Glidepath The quarterly newsletter of the Canadian Museum of Flight Issue #98 Fall, 2008
The Museum Charts its Course into the Future
The Canadian Museum of Flight has launched itself on a bold path into the future, including creation of a stunning new facility and establishing a new partnership with 746 Squadron Air Cadets. On Members Day, September 13, our President Gord Wintrup announced these initiatives, laid out his vision for the future, and answered questions from Members.
The new facility will be constructed on the north east corner of the Langley Airport, with access from 56th Avenue. The contract has been signed and site works have commenced. The Museum portion of a larger building will include two ROYAL CADETS hangar bays totaling about 21,000 ft², plus an additional wing for shops and offices, meeting rooms and storage, with a footprint of about 10,000 ft². The latter will be configured with a mezzanine level, bringing the total floor area close to 40,000 ft2, an enclosed area approaching the total size of the existing museum property. Considerable design work remains to finalize the best layout and most efficient use of that space, and input from all Members will be welcome!
The partnership with 746 Squadron will mean complementary uses for this new facility, to the benefit of both the Museum and the Cadets. The Cadets will benefit from adequate space for an enclosed parade ground, meeting rooms, class rooms, and kitchen and washroom facilities. The Museum will benefit from interest and involvement in Museum- activities by Cadets, their officers, and their parents. Combined, the two organizations will create a facility that is alive, energetic, and a substantive contribution to the aviation community in Langley and the Lower Mainland. The facility will also be designed to host conferences, sales functions, weddings and other social events. This aspect will yield an ongoing source of revenue for the Museum, helping to provide a sound financial foundation into the future.
The Canadian Museum of Flight
Bringing British Columbia’s Aviation Past into the Future
- Honourary Patron
- The Honourable Steven L. Point, OBC, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia
- Board of Directors
- Gord Wintrup President
- George Miller Vice President
- Paul de Lange Treasurer
- Matt Offer Secretary
- Carol Bellavance Director
- Vic Bentley Director
- Rich Ulvild Director
- Bruce Bakker Director
- Capt. Bill Thompson Lifetime Director
- Museum Staff
- Terry Brunner
- Rob Currington
- Museum Coordinates
- Telephone 604 532-0035
- Fax 604 532-0056
- e-mail tbrunner@telus.net
- Website www.canadianflight.org
- Address Hangar #3 5333-216th Street Langley, BC V2Y 2N3
- Museum Hours:
- daily from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The Canadian Museum of Flight is always looking for new volunteers. We are always in need of aircraft restorers, gift shop volunteers, facility maintenance helpers, and history and aviation enthusiasts of all kinds. No experience is necessary as training is available for all positions. We invite everyone, from young students to retirees, to join the team. If interested, please contact the Museum Volunteer Coordinator, Rob Currington, at 604 532 0035.
Glidepath goes digital!
For the Canadian Museum of Flight, there are compelling reasons to use the web to distribute Glidepath:
- more timely information
- links to the Museum’s new, enhanced Website which can lead readers to more detailed background information, more details on upcoming events, more photos
- economics, given the cost of printing and mailing paper newsletters
- greater visibility and higher profile for the Museum in the world of aviation.
We hope to significantly reduce the number of copies printed, and thereby cut the cost of printing and distribution.
All Museum Members are strongly encouraged to contact museum staff (contact information above) to sign up for Glidepath delivery by e-mail, to enjoy all the benefits of enhanced future Glidepath issues, and to help the Museum control costs.
Choo Choo’s Restaurant Contest
This issue’s winner is David Fraser, Member #2594. He will be receiving a certificate for dinner for two at Choo Choo’s Restaurant in downtown Langley. Congratulations!
Keep your eye on this space, as next time, who knows, you may be the winner. Good luck to all!
A Tribute to Jack Lingham
by Mike Craig
“He’s always been Airporty!” Whether they lived in England, Africa, Ontario or British Columbia he always gravitated toward things aeronautical explained Barbara Lingham, of her late husband Jack. Beloved volunteer John L… Lingham, or Jack to most everyone, is already dearly missed. Jack and Barbara were in line to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.
