It's Always Coffee Time !!
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While doing some work with the Montreal Police in the fifties, this picture was taken "through the window" by a newspaper photographer and he gave me a copy later. We needed a cup of coffee so with me acting as the "waiter" (me behind the counter) I poured it for the guys. The restaurant had been just closing up when the owner got himself wasted. After the usual preliminaries of checking everything we could at the time we had to wait for the Medical Examiner and Forensic to get there so we decided to have some coffee. Hell, why not? It was already made anyway! The victim wasn't going anywhere. Besides that, I don't know if you can read those prices on the wall but that's the main reason I put this picture in here. It says "Hot Dogs 15 cents or 2 for a quarter." Next to that is "Patates Frites" 10 cents (that's "potato chips" for you "mon dit" Anglais) Beside that is "Hamburger 35 cents!" This was 1956. I have often heard people say that Montreal is a warm, friendly place. Hell I lived there for a while but I guess I must have missed that part. To me it's about as friendly as Chicago or New York City or even Philadephia! Crime you say ... mes non! Just a fact of everyday life there that's all. Mind you if you are French you just might have a chance of surviving better than if you are an "outcast" like a "mon dit Anglais!" But that sounds bitter doesn't it? Now of course I have no reason to be bitter with those nice people just because they want Canada to keep supporting them but still let them break up our country at the same time. Bitter .... hell .... no!Right now all I'm doing is dropping a "hodge podge" of items "helter skelter" on this page. I have so many different topics or themes to do but until I get my slide converter for my scanner these will have to do for now. If you don't like them, "switch channels!" I'll get better hopefully as I get some experience at this, until then please bare with me .
I am including a picture of a good friend of mine years ago that I think would be an interesting story for you. He was born in Liege, Belgium and was only about twelve years old when the Nazis invaded his country. They killed his mother and father right in front of him and later forced him to witness the execution of his Grandmother! They then put him in concentration camp where, due to his age, he was "allowed" to work on farms as a labourer. Being so full of hatred and also completely fearless of the Nazis, he made many attempts to escape from his "farm camps" which were also guarded but was brought back each time. They always beat him and made him work harder than ever without full rations, which were no hell to begin with.
After about four years of this he finally managed to escape and join the Belgium underground. There he was trained to kill with his hands, knives, guns and make explosives which they put to good use by blowing up ammunition trains, etc. to generally harrass the enemy. They were supplied with weaponry from London by air drop in the night and worked with the British Intelligence Agents who came over to organize and train them. George was fluent in French, Belgium and German so he was often used in very hazardous jobs because of that. When the Allies were pushing the Nazis out of Belgium, the underground sort of "paved the way" in many cases for them. He remembers (fondly) a time when the Germans were cut off from their battalion and took refuge in a Monastery thinking that no one would touch them there as it was supposed to "sanctuary." George and his fellow countrymen surrounded the Monastery and lobbed Molitoff Cocktails into it, setting it ablaze. As the Germans came running out shouting, "Kammerad!" they either machine-gunned them all or bayonetted them without mercy. George, being an expert with a knife (his favourite weapon) killed so many Germans with a knife he cannot remember how many ... his hatred was so deep-seated. He said he would rather kill them with a knife as they weren't worth the price of a bullet.
I remember being in a restaurant in Niagara Falls in 1952 with him one day when four people came in and sat in the booth across from us. We had been talking together quite pleasantly when all of a sudden George went silent. I couldn't figure why until he literally leaped across the aisle and started hammering those four men like a maniac! They were speaking German! I dragged him out of the place and we took off before it got too "sticky" to handle the local constabulary. George had good reason to hate them after what he went through. He never did get over that hatred either. Near the end of the war, he was personal interpreter for General Patton and that helped him to get into the States as it was next to impossible to do normally. As a matter of fact I drove him to Jamestown, New York when he moved and have only heard from him a couple of times since then. I hope he did well in America. He deserved to.
