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Canadian Military Aircraft Serial Numbers About my database project |
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| My early
databases I've been fascinated by aircraft as long as I can remember. This probably started because I was raised on military air bases. Another life time passion has been history in general, and Canadian history in particular. I've always been a voracious reader of all kinds of non-fiction. While my buddies were reading Superman comics, I was in the base library reading Canadian military history. Well, OK, I read Superman sometimes too, but you get my drift. A foundation was being laid for the craziness that would follow. It was the base library that introduced me to Air Britain magazines, and the excellent little Ian Allen books of serial number and registration lists. It was pretty natural to connect what was in these publications to the military traffic all around me, and I probably started my first list of serial numbers at about the age of 12. It was frustrating at first, because I didn't fully understand the differences between serial numbers, codes, squadron markings, etc. When I was 14 we moved to The Big City, and the library there had a copy of "Aircraft Camouflage and Markings" by Bruce Robertson. Reading this was an epiphany. I immediately started a list of Canadian military aircraft serial numbers, in a three ring binder. The list is digital today, but the half dozen binders I had filled before I bought the first Amiga are still in the basement somewhere. Going digital was, in a way, very distracting. I had already identified many types of non Canadian serial numbers worn by aircraft in Canadian service, and it was easy to set up the database to record them. Similarly, my research on Canadian built aircraft turned up even more serial number series, and one by one they were added to the database. Once that was done, I started recording non Canadian aircraft in these ranges. After all, I thought, how many aircraft can there be out there? Fifteen years later, I still can't answer that question. For several years I didn't spend much time on the database, and I'm currently collecting data much faster than I'm entering it. I hope that setting up these pages will force me to focus on updating at least parts of the database. |
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| The database today My first digital database used Microfiche Filer, run on an Amiga. That original Amiga is land-fill today, but the database lives on in Microsoft Access running on a couple of PC clones. This table gives a list of the arbitrary categories I have created within it, and the size of the database on the date shown. Canadian serial number records are shown in red. For sequences that are not uniquely Canadian (such as the RAF_AA sequence), a Canadian record indicates an aircraft numbered in this sequence that was operated by a Canadian military unit, but was not owned by, or on charge with, the Canadian government at the time. I have just started to identify these, and there are many more to come.
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| Here is one my data entries forms, to show you the fields available for each record. Most of the bulk data is actually first entered in an Excel spreadsheet, and then imported to Access. This is an easy way to create a large number of records, with serial numbers and company numbers quickly incremented. Note that the example shown below is NOT of Canadian aircraft. |
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I also use some Access forms to enter data one aircraft at a time or to add data to existing records, like this one. |
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I decide which "sequence" a record belongs in based on the ownership of the aircraft. This means that the same serial number may be duplicated in more than one sequence, if the aircraft changed ownership without receiving a new serial number. As well, the same aircraft may have multiple records, if its serial number has been changed over its life. When I can, I record the manufacturer's serial number or other identifier in the field "company number", since this never changes with changes in ownership or markings (well, almost never). This is why I identify the number of records throughout these web pages, and not the number of aircraft. The number of individual aircraft, obviously, is something less than the number of records. As an extreme, but not uncommon, example of the difference between number of records and number of aircraft, consider the example of many of the Dakotas operated by the RCAF. These aircraft may each have up to four different records in my database:
First, the entries in the "comments" field are, at best, just a snap shot of some moments in the aircraft's history. For example, if the comment reads "With No. 412 Squadron in 1960", it should not be interpreted as meaning the aircraft never served with this unit at other times, or never served with other units. Second, many of the dates quoted for assignment to a new unit or Command are taken from official records, and are usually only the date on which the paperwork was up-dated. They may, or may not, be the actual date on which the aircraft was physically transferred. When I can find it, I will also mention the date on which the aircraft was delivered to a new user. These can be a few days, or even weeks, before or after the paperwork transfer. In some cases, the change in Command ownership did not produce a change in the unit operating the aircraft, and no physical re-location would have occurred. I feel it is still of some use