Canadian Lancaster

Personally, I don’t like long threads, but I know some of you do, and as I found this in the Winnipeg Free Press (!), I thought you may like to read the whole article.

10 January 2004
Winnipeg Free Press

Jim Shilliday Hamilton — During a stopover on a flight to St. John’s, we discovered that Canada has one of just two flying Avro Lancaster bombers in the world — it honours a young Winnipeg man who won the Victoria Cross.

People from as far away as England come here to get a one-hour ride in it, for $1,400 a pop.

Dozens show up each year at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ont. to fly in the Second World War bomber, the best the allied forces had. It is one of 40 aircraft in the renowned museum, which preserves Canada’s military aviation history.

The Lancaster is dedicated to the memory of Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski, and bears the colours and markings of his aircraft, which flew with 419 (Moose) Squadron. On June 13, 1944, his aircraft was shot down in flames by a night fighter. Mynarski, ignoring his own safety, tried to free the trapped rear gunner. The gunner survived, Mynarski died.

Beth and I were waiting for a connecting flight when we decided to visit the museum. It took our breath away.

No other Canadian aviation museum has so many of its exhibits airworthy and frequently flown. Besides the Lancaster, two other aircraft — the 1930s Boeing Stearman open-cockpit biplane trainer and the North American (Canadian Car and Foundry) Harvard trainer — also take up passengers. Two flights are offered: a bird’s-eye view of Hamilton and the Lake Ontario shoreline; Niagara Peninsula and the Grand River area.

For aviation enthusiasts, the museum at Hamilton International Airport is a treat, a 10,000-square-metre delta-winged building opened in 1996. Chock full with almost every aircraft flown by Canada’s air force pilots — including a diminutive First World War Sopwith Pup biplane — the museum is open daily, closed only on Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. It is affiliated with the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa.

There’s an appealing atmosphere of respect and remembrance of a past through aviation displays, memorabilia and photos of Canada’s leading aviators. Muted background sound is the nostalgic music of the wartime years, ballads and big bands.

On the upper level, you can watch volunteers at work building a replica of the Silver Dart, the first plane to fly in Canada (the British Empire, in fact), in 1909. The Silver Dart was the product of an organization run by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone.

All operations (manned mostly by volunteers) are under one roof: aircraft rides (all pilots have commercial licences), gift shop, cafeteria, guided tours, aviation library, vintage aviation movies in the Rolls Royce theatre. Meeting rooms can be rented. Private dinners, reunions or theme events can be arranged with guests dining and dancing beneath propellers or jet intakes.

The museum is just a five-minute stroll from the airport passenger terminal, easily identifiable by the F-104 Lockheed (Canadair) Starfighter at the entrance, standing on its tail, blasting skyward. If you are flying Westjet and stop over at Hamilton, your boarding pass will admit you to the museum. Westjet is a museum supporter.

Visitors can test their flying skills in flight simulators. They can sit in the cockpits of trainers and fighters. They can get close up to all the colourfully painted and camouflaged aircraft. Beth used remote controls and discovered she could manoeuvre a model Hawker Hurricane fighter (remember The Few in the Battle of Britain?) or raise and lower flaps and undercarriage of a real Lockheed (Canadair) T-33 jet trainer.

Why pay $1,400 to fly in an old bomber? Well, it’s the only show in town (the world). The Royal Air Force has the only other flying Lancaster, but it doesn’t make room for the public. There’s a mystique involved, particularly for older people with memories of the aircraft that played a huge role in winning the Second World War.

Thousands of Canadian boys from coast to coast were Lancaster crew members — gunners, navigators, bomb aimers, pilots — and thousands of them died during raids over occupied Europe. People recall the exploits of Guy Gibson and his Dam Busters, and the movie that followed, featuring the Lancaster.

Lancasters flew 156,192 sorties, twice those of its nearest “competitor,” the Handley Page Halifax. Some 152,000 aircrew served in Bomber Command, 47,268 of them killed in action. The Royal Canadian Air Force lost 9,919 men in Bomber Command.

And people recall the shameful 1992 CBC series, The Valour and the Horror. The second episode, Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command, attempted to rewrite history and trivialize the deaths of so many young men. It resulted in aircrew veterans from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States suing the CBC.

“Those who fought, and whose many friends gave their lives, to preserve individual freedom against the arbitrary power of the State, as personified in Adolf Hitler, must fight today to preserve the truth of what they did from state-supported filmmakers in Canada,” they stated.

So, to help support the museum, some people will fork over a lot of money to fly in one of its aircraft. For $1,000, a “benefactor” gets the $100 one-year membership, a $500 tax receipt and, among other privileges, a flight in a Harvard or Stearman. For $1,500, a “bomber crew” gets the year’s membership, a $1,400 tax receipt and a flight in the Lancaster.

A Lancaster bomber interior is a cramped environment. Of the four paying customers in each flight, only one has a tiny window. If they are lucky, said a woman who made the flight — and can get over the wing spar that caught the shins of so many bomber crews — they are invited up to the cockpit for a look around during the flight. All are ecstatic when they recall their adventure.

Of 7,377 Lancasters built in the UK and Canada during the war, only 17 remain more or less complete, around the world.

The Lancaster makes two flights a week on average, from May until Nov. 11, Remembrance Day. Then it goes into the hangar to pose handsomely, and get its winter maintenance checks. The Harvard often takes up passengers in winter.

If you’re killing time in the Hamilton terminal during a Westjet stopover, hustle over to the Canadian Warplane Heritage hangar. You won’t regret it. And if you’re spending time in the Hamilton area, see about a Lancaster flip. There’s no place else in the world you can do it.

Jim Shilliday is a Manitoba writerand traveller. He and his wife Bethlive in Stonewall.