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 role till the early 1980s - the Shackleton being a World War 2 design that that was only retired in 1991. To put that in perspective, the RCAF replaced its ASW aircraft twice in that time period - first with the CP-107 Argus, and later with the P-3 Orions we currently use. Like the Ju 290 and the Fw 200, the Shackleton is a maritime patrol aircraft that is sort of obscure, so I find it sorta fascinating -and Airfix just released a new 1/72 kit of the same that I covet - so it might make an appearance here someday.)
Anyway, I digress. Odd Canadian aircraft:
If you know airplanes, it doesn't surprise you to learn the RCAF flew DC-3s/C-47s. It surprised me to learn we were flying them in a reserve capacity until 1989 - I suspect the killer paint job had something to do with it.
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Canada faced some rather unusual problems at the start of the Cold War. The problem was simple: if you leave out the United States, Canada has as much territory as the rest of NATO put together, much of it the vast and nearly uninhabited kind. As the Cold War entered its "nuclear bomber" phase, it soon became clear in a hypothetical war many, many Soviet bombers would be flying over the pole and south over Canada should World War 3 happen. (These bombers would also be attacking Canadian targets, but most of them would just be passing through to the United States.) This meant the RCAF had a interest in interceptors, IE jet fighters specialized in going very fast and hitting incoming bombers hard. By the nature of their design, interceptors are bad at more generalized fighting tasks such as shooting down other fighters or supporting ground forces. Canada's solution in the face of this problem was to try and cover their bets with a few different jet types. The first of these bets was also the most unusual, but also probably one of the most inspired: the CF-100 Canuk.
The CF-100 was unique in that it was designed and built in Canada - the only all Canadian combat aircraft to enter service. The Canuk was 'all-weather' interceptor, meaning it could intercept aircraft in the dark or in otherwise poor flying conditions. (This was something that Canada's other jet fighter, the Canadair Sabre, couldn't do.) Equipped with eight .50 machine guns, the CF-100 also could boast of its neato cavity magnetron radar the Americans developed in World War 2, instead of the stag antlers and TV aerials that radars had been up until that point. The Canuk could also operate from short runways (not a thing to be despised in the early jet age) and had a excellent rate of climb. The air frame proved to be enormously durable as well, which lead to a very long service life. In training and electronic warfare roles it lasted until 1981. Avro of course tried to follow up this success with the CF-105 Arrow, which was designed to be a supersonic interceptor capable of flying long distances while supersonic. That airplane, though, is nether odd nor obscure, so we'll just leave it.
The Canadair Sabres (license-built F-86 Sabres) were day fighters and a notable export success. In a improbable fact, the highest scoring fighter ace in history, Erich Hartmann ended his military career flying a Canadair-built Sabre in the West German Luftwaffe. The Sabres in Canada were replaced partially by Canadair Starfighters (license built etc Lockheed Starfighters) which were the jet interceptor squared: capable of flying about as fast as as a airplane could go in the period, but utterly useless at anything aside from intercepting. Starfighters get a mention here, simply because the RCAF for awhile stuck with bare aluminum.
In the wake of the political failure of the Arrow, Canada also bought F-101 Voodoos, a fairly odd duck in its own right. Originally developed as a long range escort fighter, by the time it was in flight testing the idea for bomber escorts was fast waning - Fast, high altitude bombing runs would soon switch to fast, low altitude bombing runs. The resulting product went forward as a recon airplane, a long range interceptor, and as a 'penetration' aircraft for tactical nuclear strikes. (Planners pictured Voodoos dropping bombs on enemy airfields in the early moves of a third world war nuclear Armageddon.) To that end, the F-101 had a fairly substantial internal weapons bay to reduce drag - which made it close to the Arrow, abet less advanced. Unlike the Starfighter, the F-101 was only used by the US and Canada; the USAF used Voodoos as a reconnaissance aircraft during the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam. Canada's jets (to pick nits, the F-101B) were naturally called CF-101s; and they featured two crew positions and slightly improved engines. Speaking of nuclear, funny story, Canada's Voodoos could be armed with Genie nuclear tipped anti air rockets, which the United States lent Canada. The controversy over this move played a major role in the defeat of John D. Diefinbaker's Conservative government (karma for cancelling the Arrow program.)
The Voodoos and the Starfighters would be replaced by the CF-18 Hornet in the 1980s, though Canada managed to make an unusual variant:
One CF-101 was modified with electronic warfare gear, and nicknamed the "electric Voodoo."
To supplement the Starfighter and the Voodoo, the RCAF got another jet fighter - this time one to fill in on the close support role. The CF-5 Freedom Fighter was a licensed and slightly improved version of the F-5. Used for "all the other jobs" the first two fighters couldn't do, the CF-5 was introduced in 1968 and retired from the RCAF only in 1995.
Another airplane I only learned about through models - Revell makes a 1/72 Canadian SAR Twin Otter. I thought these had all been withdrawn from service, but surprisingly, it is not true; the SAR wing at Yellowknife still uses them.
Up until 1980, the RCAF also used the Twin Otter's predecessor: the, er, single Otter.
Kind of a monoplane, maple-flavored An-2. Used as light transports by reserves, they were partially replaced by helicopters in the 1980s.
Immediately after World War 2, the Douglas DC-4 was widely used by pretty much every western nation. Canada, of course, managed to pack some innovation into its Canadair built licensed copies. The DC-4 was also the military C-54, and had already been built in several versions; Canadair mixed and matched systems and structural bits until if found a combination it preferred. The main modification was replacing its four P&W R2000 radials for four Merlin V12s. The result was very reliable, abet rather noisy.
