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The AIH Transcript for December 24, 2018

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello I'm Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening. I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight...

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It was Christmas Eve in 1957 -- and I was a pilot trying to get home for Christmas.

CO: Charlie Delta: we are clear for takeoff, with our annual holiday broadcast of The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth -- as read by our late former host Al Maitland.

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Many times you were actually flying a plane that had come right out of being built to your airfield.

JD: 100 year-old Jaye Edwards shares memories of flying bombers from factories to the frontlines during World War Two -- as part of Britain's corps of civilian female pilots dubbed the 'Attagirls.'

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I could not believe that my fondest wish was being answered to fly a Mosquito. It was magic -- the fastest airplane in the world.

CO: Second World War pilot George Stewart recalls the first of nearly countless times he climbed into the cockpit of a Mosquito and was in the air faster than you can say...

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Johnny Kavanaugh

JD: And...

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The funny thing about The Shepherd -- it was our second choice. And then we had to convince the budget people here that it was a good idea to be running a Christmas story about an airplane.

JD: Hear how "Fireside" Al's beloved reading of this classic ghost story very nearly never made it off the ground -- let alone in and onto the air. As It Happens. The Shepherd Edition. Radio that strongly objects to its portrayal in this story...

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No radio -- a dead box on all channels.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: The Shepherd

Reading: The Shepherd

JD: I'll give you a second to gather the troops -- get comfy in your couch, your chair, or car. And now...it's time. If you're quite ready or not, we will begin. The year is 1957. An RAF pilot is heading home from Germany for Christmas. Fog sets in and all radio communication is lost. Here now is former As It Happens host the late Al Maitland with his reading of Frederick Forsyth's The Shepherd.

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AM: While waiting for control tower to clear me for takeoff, I glanced out through the cockpit canopy at the German countryside, white and crisp beneath the December moon. Behind me lay the boundary fence of the Royal Air Force Base. Far away to my right, the airfield tower stood up like a glowing candle. Inside the tower I knew all was warmth and merriment — the staff waiting only for my departure to close down and head back to the parties in the mess. Within minutes of my going, the lights would die out, leaving only the flickering red station light beating out in Morse code the name of the station: C.E.L.L.E. to an unheeding sky. For tonight, there would be no wandering aviators to look down and check their bearings. Tonight was Christmas Eve in 1957, and I was a pilot trying to get home for Christmas.

AM: My watch read 10:15 by the dim, blue glow of the control panel where the rows of dials quivered and danced. It was warm and snug inside the cockpit, the heating turned up full to prevent the Perspex icing up. It was like a cocoon, small, and warm and safe, shielding me from the bitter cold outside. From the freezing night that can kill a man inside a minute of use exposed to it at 600 miles per hour.

AM: “Charlie Delta, clear takeoff”. The controller's voice sounding in my headphones woke me. I eased the throttle forward slowly with the left hand, holding the Vampire steady down the central line with the right hand. Behind me, the low whine of the Goblin engine rose into a scream. The snub-nosed fighter rolled, the lights each side of the runway past till they were flashing and a continuous blur.

AM: As the end of the runway whizzed beneath my feet, I pulled the Vampire into a gently climbing turn. Down on my right thigh was strapped the map with my course charted on it in blue ink. But I did not need it. I knew the details by heart: Turn overhead C.E.L.L.E. airfield onto course 265 degrees. Continue climbing to 27,000 feet. On reaching height, maintain course and keep speed at 485 knots. Check in with channel D, the RAF’s North German air control frequency, to let them know you're in their airspace. Then a straight run over the Dutch coast and the North Sea. After 44 minutes flying time, change to channel F, and call Lakenheath control to give you a steer. 14 minutes later, you will be overhead Lakenheath. After that, follow instructions and they'll bring you down on a radio-controlled descent.

AM: 66 Minutes flying time with the descent and landing and the Vampire had enough fuel for over 80 minutes in the air. From Lakenheath, I knew I could get a lift down to London after midnight. By breakfast time, I’d be in my parents’ home in Kent, celebrating with my own family. The altimeter read 27,000 feet. I eased the nose forward, reduced the throttle setting to give me an air speed of 485 knots, and held her steady on 265 degrees. Somewhere beneath me, the Dutch border would be slipping away, and I had been airborne for 21 minutes. All well.

