agreement – often called the "Riverdale Agreement", after the UK representative at the negotiations, Lord Riverdale.

The agreement stated that the training was to be styled after that of the RAF: three initial training schools, 13 elementary flying training schools, 16 service flying training schools, 10 air observer schools, 10 bombing and gunnery schools, two air navigation schools and four wireless schools were to be created.

The agreement called for the training of nearly 50,000 aircrew each year, for as long as necessary: 22,000 aircrew from Great Britain, 13,000 from Canada, 11,000 from Australia and 3,300 from New Zealand. Under the agreement, air crews received elementary training in their home country before travelling to Canada for advanced courses. Training costs were to be divided among the four governments.