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Canadian Military Aircraft Serial Numbers The Beginnings 1883 to 1919 |
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The Canadian Air Corps |
RFC/RAF in Canada |
CAF in the UK |
RCNAS |
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Canadian Military Interest in Aviation Prior to 1914 |
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| Canadian aviation historian, and ex Air Cadet,
Hugh Halliday has produced several well researched books on Canadian
military aviation history. On a recent trip to the second hand
book store I was lucky enough to find a mint copy of one of his early
works, " Chronology of Canadian Military Aviation" (Canada War Museum
Paper No. 6, National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, 1975) which provided
me with new details of early Canadian military interest in aviation. |
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| The early Canadian military grew out of the
British trained and directed forces raised to defend Canada. As
early as August 1883, Captain H. Elsdale of the British Army used a
captive balloon to take aerial photographs of the Halifax
Citadel. A Canadian citizen, J. L'Etoile, offered to create
a Canadian balloon corps for the Canadian Department of Militia
that same year, but the offer was not accepted or acted on. |
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| In March of 1909 Master General of the Ordnance,
Canadian Department of Militia and Defence, Col. R.W. Rutherford, began
to press for a formal Canadian military policy on aviation. On 15
May the Militia Council announced that assistance of men and equipment
would be offered to inventors, but no cash. The first group to
take advantage of this offer was the Aerial Experiment Association of
Halifax (see below), who displayed several of their early aircraft to
Canadian civil servants and officers. In June of 1909 the
Association shipped the "Silver Dart", the first heavier than air
aircraft to fly in Canada, to the Army Camp at Petawawa, Ontario (later
home to Army AOP Troops, and today home to No. 427 Tac Hel
Squadron). Four demonstration flights were made in early August
1909, ending in a minor crash on the last flight. The similar
"Baddeck No. 1" was then shipped to Petawawa, and continued flights on
11, 12 and 13 August. Again the demonstration ended when the
aircraft crashed. This series of flights captured the imagination
of many younger officers, who pushed to purchase aircraft and take flying
lessons for several years, but older officers and civil servants
dismissed the aircraft as an impractical invention. |
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| Like most aircraft of the day, the Association's
aircraft carried no registration, no serials, and no company
numbers. Slim pickings for the aeronumerologist. |
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The Canadian Air Corps September 1914 to May 1915 |
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| In
the rush to send arms and men
to Europe in the early days of the
First World War, a small air arm was organized to accompany the
Canadian Expeditionary Force. Using their entire capital budget of
$5,000, a single engine Burgess-Dunne was
purchased, and shipped from the factory at Marblehead, Massachusetts to Lake Champlain, Vermont. It was
assembled there, and ferried to Quebec City by company pilot Clifford Webster. This was to
be its
only known flying time. The aircraft was immediately loaded on a
freighter
bound for England, and sailed for Plymouth In late September, arriving there on 2 October 1914. |
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| By
the time the aircraft had
arrived and was unloaded, Canada realized
that it had no trained airmen, and that its main aerial contribution in
the
early years of the war would be training airmen for the existing
British flying services. When the Canadian Air Corps was
officially
disbanded in May 1915, its only aircraft was well on its way to
becoming Canada's first bio-degradable warplane. Its exact end is
lost
in the mists of time. I can find no record that this aircraft
ever
received any serial number, or any other markings. Recent
paintings showing the aircraft trailing two Canadian Red Ensigns from
the wing struts may be speculative. The RCAF
Museum in Trenton, Ontario has recently purchased a replica of this aircraft. |
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The RFC/RAF in Canada February 1917 to November 1918 |
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| Canadians began joining the
British flying services even before the war
began, and the British recognized that Canada could be an excellent
source of recruits, aircraft production, and flying room. At
first,
private schools were encouraged in Canada to train Canadians (and a few
Americans and
others) to FAI license standards. The volume of recruits
eventually
swamped these early facilities, so in early 1917 the RFC began a
massive expansion of schools, flying facilities, and aircraft
production in Canada. |
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| Construction of the first RFC
school in Canada began at Borden,
Ontario, in February 1917. Today this site is home to a Canadian
Armed
Forces technical training wing, and a reserve helicopter
squadron.
Some of the
World War One buildings survive, and at least one is used as a
museum.
Eventually, three main air stations would be operated in Canada, and a
temporary detachment flew in Texas in the winter of 1917/1918. |
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| The
main aircraft type used was
the Curtiss JN-4(Canadian), or Canuck,
built in Canada by Canadian Airplanes Limited of Toronto,
Ontario.
Glenn Curtiss' aerial association with Canada dated back to his joining
Alexander Bell's Aerial Experiment Association on 30 September
1907. By the start of World War One, Curtiss was an
established
aircraft manufacturer in the US. Together with J.A.D. McCurdy, a
former partner from the Aerial Experiment Association, he opened the
Curtiss Aviation
School,
and an associated manufacturing and design facility, in Toronto,
Ontario on 10 May 1915 to meet the British demand for trained
pilots. The
factory was spun off as Canadian
Airplanes Limited in the summer of 1916, as a result of early planning
for a large scale increase in aircraft production and aircrew training
in Canada. This Canadian facility
produced a number of
Curtiss designs, original designs, and licensed designs, for training
schools in Canada,
for the British flying services, and for the US Army. Known
military serial
numbers of aircraft built in Canada
by Curtiss and Canadian Airplanes Limited in World War One are listed
below. In addition to those aircraft that received
military serial numbers, a few Curtiss designs were delivered to civil
operators, and at least one de Havilland D.H.6 was built by Canadian
Airplanes Limited, and delivered to the RFC in Canada without a serial
number marked. This aircraft was later operated as a civil
aircraft in
the U.S., apparently without any registration. (Things were
simpler back then.) |
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| By the time the RFC wanted large
quantities of trainers for its new
Canadian schools, the Curtiss JN design had been evolved into a state
of the art (for the time) trainer. The Canadian built aircraft
used
their own model
numbers, and the unofficial designations JN-4(Canadian) or Canuck are
frequently used to distinguish the Canadian built JN-4, which
differed in several respects from US built JN-4s. The Toronto
facility built about 1,210
for the RFC in Canada, and about 120 similar aircraft were delivered
from
Curtiss' American plant for use in Canada. |
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| All
Canucks were built
with ailerons on the both the upper and lower wings, unlike the U.S.
