Ode on a Canadian Warbird
The author remembers childhood, with round engines.
- By Bruce McCall
- Photographs by Bruce McCall
- Air & Space magazine, January 2010
Behold, the Bolingbroke: a slack-jawed patrol bomber that
could set a young imagination on sub-spotting missions.
Bruce McCall
(Page 2 of 3)
Canada, so vast and empty and safely distant from the European war, was the natural venue for a sweeping emergency program called the British Commonwealth Air Training Scheme. Almost as soon as war had been declared against Germany (Canada beating even Britain to the punch), training airbases sprang up across the country to mold fighter pilots and combat aircrews out of raw British Commonwealth and various other Allied recruits. Three or four such bases lay within a 20-mile radius of my Ontario hometown, the closest a mere nine miles east, near the hamlet of Jarvis. To a war-wild kid of eight, this was better than if they'd plunked down the Great Pyramid of Cheops in those empty fields.
My fondest dream was to get as close as possible to the action of the war— fated, barring some miracle, to remain a dream for a kid stranded thousands of miles from the battlefront. But miracles can happen. One such occurred the day in 1942 when my expat Uncle Gib, a New Jersey doctor and a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces, stopped by on a family visit. “Kindly Uncle Gib,” I should have said, because he leveraged his prestige to wangle the five McCall boys a tour of the Jarvis Bombing and Gunnery School.
What shimmers brightest in memory from that enchanted afternoon 60-odd years ago was the quiet ecstasy of walking along the tarmac and touching real warplanes with my own hands. I discovered that real warplanes were streaked with oil and exhaust burns, scratched and patched in ways that escaped notice in those glamorous aerial views. Only superannuated types flew at the Jarvis school, like the Fairey Battle, an ungainly fighter-bomber that had almost singlehandedly lost the Allied air war over France in 1940; the Bristol Fairchild Bolingbroke, a variant of the Blenheim light bomber; the Westland Lysander, a gawky high-wing observation plane; and the Avro Anson, a harmless-looking twin-engine bombing trainer. All of the Jarvis aircraft were painted bright yellow like all RCAF training aircraft. But in the eyes of the boy airplane nut, every one was vital in the Allied war effort.
The thrills weren't always static. Our tiny corps of fanatics soon sniffed out the fields near town where student fighter pilots practiced low-level runs. The “Danger: Low Flying Area” signs served only as an invitation to stand out there in the open until an AT-6—Harvard, in RCAF nomenclature—suddenly materialized on the horizon and thundered straight toward us 30 feet off the ground, flattening even the nerviest against the earth as it passed overhead in a mad blur of noise and propwash. Whereupon you got up and did it again and again until the last Harvard had gone home.
My own aviation fever was intensified no end by having a father who wore the uniform of the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1940, seized by the patriotism common among Canadian manhood at the time, he sidestepped his official exemption as a father of five to accept a commission as a pilot officer. At first, he flew a desk in Ottawa as a press liaison officer—natural enough for an ex-newspaperman, but hardly a stage for war heroics. His kids got over the letdown when Dad was assigned to run interference between the RCAF and the Warner Brothers contingent filming Captains of the Clouds, one of Hollywood's innumerable morale-stirring war movies, this one glorifying Canada's bush pilots and starring James Cagney. The McCall boys would reap near-royal prestige a few months later by showing up at school wearing our brand-new RCAF-style blue flannel Captains of the Clouds wedge caps.
Our RCAF connection next brought us a genuine butter-yellow “Mae West” life-jacket, the very kind worn by Spitfire pilots downed over the English Channel. We never bothered to ask how Dad had acquired this priceless article of the Allied air war. We simply made the most of it, taking turns bobbing about in the local swimming pool wearing that floating pillow while the have-nots stared in envy.
Dad was also assigned to shepherd the young Canadian fighter ace George “Buzz” Buerling across the country on a war bond drive. Dad's diary entries from that tour almost wince in pain: The dashing Buzz, fresh from scoring numerous kills in his Spitfire over tiny, beleaguered Malta, made an unlikely poster boy for the Allied cause. He liked killing people—in their parachutes, if the chance arose—and didn't mind saying so to the Canadian press. Buzz was likely to say just about anything, to my father's horror and the regret of Buzz's RCAF sponsors. (The restless Buerling, who'd known little else in his adult life but air combat, felt adrift in peacetime. He soon hired himself out to the fledgling Israeli air force, only to die in a landing mishap in Cairo in 1948.)
