Great as all those airplanes are, the top of aircraft production, with no design help from elsewhere, has to be the C7 Caribou.

Still active today with the RAAF, 40 years of hard work, and they still sound and work good.

We still do not know, what to replace them with.

Regards

Col Tigwell

Re: Re: Re: Canso
 

Sapper...

Don't forget the" Dollar nineteen",our term for the Fairchild Boxcar....Don't forget ..I was there...Those old clam shell doors used to shake and the gaps in them tended to keep me away from them during flight...Looking out though the gaps in the rear doors at 8,000 ft..and them shaking like a dog crapping razor blades,Is enough to make you remember them...

The C-119 was nicknamed the "Dollar 19" in reference to its price and numerical code. The high twin-boom tail characterized the Aircraft. Originally utilized to transport the Canadian Airborne, many troops regarded the Aircraft as an extremely noisy mode of transport.
http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/equ.../boxcara60.jpg

http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/equ...er/boxcar3.jpg

Re: Re: Re: Re: Canso
 

Alex, you and I need to get together sometime. I missed the piston era of ATC and I'd love to hear more of your stories. I've complained in the past about long, slow and noisy flights in Hercs, but at least they were pressurized so they could fly above most of the turbulence and were air conditioned to boot. Bumping along at speeds that cars can now now match through the chop of the lower atmosphere must have made any flight in a C-119 seem an eternity. They used to fly those darn things to C.F.S. Alert for heaven's sake! However, there is one thing that the Flying Boxcar has over the Herc...a better safety record! No Canadian personnel were ever killed in a C-119.
Did you ever get to ride in a North Star? I understand we flew them until 1965. Now there was a noisy aircraft! Four screaming Merlins would beat any traveller into submission in very short order! A very amusing anecdote of a trans-Atlantic flight aboard one was written by one Danny Turner and printed in the Centralia Coronet in Dec. 1956, titled: "North Star: I Had to Get Home for Christmas!" He talks of just being able to grin stupidly at each other for several hours as the noise made any kind of verbal communication impossible. My one overseas flight in CF aircraft was on board a Polaris (the one thing I'm grateful to Lyin' Brian for)...cold drinks, warm meals, in-flight movies, soft pillows and reclining seats...even the female stewards were pretty! We even dropped into Brise-Norton for a quick pint! Stark contrast to what you experienced eh?



P.S. Great shots of ATC C-119's ...the first is by W.H. Meaden and the second is of a resupply drop from the belly hatch during an Army exercise near Quebec City on Feb. 4, 1955

:cheers: CHIMO! :cheers:

Col, thanks for that. You list two P224's, I guess one of them is P223 - this must be A24-92 instead of A24-98?. According to my info they were re-numbered 16-220 to -225. It's a shame we did not get more use out of these completely overhauled Catalina's, but when the Dutch left New Guinea there was no need for them any longer.

Hanno


16-220 1959 A24-104 19 Feb 1954 PBY-5A, ex-RAAF, USN 46594, scrapped Boroekoe 21 Aug 1956
16-221 1984 A24-110 23 July 1954 PBY-5A, ex-RAAF, USN 46619, scrapped Boroekoe 12 Aug 1956
16-222 1985 A24-111 Aug 1954 PBY-5A, ex-RAAF, USN 46620, scrapped Boroekoe 12 Aug 1956
16-223 1855 A24-92 1954 PBY-5A, ex-RAAF, USN 46491, cannibalised, soc 15 Apr 1954
16-224 1899 A24-99 2 Feb 1954 PBY-5A, ex-RAAF, USN 46535, scrapped Boroekoe 1 July 1957
16-225 1986 A24-112 8 Dec 1954 PBY-5A, ex-RAAF, USN 46621, scrapped Boroekoe 28 Aug 1956

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Canso
 

I flew as a kid on a North Star to NFLD in '53..All I remember is the noise and the flame from the exhaust..I flew a search and rescue mission in December of '63 on An Exploder when that DC-8 went down North of Montreal with all hands on board...
The engines were recovered down 60' in frozen ground..She went straight in...

The Trans-Canada Airlines DC8, bound for Toronto, crashed into a field, 20 miles from Montreal's international airport at 0632 local time (2300 GMT). the DC-8 jet crashed in the foothills of the Laurentians near Ste. Thérèse.


I flew in The Herc' too many times to recount..Allways liked them until you do a combat landing in one...
The flight where the lightning hit the nose radom on a mercy mission to Tunisia to help out from the flood of 'winter of '69 was especially memorable...

