Another Big War Project in Alberta

I am really enjoying my second reading of a great book I bought from a Goodwill store in Seattle, WA entitled, "Warplanes to Alaska" by Blake W. Smith. The subject of the book is the very well kept secret mission during WWII which saw thousands of American warplanes funneled through Alberta on their way to Russia to help their war effort. I have to admit that I only learned in recent years about the Lend-Lease program which also was known as the ALSIB (Alaska-Siberia) route, the Northwest Staging Route (the name given to the airway by the Canadians), the Northwest Ferry Route or to most of the U.S. Army Airforce simply "The Pipeline". The route officially began at Great Falls, Montana at Gore Field (now Great Falls International) where aircraft from manufacturing plants in the midwest and California would gather for a thorough once over before being sent up the "pipeline". The program's airfields and airstrips stretched like a string of aeronautical pearls through Alberta, crossing through a little slice of northern British Columbia, on to the southern part of the Yukon territory and then across Alaska to Nome where Russian pilots would take delivery of the planes for the flight to the eastern front.

The route was a hastily created collection of airports and airstrips that followed the Rocky Mountains on the eastern slopes where the weather and terrain were a little more forgiving to pilots who would essentially be pioneering what had until recently been a frontier of remote trap lines, beautiful but remote region and mostly uncharted mountains and rivers. In little more than a year this once unexplored route would be dotted with landing strips carved by the brute force of bulldozers who blazed a slow trail through the wilderness. These bulldozer trains carried  behind them sleds containing all the supplies they would need to create the many places fliers would flock to in low visibility conditions or when the cold weather got the better of the aircraft and forced the crews to land immediately.

Alberta airports in the ALSIB route (from south to north) included Lethbridge, Calgary, Edmonton (now known as Edmonton City Centre or formerly as the "Muni") and Grande Prairie. Lethbridge was the point of entry for Canadian sovereignty and a busy airport in its own right as the Alberta stopping point on Trans Canada Airlines Trans-Canada mainline route and also home to #8 Bombing and Gunnery School of the BCATP. The Americans built a repair and refueling facility on a quarter section of land at the Calgary airport which was home to # 37 Secondary Flying Training School (R.A.F.). The facility was located on the west side of the airport, across from the hangars for #37 S.F.T.S. and the terminal building which were both located on the east side of the airport. The largest American presence in Alberta for the ALSIB route was at Edmonton where they built a massive series of hangars on the north side of the aerodrome for final inspection and major repair to aircraft that would soon be leaving the relative comfort of the populated prairie lands for the desolate and rugged territory that lay ahead on the way to Alaska. In the final year of the program, the Americans built an entirely new airport complete with concrete runways and a multitude of hangars and support buildings north east of Edmonton and called the base Namao.\

A series of radio ranges were strung along the route to help the aviators navigate in less than perfect weather.
Though a relatively new technology , the ranges were critical to keeping the aircraft navigating safely around the near ever present high terrain and mountains that accompanied the route from Grande Prairie to its terminus.

It must have been impressive for citizens of Alberta to see the once wide open skies of their home filled with every manner of military aircraft between the hundreds of training aircraft of the BCATP and the multitude of bombers, fighters and cargo planes of the Lend Lease program. The drone of so many powered aircraft must have also reminded Albertans of the vital role their backyard was playing in the effort to bring WWII to a successful close for the Allied Forces.

The story of an Australian training in Canada in WWII

Hello once again.

#3 Secondary Flight Training School
(or S.F.T.S.) was located in Calgary at what is now Mount Royal University (originally Mount Royal College). Pilots from around the world came to Canada to train to fight the Nazis, Italians and Japanese in WWII.

I went to Mount Royal College in the early 90's and had no idea that it had once been an airport (the airport closed in 1965). The old hangars can still be seen on the north side of the original student residences and along Crowchild Trail near the ATCO plant. I used to park my car to attend MRC in the middle of what had been the runways.

