Canadian Air Force century celebrated at AirVenture

The 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) prompted justifiably proud Canadian military and civilian fliers and aircraft owners to bring warbirds and modern jets across the border for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2024.

A powerful contingent flew in from Michael Potter’s Vintage Wings of Canada, bringing a Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and a Mustang as flown by the RCAF. It was a treat for warbird enthusiasts to see these machines add an international flair to the offerings at Oshkosh.

Dave Hadfield, chief pilot of the Vintage Wings collection, told a packed Warbirds in Review audience that the Hawker Hurricane was a radical upgrade in fighter technologies in the last half of the 1930s.

If its steel truss fuselage with wooden stringers and fabric covering seem old-school, the creation of a cantilever-wing monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear and the promising Merlin liquid-cooled V-12 engine was nonetheless a game changer.

The Hurricane flew only months after the Royal Air Force ordered its first machine with retractable landing gear, the ubiquitous Avro Anson, that same year.

If the Hurricane represented the bleeding edge of technology in Britain in 1935, the following year saw the all-metal Supermarine Spitfire push the boundaries even further. Hadfield told the AirVenture audience that the new skills required to fabricate Spitfires had a learning curve, taking about two years to bring the work force up to speed. That gave Hurricane production a head start.

Cultures are fond of sifting down to a minimum number of icons to represent eras, and the sleekly minimalist Spitfire has become the icon of the Battle of Britain despite the presence, and valuable service, of large numbers of Hurricanes.

RCAF fliers were part of the Commonwealth assets contributing to British air operations throughout the war.

The Hurricane displayed at AirVenture 2024 was a 1942 Canadian license-built Mark XII, painted to represent an early Mark I variant. As such, it carries a curious color combination on the undersurfaces of the wings, with the left wing black and the right wing a light color, probably RAF Sky Blue, when viewed from below. This was easy to see when the Hurricane flew at AirVenture.

While some stories have suggested the half-and-half light/dark colors were a hedge for using the aircraft in daylight as well as night, the answer is more prosaic. The stark two-tone undersurfaces were employed for awhile as a bold recognition feature for spotters in the UK who could quickly differentiate friendly aircraft from hostiles.

The Oshkosh crowd also learned a quirk about gear retraction in the pioneering Hurricane from Joe Cosmano, a pilot for Vintage Wings.

The gear retraction handle, which is also used for wing flaps, is on the right side of the cockpit, necessitating a juggling of hands during takeoff, especially if the throttle slips. This task-saturated environment can lead to a porpoising appearance to a Hurricane on climb out, if the pilot is new at it. And, newbie, be careful that you don’t retract the gear instead of the flaps while on the ground.

The collection’s Mark IX Spitfire on display at AirVenture was built in January 1945, a testament to the longevity of the design. Since the Spitfire was originally intended as a short-range interceptor, its internal gasoline capacity is less than one would like for a cross-country aircraft that visits air shows over a wide area. A modern alteration on this example is the addition of fuel bladders in the wing gun bays, barely visible atop the wing where caps can be seen.

Hadfield told the crowd he prefers the classic British articulated control stick and spade grip in the cockpits of the Hurricane and Spitfire over the standard fighter sticks in many other warbirds. The British stick articulates to the left and right about halfway down instead of at the floor line, and has a ring or spade grip. The standard floor-mounted stick in the Mustang can be hard to use for full aileron deflection because it will strike the pilot’s leg, where the articulated British column won’t, he said.

The Mustang on display at the Warbirds in Review session was a retired RCAF Mark IV version, modified for Canadian Air Force use after World War II, according to Vintage Wings of Canada pilot Dave Hewitt. Modifications included improved cockpit ventilation, plus the relocation of oxygen system equipment and cockpit lighting, he noted.

Hadfield added that Canadian modifications also improved cold-weather startups and de-icing.