Barbara Lingham sat down with Glidepath to share some warm stories of this very private yet deeply committed man of the world and a fixture around the Canadian Museum of Flight: Barbara met Jack, the budding Lancaster rear-gunner, during WW2 when she was a proud, British, bus conductress. Jack always sat topside the double deckers. And Barbara saw to it that he rode for free! They married in 1949 when Jack was 24 and by then had been in the Royal Air Force 7 years. Amongst Jack’s mementos is a plaque honouring and thanking him for his efforts in the famous WW2 airdrop. Operation Manna. Over a period of three weeks in the spring of 1945, 2,835 Lancaster’s dropped over 6,500 tons of food to 3.5 million starving Dutch citizens in western Holland. When Jack received this award in 1995, Barbara says he never said a word about it; he just hung it up on the wall until she discovered it later. Other memorable war stories that Jack previously told Glidepath include secret. Lysander missions flying behind the enemy line dropping ‘black plastic’, an explosive, through the ‘Joe-hole’ for allied agents on the ground.
By the mid-fifties Jack’s stint. with the RAF was over so in 1957 he immigrated to Canada, to his uncle’s farm in Tillsonburg, Ontario. The young couple’s two daughters were 4 and 5 years old. Not long after their arrival in Canada Jack started a flying school on Toronto Island called Air Go. After 3 successful years he was lured by an ad looking for a pilot in Nairobi, Kenya. A wonderful experience, good for the resume but short lived. The airline went belly-up after 4 years so Jack and his family moved back to Ontario, took their car out of storage in a friend’s barn and drove out to Vancouver in a January west coast storm of storms. Immediately he landed a job as a pilot flying cargo planes for the now defunct PWA. Before heading up his own airline consulting business, he was an inspector for the Ministry of Transportation overseeing pilot licensing throughout the province.
Jack was one of the original CMF volunteers who recalled the days at the Crescent Beach location. In these last few years he had become synonymous with the Fleet 80 Canuck rebuild project. This “conservative” Englishman from Kent was interested in all things worldly Barbara would say. Apparently, while in school, Jack studied chemistry and physics with a strong passion for Dentistry and was in fact admitted to Bristol University but had to decline for lack of financial funding. His interest in global issues and the humanities is reflected in the rearing of their well grounded daughters. Barbara Lingham says Jack was a “hands on father” and an excellent husband while still remaining “his own man”. There are many attributes to Jack’s beliefs, his ideals and his uniquely defined style that set him apart but the comments that stuck to the ribs long after the interview with Barbara was her quoting Jack as he was preparing his daughters for that big old world out there; during mock job interviews he would tell them… “Sit up straight, don’t slouch and don’t ask too many questions”.
….Thank you Jack!
The Hapless Hampden
by Jerry Vernon
The Handley-Page Hampden bomber was not a great aircraft. However, it was one of the few bombers the RAF had in those early days of World War II, so many brave crews fought and died in Hampdens. 2440 air force personnel perished in Hampden crashes, a quarter of those during training, and a further 357 became Prisoners-of-War or internees.
The prototype Hampden flew in 1936, when the RAF were just emerging from several generations of lumbering biplane bombers. A total of 1273 Hampdens were built in the UK by Handley-Page and English Electric, and a further 160 were built in Canada. Also, Short Brothers and Harland built another 150 Herefords, which were Hampdens with in-line Napier Dagger engines. Almost half of the total production, 714 aircraft, were lost on operations and a further 458 were lost during training and other non-operational flights. One intact Hampden was retained for display purposes after the war, but was thoughtlessly scrapped before museums and collections became a popular activity.
The other British twin-engined “heavy” bombers of the early war period were the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and the Vickers Wellington. The prototypes for these two bombers had also first flown in 1936. Unlike the Whitley and the Wellington, the Hampden had an additional important role as a torpedo bomber. However, as better aircraft came into production the surviving Hampdens moved into a training role, while in Canada training had been their role from the beginning.
The Hampden was handicapped by the cranky and unreliable (by today’s standards) Bristol Pegasus engine. It also suffered from a peculiar flying fault known as “stabilized yaw”, which meant the aircraft could get into a situation where it was flying sideways in a “crabbed” condition and eventually fall out of the sky. The problem was a result of the very small side area of the skinny “tail boom” rear fuselage and the tiny fins and rudders. When in a stabilized yaw, the rudders had very little effect to straighten out the aircraft nor would differential throttle help, as the pilot of the Museum’s Hampden soon discovered moments before he crashed into the waters of Patricia Bay.
Several Hampdens were lost in B. C. due to stabilized yaw, even though the pilots at No. 32 OTU were warned not to attempt turns at low speed and low altitude while climbing. In the case of P5436, it had just carried out a practice torpedo drop from a low altitude and was climbing out at low speed when the pilot apparently turned to observe the path of the torpedo. The aircraft was soon slipping sideways and remedial action had no effect. The Navigator knew what was going to happen, and by the time the aircraft struck the water he had climbed out of the nose bomb-aiming position into his seat behind the Pilot in the upper fuselage and had flung open his hatch!! They were lucky to all escape, as a Stranraer flying boat had just taken off nearby and had them out of the water within a minute or two, while the aircraft plunged to the bottom of the bay, nearly 600 feet below the surface.
