Flying On Instinct Read online

  Everything was set for the first summer of bush flying doing aerial photography and fire patrols along the St. Maurice River valley. Using the two flying boats, patrols were extended from Lake of the Woods (Lac des Bois) in Ontario to James Bay. This continued for two summers, but by 1921, operating costs were so high that the Laurentide Company refused to fund the patrol-only pursuit any longer and reorganized it into Laurentide Air Service Ltd. with Ellwood Wilson as president and barnstormer William R. Maxwell as vice-president.

  A handling party launches Curtiss HS-2L flying boat G-CYDS of the Canadian Air Board from the dock at Victoria Beach, Manitoba, in 1921. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA PA-05328

  Looking for financial support, Maxwell convinced Quebec shipbuilder Thomas Hall to invest $10,000 to create a commercial arm of the business. In the summer of 1922, Laurentide carried 310 passengers during 688 flying hours as a bush charter service for prospectors, hunters and lumbermen. Based on this success, Maxwell bought 12 more HS-2Ls sight unseen. Many were still in their factory shipping crates. He hired six pilots who flew mapping expeditions covering 20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometres) of forest in Ontario. In 160 flying hours they mapped an area that would have taken ground surveyors five or six years to cover.

  The government of Ontario took note and created its own Ontario Provincial Air Service (OPAS), poaching Maxwell and other staff away from Laurentide along with many of its customers. In one 1926 operation, OPAS planes flew 27 men and 6,420 pounds (2,912 kilograms) of equipment to successfully fight a remote northern forest fire that could not have been extinguished any other way. “No man,” Maxwell said, “approached or left it by ground.” Backed by public funding from the Ontario government, OPAS lived on into the 1940s while Laurentide died in 1925 from the loss of key personnel and business to OPAS. Laurentide missed the Red Lake gold rush by mere months.

  In the summer of 1925, Lorne and Ray Howey discovered gold under the roots of an upturned tree at Red Lake in the Canadian Shield. When news of the discovery reached the outside world in March 1926, dogsleds mushed over frozen wilderness and bush planes buzzed overhead in the wildest stampede since the Klondike gold rush of 1897–98. In one hour, a plane could cover an area that would take 12 days to travel by land. More than 3,000 men trekked up the frozen Hudson River for six days and nights in bone-freezing cold to reach the Red Lake base camp. From there, they still had to survive staking and working a claim. In 1934, the price of gold rose from $20 to $35 an ounce, resulting in increased mining activity in Red Lake.

  The Red Lake gold rush proved the usefulness of the float planes that would soon dominate northern transportation. Early on, the Red Lake Transport Company had used 60 teams of horses for hauling winter freight, and stern-wheel barges, tugs and freighter canoes in summer to help get fortune seekers in. Faster modes of transportation were needed to get their gold out to southern buyers. In 1927, Red Lake was the service centre for prospectors, miners and construction crews working at the Howey Gold Mine. Ten years later, Howey Bay in Red Lake was an air hub for planes of all types, on skis or floats, with payloads of people and cargo arriving and departing at 15-minute intervals. At the height of the gold-rush staking period, this bush-plane airport without radios or a control tower was the busiest airport in the world!

  The Canadian-designed and built Noorduyn Norseman fulfilled the miners’ needs and more. In 1935, Dutch-born aircraft designer and manufacturer Robert B.C. Noorduyn decided to build a bush plane for Canadian conditions. To get it right, he asked bush pilots what they needed. They told him that the plane must have high wings so they could see where they were going, and four doors, two on each side, so they could load and unload large cargoes quickly. Whatever cargo wouldn’t fit inside, such as canoes or lumber, could be balanced and strapped to the wing struts or floats for transport. The plane had to be easily adaptable to floats, skis or fixed-wheel landing gear. It had to be rugged enough to withstand rough water in summer and plow through snowdrifts in winter. And speaking of winter, it had to have an insulated cabin and heated cockpit.