I met an interesting veteran at the Calgary Aerospace Museum who told me that the airport was known as R.C.A.F. Station Lincoln Park after the war and was mostly used for repair and storage of surplus aircraft and as an emergency landing field. If you ever have the chance, be sure to visit the Calgary Aerospace Museum and the Nanton Lancaster Museum too...both have an impressive collection of the history of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and you can get right up to most of the artifacts.

These photos were purchased off Ebay from Australia. The photographer was George Price whose family called him "Mac" as his full name was George Garnet McLeod Price. He was in the Royal Australian Airforce at Rochmond R.A.A.F. Base New South Wales. He had always wanted to fly, however, at first he was an engineer in the R.A.A.F. He was then sent over to Canada with others for pilot training and finally got his "wings"...every pilot candidate's dream.

The boys were well looked after by the Canadians and they appeared to have a great time. Entertained, wined and dined! They were well looked after by the Air Force Mother's Auxiliary who used to send cards home advising that, "they had seen 'your son' and that he was well" ect. By the time these men returned to Richmond, Australia the war ended and "Mac" therefore did not go to war.

Mac married his childhood sweetheart, Eileen who was a W.A.A.F. (Womens Auxiliary Airforce). She was very worried about all the beautiful girls that Mac met up with over there.

He finally left the R.A.A.F., having been offered a job as Chief Engineer with the Guinea Air Traders, Lae New Guinea about 1945/46. Eileen went with him but came home when she was 3 months pregnant.

Mac was killed in an air crash of a Lockheed Hudson at Lae in 1948. He was only 25 years old. They were taking natives to the Bulola Gold Fields and it was his day off. Nonetheless, he was asked to go along and bring back a plane from Wau. They had only taken off when it crashed on a small island in the Markham River. The accident report stated that the pilot was inexperienced, got in to difficulties and could not right the plane. They were all killed, 27 natives and 5 crew, including Mac who by all rights shouldn't have been on that plane as it was his day off.

Mac's daughter Catherine was born 5 months later without ever getting to know her father.

A great big thank you to Mac's sister, Patricia who not only offered these photos on Ebay but was kind enough to share some personal history of the men in these pictures with all of us.

Some photos and Maps of the BCATP in southern Alberta

My first two posts were word filled but lacked any visuals to go along with them. I am fortunate to have been able to collect a wide variety of materials from the BCATP and the Royal Canadian Airforce over the years. It is my sincere belief that these items belong in the public domain for all to learn from and to help share the history of this proud era.

This aeronautical map shows the Calgary area in 1942 and gives us just a little glimpse at how very crowded the skies of southern Alberta must have seemed with numerous training bases all in such close proximity to one another. In this little snapshot we have about 60 miles of latitude and 11 BCATP aerodromes!!! You can identify the individual bases starting right at the bottom of the map with Vulcan, then Ensign, Frank Lake and so on as you go north. Some of these aerodromes were satellite fields to the main training bases, a place away from the main training aerodrome to practice takeoffs and landings, precautionary landings and forced approaches. Here's the kicker for you...of the 11 BCATP installations shown on this map in 1942, only three are still in use today as airports (Calgary International, Airdrie and soon Vulcan which is being brought back to usefulness as an airport after having been left to rot on the prairie for more than 60 years).

The area circled in red pencil is the approximate boundary of the training area for a pilot from High River which was home to #5 Elementary Flight Training School. This map came with the actual markings that one Leading Aircraftsman Cavanaugh had marked while learning the basics of flying an aircraft. You can see areas marked for dual work (where the trainee has the instructor along to teach the pupil and to help in case the student gets himself into a tough situation), solo work, aerobatic solo area (I'm sure that was a popular area!), L.F. area which was for low flying (pilots are taught how to use fields other than aerodromes and runways for precautionary and forced landings...you always have to be ready to land just about anywhere when flying a plane) and then there are four areas marked for "F.L." which I believe were actual fields that had been picked as appropriate for practice doing forced landing...the instructor simulates an engine failure (the engine is brought to idle so it is still turning over, it just isn't providing enough power to maintain altitude, you can add throttle again to restore powered flight) and the student has to learn how to manage the amount of altitude he has left in order to bring down his aircraft in a safe landing on a dirt field.