I flew in a Buffalo from Lahr to Sardinia quite a few times and was never so happy to get on the ground after the time we flew THROUGH a thunder storm over Corsica....Was every way except upside down,and I'm not sure of that.....Those 1000 foot drops were friggin' violent and could never tell if this was the one where the wings tore off or not...

And the DC-3 flights from Sardinia to Naples during the winter of '69-'70,where we were loosing ground ,flying backwards,to headwinds ,heading back to Sardinia...

And the time we allmost.dropped the new VOLVO into the Med out of the Herc,cause the idiot ,filled it full of gas and it started to expand and leak into the aircraft ...(The proceedure was we could fly our cars out IF we drained all gas and oil out of them...)
We were going to drop if but we flew around through France with the rear doors open ,and unpressurized...
That ended our free car trips..

That was hair raising..

And flying the DC-3's into and out of Moosonee was a white knuckle flight on occasion...

Yes ..we could spin some yarns..


Jeez..no wonder I drank...

YUKON.....
 

Derrek...
I forgot about the flight from Trenton to Lahr in August of '69....now there was noise...Tabernac....
Flew right over Woodstock...Could smell the dope from 27,000 feet....

TCA DC-8 Crash
 

Coincedence AL.It was on the local news at noon hour.Today's the anniversary.A newsman was up in Blainville today at ground zero where the 118 people died.It's a quiet modern residential street now.The swamp is gone and there's a plaque in an adjacent park with all 118 names on it.Also a coincedence,my brother,serving as a navigator with 426 Squadron at Dorval,was called out that evening to be on a North Star,searching for the jet..To this day,because the DC-8 had no black box,they've never found the cause of the crash but still suspect the vertical gyroscope.I still remember the date.Wewere supposed to get together at my mom's house for supper with my brother and his wife.She called my mom to tell her about my brother being called out on a search.

Hanno I will check with the RAAF again, because we might as well get the records right about these six aircraft.

Will revert soon

Regards

Col

Hanno your list is correct. It turns out that the ADF serials had seven PBY5A going to NEI.

P244 is a typo and it not valid.

Sorry to confuse the situation.

I looked at three of these airplanes, prior to handover, Bristol had done a great job, looked and smelt like new.

Regards

Col

Col, do I understand correctly you worked at Bristol Aviation at Bankstown? If so, could you tell us a little more about you experiences there? They might seem "just another day at the factory" type of stories to you, but could prove to be interesting reading for the rest of us. I myself am interested in anything with a Dutch connection.

Thanks,
Hanno

I am sorry to disappoint you, but I was only 12 years old when I saw the Dutch PBY5A's at Bristol.

My father was an inspector with Bristol, and that is how we got in.

The aircraft looked jhust like new when they left.

Regards

Col

Col, it must have made a hell of an impression on you. Pity to learn those as-new Catalinas were scrapped within three years when the Dutch pulled out of the East Indies.

H.

Here's a picture of her at Rotterdam, taking off from the Maas river. Picture courtesy of KTR-member Pieter van Wijngaarden:

http://64.69.39.188/g503/data/836/ca..._rotterdam.jpg

Dutch Catalina needs your help!
 

Some of you may have heard of the setbacks of the Dutch Catalina PH-PBY - the oldest flying one in the world - suffered earlier this year. First an engine failure, and then a nose wheel up landing. A freshly overhauled engine was acquired and the nose wheel damage is repairable, but the down time has led to a reduction in flight hours available for revenue flight. The damages plus the loss of revenues has brought the association operating PH-PBY in serious financial difficulties.

In short: they need your help - please consider donating towards keeping this Cat in the air! Contact the Association via their website https://catalina-pby.nl/en/ . They have various options to make donating as easy as possible.

Thanks in advance!

- Hanno

Attachment 94563

Catalina 16-212
 

PBY-5A BuNo.48317 with registration 16-212 - see the top of this thread - it the last surviving Catalina which served with the Dutch armed forces.

Last summer a project started to restore her to static condition - read more here: "Sole Surviving Dutch Navy PBY Catalina Begins Restoration at Nederlands Transport Museum".

The Netherlands Transport Museum is located in the former Fokker Services buildings in Nieuw-Vennep, the Netherlands.

Attachment 121289 Attachment 121290

Cat Tales
 

This makes for interesting reading: "Cat Tales: The story of World War II’s PBY Flying Boat"

Did you know the one of the PBY novelties was its huge wet wing, the first on any production airplane?

Attachment 121323 Attachment 121324