Some Of The Planes I Flew
I found a few pictures of some of the old aircraft I've flown toward the end of W.W.2 and thought I'd pop one of my old favorites in here now. It was one of the favorites for training fighter pilots. It was originally known as the AT6 Texan but Canada renamed them "Harvards." They had a considerably low aspect ratio so that meant that it's glide capabilities where not too generous. I know because I ran out of gas one time and had to "dead stick" into a farmer's field with one! As I did my "S" turns, I picked my landing "target" which was a freshly harvested hay field with a rail fence at one end and a wire one at the other. The wind was minimal so I side-slipped hard just over the rail fence, touched down right off but that damn wire one was coming at me pretty fast. Thank God for wire fences as I came awful close to hitting it but it surely would have been more forgiving then the bloody rail fence!. Right at the last moment I "ground looped" the plane as hard as I could and in a blinding swirl of dust, came to a stop about six feet from it ! ... Fun.
It is now 14th July, 2001 as I write this. This morning I had occasion to drive to Barrie, which is known pretty well as the "host town" of Camp Borden. Camp Borden is between where I live in the boondocks and Barrie and I generally have to go way around the Camp as it is miles long and miles wide. It was one of the most active Training Camps in Canada because of its size and accomodated both the Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force. They were separate Camps within the one Camp with armed guards all round and even between the Army Section and the Air Force Section as each had their own "secrets" I suppose and security was very tight indeed. Tight enough to get you shot on sight if you tried to sneak into any of the facilities! I live within ten or eleven miles of the Camp and have now for fifteen years. I have always wanted to one day take the time to just go out on the runways and "let my mind wander back in time" but never seemed to take the time to do it.
Today on the way home from Barrie, I did just that and as usual, had my trusty Nikon Digital Camera with me. I was taken aback quite badly when I couldn't find my way around it .... forgetting of course that fifty-five years have gone by since I was anywhere throughout the place. I've been there since but usually flew in and was picked up at the runway and chaufferred to whatever function I was there for. Today ... I was "on my own" and have to tell you that I even had a time finding the runways as all the old familiar landmarks are gone and newer, much larger buildings have taken their place! I did eventually find it and am including a picture of it here. Of course as I am now a civilian, I had no privileges and could not go past the fence all around it so I had to settle for a picture "through the fence." The reason for the fences is not necessarily for Military purposes but they now sport their own "private flying school" there! Can you imagine. The Services never had it so good I guess.
I can tell you that when I stood there at this large empty runway, the memories of old flooded through my mind and the many pilots they trained there .... many of whom never came back. The skies and those runways were literally teeming with planes constantly. They flew day and night without fail ... even in bad weather! I particularly remember one of our boys caught up there in a blinding rainstorm and couldn't see the ground. Radios in those days didn't work too well and radar at that time was too new for us to have as they needed all they had for combat duty. We were all out in the rain rooting for the guy and the tower couldn't do anything but keep shooting a Very Pistol up into the rain in case he could get a glimpse of it. He did and down he came without fanfare or chancing another "line-up!" Trouble was that his landing gear was jammed up so he had to pancake into the tarmac. Not knowing where he was except that he had seen the flare, he flew that kite right between two hangars where we were all out watching for him and belly-landed right before our eyes ... wheels up but heading away from us! The Harvard had a variable pitch metal propellar on them and this one simply curled up quite neatly when it hit the tarmac and he walked away from it without a scratch! I only hope he was that lucky after he got overseas. Of course, there's no way of knowing but that memory is still vivid.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you .... The Tiger Moth ... Now this little "darling" was one of the most popular older aircraft ever used. It dates back so far I hate to think about it. Everybody I ever talked to said what a marvellous old aircraft it was and how easy it was to fly and how good it was in areobatics. Every time I went up to one I was afraid the bloody wings or undercarriage would fall off ... it looked so old an fragile! After much "goading" from the other students, I had no choice but to "have a go" at it so off I went down the runway. Would you believe that this thing didn't even have a tail wheel? Uh Uh, it had a "skid" instead and because of this skid and not a wheel, it was noted for "ground-looping" quite often on landing which usually knocked one of the lower wings off !