This is the same general area as the first aeronautical map but the first thing you probably noticed is the color of the background. The colors are much darker and are in the red spectrum...these maps were used for training pilots and navigators on night flights...these colors could be seen easily with a red light which would help the trainee to view the map in a darkened cockpit without ruining their night vision. It took me a while to figure out these maps as there is nothing on them to say they are for night navigation specifically. I can imagine this map having been used by L.A.C. Cavanaugh on a night navigation exercise. I have some of his flight logs which show some of the flights he did and some of the waypoints along the way which just fires up ones imagination all the more. I must say, it is truly inspiring to be holding a historical document in your hand that acts as a tangible link to the past. All the more reason, I think, that items like this deserve not to be locked up in some dusty drawer somewhere unappreciated but out in the public eye for anyone who might gain something from being able to view them again.

This photo is from an Australian fellow who came to Canada to continue his flying training here at #3 Secondary Flight Training School in Calgary. This particular aerodrome fascinates me for a number of reasons. This facility was located where Mount Royal University sits today. I attended Mount Royal when it was still called Mount Royal College and parked my car in a field that would have sat right in the middle of this triangle of runways and taxiways. This aerodrome actually accomplished two purposes...it was home to #3 S.F.T.S. and it was also home to #10 Repair Depot which would accept damaged or "pranged" aircraft and either repair them fully or take them apart for their still valuable functioning parts. If you look at the top and the bottom of the photo, you will notice two separate sets of hangars...one was for #3 S.F.T.S. and the other for #10 Repair Depot. The repair depot continued to function after the war and the base was also used as a storage place for war weary aircraft like the Avro Lancaster which were kept in flyable condition in case Canada faced another foreign threat. The base was closed in 1958 and the runways were still available for emergency use until 1964.

The Australian fellow who took this and a multitude of other photos I was fortunate to acquire had a most interesting story to tell. I was so lucky that his sister who sold me the photos was so willing to relay all the stories that she had about her brother and his time training in far away Canada. That story would make for a wonderful Blog entry in itself. I think I just came up with the inspiration for my next installment of this journal.

What got me interested in the BCATP in the first place.

I can remember quite clearly those Sunday morning drives in the country back roads of Southern Alberta with my father. We had a 1964 Plymouth Valiant with a push button automatic transmission, bench seats, a hole in the floor board on the driver's side where you could watch the road fly by and of course the ash tray where my father would keep his ever present tobacco pipe on standby. There were many a great adventure in that car as I discovered and developed my own version of my dad's thirst for discovering local history by traveling the gravel pathways that crisscrossed the prairie in very orderly divisions.

On one of the great many expeditions we would undertake in our maroon "historymobile" was to drive west of Lethbridge, Alberta along Highway 3, past the town of Monarch, up the coulees of the Oldman River and further west to a range road that was marked to the north as Pearce and to the south as Orton. We would turn right and drive through what had obviously once been a more populous and prosperous little village at some point in time. By this point in history, Pearce was little more than a very small collection of homes surrounded by a few outlying farms. The Canadian Pacific Railway line passed through the old place as it wound its way between Lethbridge to the east and Fort Macleod and the Crowsnest Pass to the west. I discovered a photo of a small train station that had once stood in this community, something that I could find no evidence of in modern times. The station was the first introduction for many a British aircrew candidate to the wide open prairie lands that would be their new temporary home for learning the skills to fly and fight. I am sure also that this would have been the candidates first introduction to the nearly always present strong winds of southern Alberta, winds which quite regularly gust more than 40 miles an hour and sometimes reach 70 miles an hour.

