This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------4A743FEF3F72
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Dear Sir,
Enclosed is a story for the archives!
Cheers,
--
Fred Kuzyk
President, Morgan Sports Car Club of Canada
Visit the Morgan Sports Car Club of Canada's website at:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/msccc
--------------4A743FEF3F72
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="AIR&CAR2.TXT"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="AIR&CAR2.TXT"
OF SPORTS CARS AND AIRCRAFT And Golden Ages
-Fred Kuzyk
Comparing notes with a Mustang enthusiast years ago, we were amazed with some
of the "advanced"
features on my Morgan. Lucas electrics for all their notoriety do have some
innovative aspects. The "bump
button" on my starter relay, forinstance, is very handy when setting points or
when doing a compression
test. I discovered this feature only by accident one day, as it wasn't
mentioned in the Owner's Manual, the
Morgan Four Shop Manual, or any other book I've come across.'
My friend thought this feature was wonderful, for with American cars one
must connect an external
device to perform this function. Likewise, he was impressed with the
advance/retard wheel on the
distributer. It reminded him somewhat of the GM Delco distributer with the
little window in the cap,
through which one could adjust the points with a hex key while the engine ran.
We both agreed the Lucas
system is a great way to adjust ignition timing-and without a wrench!
He also liked the front disc brakes and commented that they were rather
uncommon on cars of that
era. True. I think Jaguar was the first to use these in 1959. But while discs
were new and rare on cars of
the early 1960s, they had been used for years on aircraft. An innovation from
another industry....
One of my favourite car shows in 1991 was a display of both classic autos
and planes at The
Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, in Hamilton during August. This show was
also repeated in 1992.
This wasn't a typical car show. There were no trophies, no parts vendors. What
there was instead, was a lot
of history. Such as, the juxtaposition of an immaculately restored P~5l Mustang
and a similarly immaculate
'65 Ford Mustang sitting beside each other in a WW II hangar with the sounds of
Glen Miller all around.
These airplanes are not dusty museum pieces, they do fly! While primarily a
static show, a couple of
vintage planes did do fly-bys, much to my delight. I suppose the cars, or
planes, by themselves would be
interesting enough, but somehow together the sum is greater than the parts. The
atmosphere triggered lots
of memories. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much was that it reminded me of
my student pilot days and
my time as an Air Force technician, now 20 years ago.
When auto enthusiasts gather you often hear debates about the performance,
handling, or sound of a
particular car or engine. An early T-Bird vis-a-vis a Corvette, the merits of a
Hemi, a twin cam, or the
sound of a Rover V-8. Motorcyclists will argue that a bike will beat anything
with four wheels. Drivers
recount the thrill of experiencing a
laps at Shannonville, Mosport, or of a pass down the 1/4 mile at Cayuga. Well,
since I have an appreciation
for a variety of machines (including antique fire trucks, Fender tube
amplifiers and Stratocaster guitars), I
gotta say the sweetest sounding engine is the Rolls-Royce Merlin in a Spitfire
fighter (it helped save
Britain!) and the ultimate thrill is doing over Mach 1 in an old Voodoo jet
fighter, when NORAD was
active! And one of the most sleekest, elegant sights in my mind has to be the
British Vulcan bomber. Not in
service now, at air shows during the '80s you could see this giant "manta ray"
gracefully climb while its
massive Rolls-Royce engines roared. Besides at air shows, one could have seen
this aircraft if you were in
the Falklands during this time period, however its temperment was less gentle
while it dropped loads of
armament against the Argentines!
During my four year tenure with the Queen, I experienced a multitude of
aircraft. Multi-engine
transport planes are comfortable and roomy, somewhat like luxury saloons, they
fly straight and level:
comfortable but a bit boring! Except perhaps to the airlines, they like
transport pilots. Helicopters are agile
like a Cooper. Great in the curves and can stop on a dime. But rotary-wing
craft are inherently limited with
regards to acceleration and top speed. A Harrier jump jet, however, can
maneavour like a chopper but
doesn't suffer from the limitations. Yes, the real sports cars of the
aeronautical world are the jet fighters.
