Odd Airplanes of the RCAF
Last week in the library, I came across a book called "Canada's Air Force Today" from 1988. It's interesting in of itself as a snapshot of Canada's Air Force at the end of the cold war, but the thing hooked my attention mostly because Canada was flying a surprisingly wide variety of aircraft, most of them Canadian built, if not Canadian engineered. Well, that and the 1980s Canadian Air Force loved its bare metal and racing stripes look, which still lives on in our SAR (Search and Rescue) aircraft. Oh, and if you are reading this and thinking "look at what a shoestring air force we had" well, cheer up, buttercup. Unless you were a superpower nation, flying first gen postwar jets in some capacity was the norm. Indeed, we did better than some; re-reading this list makes it conspicuous to me that we did much better than say, the British when it came to ASW (anti-submarine warfare) aircraft. (The British kept the interesting but odd Avro Shackleton in the r...