To the Stars the Hard Way

It wasn't an easy war to get into, back in 1939 and 1940. In fact, if you lived in Canada and wanted to fly, you soon began to think it must be a private war, reserved for university graduates, or people with brown hair, or former glass blowers, but certainly not open to young men whose principal qualification was a desire to get in there and fight. Later you found that the trouble had been a lack of planes and schools and instructors, that the country wasn't organized for the job it had taken on. But you didn't know that at first and you hadn't realized that you wouldn't be allowed to fight Germans in the air unless you could prove that you had gone all the way through high school. It fried you to a crisp to learn these things, not to be able to get in, to feel that you were being barred from the job you had been living for, that you were all raveled in red tape. That was the way it hit me — and plenty of others.

Ever since I can remember, airplanes and to get up in them into the free sky had been the beginning and end of my thoughts and ambitions. The woods are full of youngsters who drop anything they're doing to watch the planes go by and who can tell by the drone of an engine exactly what type of aircraft is passing. All over North America kids by the tens of thousands are whittling flying models. But with me it went even deeper than that. I don't know exactly when I began to feel this way, by the time I was nine all my afterschool hours and my Saturdays were spent at the old Lasalle Road Airport, about three miles from home, watching the planes of the Montreal Light Aeroplane Club and others — I remember seeing a couple of Gypsy Moths, an Aironca and a Travelair — I remember seeing them take off and land.

I realize that even then flying was an obsession with me. From the first day I watched a Moth disappear beyond the St. Lawrence I knew I was going to be a pilot, or else. Instead of sitting behind my desk in Bannantyne School, the urge to sneak off to the airport was too strong and I'd play hooky, knowing the cost only too well — two lickings, one at school and another at home — but I figured it was well worth it. When I got out to the field I'd climb the fence and try to get near the planes, hoping I'd maybe even get a chance to talk to a pilot. Then, in the late afternoon, I'd sneak home, late for supper, and afterwards put in hours of homework on the newest model aircraft hidden in the bedroom cupboard.

That year the Lasalle Airport was closed down and the planes moved out behind Mount Royal, back of the city, to the Cartierville field. I was only nine or ten then, and it was a long trek, but I was out there every Saturday, and whenever else I could make it. Sometimes I was lucky enough to scrape up a couple of streetcar tickets. But no matter how I got there, I'd be at the field whenever I could, just hanging around, watching and hoping. Then, all of a sudden, the dream came true.

It was during the summer holidays, the year I was ten. As usual, I was at the airport and somewhere close to the hangar when a quick thundershower blew up. I was huddled against the wall and a man came along. It was a man I guess I had been watching and worshiping from afar for months.

"Come on in, kid, and keep dry," he said, pushing me toward the holy of holies, where the planes were kept. Inside, we talked all through the storm. That is, he talked and I said "Yessir" and "Nosir" every once in a while. Then the rain stopped and we started to go out,

"Thanks a lot, sir," I said.

"That's fine, kid," said my benefactor. "Say, you think a lot of flying, don't you? Like to take a flip someday?"

Would I! Okay. Go home and ask your mother, if she says it's all right, 111 take you for a ride. Can you picture the ten-year-old who rode the trolley back to Montreal and on down into Verdun, the suburb where home was?

The family thought it was just a gag. Who'd take a ten-year-old sky-riding? Sure, you can fly, mom said. Sure, you can go to the moon!

I was back at Cartierville the next morning, long before the planes were out on the apron, looking for my pilot. "Mister! Mister!" I began to yell when he was still fifty yards away. "It's all right. I can go. My mom says I can fly!"

"All right, son, all right," the man said. "Keep your shirt on. Well fly ... right now, if you like!"

Ten minutes later we were in the air, heading toward the mountain and the city ... and I was a flier for the rest of time, no matter what happened. From now on the world would never be the same again!

The man I rode out and up with that morning remains my best friend and adviser to this day. Bush pilot, barnstormer, instructor, and now parachute tester, Ted Hogan is the fellow who brought me along, who found odd jobs for me to do around the Cartierville field and who, by the time I was twelve, was letting me get the feel of the controls. Mom thought I ought to be a doctor. Dad hoped I would become a commercial artist. But Hogan always said: "Fly, kid. It's the only life!" It sure is!

By the time I was fourteen I was selling papers and magazines, building model aircraft and selling them to the other kids around Verdun, running errands, doing anything I could find time to do to scrape money together for flying lessons. Whenever he could find the time Ted would take me up and let me fly his Rambler around, always for free. Not once did he accept a cent from me. It used to take about a month to earn $10 and whenever that total had been reached I'd quit everything else to plunk my big bill down on the counter and buy an hour's dual from one of the other instructors, usually a chap named Champagne, whom everybody called "Fizzy." Finally, when I was sixteen, my dad helped out with the last wad of bills to let me finish my dual and start out on my own. I was away!