They accelerate like a dragster with lots of top speed (in the order of Mach
2.5) and possess nimble
handling. Fast cars are endowed with names that evoke images of speed, power
even ferrocity. Names such
as Ace, Cobra, Tiger, Avanti and Jaguar. So it is with jet fighters - Tomcat,
Eagle, Falcon, Hornet. And
before those, names like: Vampire, Sabre, Banshee, and Meteor. As there was a
golden era of British sports
cars, the golden era of Canadian aviation was the 1950s. Canada was the 4th
largest military power after
the war, and it was a world "air power" in that decade. This was a position
that Canada may have found
uncomfortable and unnecessary after Korea.
Standing at the end of the runway at Canadian Forces Base North Bay in the
late '70s, I remember
the sight of the last remaining CF-l00 Canucks (nicknamed "Clunks") passing
overhead on takeoff. These
craft were over 25 years old. Although obsolete and dated, they were still
air-worthy and looked great. At
one time, there were almost 700 of these birds, some were even purchased by the
Belgian Air Force. Built
by A.V. Roe (AVRO) Aircraft of Toronto, this was the first and last
all-Canadian operational jet fighter. It
was a twin-engine, all weather subsonic interceptor. I was working out of the
Alert hangars which were
then empty. During earlier times, these hangars housed pairs of North American
Air Defence (NORAD)
interceptors which stood ready, 24 hours a day, to intercept Russian bombers
before they could get close to
the populated south. At a moments notice, air crew and ground crew would fire
them up right in the
hangar. They'd roll out and being by the end of the runway, they'd practically
takeoff right out the door!
When I was there, 414 "Black Knight" squadron was the last "Clunk" squadron. No
longer in a combat
role, they were being used for electronic warfare, which was playing the part
of bad guys in exercises and
trying to jam our radar. I tried my hand one day on the CF-100 simulator. What
an experience! One
moment you're at several thousand feet, the next, on the deck. Trying to land
it, I crashed and burned three
miles short of the runway. My thirty-five hours as a pilot in a Cessna didn't
prepare me to be a jet-jock!
Anyway, the Clunks were retired in 1981, on their 30th anniversary of
operational service. Their airframe
life-span had exceeded all expectations, it's just that they couldn't get the
small number of engines for them
from Orenda any longer.
CFB North Bay was fascinating for me for other reasons. Although I never
went looking, I was told
you could still find the remains cf the Bomarc missile bunkers up in the hills.
The Bomarcs were large anti-bomber missiles equipped with nuclear warheads.
There was a big debate about these weapons, in the early
'60s which helped bring down the Diefenbaker government. Bomarcs weren't
accurate enough without the
nuke warheads, so they were eventually fitted. although we had the missiles,
I'm told American personnel
held the keys to arm the warheads, as they owned these sensitive weapons! The
Bomarcs were a
boondoggle, and shortly after their inception it was announced that further
implementation was cancelled.
It could never replace a manned fighter. As a result, 446 Missile Squadron at
North Bay was one of only
two batteries that came into being. By 1972, these were finally scrapped and
air defence was solely the
rhealm of fighters once more.
CFB North Bay was also the home of the Canadian Norad Headquarters. The
nerve center here
receives signals from the radar stations of the DEW (Distant Early Warning)
line, and co-ordinates the
fighter defences in our region. This command center was called the SAGE (Semi
Automatic Ground
Environment) but was better known as "the hole". Over six hundred feet below
ground through the solid
rock of the Canadian Shield, a three story buiding sits within a cavern. Access
is via two tunnels, the main
one over a mile long. Propane buses take you down past the thick blast doors.
The complex can be totally
self-contained, when "buttoned-up". Having its own power plant, water supply,
sanitation, hospital and
food stores - it was meant to survive a direct nuclear attack. The building
even sits on rubber insulators, to
minimize shock. The place was awesome to visit! It housed the two largest
computers in the world. 50,000
vacuum tubes. Occupying whole rooms, they were state of the art in 1959 but
bulky and antequated in
1979. IBM staff did constant maintenance, mostly replacing tubes according to
schedules. Controllers
monitored radar screens, the computer identifying planes by referring to flight
plans. The war room was shades of
"Dr. Stranqelove" with its maps, displays, and boards showing the current
threat to North America and our stage of alert
readiness. I decided if I had to be somewhere during atomic attack, this was
the place!