  The 10-passenger Norseman was the ideal bush plane—sturdy, reliable and easy to repair. It was also used for troop transport during the Second World War. The designation “Norseman V” was reserved by the company until the end of the Second World War to represent Winston Churchill’s “V for Victory” symbol. Until 1953, the Canadian military used the Norseman as light utility transport, then replaced it with the de Havilland Otter. When production ended in 1959, a total of 903 Norsemen had been built. In the 1960s, over 20 Norsemen were still stationed in Howey Bay servicing the North. Some are still flying, most in Canada.

  A Norseman (USAAF tail number 44-70285) gained some infamy when it disappeared over the English Channel on December 15, 1944, while carrying famous American bandleader Glenn Miller en route to Paris to join his Army Air Force Band. No trace of the plane was ever found, but its flight plan was through an area used by returning B-17 bombers to jettison unused bombs after a mission. It is speculated such a bomb hit Miller’s Noorduyn UC-64A Norseman, which was at a lower altitude. RAF pilot Fred Shaw reported that a small plane was seen crashing into the North Sea near that route, but the mystery surrounding the death of Glenn Miller and the two crewmen has never been conclusively solved.

  One of the new air services formed to take advantage of business opportunities in the goldfields was Patricia Airways and Exploration Ltd., named for the district in which the lake was located. Its head pilot, Harold Anthony “Doc” Oaks (both his father and his uncle were doctors and the family may have wanted to steer him in that direction) was a former captain in the RFC, a geologist and a mining engineer with a degree from Queen’s University. Oaks decided that flying to the digs was more profitable than prospecting them. He sold his claim and rented an HS-2L, plus a tiny Curtiss Lark biplane with two open cockpits, one for himself as pilot and one that held up to 400 pounds (180 kilograms) of mining equipment or two passengers snuggled tightly together.

  During 1926 and 1927, Oaks and his Lark, equipped with floats or newfangled skis, made up to 10 trips a day carrying a total of 260 passengers, as well as 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms) of prospecting gear and 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms) of mail to Red Lake, Ontario. Profits soared. The Lark was cheaper to operate than the heavy HS-2L, so Oaks decided to form a new air service with light, agile planes. He tapped James A. Richardson, a Winnipeg grain exporter, for funding, and they formed Western Canada Airways Ltd., a commercial aviation company that began with a fleet of exactly one Fokker plane. Oaks did double duty as pilot and business manager, Al Cheesman was the mechanic and J.A. MacDougall their head office clerk. The plane bore the registration G-CAFU and the name City of Winnipeg.

  The company serviced mining camps and did it so well that they won a major contract from the federal government to airlift drilling machinery, surveyors and engineers to Hudson Bay. The plan was to move western wheat through Manitoba to a rail terminus in either Port Churchill or Port Arthur, but only if the bay at either town could be dredged deep enough to handle huge grain ships bound for Europe. Both ports were ice-free in summer, but only drilling would determine if the geology was suitable. And it had to be done quickly. Rail crews would finish the Hudson Bay Railway line next summer. Could Oaks do it now? He knew winter flying in the North would be difficult, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  With Richardson’s money, Oaks bought three Fokker Universal planes and hired three pilots: two RFC veterans poached from OPAS and skilled Norwegian cold-weather aviator Bernt Balchen, who had participated in Arctic air searches for lost polar explorers. When he first sighted his new employer’s headquarters, Balchen could not believe his eyes. “It was little more than a lean to,” he wrote in his diary, with “an impressive sign over the door: Western Canada Airways.” But it was a multi-purpose lean-to, comprising “ticket office, freight station, and passenger terminal for the whole flying gold rush” he noted. The Fokkers arrived from the American facto
ry, and they were in business.

  The Fokker Universal was the first aircraft built in the US based on the designs of Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker, who had worked for Germany during the First World War. About half of the 44 Universals built between 1926 and 1931 were used in Canada and flown by legendary bush pilots like Walter Gilbert and Punch Dickins. While the Curtiss HS-2L flying boat could only operate in summer, the Fokker had an interchangeable undercarriage and could be outfitted with floats, wheels and skis for virtually all-season operation. Fokker established the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation at the Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to build other aircraft under licence.

