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The Lanc on late final over what is now the Crowchild Trail. Tony Swain photo
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A typical Search & Rescue Lancaster from the fifties. The search windows with Tony’s defrosters can be seen just forward of the stabilizer. As Pictured in Green & Pollingers book ‘The Aircraft of the World’ 1955. |
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Lancaster Test Pilot Andy pretending to be one. Tony Swain photo |
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The Lanc on late final over what is now the Crowchild Trail. Tony Swain photo
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Doug (Andy) Anderson and his wife in 1941 with CF-BAT, a classic Aeronca Model L. |
A LANC IN TIME
In 1958, I designed a fantasticle new heating system for the famous Lancaster bomber, and they said it was about time.
The RCAF had a big stack of old Janitrol heaters in stores, and wanted to use them up. We stuck them in Lancs, Canso’s, Mitchells and the all new Rebooted Grumman Albatross.
The Lanc installation was the ‘figuring it out’ prototype, and I was the lad given the design job. Got me and my boss a free trip to Grumman’s, at Bethpage on Long Island, where I was entranced by fire flies winking on & off in the local trees, just like a Disney movie.
This all took place at the Air Force’s Secret Modification Base at Lincoln Park in Calgary in the cool of an Alberta winter. Anyway, once we had a Janitrol mounted on a Lanc, we had to test it, and I got to go along for the ride, along with my Bigger Boss, Bill.
I was thrilled! A flight in the historic Lancaster! A plane that flew over our house most every night during The War - we scruffy kids were pretend crew on the local garbage truck parked every night on Decontam, the Rescue Center over the back lane fence.
Of course even in 1958, and being used for Search and Rescue, Lancs were still sort of secret, so there’s no hero pic of us climbing in, or anything. But Big Boss Bill thought it a good idea to record all this new heat flowing about, just in case no one believed us. So I sneaked in my trusty Revere 8mm clockwork movie camera.
Due to the heat, or lack of, being a ‘No Show’ on the subsequent six minutes of film, the faded reel of 25 ASA Kodak has languished unwanted in a cardboard box these 45 years, especially since my trusty 8mm movie projector seized up.
However, due to the recent discovery of VHS and digital cameras, miraculously, we are able to present a few historic stills from that magical flight as described in the following.
Our intrepid pilot Andy Anderson, was a popular chap, and recalled recently by old and frail friends as a ‘glamour boy and fun guy.’ A civilian test pilot, he flew whatever we were mucking about with, be it Lancasters, Otters, Beech 18's, Harvards, Cansos, Packets, Mitchells, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. It was rather a fun job!
Our other test pilot, a more serious gent, had complained on an earlier test, that first there was no heat, and when he complained to his flight engineer, and noted it on his pad, the subsequent blast melted his nylon socks! What’s an intermediate designer to do? Supply cold heat?
A COLD FEB MORNING
Anyway, we sorted that out with a ‘pepper pot’ diffuser on the pilot’s foot warmer, which we were about to test. And also, the fact that other crewmembers demanded individual hoses that stuck directly up their drawers! You just can’t please everybody. Sigh.
The original reason for all this palaver was to provide defrost to the search windows, but things do tend to get carried away. That particular Lanc could well be the one now at the CWH, or maybe it went to Strathallan!
Most of the pictures were taken through the aft search windows in the tail that can be seen in the SAR Lanc picture from those days shown here. My Draftsman’s Log shows them as Lancaster XDC aircraft, numbers 848 and 851, if that means anything to anyone these days!
It was a cold February morning when we took off. Andy took us flying over the army tank training area on the Sarcee Reserve (The long suffering local Native Indians were under constant attack!).
He feathered all of the props, one by one, and even managed to have two stopped at the same time at the comfy height of about a thousand feet.
The pic of Andy "pretending to be a pilot" whilst actually doing a test flight, was hard to get. I had to ask, "Do some pilot stuff!" and he obliged by removing his impish grin, and peering around in a grim manner he figured befitted a proper pilot. Quite the guy!
It's too bad that's all I have of Andy. He’d apparently been separated from his family for many years. Last December his son in-law Doug Ogle asked if I knew where he went after the base closed in 1963. Some thought he’d gone on helicopters in the Far East, but no one really knows.
Doug sent this interesting picture of Andy and his wife taken about 1941 with an Aeronca Model L. Andy’s real name was Doug. Anyone know more?