AVRO Aircraft was a busy place in the late 1940s & early 1950s. Besides the
Canuck program, they had
also built the first jet airliner in North America, called the "Jetliner". The
British "Comet" only beat the
Jetliner off the ground by a couple of weeks, otherwise we would have beenfirst
in the world! Sales to
airlines never materialized due to the Korean war, however Howard Hughes leased
one as a personal toy.
AVRO was also commisioned by the US Air Force to attempt to build a "flying
saucer". Called the
Avrocar, it was a huge fan that hovered only a few feet off the ground with
poor control. The project
actually was the first hovercraft. Their most ambitious project was the CF-105
Arrow fighter. The RCAF
(Royal Canadian Air Force) was looking to the future and realized that a
supersonic replacement for the "Clunk" would
be needed. Friends and foes were developing such planes. Required were powerful
new engines, and the RCAF
desired a modern weapons control system along with a guided missile for a
weapon (a vast improvement over the
existing "dumb" rockets and guns). A formidable package that would have taken
the RCAF through the
1960's and beyond. Canadian Westinghouse was given the task of creating the
"Velvet Glove" missile and
ASTRA fire control, while the Orenda Engines division of AVRO designed the
massive engines. As the
major contractor, AVRO designed the airframe & would assemble the components.
The Arrow's design was
decades ahead of its time. Its delta wing shape had proven itself easily
capable of supersonic speeds. Its twin Orenda
Iroquois engines were capable of 25,000 pounds of thrust each. This is the
level of power of present day fighters, far beyond
anyone else in the late '50s. Arrow #6 was to have been flown with these
engines in 1959. Had it done so, it surely would
have set records for top speed, climb rate, and altitude. Sadly, the whole
project was cancelled a few months before it was
ready. Costs had gotten out of control. The RCAF wanted the best of everything,
and perhaps should have went with
existing weapons and engines. The government had spent some $300 million on all
the development and Arrows would have
costed an additional $3-$4 million a copy, when the government hoped to spend
about a million each. Originally, about 500
were to be built. Even for as few as 100 planes, the further cost was high. Our
allies, though interested in the technology and
potential of the project, expressed no firm interest in buying copies of the
plane for their military. They had to protect their
own companies. Authorities have said that had we made 20 or so aircraft
operational, one squadron, and it was shown what
it was capable of, the American forces would be clamouring to have it built
under licence in their country. Much like the
English Harrier was later built for the US Marines. The Diefenbaker government
also felt that the bomber threat was
diminishing (bombers still persists today but the cold war has finally ended)
that ballistic missiles were the new threat, &
manned fighters were thus obsolete. It was the missile age, and the
Conservatives mistakenly put a lot of faith in the Bomarc
for our defence. These assumptions were wrong. Whithin two years of scrapping
the Arrow, the politicians had no choice
but to buy American, obtaining Mc.Donnell CF-101 Voodoos for NORAD duty .
Likewise, to replace our Korean
war Sabres in Europe, they purchased Lougheed CF-104 Starfighters for our NATO
contingent. Cheaper
and adequate, but not in the same league as the Arrow.
When Dief pulled the plug, the results were devastating. AVRO
immediately shut down all
work (a desperate political move perhaps) putting nearly 15,000
employees out of work. The
company was dependant on this contract & had no other projects, other
than the small work
force involved with the flying saucer for the US. All five of the
flying Arrows, as well as the
completed sections on the assembly line, were cut for scrap. The
government owned all the
aircraft & it was secret stuff. Having no use for it all, it was all
destroyed. Our greatest aviation
achievement and not one was saved for research or for display at the
National Museum at
Rockcliffe. The government also torched plans, drawings and other
artifacts. Engineering
expertise and future research and development was lost. A whole
industry destroyed. Some of
the talented AVRO engineers went on to NASA and helped put an American
on the moon.
So, the CF-104 Starfighter would soldier on through the 60s &
70s instead. It was a single
engine, stubby winged craft. I remember that it had a strange howl
when it taxied if a little
throttle was applied. Pilots dubbed it "the widowmaker". Our role in
Germany required that it
fly low and fast, not what it was intended for. It's wings didn't
allow it to glide well, so if the
single engine flamed-out, it dropped like a rock. Hence the nickname.