There's another thing I didn't think of until after I took off and that's a little feature called "leading edge slots" to make it so you wouldn't "stall" easily. This old crate wasn't noted for its speed so it needed these to stop the wing from stalling easily. Those leading edge slots starting rattling away like crazy as I was climbing off the runway and frankly, they scared the hell out of me. I didn't even join circuit .... I just sort of "skidded it around" in the air and landed the sucker on the grass where the boys were having a good laugh on me for being such a "chicken!" Chicken hell .... it's just that I have a passion for "living" and wanted to stay that way as long as I could. Regardless, the little "beasty" is shown here for you to see. It did indeed train a lot of good pilots in its day and contributed well to our country's safety through the pilots that trained in them a long time ago.
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This old bomber was the Avro Anson. We all called it "the flying greenhouse" because it had so much plexiglass on it. The plane was made entirely of wood and fabric and was originally designed to be a "medium bomber." However it was never really used for that purpose as much better aircraft were introduced that were much more proficient and deadly. However the Air Force used it extensively to train Bomber Pilots, Navigators, Bombardiers, Gunners and Ops men. It was usually loaded with 11 pound target bombs for bombing practise. I can't remember what year they came out but it was well before the war. In those days there was no such thing as power assisted controls so they were very "heavy" to handle. Also because they were made mainly from wood, if you put much "G" stress on the wings of this plane they would actually bend horribly. When this happened, we always thought they were going to fall off or worse ... break off! I remember pullng one out of a "shallow dive" :-) over Barrie and both the Co-Pilot and myself had to pull for all we were worth to get it to pull up. When we did manage to level the ship out, we were skimming the waves of Lake Simcoe just a few feet above them! No floats on the damn thing either. Fortunately for us they were a forgiving old plane but a fair share of them got pretty well cracked up even so.
Although I never flew one of these things,I just have to mention it in here. This was the CC-119 "Flying Boxcar" and that's what it really was too. It carried large loads of materiel (for those days) including jeeps, field guns, etc.. It had twin booms and "clam-shell type" doors that opened up in the rear of the aircraft. They were used to para-drop men and materiel out the back in seconds. It was a great ship for paratroopers in its time and was often used to drop troops from extremely low levels as well ... sometimes not higher than 600 feet off the surface! Try that one ... and especially at night. I had the privilege of going along in of one of these "little monsters" for the experience. You had to climb a ladder to get up into the cockpit from the cargo space. When you looked back onto the troops all lined up waiting for their jump-off point, you almost felt like you were loking down into an arena from your vantage point up top! Imagine how those boys felt waiting.
I'll never know why this aircraft, the CC-106 Yukon was not too well accepted by the RCAF in the early sixties. I was stationed at Trenton where they were being tested day after day and night after night. The Officers Mess where I lived was directly across the highway from the hangars and two of those suckers were being tested every night ... all night. They were turbo-prop engines and each had four of them! Talk about noise. I look back now and know why the guys got so "imbeebriated" most every night ... it helped to drown out that incessant noise! They seemed to feel that those turbines just had to be tested at night. This was a wonderful aircraft. 12 to 14 square dances could be performed inside it with plenty space left over. There were "slots" all along the length of the floor of the craft that accomodated cargo of all sorts or they could be replaced in minutes with the most comfortable seats imagineable .... just like a commercial airliner. As a matter of fact that is what the Air Force did eventually wind up using them for a lot ... an Air Force "airline" that carried personnel all over the world. They were what is known as a S.T.A.L. Aircraft (Short Take-off And Landing) which meant they could take off and land on a very short runway so the versatility they were capable of was truly amazing.
