Frugal Film Project – July 2024 – Per Ardua Ad Astra

Per Ardua Ad Astra – Through Adversity to the Stars

As a personal rule, I tried hard to avoid using the same locations twice, but there are always exceptions. Last year I featured one of my favourite local museums, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario. While that post was directly about the museum itself, for this year the museum is merely a backdrop for something different, a celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force and Canadian Air Power through the century. The one thing that you’ll notice in this post is an expanding history section and also a selection of digital images that I shot during the event at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

Like most of Canada’s modern military history, the Royal Canadian Air Force saw its start in the blood soaked trenches of the First World War. Upon Canada’s entry into the conflict, the Minister of the Militia, Sir Samuel “Sam” Hughes, saw the potential of a military air force. By September 1914 the Canadian Aviation Corps were formed with two officers a mechanic and a single Burgess-Dunne biplane. The CAC lasted less than a year without seeing any action in the air over the western front. But that didn’t stop Canadians from joining the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and in the air produced several Canadian aces including William “Billy” Bishop and Wilfred “Wop” May. By 1917 the RFC operated training airdromes across Canada, notably near Barrie, Ontario known at the Borden Military Camp. and even an aircraft manufacturing factory. By 1918 the Canadian Government began exploring the possibility of the creation of a proper Canadian Air Force consisting of eight squadrons and commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel William Bishop. While the Canadian Government waiting, the British Air Ministry formed a two squadron Canadian Air Force, consisting of a day fighter squadron operating the Sopwith Dolphin and Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5A fighters and a bomber squadron operating an Airco DH.9A bomber. Sadly the small CAF did not fly any combat missions and by 1919 funding was cut and a year later the CAF was formally disbanded. The government decided to not pursue forming a peacetime military air force. But that didn’t stop the creation of a civilian body. The Air Board saw creation in June 1919, and was put in charge of air transport, search & rescue, air mail, mercy missions, surveillance & photography along with maritime patrol duties. The Air Board operated using surplus military aircraft and veteran pilots from the First World War. Through the 1920s, the Air Board established six air stations across Canada, and even formed a small military wing operating out of Borden. In 1922, the entire Air Board was transferred to the Ministry of Defense and renamed the Canadian Air Force, and despite being lumped in with the military, it operated both civilian and military air operations across Canada. A formal application was submitted and accepted in 1923 for Royal Accent. But it was not until 1 April 1924 that the Canadian government formally accepted the change and the Royal Canadian Air Force began operations. In 1927 the civilian operations were spun off into a separate entity leaving the RCAF as a purely military aviation branch, although they did still assist the civilian branches when and where they could. But budget cuts in the 1930s decimated the force, and resulted in by the time the decade came to the close the RCAF operated on a skeleton crew and a fleet of obsolete aircraft.

When the war in Europe opened in September 1939 the RCAF scrambled to send pilots and aircraft to Europe while also maintaining defenses at home. Because of the great distance between the major theatre and Canada, the British Government along with Canadian, Australian and New Zealand governments started to cooperate to train new pilots in a rapid and efficient manner. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan saw new air bases spring up and a rapid rearmament and deployment of the RCAF. Within a month of the war starting for Canada, the RCAF expanded to fifteen squadrons fully operational, manned and flying from an original eight in operation (of eleven total). Three squadrons were sent overseas while twelve remained in Canada to conduct maritime patrols and defense of convoys to Europe. The RCAF fought in all the major operations throughout the war, the Battle of the Atlantic, Battle of Britain, the Bombing of Germany, the D-Day landings, along with operations in East Asia, North Africa, and Italy. During World War Two, the RCAF operated a wide variaty of aircraft, from trainers and transports, fighters and bombers. Some of the iconic aircraft include the Avro Lancaster, de Havilland Tiger Moth, de Havilland Mosquito, Supermarine Spitfire, North American B-25 Mitchell, Hawker Hurricane, Handley Page Halifax, Consolidated PBY Catalina, and many more. RCAF pilots helped with the mass escape from Stalag Luft III (The Great Escape). The RCAF peaked in 1944 with some 215,000 personnel, and 48 overseas squadrons in operation. During the war the RCAF suffered 13,000 killed in action with another 4,000 dying during training. By the time the war ended in 1945, the RCAF was the fourth largest air force in the world. Post-War saw the immediate reduction in personnel and squadron strength, the government looked at a peacetime force of 16,000 personnel and eight squadrons. But by 1947 that number had been dropped to 12,000 personnel in five squadrons. And the RCAF fell back into its peacetime mission of air transport, surveying, along with supporting expeditions into the artic and Search & Rescue missions. That didn’t stop the RCAF from modernising to meet the growing Soviet threat and changes in technology. In 1947 the RCAF began operating helicopters, with the Sikorsky H-5 and a year later its first jet powered fighter, the deHavilland F.3 Vampire.

