Fog grounds ancient aircraft

Two vintage warplanes, adorned in bright yellow hues, were supposed to arrive in St. Stephen Friday.

Instead, any people interested in seeing the ancient aircraft at St. Stephen airport Saturday were greeted by an obscuring layer of thick, grey fog and overlying cloud. Those weather conditions kept the aircraft grounded in Saint John, according to Vintage Wings organizer Chris Cormier.

“We missed out everything over the last week,” due to the weather, he explained.

“They can’t fly in clouds or rain, or anything like that. They don’t have enough instrumentation on board.”

As of Monday, one plane had been sent to Ottawa, and the other remained in Saint John, to fly westward shortly. There will be no attempt to bring the remaining aircraft to St. Stephen.

“The tour is pretty much done,” said Cormier, with planes required to return to their home base in Gatineau, PQ for a weekend air show. 
 
He noted the Vintage Wings organizers are planning a 2013 tour, but none of the planned stops include St. Stephen.

SOURCE: The Saint Croix Courier (St. Stephen, NB) - 11 September 2012.

Community Days - Saint John, NB

Vintage aircraft ‘Yellow Wings’ will visit St. Stephen

A Fleet Finch - a First World War era biplane - is one of the four vintage fighting machines destined to visit St. Stephen in September.

Aircraft enthusiasts and history buffs will get a chance to be up close and personal with vintage aircraft when the Yellow Wings pay a visit in September.

George Laviolette, who manages the Giddens Memorial Airport for the Town of St. Stephen, said a representative of the Yellow Wings contacted him seeking to display the old war planes at the airport on Sept. 6 - 8.

The Yellow Wings program was established in 2011 by Vintage Wings of Canada, an aviation museum of historically significant and still operational aircraft established at the Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport in Quebec.

The charitable organization created the Yellow Wings program in 2011 to pay tribute to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) described by the museum as “one of the greatest military and industrial achievements in Canada, indeed the world, during the Second World War.”

The Yellow Wings web site describes the BCATP as “a stunning achievement in planning, construction, community involvement and aircrew training that involved every province of Canada, hundreds of small and medium sized communities across the country, and hundreds of thousands of airmen from Canada, the British Commonwealth and the United States of America.”

It described the program as an attempt to bring the story of how “everyday Canadians, communities and companies did their part as the Aerodrome of Democracy to win the war against two evil empires.”

Pennfield Ridge was the site of some of that training.

The success of the Yellow Wings program last year, involving visits by the vintage aircraft to various communities across Canada, prompted the museum to extend it to 2012.

Laviolette said the display would be “great for the older veterans“ in the area.

He said the planes would be returning to Gatineau, via St. Stephen, after participating in a large air show at Stanley, N.S. Laviolette expects all four planes in the program to land at the airport – two biplanes, a deHavilland Tiger Moth and a Fleet Finch II as well as a Fairchild Cornell MK II and a Harvard IV.

There will be no charge for admission to the airport grounds to see the planes, but there will be a charge for anyone wishing to take flight in one of them.

Heritage Fair Project by Jay Torrey and Kyle Thorne

 

Photographs from a Heritage Fair Project that was held 02 April 2012 at Fundy High School in St. George. This project by Jay Torrey and Kyle Thorne.

Kyle Thorne and Jay Torrey - 08 September 2012
Pennfield Ridge War Memorial Service
The Royal Canadian Legion (Branch #40), St. George

Queen unveils WW II Bomber Command memorial

Queen Elizabeth unveils the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, London, on Thursday as Prince Philip and Prince Charles (right) watch.

Queen Elizabeth has unveiled a new memorial to honour the 55,573 men of the RAF's Bomber Command who died in the Second World War.

The memorial features a 2.7-metre high bronze statue depicting seven aircrew.

The roof of the £6-million ($9.8-million Cdn) memorial, which is in London's Green Park, is made from aluminum recovered from a Handley Page Halifax III bomber that was shot down over Belgium in May 1944, the BBC reported.

Held up by controversy

The large number of civilian deaths in the campaign remains controversial, and is one reason there has been no memorial until now.

The German city of Dresden — where 25,000 civilians died in bombing raids — initially objected to the memorial. But the objections were eased by the placing an inscription commemorating all the lives lost in the bombings of 1939-45.

The service Thursday was followed by a flypast of the Royal Air Force's last flying Lancaster Bomber.