Dad would be posted overseas to the Canadian 6th Bomber Group in Yorkshire, England, in the summer of 1943, and military souvenirs kept trickling into our hands: the gorgeous blue-and-gold cloth shoulder patch of the U.S. 8th Air Force, cap badges of virtually every extant British Army regiment, booklets of tiny paper cutout models of British aircraft requiring a surgeon's touch to fold and glue to completion. The childish greed for such loot obscured any observations of what was happening to our father. Charged with writing daily morale-boosting profiles of Canada's brave young airmen for home-front consumption, he found himself over and over again interviewing one Lancaster bomber crew after another before a nightly raid—wholesome lads, many of them barely out of high school— only to find the next morning that they were never coming back. He lost his best friend this way, shot down over Arras, France, one June night in 1944. The relentless tragedies left him shattered; within six months, he was repatriated and out of the service. I don't think he ever really recovered, nor did his seething hatred of everything German ever cool.
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Comments (11)
Thank you very much for Bruce McCall's charmingly written "Ode on a Canadian Warbird". There are, however, there are a few points in it which you may want to check. They are relatively trivial, and don't take away from the sweet message of the story; I mention them only because I know many people rely on your publication's accuracy with respect to matters of aviation history.
1 He says the British Boulton Paul Defiant had as:
". . . its only armament a fixed, forward-firing gun turret amidships. . . "
Insofar as I am aware, the Defiant's midship turret, configured rather like the one on the Grumman Avenger, rotated, as you might expect a turret to do. The Defiant's turret had four .303 machine guns, instead of a single .50. There was no fixed, forward firing gun.
2 With respect to the start of World War II in September 1939, after the invasion of Poland, he remarks:
"Almost as soon as war had been declared against Germany (Canada beating even Britain to the punch). . . "
According to any history of the period of which I am aware, Britain declared war first. As a demonstration of its growing independence from Britain, Canada (unlike, for example, Australia) delayed its entry into the war by several days, instead of becoming involved immediately that Britain did, as it had in World War I.
3 He remarks on Buzz Buerling, who had established a fearsome reputation as a fighter pilot in such dangerous places as Malta, that he:
". . . felt adrift in peacetime. He soon hired himself out to the fledgling Israeli air force, only to die in a landing mishap in Cairo in 1948."
I think that Beurling was killed in an accident in Rome, Italy, not Cairo.
Wayne Cochrane
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Posted by Wayne Cochrane on December 18,2009 | 02:12 PM
Ah, yes.
I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, born in 1932, and I saw the Memphis Belle circuit the city and land at Nellis AFB while it was still McCarran Airport. I, too, spent the war years entranced by the beautiful creations that struggled for life and death above the skies of Europe and the Pacific.
I had more luck in being able to build my first model -- a Spitfire that broke its wing and tumbled ignominiously to earth after my father launched it a bit harder than its fragile balsa would tolerate. My patiently carved balsa ME109 with 10" wingspan, wire-caged cockpit and metal spinner flew many sorties at the end of a string on a stick, eventually disappearing into the clutter and mist of time. I built the P-40s and Hurricanes that were printed in the "Funny paper" each week and then came the great day!
The Air Force had an Armed Forces Day at Nellis! They flew in Hellcats, Mustangs, and even a Zero! I was standing behind the wing of the Zero on the right when the attending Sergeant saw that its flaps were still extended. Calling to me he snapped, "Hey kid, get in there and pump up those flaps!" Me?? I couldn't believe it, but I crawled into the cockpit and plunked myself onto the bare metal seat, my head just barely over the edge of the cockpit. I remember the instruments marked in both English and Japanese, and how small the airplane suddenly seemed to me. And the skin between me and the outside so thin and painted a medium green. "You see that lever under your right hand and the button?" I did. "Well, push in the button and pump the lever until I tell you to stop!" I did. "OK, that's good!" The flaps were up and I had actually made them retract! Wow! Wow! I had operated a real, honest to goodness Japanese Zero! My brother was jealous, but I didn't care!
My brother became a private pilot. I never did. But...
As as 13 year old kid, I adjusted the flaps of an honest-to-God flying copy of a Zero. Can't beat that!
Posted by David Stephens on December 19,2009 | 06:48 PM
Being of the vintage just old enough to be a Canadian boy in WW2, I can say Bruce captures the mood of the times for a boy.
I remember having a crude little die-cast metal Hurricane like he mentions. It had some kind of fibre wheels that got wet and shredded.
Many years ago now!
Posted by Os. Love on December 19,2009 | 07:46 PM
It's good to know I am not the only kid that couldn't make the transition from prop to jet. When the jet model planes hit the market, I had no interest in them. They looked like exhast pipes with stubby sweptback wings with no character, and couldn't excite the same desire to fly.