  In 1926, Fokker made plans to create a sturdy civilian aircraft designed to land on very rough airstrips, or none at all. One of the features that made this possible without shaking the plane apart was an early shock absorber made of bungee cord. The new plane, the Fokker Super Universal, evolved from the Fokker Universal under design refinements spearheaded by Robert Noorduyn, who would later build his own Noorduyn Norseman bush plane. The mixed-material construction consisted of a welded steel-tube frame for the fuselage, fabric-covered tail surfaces and a plywood wing with a span of 47.74 feet (14.55 metres) mounted above the fuselage. It had a single 149 kW (200 hp) Wright J-4 radial engine and later a 246 kW (330 hp) J-6 engine. Two gasoline tanks were mounted in the wings, and at a maximum speed of 118 MPH (190 Km/h) it had a range of 535 miles (860 kilometres). The pilot sat in an open cockpit forward of the wing’s leading edge. The enclosed cabin below and to the rear of the pilot held four to six passengers or was fitted for cargo estimated up to 940 pounds (427 kilograms).

  In 1927, a Fokker Super Universal sold new from the factory for $14,200. But on March 31, 1931, the wing of a Trans World Airlines (TWA) Fokker fell off during a flight between Kansas City and Los Angeles. The plane crashed, killing all on board. The American government decreed all future passenger planes must have two engines and be made of metal. William Boeing and Donald Douglas began building such planes, and Anthony Fokker’s company was acquired by North American Aviation in 1933.

  On March 23, 1927, the first major flying project at Western Canada Airways (WCA) got underway when two open-cockpit Fokkers piloted by Bernt Balchen and Fred Stevenson picked up 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) of drilling equipment from the end of the rail line at their Cache Lake, Manitoba, base and deposited it at Port Churchill. The Churchill Operation, as the press dubbed it, was the first time large amounts of cargo had been airlifted into the Canadian Arctic.

  On one return trip, Fred Stevenson failed to show up. Seventy-five miles (120 kilometres) north of Cache Lake, his oil line burst and he put down on a frozen lake. With darkness falling, Stevenson snuggled into his flight suit and went to sleep with howling wind and wolves for company. At sunrise, he spotted fresh footprints and followed them to a cabin. The Native occupant was startled by the unexpected company, but he and Stevenson agreed on a price for a dogsled, and Stevenson mushed south. The dogs, however, weren’t up to the trip, so Stevenson released the tired animals and continued on alone through thigh-high snow. Meanwhile, Balchen and his engineer, Al Cheesman, had taken off at first light in search of their missing friend. They spotted the downed plane but not Stevenson. Planes were too expensive to be left sitting on a remote lake, so they decided to land and fly it out. Cheesman, who had some flight experience, got the engine going and took off. When he saw the low oil-pressure gauge, he set the plane back down, fixed the broken line and made it back to Cache Lake with Balchen following in the other Fokker. When Stevenson finally got back to base after three days of slogging through snowdrifts, the first thing he saw was the plane he had left back at the lake, now sitting on the landing strip. He truly thought he had been out in the bush too long.

  On a subsequent takeoff, Stevenson ripped his undercarriage, but the only place where repairs could be made was at a train depot 135 miles (218 kilometres) away. He piled the broken parts onto a railway handcar, and with Cheesman pumping one handle and Stevenson the other, they seesawed their way there and back.

  Balchen had his adventures, too. Caught in a blizzard near Eskimo Point, Manitoba, as the sun was setting, he decided to land on snow-covered tundra and wait out the storm. He was rocked to sleep by strong winds pummelling his plane but was roused in the early morning darkness by a peculiar bumping motion. Trying to focus through the dim light and blowing snow, he could just make out a big white shape. A polar bear was butt to butt with the back end of his plane, using the horizontal stabilizer as a scratching post. Balchen decided to let the itchy bear be; however, before taking off into a clear sky the next morning, he made a careful inspection of the aircraft’s tail section.