The vintage plane dropped poppies over the park as a message of remembrance for those who died.

A group of 42 Canadian Bomber Command veterans are in London this week for the unveiling of the memorial, joined by veterans from Australia, New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries.

Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney led the Canadian delegation in London.

"The memorial will serve as a permanent reminder of the many sacrifices made by these brave men and women," Blaney said in a statement.

"After proudly serving our country, our veterans deserve our recognition and respect. Our government will continue to ensure that their sacrifices and contributions will be remembered for future generations."

Earlier this week, Canada unveiled a new military honour to pay tribute to Canadian veterans who served in Bomber Command. The honour is a bar to be worn with the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal.

The government says the new bar is meant to honour all Canadians who fought in Bomber Command during the Second World War, but in particular the more than 10,000 Canadians who died in service.

SOURCE: CBC News website - 28 June 2012.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES: So many of "the boys" from Pennfield Ridge Air Station, especially those from No.34 Operational Training Unit, served in Bomber Command.

Ottawa creates new honour for Bomber Command vets

A Lancaster Bomber banks over Dover in south eastern England in 2009.

The federal government is creating a new military honour to pay tribute to Canadian veterans who served in Bomber Command during the Second World War. Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Veterans Affairs Minister Stephen Blaney made the announcement today in Ottawa.

A special bar is being created which veterans who served in Bomber Command will wear on the ribbon of the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal. The medal was granted to personnel who volunteered for service in the Canada’s land, naval and air forces and who served 18 months or more between Sept. 3, 1939 and March 1, 1947.

The government says the new bar is meant to honour all Canadians who fought in Bomber Command during the Second World War, but in particular the more than 10,000 Canadians who died in service. More than 55,000 Allied air crew members were killed carrying out raids over Germany.

Blaney said the bar is being designed and will be ready by the end of the year. Surviving veterans can apply for it, as can the families of any of the 50,000 Canadians who served in the campaign.

The new honour comes 67 years after the end of the war. MacKay today acknowledged this tribute is "long overdue."

"It is unfortunate it has taken this long," MacKay said. "[Creating the honour] is complex and there is certainly, as is always the case, politics involved in that."

The story of Bomber Command remains a contentious issue among historians. Allied air raids killed more than 600,000 Germans. The morality of mass bombing raids has been debated since the war’s end.

'A bit late'

John Bower-Binns flew 37 missions with Bomber Command and was on hand for today's announcement.

"I think it's a bit late," he said.

"Bomber Command took a very active role in the war. And for a long time, we weren't very well recognized. They thought we were a bunch of criminals for bombing cities."

Questions over Bomber Command led to a controversy at the Canadian War Museum in 2007.

Veterans groups criticized the wording of a display on the history of Bomber Command. They claimed it made Allied air crews appear to be war criminals.

A Senate committee investigated. It found the wording of the display to be factually accurate but urged the museum to change it nonetheless. The museum’s directors relented, putting together a longer, more detailed display that veterans considered more balanced.

A group of 42 Canadian Bomber Command veterans will travel to London, England, this week for the unveiling of a new memorial to Allied air crews. The Queen will officially open the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, near Buckingham Palace.

SOURCE: CBC News website - 25 June 2012.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES: So many of "the boys" from Pennfield Ridge Air Station, especially those from No.34 Operational Training Unit, served in Bomber Command.

Film society to show documentary again

There was a full house at Sunday’s showing of “Lost Airmen of Buchenwald” at the W. C. O’Neill Arena Theatre and some people had to be turned away so there will be a second showing Wednesday April 4 at 7:30 p.m.

The documentary is about the 168 Allied airmen who were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. One of them was Hawker Typhoon fighter pilot Jim Stewart of Saint Andrews who was in attendance at Sunday night’s showing and received a standing ovation from the audience afterwards when he came forward to answer questions.

An RAF fighter pilot, he was shot down near Rouen, France, May 13, 1944 and managed to evade capture for several months with the help of members of the French resistance movement.

War, said Stewart, is so often a case of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and spoke of his own personal hero from those days in the concentration camp, New Zealander Phil Lamason, the senior officer in the group who is also featured in the documentary. He said he has been back a couple of times and attended the 65th and last liberation of Buchenwald celebration in 2010 but there are not many of them left.

SOURCE: The Saint Croix Courier (St. Stephen, NB) - April 3, 2012.