With this slightly mad start, Canadair managed a more ambitious modification in the late 1950s. They bought a license for the Bristol Britannia airliner. The Britannia was four-engined turboprop airliner which entered the market just as jet airliners came into their own, so it was a bit of a tough sell. Canadair first took the airliner and made a world-beating ASW aircraft out of it: the CL-86 Argus. The turboprop engines were swapped out for four Wright R-3350 radials (IE the engine that powered the B-29) for better fuel consumption at low altitudes. These things flew until the early 1980s.
So the Convair CV-440 turboprop airliner was ending production in the early 1960s. Canada wanted to replace its DC-3s and B-25s (!) with something more modern, so Canadair bought the tooling and even a few leftover airliners. The CC-109 was born! Only the engines were apparently awful - in the mid-1960s the existing air-frames got re-engined with new turbines - and they made a grand total of 13. It was used as a light/VIP transport until the mid 1990s, but it definitely didn't replace the DC-3s. It was replaced with Dash 8s and Challenger jets.
The B-25, since it came up, served in seemingly every Allied air force in World War 2. I guess because spares were so easy to find, they remained in service in the RCAF as a reserve light transport until the early sixties.
Another common air-frame that had a somewhat unusual second life was the Avro Lancaster. I imagine the sheer number of Lancasters Canada had at the end of World War 2 recommended them to service - that, and they had been build at the Avro's Downsview plant in Toronto. They served as transport and SAR aircraft until the early 1960s.
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| This picture is from "Torbay Airport" - eventually to be renamed St. John's International airport. |
Bought in the early 1970s to replace the CL-44 and the CC-109, the RCAF bought 5 Boeing 707s that Boeing had surplus after the buyer backed out - renamed in Canadian service as CC-137 Huskies. With the application of a aftermarket kit from Beechcraft (which I know is the term, but it still makes me laugh because I always think of ad-ons to Honda Civics) they were also made into aerial tankers. These aircraft served until the mid 1990s, when used Airbus 310s were bought as replacements. In a very obvious demonstration of government priorities, these Airbuses only replaced the CC-137s as tankers in 2008, after the German government had done the real work of developing a refueling kit. (Though speaking of, apparently the five air frames were sold to the United States, to provide spares for their Boeing 707 JSTARS aircraft.)
Speaking of moving stuff about, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the De Havilland Canada Caribou twins. If you wanted to point to an area where the Canadian Aerospace industry was historically a world expert, it'd be short take off / landing (STOL) transports. The DHC Caribou and the Buffalo are light transports that are just this side of helicopters in their ability to take off from anywhere.
Above is a Caribou, below is a Buffalo. The Buffalo has improved engines, turbine as opposed to rotary, and a more modest tail; it is proportionally quite large, but the Caribou has a tail that makes it look like some sort of flying axe. Both were exported as well; they were designed to take a helicopter's worth of stuff, and the longer range and much lower maintenance costs made it attractive to any nation having to fly out of rough country. Canada still uses the Buffalo as a Fixed Wing SAR aircraft.
As a air superiority fighter, the Canadian Navy flew F2H Banshees. F2Hs were widely used in the US Navy, and saw action in Korea. Not so unusual, except the Canadian Navy Banshees looked sharp as hell in their navy colors. In the early 1960s, the Banshee wing was dropped in favor of an all-ASW aircraft complement.
The S-2 tracker isn't a terribly unusual aircraft either for the time, though the Grumman S-2s used by the RCAF were built under license by De Havilland Canada. They outlasted the carrier they were built for, flying ASW missions in the 1970s and lighter duties (maritime surveillance and fisheries patrol) into the 1990s. The Bonaventure was retired under Trudeau the 1st, (as is tradition, just after the carrier had received a major mid-life refit.) Australia kept the Bonaventure's sister ships, the Melbourne and the Sydney in commission until the early 70s and early 1980s respectively, so for the dreamers it seems plausible that Bonaventure could have been kept in service until then.
Last but certainly not least, the Canadair CL-84 Dynavert:
OK, so if you know post-World War 2 aviation development, you know that everybody developed a weird obsession with what are awkwardly known as V/STOL aircraft. That is, aircraft that can take off and/or land vertically. This obsession began with military planners realizing that airbases were actually pretty vulnerable to attack, and that having aircraft that didn't need airbases would be a hell of a thing. With not much more than that, immense amounts of money went into developing aircraft that mostly never got past the prototype phase. In general, making a aircraft that can fly like a airplane and hover like a helicopter is really hard, and making one that wouldn't just be a way to get otherwise valuable pilots in combat killed pointlessly is essentially impossible. In the Cold War, only two aircraft actually made it to being operational: the Harrier family of jump jets, and the Yak-38. Both aircraft demonstrate an alarming tendency to kill their own pilots as opposed to enemy ones; very expensive molehills for the mountains of money and hours spent.
Anyway, Canadair, in a joint effort with the American General Dynamics, managed to make a VTOL aircraft that actually worked: that's the CL-84. The CL-84's Wikipedia article has a fairly detailed history but for the TL;DR crowd, it was a swing wing turbine powered light aircraft that could hover like a helicopter, and fly like a normal airplane. It featured some sort of mechanical box that converted control inputs from horizontal to vertical flight, and had been kept light enough that a mechanical failure in one engine did not spell instant death for the crew. In the context of VTOL flight then and now, these are impressive achievements.
By 1974, enough testing had been done for General Dynamics to start looking for customers, and it turns out the project had lousy timing. The US Post-Vietnam draw-down had begun, and the United States military was not really interested in a new aircraft. Neither really was anybody else, not even Canada.
The other knock against the program was that Canada was going to build the things, and that removed interest not only in the American military-industrial complex, but other potential buyers as well. With not even Canada being interested, the whole program withered on the vine.
