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Volume 54 Number 14
www.couriernews.ca
April 6, 2021
RCAF celebrates 97 years of service On Thursday, April 1, 2021, the Royal Canadian Air Force celebrated its 97th birthday
Aviator Avery Philpott
4 Wing Cold Lake conducted a large formation flypast over the city of Cold Lake with six Royal Canadian Air Force CT-155 Hawks and 15 Royal Canadian Air Force CF-188 Hornets to celebrate the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 97th Birthday on April 1. 2021. JOANNA CALDER
airmen for service with the RFC (which became the Royal Air Force (RAF) on When the First World War broke April 1, 1918, when it amalgamated out, Canadians were eager take to the with the Royal Naval Air Service). A skies, flying the newest technological Canadian Air Force would not come development in warfare – the airplane. into being until late 1918. But those who wanted to join Great Camp Borden – now Canadian Britain’s Royal Flying Corps (RFC) Forces Base Borden – in Ontario was generally transferred from the Army the RFCC’s main base. In January after serving in the trenches of Europe 1917, a group of RFC officers, led by or obtained a basic flying certificate Lieutenant-Colonel Cuthbert Hoare, from a private company in Canada and arrived at Camp Borden, which had then travelled to Great Britain in hopes been used as a camp by the Canadian of being selected. There was no military Expeditionary Force the previous year. aviation training available in Canada, Under Lieutenant-Colonel Hoare’s and no Canadian Air Force. leadership, RFCC built Canada’s first In 1917, the era of military flying station and – at Borden and other aviation dawned in Canada with the locations – trained thousands of aircrew establishment of the Royal Flying Corps for service overseas, as well as training Canada (RFCC) in southern Ontario. their instructors and the groundcrew Its goal: to recruit and train Canadian and support staff needed to keep the
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students airborne. The first Canadian Air Force During the “Great War”, Canadians took to combat flying so well that, by the spring of 1918, the government of Prime Minister Robert Borden pressed for the development of an air wing, consisting of eight squadrons, for service with the Canadian Corps in France. But Britain wanted to keep talented Canadian air and ground crew within the RAF and they succeeded in limiting the number of Canadian squadrons. Nevertheless, on August 5, 1918, the British Air Ministry announced the formation of two RAF squadrons to be manned entirely by Canadians. A Canadian Order-in-Council confirmed the formation of the Canadian Air Force (CAF) on September 19 for “the
purposes of the present war”. The CAF was created too late in the First World War for significant growth. Six more squadrons were planned for service in Europe, but with the war’s end on November 11, 1918, the plans were not implemented. What would become of the fledgling CAF? “In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Canada’s need for an air force was not readily identifiable,” says W.A.B. Douglas in the second volume of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s official history. “The country faced no discernible external threat. Canadians had little appreciation for expenditures on such esoteric military commitments. Continued on page 8...