About five miles north of the village of Pearce was a small collection of farms that to a ten year old boy looked nothing like what he imagined a World War II pilot training aerodrome would have looked like. By the mid to late 1970's when our adventures would bring us to the former military installation, none of the original structures that had formed the little world unto itself still remained. I would strain to see if I could discern any patches of pavement that might have indicated where even one of the 3 runways and their associated parallel taxiways would have been. I never could find any physical evidence that this once bustling aerodrome had even existed here in this somewhat remote location. I think that the fact that I couldn't locate any tangible proof that this place had once been so vital and busy a place just served to foster much greater desire to learn and discover more about this mysterious place. My father had somehow acquired a Canadian Mines and Resources map of the Lethbridge area and I remember very clearly seeing the aerodrome at Pearce marked on that map about the half way point between Lethbridge and Fort Macleod.

After visiting this ghostly expanse of flat land with knee high grass and grazing cattle I would often find myself dreaming about what this place had once been like. I could imagine all those young men who came across the Atlantic by ship, facing the peril of having their convoy attacked and their ship sunk by prowling bands of German U-boats, leaving all that they had always known behind in war ravaged England. Those same men landing in east coast harbours and then boarding steam powered trains that would travel what must have seemed like an impossible distance both day and night to bring them to such remote places so far away from home. I would wonder about what the men would do when they weren't learning the basics of aviating. Did they attend dances, write long letters home to their loved ones, travel the countryside by bicycle, catch a train into Lethbridge to check out a movie or a hockey game? I imagined all the large hangars that held the training planes, the many barracks that held all the promising young recruits, the classrooms where they would learn navigation, engine management, aircraft recognition, basic armament, weather and the multitude of other facets that would be crammed into those young minds to make them proud new pilots.

It wasn't until I was much older and was working on my commercial pilots license that I ever got to first see for myself from the air just how significant the Pearce Aerodrome had once been. It was in the year 2000 when I had recently returned to southern Alberta and I was building time for my license by flying friends and family around to various interesting destinations. One of my very first of these flights I took along my father who so many years ago had lit the fire that now burned in me, hungering for knowledge about this program that had created so very many air facilities in such close proximity to one another , facilities that now had been wiped from memory and left to slowly be forgotten as the prairie reclaimed the once vibrant places. We flew northwest of Lethbridge (which itself had been a part of the BCATP as first an elementary flying training base and shortly afterward a bombing and gunnery school) along the #3 Highway past Coalhurst and Monarch following the Oldman River and the Canadian Pacific Rail line as they both wound this way and that across the landscape below. And then you see the pavement of the old great base...the highly recognizable triangle of runways and taxiways which still defy the prairie's bid to swallow and reclaim the old asphalt. The concrete pads that had once been the foundations for the hangars, drill hall, maintenance shop, motor pool, barracks and other such buildings now being torn up for their valuable gravel to pave nearby dirt roads. It was like final confirmation that the rumours of this place had all in fact been true, the aerodrome really only existing as a view from the air....how appropriate for this once very busy place.

First Post

Well, here goes...

I had a 'blog a few years ago. I really enjoyed the occasional entry about this and that, the chance to have some of my thoughts out there for others to read and mull over. For some reason, one day I went to the 'blog and the site had disappeared...I never did find out what happened to that 'blog...I guess it is time to start another one!

I chose the title of this 'blog as BCATP which stands for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. It is a subject that I have obsessed about for quite a number of years now, having grown up in Southern Alberta where the BCATP was front and center during World War Two. The plan, as it is known for short, was created in 1939 in Canada as a means to train aircrew for the British and her Commonwealth of nations (the former British Empire states) in the battle against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. Canada was an excellent choice as a training ground for pilots and other aircrew positions with its vast, open skies, reasonably good flying weather and its distance from the menace of Nazi war planes.

There were installations and branches of the plan across the country, literally from sea to sea. Communities across Canada were more than happy for one of the BCATP facillities to be located in their backyard after having suffered through the economic doldrums of the Great Depression. Within short order runways, hangars, hospitals, barracks, classrooms and a multitude of other buildings sprouted like new growth from the soil across the nation and with that growth came renewed optimism and financial well being.

There are a great many stories, maps, photos and other documents I have collected from this moment in Canadian history and I look forward to being able to share them with you in the coming installments of this 'blog.