Posted by Michael McAmis on December 20,2009 | 10:35 AM
I remember as a child, during WWII seeing new Grumman Wildcats being towed across US-1 in Linden, NJ for their first test flight at Linden Airport (now a single runway general aviation facility). It seemed like one aircraft was completed every few minutes at the old GM truck plant (now an empty lot).
A second spectacular event was to see the skys filled with what seemed like hundreds of heavy bombers headed for Europe to bomb Germany. Each had four engines and as my neighbor, who was a WWII pilot, would say " these aircrft are the most efficient means to convert gasoline to noise"
Posted by John Miller on December 21,2009 | 03:57 PM
I very much enjoyed reading Bruce's childhood Ode on a Canadian Warbird. Although I was born nine years after WWII concluded, round engined aircraft roared regularly over my childhood home on their way to landing at Malton. My folks never much cared for "that racket" as I recall, but it was firmly planted in my blood during those formative years. My Dad lost his brother and my Grandfather lost a son (my uncle Donald in a Lancaster over France in April'44) and the talk of another aviator in the clan was not welcome news. I kept quiet and went full throttle once ready. Over my career I had the good fortune to fly DC 3 as well as the mighty Howard 500 with the twin thundering Pratt R-2800's! Every time I fired up the Dak or the Howard the sweet sound and smells transported my senses back forty plus years, to a much more dangerous time to be a young aviator. Thank you Bruce for your memories, and to all the souls who sacrificed their lives during those dark hours so many years ago.
Pete Moffat Vancouver BC
Posted by Pete Moffat on January 4,2010 | 06:17 PM
Bruce McCall has accurately captured the spirit of that past time and the essence boyhood in wartime. At the end of the war, I was almost ten years old. While my actual memory of the historic details is vague, I experienced the same immersion in books, propaganda, movies and objects. Radio broadcasts of "L for Lanky" and the roar of Harvard trainers were part of the experience as were buying war-saving stamps and being told that every cent bought another bullet and meant another enemy killed.
The experience was reinforced in school as, from sixth grade on, most of the teachers were veterans who had served overseas. As if to ensure we did not lose the spirit of the war, we were regularly exposed to both documentary and Hollywood accounts of battles. One of the consequences of this exposure was a common belief that it would only be a matter of time until WW III happened. The cold war served to reinforce that and when the Korean conflict broke out, many teenagers assumed that it was a case of "here we go again". Fortunately, that was not the case and airplane nuts of my generation are free to indulge their fantasies without having to actually live them. The many vets I encountered in school and in my working life all had the same attitude that it was a job that had to be done and a time to be left behind. That said, I still feel a chill at the rare sound of a Merlin engine.
Posted by Rob Campbell on January 14,2010 | 11:49 AM
I was 10 when 1941 lived on the base mossbank sask all limeys training as gunners in db cbs Moose jaw sask had the harvards for pilot training mossbank was 60 mi south on barren prarie with battles
Don't forget the. Tiger moths bi planes that the wind would blow into the next municipality.but did. We have party on dday.we were a city swiming pools
Bowling allies planes everywere formation flying v-shape billows dakotas your article brings back fond memories very good article movie stars visited us.
Mossbank was 300 sols in middle on nowwhere 40 below zero wind wind wind alex patterson
Posted by on October 31,2010 | 07:50 PM
I BELIEVE AFTER SEEING A FIlM ON Mr. McCall on TV that I sat in the row next to him in grade 9 art class- Malvern Col. Ins. under the supervision of a Mr.MacKenzie. I recall Bruce was doing an ink rendering in red and brown of a German Heinkle bomber and I was most impressed at his ability to portray the complicated nose glazing so beautifully as for me I was probably doing a German soldier or Frankenstein---That image has stayed with me all these years and I went on to make a smaller success out of painting airplanes and continue to do so! EDITORS' REPLY: If you want, we can send your email address on to Mr. McCall. You can send it to editors@si.edu.
Posted by peter mossman on August 5,2011 | 10:08 PM
Thank you for publishing my comments--it was with the hope of contacting Mr. McCall that I sent it in. I would appreciate your forwarding my e-mail address to Mr. McCall.Sincerely Peter Mossman. EDITORS' REPLY: We will. Thanks for writing.
Posted by peter mossman on August 9,2011 | 04:30 PM
I was a history/government/economics major in college at Purdue. I continue to enjoy history - all eras - and especially enjoyed the last article about McCall. Thanks for all the great articles in Air and Space Magazine.
Posted by Eleanor Hannemann on December 25,2011 | 09:55 PM