Many other crews were not. so lucky. For a list of the Hampden losses at the Operational Training Unit, and brief descriptions, please visit the Canadian Museum of Flight website, and click on the link to “Glidepath Stories”.
The larger and more successful Handley Page Halifax four-engined bomber also suffered from stabilized yaw in the early models which also had very small tail ins. Although Sir Handley Page apparently would not admit there was a problem, the later versions of the Halifax were built with much larger “barn door” fins and rudders and the problem ceased to exist.
Why did we built Hampdens in Canada?? The order for Hampdens was officially described as an “educational contract”, intended to build up expertise in the Canadian aircraft industry for the production of larger and more complex aircraft such as the Short Stirling and Martin B-26 Marauder (both of which were never built here) and the Avro Lancaster, which was built in large numbers at Toronto.
An Air Ministry order for 160 Hampdens was placed in 1938 with Canadian Associated Aircraft, a consortium of six existing Canadian companies. In the “Canadian way”, then as now, 80 were to be built in Ontario and 80 in Quebec. The companies involved were Fleet Aircraft, National Steel Car and Ottawa Car Manufacturing in the Ontario Group and in Quebec, Canadian Vickers, Canadian Car and Foundry and Fairchild Aircraft of Canada. Major components were produced in the various factories and the aircraft were assembled in Toronto and Montreal. In Ontario, the assembly was done at National Steel Car’s Malton plant, later renamed Victory Aircraft and, postwar, A. V. Roe Canada. The wings were built by National Steel Car and the tail assembly was built by Ottawa Car. The Ontario fuselages were built by Fleet at Fort Erie, and moved by road to Toronto. The Hampden that is at Langley was the 80th and last Hampden built in Ontario.
Oddly enough, however, when the aircraft was salvaged from the water, the stencilling on the tail fin skins plainly read “FAIR AIR” and “FAIR/CA”, denoting they were built in Quebec by Fairchild Aircraft of Canada.
Of the 160 Canadian-built Hampdens, 76 were retained for use in Canada and the other 84 were shipped as deck cargo to Britain, where they served with various bomber squadrons and training units. Most of the Hampdens in Canada served with No. 32 OTU at Pat Bay, training torpedo bomber crews. Later in the war, 21 “war weary” Hampdens were ferried to Canada over the reverse ferry routes to make up for attrition at the OTU. Most of these aircraft were ferried back over the “traditional” ferry route via Gander or Goose Bay and Montreal, but a handful were flown via the quicker and more direct Crimson Route, via Greenland, Baffin Island and either Edmonton or Fort Smith to Pat Bay. My late friend Don McVicar pioneered the Crimson Route and brought back two Hampdens “over the top” this way. The Crimson Route could be flown in 8 to 10 less flying hours, UK to Pat Bay.
No. 32 OTU(RAF) had originally started off using Ansons and Bristol Beauforts before Hampdens were available. Over the next year-and-a-half, the OTU was losing as many as two or three Hampdens a month on training flights. Despite the influx of additional aircraft from the UK in the Fall of 1943, on 30 Jan 44 the Commanding Officer of No. 32 OTU issued an order that all Hampden flying would cease at midnight that date. The 46 surviving airworthy Hampdens were quickly ferried to Sea Island and scrapped, and the OTU carried on training with Beech C-45 Expeditors and Douglas C-47 Dakotas, later moving to Comox as No. 6 OTU(RCAF) and switching to the role of training transport crews.
Overseas, three RCAF squadrons flew Hampdens(408, 415 and 420 Squadrons), losing 122 aircraft between them.
Apart from photos and wreckage salvaged from crash sites, nothing else was retained in Canada from the 97 Hampdens that operated here during the war.
Mystery Airplane
The “Mystery Airplane Contest” is a regular feature of the Glidepath Newsletter. Each issue will have a pictuure of an airplane, and some clues to its identity. You are challenged to correctly identify the aircraft. All correct responses will go into a barrel, one entry will be drawn, and the winner will receive a small gift fro9m the CMF. Guesses are limited to one per person. Entries can be submitted to the CMF by mail, e-mail or phone.
This issue’s mystery plane:
This issue’s mystery plane was a common workhorse throughout British Columbia in roles both civilian and military. From the photo, it is immediately evident we are looking at an all- metal, multi-engine, conventional gear aircraft. But which one?
And there is a twist: respondents that identify the specific aircraft illustrated, and state how they knew the answer if any do will go to the head of the line.