built JN-4s, which had ailerons only on the upper wing. At least
a few U.S. built aircraft received lower wing ailerons post-war,
probably as a result of mingling of spare parts. Canadian built
aircraft did not initially receive the increased
dihedral seen on US built JN-4s, but by the end of
the war some Canadian built JN-4s had been re-rigged to
match US production. |
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| The
aircraft of the RFC in
Canada bore RFC markings, and
distinctive squadron markings. They were allocated their own
serials, extending from C101 to at least C2000. These numbers
duplicated numbers in the C1 to C9999 series used by the RFC/RAF in
Europe. The records of the RFC Canadian serial numbers are
incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. I have relied on two
main sources for the information below: "British Military Aircraft
Serial numbers" by Robertson, and "Canadian Aircraft Since 1909" by
Molson and Taylor. I have attempted to resolve the differences
between
these sources in the tables below, but I can't make any guarantee of my
accuracy. |
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| At the end of the Great War, the surviving RAF
in Canada aircraft were mostly sold, or donated (in small numbers) to
the Canadian government. The sold aircraft, including JN-4s, Avro
504s and one D.H.6, found their way into the hands of barnstormers and
other early commercial operators in Canada and the US. I have
included information on the subsequent fates of these aircraft, when I
have it. I have found very little on the many aircraft I know
were used in the US, and I would welcome any information you may may
have on them. |
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| In May of 2006 I was lucky enough to receive a
CD of scanned photos from Thomas Granger. The pictures were taken
by his grandfather, while serving as a mechanic at the RFC/RAF repair
depot in Toronto in 1918. Thomas was kind enough to allow me to
post these pictures on the web. |
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The beginnings of independent air arms 1918 to 1919 |
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| Late in the Great War, Canada
had established itself as a military
power to be reckoned with. Its military leaders had learned the
importance of military technology, including aircraft. They had
also
learned that the British military command, however well intentioned,
could not always be counted on to act in Canada's best interests.
As a
result, Canadian government and military leaders began planning for an
independent Canadian military, including
an army, a navy, and an air force, well before the end of the war. |
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| The
political and military struggles that led to
the evolution of an
independent Canadian Army during the Great War are well recorded
elsewhere. To provide
support for this organization, planning for the first Canadian Air Force
(CAF) began in
the UK in April 1918. It was to contain fighter and bomber
squadrons,
and would be equipped and organized along British lines. The
funding
and the staff, however, would be Canadian. Ground crew training
commenced training at Halton in the UK on 22 August 1918, and formation
of the
Headquarters began in the UK in September 1918. In late November,
the
first 2
Canadian squadrons came into existence, when No. 81 Squadron and No.
123
Squadron of the RAF became No. 1 and No. 2 Squadrons, CAF,
respectively. Both squadrons were disbanded in early 1920, and
the last
Headquarters unit was disbanded in August of that year. Some of
the personnel were to join the Air Board and the new CAF in Canada. |
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| The two
CAF squadrons in the UK operated
RAF owned aircraft (19
records, updated 15 April 2005), in their original
markings, plus a handful of war prize Fokker D.VIIs (including 6823/18,
6849/18, 8482/18,
and 8493/18). Some of the ex-CAF aircraft were sent to Canada,
where they joined the 10
or 12 USN
flying boats from Halifax, and 10 of the RAF's Canucks, in the
newly formed
Air Board. |
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Planning for A Royal Canadian Navy Air Service (RCNAS) also began late in the war. It would provide anti-submarine patrols off the Canadian East coast (in place of U.S. Navy units then performing that task from bases in Nova Scotia), and train pilots for the RAF. It was intended that a USN base near Halifax, Nova Scotia, along with its equipment and Curtiss HS2L aircraft, would be transferred to the RCNAS when enough trained personnel were available. Other naval aircraft in Britain and the US were set aside for this service, and some may have been shipped to Canada before the war's end, but never used. By the end of the war training was underway, and some RCNAS members were serving with the RAF to gain operational experience. The force was formally established on 5 September 1918 and disbanded on 8 December 1918, before any aircraft were operated. |
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Among the aircraft known to have
been transferred to Canadian control,
intended for the RCNAS, were:
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| This
data has come
from a variety of sources, and may contain all sorts of errors. In the
future, I will add a complete list of references. For now, some recent
Internet references can be found at the links below. I would
welcome any corrections or additions you may have. Contact
me using the
link below. |
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© 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by R. W. R. Walker All rights reserved under the copyright laws. This is an amateur site - please don't rely on any of this data for anything important! Created 24 April 2004. Updated 12 June 2008. |
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