If you've come straight from school, factory, or office to the Air Force, your first solo is liable to be an occasion preceded by something closely resembling the jitters, I guess. But if you've been hanging around airdromes since you were nine and have spent the last couple of years running errands and washing down planes to earn money for flying lessons, it's your real big moment. Mine was, anyway. I did two circuits and landings, and they were good landings. I can still feel those skis touching snow, soft as feathers, for the great day happened in midwinter. You have to give some of the credit to the skis and the snow-covered field, because the combination gives better take-offs and smoother landings than wheels and hard ground. Even so, they were good landings, and I felt swell.

In the air I was tempted to chuck the little Rambler about, as Ted used to let me when we were up together and I had the controls. But I wanted to keep on flying, not to be grounded as a smart aleck on my first solo. So the Rambler and I were very dignified as we swept around the field and landed.

Aerobatics were strictly out at Cartierville in 1938. This was a purely commercial school, the purpose of which was to enable youngsters to learn the rudiments of flight, and nobody wanted any Ramblers washed out by would-be aces. I soon found that out, for on my fourth flip, after a total solo flying time of an hour and a half, I did my first bit of unorthodox flying, yanking the stick hard back and kicking on full rudder to throw the little crate over in a flick roll, which is neither more nor less than a horizontal spin. Unfortunately for me, I selected a spot immediately over the field for this escapade. It came off beautifully and I flew around Cartierville feeling like a king. The feeling didn't last long. When I landed and taxied up to the hangar Mike Beaudoin, one of the school's instructors, was waiting for me.

"What the hell do you think you're doing with that ship?" he barked, before I had climbed out of the cockpit. "Any more of that and you're out, so far as this joint is concerned. Don't you go trying things you're not capable of doing, not with our ships!"

Just exactly how a guy was ever going to become a pilot by flying around like a truck driver, I didn't know. But for once I kept my trap shut. From then on I made plenty sure I was out of sight of the airport before attempting any aerobatics, though I'd done practically everything in the book while flying with Ted Hogan, dual.

Mostly I'd sneak off in the general direction of Dorval, where Montreal's new passenger and Atlantic Ferry airport has since been built, to do my stuff. Seems to me the next item I added to my repertory was a spin. Taking the Rambler up to 2,500 feet, out over Lake St. Louis, I closed the throttle and started to ease the control column back. As the nose came up over the horizon and the flying speed began to fall away to almost nothing, I kicked on right rudder and over we fell, spinning to the right. I let her spin down to about 1,000 feet, then centered the controls and waited for her to make her way out. The Rambler was pretty slow about it, so to help her along I gave her a bit of opposite rudder, and out she came. I was beginning to feel like a great pilot already.

My first loop was something else, because a lap-belt is nothing to hang by when you're over on your back and you either loop a Rambler right, or you hang there until she makes up her mind to fall out of the loop, or you fall out of the cockpit! So I fussed around quite a while before I screwed up the courage to do what I'd promised myself. At last, however, I shoved the nose down and dived until I had built up a speed of 160 miles an hour. Then I yanked the stick back into my stomach and around we went, the old crate creaking and groaning like a schooner in a gale. What a difference between the school ships of '38 and today's Spitfire! If you're cruising a Spit at 300 miles an hour all you do to loop is to ease the stick back gently — and I mean gently — a couple of inches, and over she goes.

Where to find money to lay on the line at $10 an hour for solo time was the big problem all that winter, and I was a young man in a hurry. Someplace I'd heard that the Chinese sorely needed pilots in their war with the Japs, that we pretended we hadn't heard about, and I was determined to get there somehow. First, however, I had to make a pilot of myself. That took time, plus money I didn't have. I took the problem home and told mother and dad that I wanted to quit school and take a job to earn enough money to qualify for my private pilot's certificate. I didn't mention China. Mother and dad are certainly not the kind of people who would have looked with favor on the idea of their son horning into "somebody else's war." But they knew I was determined to be a flier. So they said okay.

I found a job in the RCA-Victor radio plant at 28 cents an hour and rented a room near the factory for $1.50 a week. I'd spend another $1.75 a week on food, grabbing a cup of coffee and a hot dog here, a glass of milk and a piece of pie there, and cut every other expense to the bone, to scratch together a $10 bill every week for an hour alone in the air. In my own thoughts, at least, I was already on my way to China.

Once a week I'd turn up at Cartierville with my $10 in my hand and lay my money on the line, get a ship and, telling the school I was going to fly cross-country, would beetle off over the open fields, miles away from the drome, and put the Rambler through her paces. But that isn't all I did. Every now and then I'd pick up an extra hour in exchange for odd jobs around the school — washing down aircraft and doing chores around the hangar. Scarcely a day passed which didn't see me at Cartierville as soon as I could get away from the factory and usually there'd be something to do that could be traded into flying time. Trust Ted Hogan for that!