AM: The problem started ten minutes out over the North Sea. And it started so quietly that it was several minutes before I realized I had one at all. The first warning I had was when I flicked a glance downward to check my course on the compass. Instead of being rock steady on 265 degrees, the needle was drifting lazily round the clock. I swore a most unseasonal sentiment against the compass and the instrument fitter who should have checked it. Still, it was not too serious. There was a stand by compass; the alcohol kind. When I glanced at it, the needle was swinging wildly too. Apparently, something had jarred the case, which isn't uncommon. In any event, I could call up Lakenheath and a few minutes and they'd give me a G.C.A — a ground-control approach — the second-by-second instructions a well-equipped airfield can give a pilot to bring him home in the worst of weathers.

AM: I glanced at my watch: 34 minutes airborne. Before trying Lakenheath, the correct procedure would be to inform channel D, to which I was tuned, of my little problem so they could advise Lakenheath that I was on my way without a compass. I pressed the transmit button, but instead of the lively crackle of static and the sharp sound of my own voice coming back into my own ears. There was a muffled murmur inside my oxygen mask: my own voice speaking, and going nowhere.

AM: The radio was dead. Fighting down the rising sense of panic, I swallowed and slowly counted to ten. Then I switched the channel F, and tried to raise Lakenheath. But the steady whistle of my own jet engine behind me was my only answer. While I was vainly testing my radio channels, my eyes scanned the instrument panel in front of me. The instruments told their own message. It was no coincidence the compass and the radio had failed together. Both worked off the aircraft's electrical circuits. Somewhere beneath my feet, amid the miles of brightly-coloured wiring that make up the circuits, there had been a main fuel blowout. The first thing to do in such a case, I remembered old Flight Sergeant Norris telling us, is to reduce throttle setting to give maximum flight endurance.

AM: "We don't want to waste valuable fuel don't we, gentlemen? We might need it later. So we reduce the power settings from 10,000 revolutions per minute to 7,200. That way we will fly a little slower, but we will stay in the air rather longer won't we, gentlemen?"

AM: I eased the throttle back and watch the rev counter. It operates on its own generator and so I hadn't lost that at least. I waited until the Goblin was turning over at about 7,200 RPM and felt the aircraft slow down. The main instruments in front of a pilot's eye are six, including the compass. The five others are the airspeed indicator, the altimeter, the vertical speed indicator, the bank indicator, which tells him if he's turning to left or right, and the slip indicator — which tells him if he's skidding crab-wise across the sky. Two of these are electrically operated, and they had gone the same way as my compass. That left me with a three pressure operated instruments: airspeed indicator, altimeter, and vertical speed indicator. I knew how fast I was going, how high I was, and if I were either diving or climbing.

AM: It is perfectly possible to land that aircraft with only these three instruments, judging the rest by those old navigational aids the human eyes. Possible, that is, in conditions of brilliant weather by daylight and with no cloud in the sky. By night, it is not possible. The only things that show up at night, even on a bright moonlight night, are the lights. These have patterns when seen from the sky. I knew Norwich very well, and if I could identify the great curving bulge of the Norfolk coastline, I could find Norwich, the only major sprawl of lights set 20 miles inland from the coast. Five miles north of the city I knew was the fighter airfield of Merriam St. George, who’s red indicator beacon would be blipping out its Morse identification signal into the night.

AM: I began to let the Vampire down slowly toward the oncoming coast. As the fighter slipped toward Norfolk, the sense of loneliness gripped me tighter and tighter. The night sky — its stratospheric temperature fixed, night and day alike at an unchanging minus 56 — became in my mind a timeless prison creaking with the cold. Below me lay the worst of them all: the heavy brutality of the North Sea, waiting to swallow me and my plane, and bury us in a liquid, black crypt. At 15,000 feet and still diving, I began to realize that a fresh enemy had entered the field far away, to right and left, ahead, and no doubt behind me, the light of the moon reflected on a flat an endless sea of white. The East Anglian fog had moved in. There was no question of trying to overfly the fog to westward. Without navigational aids or radio, I'd be lost over a strange, unfamiliar country. Also out of the question was to try to fly back to Holland. I had not the fuel. Relying only on my eyes to guide me, it was a question of landing at Merriam St. George or dying amid the wreckage of the Vampire somewhere in the fog-wreathed fens. At 10,000 feet, I pulled out of my dive, increasing power slightly to keep airborne, using up more of my precious fuel. Still a creature of my training, I recalled again the instructions of Flight Sergeant Norris: "When we are totally lost above unbroken cloud, gentlemen, we must consider the necessity of bailing out of our aircraft, must we not?" Of course, Sergeant. Unfortunately, the single seat Vampire is notoriously difficult to bail out of. What else, Sergeant? "Our first move therefore is to turn our aircraft towards the open sea, away from all areas of intense human habitation." The procedures were well worked out. They did not mention that the chances of a pilot bobbing about on a winter's night in the North Sea were one and a hundred of living more than half an hour. "One last procedure, gentlemen, to be used in extreme emergency." That's better, Sergeant Norris. That's what I'm in now.