Also on the warbird ramp with the Canadian fighters was a bright yellow de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer that helped so many Canadian fliers get their start. Like many RCAF airplanes of the era, the usually open-cockpit Tiger Moth at Warbirds in Review had a canopy enclosure to protect both occupants from the Canadian winter.

“What a novel idea — a biplane that has heat coming off of the exhaust,” noted Rusty Lowery, a pilot with the Delaware Aviation Museum.

Unlike British Tiger Moths, the RCAF version, which was built in November 1941, has wheel brakes.

Lowery told the crowd he “quickly learned wheel landings were the way to go” instead of trying three-point touchdowns in the Canadian version, which sits on the ground at a slightly different angle.

Perhaps fearing the brakes would cause student aviators to tip the Canadian Tiger Moths on their noses, the builders moved the main gear mounts forward about 10 inches from the position of the British counterpart, creating the different stance, Lowery said.

Warbirds in Review is known to be a place where unusual facts about aircraft are brought to light. Lowery pointed out the location of the ignition switches for the Tiger Moth, which are on the outside of the fuselage instead of inside the cockpit.

“That just seems peculiar,” he said, until one realizes the aircraft does not have a starter, and ground crew, hand propping the Tiger Moth, could visually verify whether the magneto switches were cold or hot before they manually swung the propeller.

Lowery said the inverted configuration of the Tiger Moth’s Gipsy Major four-cylinder engine placed the propeller shaft and thrust line high enough to ensure ground clearance, but it leads to high oil consumption because oil that migrates to the piston heads is not scavenge-pumped and eventually drips overboard.

Some inverted Gipsy motors consume more oil than others, and Lowery humorously said he once had a long cross-country flight in a Tiger Moth in which “I put in gas when I stopped for oil.”

The gas tank in the Tiger Moth is an airfoil-shaped canister that forms the center section of the biplane’s upper wing. It was designed to hold 19 Imperial gallons of gasoline, not quite 23 U.S. gallons. Lowery figures the burn rate is 7.8 gallons per hour at 1,900 rpm, giving the Tiger Moth an indicated airspeed of 75 mph.

Hadfield added that the Tiger Moth was a good trainer because it “exaggerated your mistakes without killing you,” and probably aided in the selection of good pilots over poor ones.

Meanwhile, on the centrally located Boeing Plaza, another Canadian warbird towered over the others. The Canadian-built Avro Lancaster Mark X heavy bomber flew in from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Ontario and made a teasingly brief twilight pass in loose formation with two American B-29s the evening of July 24.

One of only two flying Lancasters in the world, this example represents Canadians who flew Lancaster bombing missions over Europe in World War II. It has been painted in the markings of the Lancaster in which Canadian Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski lost his life while trying to free the bomber’s trapped tail gunner as the aircraft was crashing. The gunner lived, Mynarski perished.

Parked with its long bomb bay doors open to inspection, the Lancaster at AirVenture provided a close-up look at British/Canadian design and construction rationale. The bomber’s broad wings, spanning 102 feet and supporting four Merlin engines, gave countless AirVenture visitors respite from the summer Wisconsin sun.

Also sharing space on the Boeing Plaza ramp when not making adrenalin-pumping demonstration flights was a current RCAF CF-18 Hornet jet fighter painted in a special centennial paint scheme celebrating many things Canadian. A blaze of maple leaf markings collaborate with technology symbols and silhouettes of famous RCAF aircraft of the past in an artistic bridge between history and the technology needed by today’s RCAF.

And how could Canada be represented at Oshkosh during the RCAF’s centennial year without appearances by the Snowbirds jet team?

Canada has retired its indigenous CT-114 Tutor jet from the pilot training role since 2000, but retains enough of the straight-wing aircraft to keep the Snowbirds aloft.

The contingent of RCAF aircraft, old and new, attending AirVenture for the centennial handily represented the mix of British, American, and original Canadian designs that has been a hallmark of the Royal Canadian Air Force.