to record these dates, as we at least get some indication that the aircraft was still in use (or still in storage, or still under repair, or whatever) on the date quoted. In particular, there are several periods in RCAF history when many units changed Command, resulting in a change of high level ownership of the aircraft, without an actual change in daily operations at the unit level. When the BCATP began to wind down in late 1944 and early 1945, the 4 Training Commands were merged into 2 Air Commands, No. 1 Air Command forming in the east on 15 January 1945, and No. 2 Air Command in western Canada on 12 December 1944. In both cases, the aircraft serving with the effected Schools would have a change in ownership recorded (and reported on my web pages), but would continue in use with the same School at the same base. The same sort of thing happened after the Second World War, as the RCAF command structure evolved through the geographic commands, such as Northwest Air Command, into the functional based command structure (Air Transport Command, Maritime Air Command, etc.). A more complete story on this evolution can be found in "RCAF Squadrons and Aircraft" by Griffin and Kostenuk. Finally, much of my information has come from the Aircraft Record Cards, which are held in the National Archives of Canada. These often only record high level transfers of aircraft between Commands, without always recording the actual assignment to units under that Command. In order to find these lower level assignments and dates, I am sifting through microfilmed records of the individual units, and aircrew log books. This is a very slow process. In the mean time, I will report these changes in Command ownership, as they at least provide a rough indication of the location and usage of the aircraft. As always, if anyone out there can fill in some gaps for me with their research or personal knowledge, please do so. |
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| About the web pages Another epiphany occurred when I
started researching this topic on the
Internet in the early 1990s. To my complete amazement, I found other
people out there who shared my crazed obsession with serial numbers.
Some of them were even crazier than me. Most of them also spent a lot
more time at this than me. Suddenly, my life time obsession had a
purpose. I would create these pages, to share my labours with my fellow aeronumerologists. At
first, I thought I would finish filling in the database first, before
creating any web pages. However, after reading Hawking's "Brief History
of Time", and spending a few years "finishing" the database, I realized
the universe would probably come to an end before I was truly finished.
So, here is the database as it stands today, warts, gaps, and all.
The text introductions to each section are my own opinions, based on years of reading about the subject. The various lists are Access static data reports, that have been published direct to HTML, or sometimes published first to Word or Excel for polishing, and then exported as HTML. I'm still learning all this stuff, so bear with me. If anybody knows how to send a multi-page Access report to a single HTML file, complete with all formatting, in one easy step, please tell me! Setting up the front pages and writing their introductory text was the easy part. The task of creating all the lists is not complete (as you probably noticed), and will take some time. Also, I'm always adding stuff to the database, and will be updating the existing lists from time to time to show this new data. Every time I publish a new or updated page, I start to receive corrections and additions via e-mail within a few days. These are very welcome, but it means that most of the pages you can see are out of date in a very short time. Contact me at the link below if you have questions on a specific aircraft - there could be more information in my database than what you see here. The pages are created in Netscape Composer, for 2 reasons: I'm too cheap to buy a real HTML editor, and my son convinced me it could do everything I need. He also taught me how to program the clock on our VCR, so I respect his technical opinions. I've tried to keep things fairly simple in terms of colours, animations, fancy fonts, frames, etc. This is partly a personal preference, and partly because I can't figure out how to do all that stuff. I'm going to get a book on HTML from the library next week. Or maybe the week after. The pages were first laid out on a 1024 by 748 screen. I've validated them using the Netscape validate tool, and personally tested them in Netscape 7 and Explorer 6. Beyond that, you are on your own. Let me know if you have any problems viewing anything. In descending order, here are future improvements I'm working on (or at least dreaming about):
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| Terms and
Abbreviations I have tried to keep abbreviations to a minimum, but some have slipped in. Based on some recent e-mails, this has created some confusion, so I have added this section for terms and abbreviations used by me. For a much more complete list of RAF and RCAF abbreviations, see Jason Gaudet's on-line list. Also, it appears that not all my readers are aware that the RCAF definitions of Damage Categories are quite different from those used by the RAF. The definitions below are official text, as of 1975. There are minor differences in earlier and later usage, but the general idea remains.
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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 - 2010 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 25 April 2004. Updated 31 August 2013. |