To counter the growing Soviet threat from the east, Canada joined NATO in 1949 and made the commitment to form a new Air Division in Europe with four wings. In 1950, the RCAF supporting the United Nations mission during the Korean War, with RCAF planes and helicopters providing vital transport and logistics support. While the RCAF did not supply combat aircraft (none were operating at the time) RCAF pilots did fly in combat roles with the United States Air Force (USAF). This experience would lead to the RCAF sourcing a licensed built copy of the F-86, the Canadair CF-86 Sabre began a well known and much loved front line combat aircraft that formed the first Fighter wings being stationed in Europe. RCAF operated two bases out of France and another two in West Germany. In Canada a joint effort between the RCAF and USAF constructed a series of early warning radar stations with the Pinetree Line, Mid-Canada Line and the Distant Early Warning to detect and scramble interceptors to counter Soviet bombers over the artic. To help with this front line interceptor role, the RCAF began to operate in 1953 the Avro CF-100 Canuck, an all-weather and all-Canadian fighter. The Cold War RCAF peaked at 54,000 personnel and forty-one operational squadrons. Even when the CF-100 started operations, Avro was already looking at it’s next big interceptor and in 1958 the CF-105 Arrow flew for the first time, this advanced interceptor was light years ahead of its time. But political wrangling and a breach of security would force the project to be cancelled totally and buried a year later. Instead, the RCAF would accept the CF-101 Voodoo as their mainline interceptor and the CF-104 Starfighter as their front line fighter. RCAF North Bay would also become home to a series of Boeing Bomarc missiles to intercept the inbound Russian bombers, although they never worked.

In 1968, the RCAF ceased to exist as a separate branch of the military, instead along with the Army and Royal Canadian Navy formed a single unified force, the Canadian Armed Forces. Each part of the RCAF was divided into sperate commands including Air Defense, Mobile Command, Maritime Command and Air Transport Command. The Air Defense command also began to operate the F-5 (CF-116) Freedom Fighter, although at a much reduced capacity. The move also stripped the RCAF of uniforms, insignia, motto and traditions that it had built since 1924. By 1975, all air assets of the Canadian Forces were reunified under a new Air Command, which soon took on a similar structure to the old RCAF. The 1970s also saw a great deal of modernisation including new transport planes, helicopters and a single mainline fighter. The fighter chose, the F/A-18, or CF-18(8) began operating in 1982 and slowly the CF-101, CF-116 and CF-104 were phased out through the rest of the decade. New transport planes, helicopters, patrol, and tankers/VIP transports were brought in to streamline Air Command. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991 saw a reduction in the Air Command, the Pinetree Line closed in 1991 and the Distant Early Warning line in 1993. By 1994, Air Command disbanded and closed all their remaining bases in Europe. But that didn’t reduce what Air Command did, joining with NATO and UN allies to support smaller regional conflicts and enforcing no-fly zones. The late 1990s saw a shuffle with the formation of No. 1 Air Division to operate 11 wings across Canada for front line service, while 2009’s No. 2 Air Division was dedicated to training new personnel. In 2011, the Canadian Government announced that Air Command would be retitled as the Royal Canadian Air Force with a similar emblem and motto as the pre-unification RCAF and be returned the uniforms and traditions of the original RCAF. Today the RCAF has ~12,000 active personnel with ~2,000 reservists, and ~1,500 civilians and operates out of twelve bases across Canada. Since 2010 the RCAF has been working towards modernising the entire fleet with the F-35 Lightening II, Boeing P-8A patrol craft, MQ-9A Drones, CC-330 transports, CC-295 fixed wing Search & Rescue planes, and new trainers all starting to arrive allowing the RCAF to continue to support our allies across the globe.

The one thing that I tried to do for this post is to capture as many iconic Canadian operated planes in both mediums, because as much as they look good in B&W they are equally stunning in colour. The only thing I was limited with was the collection at the CWHM, but they do have most of the planes operated by Canada in the 20th and with the RCAF present, into the 21st century. While I would have loved to have captured one of the new F-35 Lightning IIs, they aren’t being operated by the RCAF yet, and even I have yet to see one or photograph one. Since I was running two cameras for this post, I could let my EOS 3000 with the 50mm focus on details, while my D750 and the 14-24mm to get the big picture. But ending up with so many images, it was another tough choice. For the feature image I made the point to include the one shot that was different from all the rest, that one shot was a group of reenactors who were dressed in RCAF uniforms from the Second World War era and it made a good connection between the historic RCAF and the modern. Then it was a matter of picking the images that stood out to me of both the CWHM collection and the guest aircraft.

What was fun this month is being able to include both my film and digital shots in a single post. But when you have a chance for a once-in-a-lifetime event such as the 100th anniversary of the air force you go into it swinging. For my film kit I went with the kit lens, trust me it wasn’t my first choice but I wanted a 28mm lens and since the only lens I could use for this event was the standard kit lens. I shot the film at the box speed of ASA-200 and developed it in LegacyPro Mic-X using the 1+1 dilution. The negatives looked excellent coming out of the tank, with plenty of density without looking overcooked. While last month I used the stock dilution, I’ll say that I much prefer the 1+1 dilution with Fomapan 200, it made the images a lot more contrasty, better sharpness without too much increase in visible grain. On the digital side I wanted to get the full effect of these amazing aircraft, so I used my D750 with the beast, the 14-24mm f/2.8G, this lens is one of my favourites and while rather heavy, I needed something with an ultra-wide zoom rather than a fixed 14mm prime lens. Editing was done in Adobe Lightroom CC, and I loved the results I got from the camera.

If there is one thing that I have learned is that when you’re presented with a chance to celebrate, commemorate, participate and photograph a major anniversary, take that chance. Grab it with both hands and your feet if need be and be there for that anniversary. As I mentioned last year, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum is an amazing place to visit if you’re interesting in military air power especially with a focus on Canadian air power. What also makes the CWHM special is that it has a large number of operational aircraft including one of the world’s two still flying Avro Lancaster Bombers. It’s well worth going to see these amazing planes in person and in flight. And living in Southern Ontario I’ve had a chance to see the Lancaster, Dakota and even the B-25 flying overhead and will always look up and smile. While these images only represent a small number of the ones that I shot at the event, you can head on over to my Flickr album for the day. Next month we’re sticking with Hamilton and exploring the historic campus of McMaster University!