AM: "All aircraft approaching Britain's coast are visible on the radar scanners of early warning system. If therefore we have lost our radio and cannot transmit our emergency, we try to attract the attention of our radar scanners by adopting an odd form of behaviour. We do this by moving out to sea, then flying in small triangles turning left, left, left again. Each leg of the triangle being of a duration of 2 minutes flying time. In this way, we hope to attract attention. When we have been spotted, the air traffic control is informed and he diverts another aircraft to find us. When discovered by the rescue aircraft, we formate on him, and he brings us down to the cloud or fog to a safe landing."

AM: Yes, it was the last attempt to save one's life. I recall the details better now. The rescue aircraft which would lead you back to a safe landing, flying wingtip to wingtip was called The Shepherd. I glanced at my watch; 51 minutes airborne. About 30 minutes left of fuel. I pulled the Vampire into a left hand turn and began my first leg of the first triangle. Below me, the fog reached back as far as I could see. And ahead toward Norfolk, it was the same. Ten minutes went by; nearly two complete triangles. I had not prayed — not really prayed — for many years. And the habit came hard. Lord, please get me out of this bloody mess.

AM: When I had been airborne for 72 minutes, I knew no one would come. I felt the rage of despair welling up. I began screaming into the dead microphone, "You bastards! Why don't you look at your radar screens? Why can't somebody see me? So damn drunk you can't do your job properly." The anger subsides. Five minutes later, I knew that I was going to die that night. Strangely, I wasn't even afraid anymore — just enormously sad. It's a bad thing to die at 20 years of age with your life unlived. And the worst thing is not the fact of dying, but the fact of all the things never done. I dropped the left wing of the Vampire toward the moon to bring the aircraft onto the final leg of the last triangle. Down below the wing tip, against the sheen of the fog bank, a black shadow crossed the whiteness. It was another aircraft, low against the fog bank, keeping station with me through my turn a mile down with the sky toward the fog.

AM: Being below me, I kept turning wing down to keep it in sight. The other aircraft also kept turning until the two of us had done one complete circle. Only then did I realize why he did not climb to my height and take up station on my wingtip. I eased the throttle back and began to slip down toward him. He kept turning, so did I. At 5,000 feet, I knew I was still going too fast for him. To reduce speed even more, I put out the air brakes, slowing down to 280 knots. Then he was with me, 100 feet off my wing tip. And we straightened out together, rocking as we tried to keep formation. The moon was to my right, and my own shadow masked his shape and form. Even so, I could make out the shimmer of two propellers whirling through the sky ahead of him. Of course, he could not fly at my speed.

AM: I was in a jet fighter; he in a piston-engined aircraft of an earlier generation. He held station alongside me for a few seconds then banked gently to the left. I followed, keeping formation with him for he was, obviously, the shepherd sent up to bring me down. And he had the compass and the radio, not I. For the first time I could see him well. To my surprise, my shepherd was a de Havilland Mosquito, fighter-bomber of World War II vintage. And then I remembered that the meteorological squadron at Gloucester used Mosquitos to help in the preparation of weather forecasts. Inside the cockpit of the Mosquito, I could make out against the light of the moon a muffled head of its pilot, and the twin circles of his goggles as he looked out the side window toward me. Carefully, he raised his right hand till I could see it in the window, fingers straight, palm downwards. He jabbed the fingers forward, and down, meaning we are going to descend, formate on me. I nodded, and quickly brought up my own left hand so he could see it. Pointing forward to my own control panel with one forefinger, then holding up five splayed fingers. Finally. I drew my hand across my throat. By common agreement, this sign means I have only five minutes fuel left. Then my engine cuts out. I saw the muffled, goggled, oxygen masked head nod in understanding. Then we were heading downward toward the sheet of fog. He pulled out at three hundred feet. The fog was still below us. I could imagine the stream of GCA instructions coming from the radar hut into the earphones of the man flying beside me.