  In spite of such contretemps, by April 22 eight tons of equipment and 14 workers had been delivered to Port Churchill. Balchen noted that on their last takeoff from Cache Lake, there was so much water on the melting ice that the ski-fitted Fokkers resembled seaplanes.

  The 1927 Churchill airlift for the Hudson Bay Railway was the first of its kind in Canada, and probably the world. It was successful at a time when aviation and northern flying were far from mature, and when communication and navigation aids were primitive at best. It’s therefore a tribute to the determination and skill of all concerned. The Department of National Defence said: “The decision during 1927 as to the selection of Fort [Port] Churchill as the ocean terminus of the Hudson Bay Railway was made possible by these flights. There has been no more brilliant operation in the history of commercial flying.” The completion of this project established the usefulness of aircraft in remote areas, not only in mining and geologic surveys, but also in servicing distant communities. Equally important, it established WCA as a pioneer in northern aviation.

  Following the successful Churchill Operation, WCA founder Doc Oaks moved on to other accomplishments, launching Northern Aerial Mineral Exploration Ltd. to fly mining engineers and prospectors into remote locations from Hudson Bay to the Rockies to sample Precambrian rocks that yielded gold, silver, nickel, zinc and copper. He established fuel depots across northern Canada so flights could go farther in greater safety. To ease winter engine start-ups, he and Cheesman developed small heated tents called “nose hangers” that fit over engines and allowed work to be done without frostbitten fingers. In January 1929, WCA established a regular air service along the Mackenzie River to Fort McMurray.

  In 1927, Oaks became the first recipient of the McKee Trophy for achievement in aviation. Known as the Oscar of Canadian aviation, the McKee Trophy (Trans-Canada McKee Trophy) is the oldest aviation award in Canada. It is given annually to a Canadian whose achievements have been “most outstanding in promoting aviation in Canada.” It was donated by Captain J. Dalzell McKee, an American pilot who completed the first seaplane flight across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver in a Douglas MO-2B in 1926, accompanied by Squadron Leader Earl Godfrey of the RCAF.

  Oaks was inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame, which is located in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, in 1974, with the following commendation: “The professional daring of his aerial expeditions into uncharted regions led others of his breed to colonize the unknown north and bring outstanding benefits to Canadian aviation.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Winged Workhorses

  and Flying Canoes

  BUSH FLYING INVOLVES OPERATIONS in all weather conditions and terrain—over desert, tundra, mountains, forest, water, and snow and ice with short, makeshift landing strips or no landing strips at all. In 20th-century Canada, any sparsely settled region outside the narrow band of development near the US border was called the boonies, the backcountry or the bush. Sometimes it still is. There were roads and railways along the southern boundary and coastal transportation by boat, but the boreal Canadian Shield and the remote Arctic tundra were uncharted and undeveloped wild country accessible only by canoe, horseback or dogsled. Bush planes would become the 20th-century equivalent of the fur-trade voyageur’s canoes.

  Today, f
light training is available to qualify for a pilot’s licence and certification, but pioneer pilots had no bush-flying instruction. They adapted their military flying skills to the new environment and learned by doing. If they did well, they survived. They flew by visual flight rules (VFR) following ground reference markers such as rivers and avoiding obstacles like mountains, clouds and other aircraft. Some joked that IFR meant I Follow Rivers, instead of instrument flight rules, where the pilot uses cockpit instruments and electronic signals. Sometimes they sketched what they saw, and these crude maps became the only rudimentary charts available. Large sections of Canadian government maps had no reference points and were identified with the disconcerting notation “unmapped.” When they flew into uncharted areas, pilots would pick out landmarks, then try to find them in reverse order on the way out—it was easier said than done. A pilot could land and take off at numerous lakes or clearings in a day’s work, moving along an erratic course that was difficult to replicate. Often, a pilot found the best way out was by straight-line flying by “the seat of his pants” back to a reference point his compass and instincts told him should be there. Homing pigeons and bush pilots had a lot in common. There was no Global Positioning System (GPS) or air-traffic controller to assign routes and altitudes. Pilots were on their own.