Note: This post was originally published on a now-defunct website in 2009. The fly-in festival, supported in large part by Bombardier Aerospace, was organized by the Canadian Air & Space Museum only six times - 2006-2011. It ended when the museum was evicted from its historic premises to make room for ice hockey rinks which, in the end, were never built at that site. In order to maintain historical context, the captions remain in their original form.
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Toronto Wings and Wheels Heritage Festival
23-24 May 2009
23-24 May 2009
Part Two
Residents and Other Visitors
(above) This immaculate CP-121 Tracker looks as if ready for flight but is, in fact, one of several aircraft on display at the Canadian Air and Space Museum and is painted in the markings of the Royal Canadian Navy's VX-10 test squadron. The Grumman Tracker was built, as the CS2F-1, under license by de Havilland Canada at Downsview and 99 were delivered to the RCN for anti-submarine warfare duties. They flew from the aircraft carrier HMCS Bonaventure and from land bases after that ship's controversial retirement in 1968 until 1990 when the Tracker was finally retired from Canadian Forces service.
(above) No, this is not an illusion but an impressive full-scale non-flying replica of an Avro CF-105 Arrow built by members of the museum and on display there. The big, supersonic CF-105 was the most technologically advanced combat aircraft ever built in Canada when it took to the skies for the first time on 25 March 1958 and remains so to this day. It was designed as a long-range, all-weather, supersonic interceptor to replace the subsonic Avro CF-100 "Canuck" in Royal Canadian Air Force service but the Arrow never did enter RCAF service and has enjoyed a status of mythical proportions in the years since. Though the aircraft's performance was outstanding, factors including a combination of cost overruns, an increase in unit cost due to a reduction in RCAF requirements from 500-600 to 169 aircraft, opposition from the chiefs of the other two military services due to reduced budgets and events on the other side of the globe conspired to end the flight test program and manufacturing in February 1959. The launching by the Soviet Union of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth, on the day of the first Arrow's rollout led to a growing belief that the day of the manned strategic bomber was in the past and that Canada could be adequately defended from a declining number of Soviet bombers by ground-to-air missiles. The option of project abandonment at any stage of the development program existed from the very beginning but the nation was still shocked when the axe fell. The Arrow's fate was not unique however and several advanced and costly interceptor and strike aircraft projects in the United States and United Kingdom met the same end in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
(above) Another Viper North aircraft at the festival was nicely painted and suitably registered Aero L-29 Delfin trainer N29VN. Designed and built by the Czech firm Aero Vodochody, manufacturer of aircraft since 1919 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the prototype flew for the first time in April 1959. Robust, of good performance for its time and able to carry a light load of weapons, the L-29 was selected by the Soviet Union to become the standard basic trainer of Warsaw Pact air forces and was supplied to a number of 'friendly' countries as well. Since the fall of communism in Europe in the early 1990s, the L-29 has become a very popular, and relatively affordable, jet warbird aircraft.
(above) Paying tribute to the unsung Douglas Dakota transport crews of the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II is DC-3 C-GDAK of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Hamilton, Ontario. The "Canucks Unlimited" markings, representing No. 436 (Transport) Squadron on the port side, were standard for RCAF Dakota's operating in Southeast Asia in the last year of the Second World War while the unique blue roundels and fin flashes were applied to aircraft of the RAF and British Commonwealth air forces operating under the control of the joint US-UK South East Asia Command. Starboard markings are those of No. 435 (Transport) Squadron.
(above) Beautifully restored Lockheed 10A, C-FTCC owned and operated by Air Canada, waits for its crew at the end of the festival. Canadians have been involved in flying for nearly as long as powered flight and aviation has contributed in no small way to the development of the nation. A great many air services sprang up following the First World War but even the largest offered, at best, only regional services. In an effort to provide air transportation from coast to coast, the federal government established a national air carrier through publicly owned Canadian National Railway and Trans-Canada Airlines launched its first scheduled flight on 1 September 1937. Its original fleet consisted of five Lockheed 10As and C-FTCC was the third delivered. After passing through the RCAF during World War II and the hands of civilian owners in the decades after the war, it was restored and displayed across Canada by Air Canada for its 50th anniversary in 1987. Air Canada continues to operate the aircraft and, in its original TCA markings and registration, it allows the public to see what air travel was like during the Golden Age of Flight.