AM: I kept my eyes on him, afraid of losing sight, watching for his every hand signal. Two minutes later, he held up his clenched left fist in the window. Then opened the fist to splay all five fingers against the glass. Please lower your undercarriage. I moved the lever downward and felt the dull thunk as all three wheels went down. In the moonlight, I caught sight of the nose of the Mosquito. It had the letters “JK” painted on it, large and black. Probably for call sign “Jig King”. He leveled out just above the fog layers, so low the tendrils of candyfloss were lashing at our fuselages. And we went into a steady circular turn. I glanced at my fuel gauge, it was on zero, flickering feebly. For god’s sake! Hurry up I prayed. I saw his left hand flash that dive signal to me. Then he dipped toward the fog bank. I followed and we were in it. The visibility was down to near zero. No shape, no size, no form, no substance, except that off my left wing tip — now only 40 feet away — was the form of a Mosquito flying with absolute certainty towards something I could not see. Only then did I realize he was flying without lights. For a second I was amazed, horrified by my discovery. Then I realized the wisdom of the man. Lights in fog are treacherous, hallucinatory, mesmeric, you can be attracted to them not knowing whether they are 40 or 100 feet away from you. The tendency is to move toward them; for two aircraft in the fog, flying formation that could easily spell disaster. Without warning, the shepherd pointed to a single forefinger at me. Then forward through the windscreen. it meant there you are, fly on, and land. I stared forward through the now streaming windshield, nothing, blackness. Then a streak of paint running underneath my feet; the centerline. Frantically, I closed down the power and held her steady, praying for the Vampire to settle. Bang, we touched. Bang, bang, another touch. She was drifting again, inches above the wet, black runway. Bam, bam, bam ditty bam, rumble, rumble. She was down, the main wheels had stuck and held.

AM: Slowly the Vampire came to a stop. I found both of my hands clenched around the control column, squeezing the brake lever inward. I forget now how many seconds I held them there before I would believe we were stopped. There was no need to turn off the engine. It had finally run out of fuel as the Vampire careered down the runway. I shut off the remaining systems, and slowly began to unstrap myself from the seat. As I did so, to my left, through the fog, no more than 50 feet away, the Mosquito roared past me. I caught the flash of the pilot's hand in the side window, and then he was gone up into the fog before he could see my answering wave of acknowledgment. But I had already decided to call up Gloucester and thank him personally. I expected the control tower truck to be alongside in seconds, for with an emergency landing — even on Christmas Eve — the fire truck, ambulance, and half a dozen other vehicles were always standing by. Eventually, two headlights came dropping out of the mist and stopped 20 feet away. A voice called hello there.

AM: I stepped out of the cockpit, jumped from the wing to the tarmac, and ran toward the lights. At the wheel of the car was a puffed, bearded face and a handlebar mustache. Is that yours? He nodded toward the dim shape of the Vampire. "Yes," I said. "Yes, I just landed it." "Extraordinary! Quite extraordinary! You'd better jump in, I’ll run you back to the mess." As we moved away from the Vampire, I saw that I had stopped 20 feet short of a plowed field at the very end of the runway. You’re damn lucky he shouted. And he seemed to be having trouble with the foot controls. Judging by the smell of whiskey on his breath, that wasn't surprising. Damn lucky I agreed. I ran out of fuel just as I was landing. My radio and all the electrical systems failed nearly 50 minutes to go over the North Sea. He digested the information carefully. No radio? No radio I said; a dead box and all channels. Then how did you find this place? He said. I was guided in I explained patiently. They sent up a shepherd aircraft to bring me down. It was one of the weather aircraft from R.A.F. Gloster. Obviously, he had radio. So we came in here in formation on GCA. Then when I saw the lights of the threshold of the runway I landed myself. The man was obviously dense as well as drunk. Extraordinary he said. We don’t have a GCA. We don’t have any navigation equipment at all, not even a beacon. Now it's my turn to let the information sink in. "This isn't the RAF Merriam St. George? No he said. This is RAF Minton." "I've never heard of it." "I'm not surprised; we’re not an operational station. Haven't been for years. Minton's a storage depot." He stopped the car and got out. I saw we were standing a few feet from the dim ship of a control tower adjoining a long row of huts, evidently once flight rooms, navigational, and briefing huts. the man returned and climbed shakily back behind the wheel. "Just turning the runway lights off," he said, and he belched. My mind was whirling. "Why did you switch them on?" I asked. "Well, it was the sound of your engine," he said. "I was in the officers’ mess having a nog, and Old Joe suggested I listen out the window for a second. You sounded damn low, almost as if you're going to come down in a hurry. Thought I might be of some use. Remember they never disconnected the old runway lights when they dismantled the station. So I ran down the control tower and switched them on."

