Naval Museum of Alberta, Calgary – help please!

Wow – reminds me of a day sometime in the early 1980’s in Auckland NZ. I lived about 1/2 km as the crow flies from MOTAT and was mowing my lawn with my muffler-less dubious old 4 stroke mower. It started making a hell of a racket and I thought I’d hit a spike or broken the blade or something like that. So I turned it off and … the noise continued.

Rushing upsatirs and looking out the window, sure enough the sound was coming from MOTAT. I got down there quick smart and fouind it was their Lancaster, the ex-Aeronavale (spelling?) machine. It was out in the open in those days. Over about 1/2 an hour thay were able to get 3 engines running – all being fed from 40gal drums feeding up to fuel lines somehow or other (holes in tanks or linings?). Amazing sound.

The guys doing this were hopeful of getting the 4th to run and doing the odd engine run from time to time, but I think that must have been wishful thinking. As far as I know those were the last engine runs.

Seafire XV Photos

Thank you to whomever credited me with the Seafire photo at the bottom of the thread. I can confirm that we started the airplane twice that day. During the second run, it blew a number of coolant seals and we shut it down immediately. It has not run since. Not only did I get some photos, but I also have an audio tape of the event. Sweet music!

We in fact had a couple of dozen of starter cartridges which we had acquired from the Budweiser sponsored racing boat people in the Seattle area. We still had a stock of 1945 vintage cartridges and we even tried a few. Fizzle, fizzle was the result. Sentimental guy that I am, I have in my possession the starter cartridge from this very start, pictured above!

The chief engineer on the project, Tubby Jarrett, had promised me the third start on the machine. Alas, it was not to be….

Mark–

Noted with interest that your shot of the Seafire at Calgary airport in 1986 shows a cowling removed…You don’t happen to have been there when they test-ran the Griffon by any chance?? That would have been the right year. As far as I can determine that would have been the last time a Griffon VI ran. They only fired it up about twice (partly because they only had so many starter cartridges)! I only found out about this a couple years ago; it was, to say the least, a surprise.

S.

Steve,

The engine runs were March 1984. I wasn’t there but Richard De Boer very kindly loaned a whole bunch of negatives of this machine and I am sure he would be delighted to see one of them posted here.

Maybe the Griffon VI has been run on SX336 at North Weald, it surely can’t be too far off.

Mark

PR451 in ’86

Mark–

Noted with interest that your shot of the Seafire at Calgary airport in 1986 shows a cowling removed…You don’t happen to have been there when they test-ran the Griffon by any chance?? That would have been the right year. As far as I can determine that would have been the last time a Griffon VI ran. They only fired it up about twice (partly becasue they only had so many starter cartridges)! I only found out about this a couple years ago; it was, to say the least, a surprise.

S.

Here is part of the resulting caption for my photo:
Vickers Supermarine Seafire Mk XV PR451 AA-N.
PR451 was one of the last remaining Seafires acquired from the Royal Navy in January 1946. It had been originally delivered to the FAA at RDU Culham on 5 October 1845. PR451 was flown by 803 Squadron operating from the Aircraft Carrier HMCS Warrior. 803 squadron became part of the 19th Support Air Group in Shearwater in January 1951 and was renumbered VF-870 on March 1st, 1951. The Squadron was disbanded in September 1962.This naval version of the famous WW II Spitfire was one of 280 aircraft built in 1945. A total of 35 Seafires served with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) from 14 March 1946 to 29 April 1954. During this period the Seafire was flown operationally by 803 Squadron (June 1945 – August 1947) and 883 Squadron (September 1945 – November 1947) from the aircraft carrier HMCS Warrior and the Royal Canadian Naval Air Section which was a lodger unit at Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Station Dartmouth (RCNAS Shearwater). The last Seafire was struck off strength from the RCN in April 1954.

Many thanks, Mark12, I hope I get just as swift and helpful reply to my next thread, which concerns a certain Sabre jet . . .

PR451

Papa Lima,

Yep everything fits with PR451 although it went through a period of no serial followed by being painted as ‘PR425’. The c/n’s numbers look comfortable with PR451 and there was evidence under the paint of this ID.

Here is a shot I took at Calgary airport in August 1986.

Mark

Plenty more, ageorge, I took 720 pix during the trip and am busy writing captions, so they are dribbling out as separate threads – I hope you have see my CWH Lancaster and Martin Mars threads already, along with the one about the Norseman baby.

I’m not much use PL – but these are great photos , any more ?? 🙂

Al