I almost got to Marvelle, France for a weekend one time but got "bumped" just before we took off! If there were seats available and you had the necessary clearances, you could "hitch" rides to anywhere they were going for nothing! I had a dream weekend planned in France .... had the seat ... was about to take off when a little short fat female Squadron Leader came up to me and told me she .... that's right ... SHE had seniority and was taking my place. Damn women anyway ... give them a little authority and God help everyone:-) .... so officious:-) I missed another great chance on the Yukon when the Captain invited me to a five day ... non-stop flight all over the Artic for an endurance test. They would be re-fuelling in mid-air all this time and be staying aloft for the full five days! The meals and service were to be the very best and I really looked forward to it. Trouble was I was Acting/Squadron Leader then and could only manage four days off so once again I was foiled. Oh well ... the luck of the draw. C'est la vie.
I personally believe that the 172 Cessna (left) is/was one of the finest small aircraft ever made! It seats four comfortably, has all the features you want to put on them, i. e. autopilot, adf, most frequencies including the Armed Services bands (which I had) "trike" landing gear, stability like you wouldn't believe! It was a plane I used a lot for just plain getting from place to place plus "family outings" as well. I've demonstrated them, taught students in them, dropped parachutists from them (usually from a 182) with the right door off and a platform built over the right wheel for them to jump from. I used to get a real kick out of taking a "prospect" up to demonstrate their stability by climbing to its ceiling and simply cutting the power and holding the wheel tight against my stomach and let it "fall!". Oh yes, the "stall horn" squeeled all that time but never did that aircraft even hint at stalling into a vertical or incipient spin! It actually behaved similar to a "butterfly" as it "dipped and dived" without a hint of rolling, slowly back towards the ground gently. With most of the lighter ones, if you did that you would ineviteably find yourself in a spin to the right due to torque action. I always considered the 172 my "Cadillac of the sky." The interior and exterior of it was much like a Cadillac .... plush! The one pictured on your left has the same colour decals as the one I flew except the one I always used was green instead of blue. The 172 ... a plane that brings back a lot of fond memories. It's sad they stopped manufacturing them but it's also nice to hear that due to public demand the company is thinking about making them again soon.
Now the one on the right is real fun to fly. Although I have been a fixed-wing pilot for many years I have to say that had I got up in one of these babies earlier I would have licensed for them. It's absolutely marvellous flying these things! The versatility. The visibility. The sheer joy of going where you want to without the need of a long landing field when you got there! As I spent many hours taking pictures from them, I also had the opportunity to fly them as well and although it is a completely different way of flying than fixed wing it's a true thrill. I also used a Hughes 500 many times and I finally recommended the Hughes as more practical for Police work than the Bell. I have to admit that the Bell Ranger was the "prettier" craft of the two but looks are not always the answer.
This is the Hughes 500C. Not quite as fancy looking as the Bell but a lot more versatile. It had more blades that were much shorter than the Ranger's so they could get into smaller areas. This also gave it more lifting power and steadier hovering ability as well. The shape of the cabin being wider, could be fitted with two stretchers, one above the other and were placed cross-wise. An extenson "bubble" was designed for this purpose to accomodate the extra width needed and they could be detached when not needed. Another advantage of the cross-wise configuration was that a violent "patient" couldn't kick hell"out of the pilot in flight whereby the Ranger configuration (length-wise on) had the feet or head of the patient right next to the pilot and could interfere with his flying if he became violent. Also they were extremely stable during bad weather compared to the two bladed Bell. I've seen it quite turbulent when we were still flying and we also operated at times in heavy rainstorms and heavy fog but still got in and out of tight areas when called upon. This is mainly due to the shorter blades with either three or four instead of two which gave the ship better control in these bad situations. All in all as I said above, the Hughes was the one I recommended at the time and that was back in 1974. I tried very hard back then to convince the "powers-that-be" that these were badly needed as a "Tri-Service" effort. They would have been operated by the Police Department but tied in with Fire spotting and emergency Ambulance runs when needed. The ship above is not the one I used but very similar.
This page is © H.Heatherington, 2003