One by one I tackled all the standard aerobatics: sideslips, falling leaves, stall and Immelmann turns, and finally, the slow roll, a tricky number to execute with an old crate. I won't forget that first slow roll if I live to be a hundred. I went into it pleasantly enough, diving the Rambler to about 115 miles an hour, at which speed she'd begin to hum like a mouth organ, before easing the stick back and lifting the nose slightly above the horizon, controls centered. Then I put on vertical bank and top rudder, to get over on my back. That's where things began to go wrong. At this juncture the next step (if you know how to roll and keep your wits about you) is to put on a bit of opposite rudder and ease the stick back slightly, though still holding it in the banking position. Keep it there, but center it and center the rudder bar, and out you 11 roll. What happened to me, God only knows. I imagine I applied wrong rudder, neglecting to remember that the controls become temporarily reversed when the ship is upside down. Whatever it was, I waddled and barrel-rolled out like a fat woman skidding round a corner. For the first time I felt completely disconcerted in the air. So I stayed out over the farming country west of Montreal and did more rolls, until I mastered them and had my confidence back.

I kept my job in the radio plant until the end of February, 1939, but wasn't at all happy about things. One week's work, no matter how close I cut corners on food, room and laundry, gave me just enough cash for an hour's flying. Even though I was picking up extra time on the trade-in system I'd be an old man before I qualified for my ticket, and there was no point in starting for China without one. I took my problem, as usual, to Ted Hogan, the only friend I had who seemed to know what I had on my mind and to accept it as reasonable.

"What you ought to do," he said, "is to get in with some small commercial outfit, somebody freighting supplies north to the mining camps, or to fur traders, or something like that, and get them to take you on. Maybe I can dig up something. Hold your horses a few days."

A week later Ted asked me: "Ever hear of a place called Gravenhurst, up in Ontario, north of Toronto?" I said no, I hadn't. Why?

"There's a guy up there," Hogan said, "name of Smith Langley, who has a Curtiss Robin and some kind of freighting contract into the Rouyn goldfields. They tell me he could use a little help."

"I'm on my way," I said.

"How you going to get there?" Ted wanted to know. "Need a little dough?"

I said no, I'd be okay. Ride the rods. That night I checked out of my room and sent a message around to the plant that I was quitting, said good-bye to the folks ... and started for China, via Gravenhurst, Ontario.

Toronto was reached in modest comfort in an empty freight car, without incident. From there I thumbed rides north and, three days out of Montreal, hit Gravenhurst and found Langley. We struck a deal without trouble. What he needed was help; what I needed was flying time. We traded even, with grub and bunk thrown in. I stayed about six weeks, during which we slammed the Robin up and down the Gravenhurst-Rouyn run, day in and day out, hustling to complete a contract job before the ice went out of the northern lakes and left us shy on landing fields. Thanks to Langley I put in enough time to qualify for my permit, equivalent of the private license. That happened on April 16th. Langley's Gravenhurst job was finished, so I hoicked back to Toronto and began to hunt westbound transportation in the freight yards.

Twelve days passed as I rode the rods from Toronto to Merrit, British Columbia, where my great-uncle George, a well-known surgeon, lived. En route I traveled in at least forty freight trains, had the odd skirmish with the railway police in Toronto and Winnipeg, but finally made it. Mostly the train crews were good fellows and not too hard on riders, unless the cops were around.

As soon as I told my uncle what I had on my mind he wanted to help me. I said I couldn't think of a thing; everything seemed to be going along all right. But next morning, at breakfast, he passed an envelope across the table. "If you're going to China," he said, "maybe this will help." Into the envelope he had tucked a check for $500. God bless my only rich relative!

Uncle George's gift put a new complexion on my travels. Now I had money in my jeans to put in enough flying time to really make a pilot of myself. That day I boarded a passenger train for Vancouver and headed out to Sea Island Airport, plunked my cash down on the counter; I paid for fifty hours in advance and went to work to polish up my aerobatics. That was early in May, 1939.

Len Foggen's school at Sea Island was equipped with a couple of Luscombes, a Bird, and a Fleet, all good, tough little trainers, and on them I went about the business of learning to throw an airplane around the sky, at the end of which time I passed the written and flying examinations for my commercial ticket, only to learn that I was too young to be licensed. While I was waiting for the bad news on the exams, I put in another seventy hours flying passengers around the drome for Foggen, just to pile up the logbook entries. I figured now that I was all set for China, with or without a commercial license, and set out again on my Odyssey.