The big clue: what is the essence, the inherent neatness, of this image?
New Membership Benefits!
- New Partnerships! Members are now entitled to visit, free of charge:
- Flight Museum in Seattle
- West Coast Rail Museum in Squamish
- Mining Museum in Britannia Beach •
- Discounts in the Gift Shop increased from 10% to 15% •
- Adrian’s Restaurant offers, with proof of membership, 10% off your food bill
Now more than ever, membership in the CMF is a great deal for all aviation enthusiasts!
Around the Museum
Flying Operations The Museum had a very successful summer showcasing its aircraft and participating in fly- ins. The Abbotsford Airshow included daily flying displays by five of our aircraft, and Museum aircraft also participated in the Chilliwack and Pitt Meadows fly-ins. We must mention the first ever Annual Round Engine Round-up organized and hosted by the CMF at Langley Airport. Well done by the entire team of pilots and ground crew for safe and spectacular outings!
Pre-flight safety and procedures meeting of the pilots and groundcrew at the Abbotsford Airshow. And what a show they put on!
Aircraft Restoration
Restoration efforts continue at a slow but steady pace. The Fleet 80 Canuck project overcame a huge hurdle with selection and fabrication of sufficient spar cap material to assemble the left wing. The Waco INF has had several components pass through the paint shop.
Displays
The biggest news is the acquisition of two new aircraft. We have a new (to us) three quarter scale P- 51B Mustang, a fibreglass single seater with a 260 hp engine. In flying condition, she really moves along at a cruise speed of 170 mph; the pilots can’t stop raving about her performance. We have also secured a three quarter scale Spitfire Mk 5, also in fibreglass. for static display after completion of some cosmetic work.
Over the summer major improvements were made throughout the hangar, with additional lighting, painting of some of the background walls, fabrication of new displays including a weathered looking shed roof over some 30’s era bush plane artifacts, development of our video display technology and a new video display for the Mt Slesse accident. Cyril Meadows and Gord Varney are making excellent progress towards fabricating a Lancaster bomber from scratch, but in truth they will probably stop after completion of one full size fuselage bay as a display of the radio operator’s station. Our next project is creation of a wall commemorating propellers and their history.
Our cool CF-104 Starfighter was loaned out over the summer, as part of a movie shoot in North Vancouver it will be the star (for CMF Members, at least) of Night at the Museum Part 2, to be released next year.
Members
Individual Members are the heart of the Museum of Flight. To recognize their contributions, the Museum held its annual Members Day September 13. Flights in Museum aircraft were hugely popular, and the meal put on by Terry Brunner and B.J. McMillan was simply outstanding. We can never have too many members or too many volunteers, so if you know of anyone with time on their hands, please help them get involved!
The Library is Back!
Since spring, the CMF Library has undergone a transformation:
- the windows have been uncovered and blinds installed ⚫
- the shelves painted and repositioned to provide more open space ⚫
- the ceiling and floor uncovered and partly painted
- some lighting changed ⚫
- a newer computer acquired and installed
It’s gone from dirty, dark and dismal to bright and inviting.
The books have been sorted into useable categories such as History – General, History 1914-1918, History 1919- 1939, etc. Aircraft books are sorted by Make and Model…
Everything is being being catalogued on the computer- it’s about 1/3 complete. The first listing should be complete by the end of the year. Eventually we hope to make it available via the Internet for all to see and use.
We would love your suggestions and input on the Library’s future – tell us what you think, and what you would like to see! Comments can be sent via email to CMFLibrary@telus.net, or talk to the volunteer (Colin McDonald) on most Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Colin McDonald in the newly bright, organized library
Museum Calendar
A look-ahead to a big slate of events in 2009…
Abbotsford Car Show February March April Annual Fundraising Auction and Dinner British Motor Club May 100th Anniversary of Powered Flight Back to Baddeck, Nova Scotia Round Engine Roundup and Hangar Dance June Open House and Members Day July August Canada Day Air Shows – Abbotsford, Pitt Meadows, Chilliwack Battle of Britain September Murder Mystery Dinner Abbotsford Car Show Rememberance Day October November Christmas at the Museum
2009 is the 100th anniversary of December powered flight in Canada. Celebration of this event will be a highlight for our Museum next year.
The Glidepath Newsletter is published quarterly by the Canadan Museum of Flight. Contributions in the form of articles, news items, letters and photos are always welcome, as are comments and suggestions, although no payments are made for manuscripts submitted for publication in the Newsletter. Please feel free to contact Terry Brunner at the Museum by calling 604 532 0035.