I attended a helicopter course at CFB Chatham (New Brunswick) in
1980. This was the home
of 416 Lynx Squadron, one of our three NORAD interceptor squadrons at
the time, which was still
flying the Voodoo. Since I had a High Altitude Indoctrination (HAI)
qualification (a three day course
that allowed one to ride in a jet fighter: teaching the effects of
lack of oxygen, explosive
decompression, the art of ejection, survival at sea or in the
wild,etc.) I was elligible for a ride.
This was indeed an experience! The bang of the afterburner kicking in,
the feel of G-force, the
silence at supersonic speed (the noise is behind you) winging over the
Gulf of St. Lawrence.
416 Squadron was involved with NORAD exercises at the time. Fighters
scrambling from the
alert hangars, day & night. The windows in my barracks room would
rattle and plaster would
fall from the ceiling as these planes thundered off in the night.
Fantastic yes, but I couln't help but wonder "what if"? Canada was again
purchasing foreign
replacements for these planes and "the widowmakers". The cost of the
contenders was in the $ 20-25 million a copy range. The US CF-18 Hornet was
chosen and the existing fighters would retire
shortly. If the Canuck lasted thirty years, I wondered if I would have
gotten a ride on the Arrow
instead?
Fast forward to 1998. Defence hasn't been a growth industry for decades. The
RCAF didn't know it at the
time but 1958 would perhaps be its peak & pinnacle, when it had 58,000
personnel in uniform &
numerous squadrons of up to date planes - as well as a dream aircraft
undergoing air testing. The golden
age would steadily decline from that point onward. Many of the air bases I knew
are now gone. Recently, it
was announced that CFB North Bay will be gone. Authorities ponder what can the
underground complex
be used for, or like an unwanted in-ground swimming pool, it might simply be
filled-in. Likewise, the base
in Germany was decommisioned, as has CFB Toronto (Downsview). CFB Chatham
hasn't heard the
rumble of jet interceptors in some years. Neither has Downsview. The city of
North York has wanted the
land for years & has announced that it will create an entertainment center
there, kind of a "Disneyland
North" tourist attraction.
Likewise, the golden age of sports or British cars declined. In the 1950s,
there were numerous marques.
The Japanese visited the state of the art Austin factory in Britain to "Learn
the ropes". They took good
notes! It wouldn't be long before they would dominate the auto industry. The
Mazda Miata is now the
affordable sports car of the 90s. With recent buyouts of Rover & Rolls-Royce,
the quirky Morgan factory
is one of the last British car makers, in a once proud industry. These are
times when nationalism has been
replaced by multi-national corporations. One of the last hold-outs is a company
like SAAB - which not only
makes cars but high performance aircraft. The Swedes, it seems, held onto their
dream of a domestic
automotive & aircraft industry.
I believe that it was Wilfred Laurier that said : "The 20th century would
belong to Canada". While that
never totally came to pass, there was a time of optimism, a time when our
dollar was higher than the US
greenback, a time when the sky & growth held no limit. Yes, there was fear of
"the bomb" but there was
also a sense that anything could be done here: peaceful uses of nuclear power,
"Peace-keeping" operations
to save the world, & faith in being "Haves", rather than "Have Nots".
Expectations that our children, and
each subsequent generation, would have a continually greater standard of
living in the future. This "golden
age" was before the cut-backs, "Social Contracts" , globalization, and other
events that have occured.
Historians & some folk may reflect back on the 1950s & 60s as a period of many
"Golden Ages", that are
likely not to be repeated here. I guess as Canadians, we're not meant to be
high-tech producers. The
experience of the Jetliner, Arrow and the ill-fated hydrofoil "Bras D'Or",
would confirm this. After all, there
isn't a Canadian car company or sports car either.
For those that yearn for another age, the "Classics of the Golden Age Show" at
the Canadian Warplane
Heritage hangar, sadly too is now also a memory for some years. However, the
Healey Club has resurrected
the concept of a show of cars & vintage aircraft at the Warplane Heritage's new
hangar, last year. On May
24, 1998, British car owners can strap on their leather helmets, goggles, &
silk scarves - and reminice
about the many "Golden Ages". Hope to see you at the Hamiton Airport, so that
we all may "remember
when"!
--------------4A743FEF3F72--
|