1941, Tuesday 03 June;
The De Havilland Dominie came to a stop, and the young Australian flight sergeant ran to the door located behind the wing, and opened it, allowing Air Vice Marshal Keith Park to climb out. He’d had a pleasant flight from Seletar, Singapore, and had asked the pilot to circle above a few minutes, so he could observe the airfield below. Kluang and its surrounding area was still a hive of activity, although they’d completed one concrete runway, with the second nearing completion, further works were ongoing on the railway sidings where a number of buildings including hangers were in the process of being built.
The RAF personnel stationed here were used to seeing visitors, although nearly always by car, and a much lower rank, as staff officers and experts from supporting organisations visited with concerns about provisions, planned allocated facilities, and timetables. But Park’s visits where ever he went, always created a buzz, an excitement, a morale booster, and the chance to catch a glimpse of the Battle of Britain hero, maybe even some brief few words with the great man.
A wing commander, the station commander, led him over to a waiting Hillman Minx, a requisitioned model, painted RAF Blue, which they climbed into, before the short drive to the officer’s mess, a newly built wooden Kampong, situated among a number of rubber trees, with a wide staircase leading onto a big veranda, rattan chairs and tables scattered along its length. He would have a progress report on the construction of the airfield, while having a cool drink, before a tour of the station, meeting the building contract managers, as he toured, and then attend the invited evening dinner in the officer’s mess, with recently promoted Sqn Ldr Gordon Steege, fresh from the Middle East and his officers of the newly raised RAAF 450 Sqn.
Here at Kluang he would find the airfield incomplete, with numerous buildings still to be built, although all the ground clearance had long been completed. So, the drawings would show a munition dump, while he would see an area cleared of undergrowth, pits scrapped out, just leaving mature trees standing, awaiting the bunkers to be constructed. Similarly, roads had been scrapped out awaiting a bed of firmly packed rock and gravel, leading to incomplete, at best, aircraft pens.
However, over by the newly built rail sidings, were a large number of big sheds, workshops and hangers, with more being built, for the newly forming RAF 155 MU, which had been given the task of assembling all newly arrived crated aircraft, and the repair of the seriously damaged in accidents and operations. Some members had been transferred from 151 MU in Seletar, but many were newly arrived from the UK, and hadn’t got their knees brown yet.
Also, in situ was the RAF Operational Training Unit (Malaya) which had been using Buffalos, but would be the first to use the Hurricanes, when they arrive. It was also planned to operate a few Battles and Blenheim’s, to train new crews as they arrive, although that was currently being done by the newly forming squadrons themselves.
And the construction work force had changed, as the PWD heavy earth moving equipment were already in Batu Pahat, in the middle of four weeks’ worth of ground clearance, and levelling work, expanding the single runway, and readily the site for the provision of all the other facilities now required of a military airfield. Kluang was now seeing lorries with a different logo, owned by a civilian contractor, ferrying Chinese labourers, aggregates, cement, treated sawn lumber, and numerous other items. Most of the workmen were living in tents, while they worked on the assorted buildings required to make up an operational airfield, and its supporting infrastructure. They had a challenging schedule, to deliver most of the facilities by the end of July, which Park hoped would happen, but privately was sceptical it could be done in time.
Further north, major work was ongoing at Taiping, the civil airfield there being turned into one that could operate two bomber sqns, with a hard runway being built, and the grass one being extended. The airfield would be operational well before November, but some other facilities would probably take longer to be completed. Butterworth was also coming along nicely, similar to Taiping, while at Ipoh, development of the airfield was somewhat restricted, and it would only be suitable for one sqn. Already other sites were being surveyed, and he hoped to begin work on some of them by September.
Park would stay the night here in Kluang, and next morning be driven to Kahang, where he would inspect the new airfield complex that was under currently under construction. There he would find the 3rd RCAF Airfield Construction Company, which had only arrived mid-May, but was already hard at work, on ground clearance, and levelling, extending the grass runway, and preparing the ground for protected munition and fuel dumps, dispersal areas with aircraft pens, hutted accommodation, all for one fighter sqn, well in front of their timetable.