AM: "I see," I said. But I didn't. "Where is RAF Minton, exactly?" I asked him. Five miles in from the coast he said. And where's the nearest operational RAF station with all the radio aids, including GCA? He thought for a moment. "Must be Merriam St George," he said. "Mind you I am just as stores Johnny." That was the explanation. My unknown friend in the weather plane had been leading me straight in from the coast of Merriam St. George. By chance, abandoned old storage depot Minton lay right along the in flight path of Merriam’s runway. And this old fool had switched on his lights as well. Result coming in on the last ten mile stretch, I had plucked to my Vampire down into the wrong airfield. I was about to tell him not to interfere with modern procedures that he couldn't understand when I choked the words back my fuel had run out halfway down the runway. I'd never have made Merriam ten miles away. I'd have crashed in the field short of the touchdown.

AM: We stopped at the officers’ mess and went in. The place had seen better days. My host the Flight Lieutenant Marx shrugged off a sheepskin coat and threw it over a chair. "I'm sorry it's not very hospitable, old boy," said Marx, going to the door and shouting for someone called Joe. "Not to worry," I said, "though I could do with a bath and a meal." "I think me can manage that," he said, trying hard to play the genial host. "I’ll get Joe to fix up a spare room. God knows we have enough of them. He’ll also rough up a meal. Bacon and eggs do?" "That'll do fine. While I'm waiting, do you mind if I use your phone?" He ushered me into the mess secretary's office, and then went off to supervise the steward. My watch told me it was close to midnight. Hell of a way to spend Christmas I thought. Then I recalled how 30 minutes earlier, I had been crying to god for help, and I felt ashamed. After a few minutes the phone was ringing.

AM: "RAF Merriam St George." "Duty controller air traffic control please," I said. There was a pause. "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid there's no flying tonight, sir. No one on duty in air traffic control." "Then give me the station duty officer, please." When I got through to him, I explained about the emergency and that his station had been alerted to receive a Vampire fighter coming in on emergency landing without radio. He listened attentively. "I don’t know about that. I don't think we've been operational since we closed down at 5:00 this afternoon, but I'm not on air traffic. I'll get the wing commander." An older voice came on the line. "Where are you speaking from?" "RAF Minton, sir. I've just made an emergency landing here. I thought I was heading for your airfield on a ground-controlled approach." "Well, make up your mind. Were you or weren’t you? You ought to know." I took a deep breath and started at the beginning. "You see sir, I was intercepted by the weather plane from Gloucester, and he brought me. But in this fog it must have been on a GCA. No other way to get down. Yet, when I saw the lights of Minton, I landed assuming it to be Merriam St. George. I’m ringing to alert you to stand on your radar and air traffic control crews, sir. They must be waiting for a Vampire that's never going to arrive. It's already arrived here at Minton." "But we shut all the systems down at 5 o'clock. There has been no call for us to turn up." "But Merriam St. George has a GCA." "I know we have, but it's been shut down since 5 o'clock."

AM: I asked the next and last question slowly and carefully. "Do you know sir, where is the nearest RAF station that maintains 24 hour emergency listening? Yes, to the west. To the south. Good night to you. Happy Christmas." I put the phone down, on the fuel I was carrying. Not only could I not have made Merriam St. George. It wasn't even open. It began to dawn on me that I didn't really owe my life to the weather pilot from Gloucester, but the bearded, bumbling old, passed over, Flight Lieutenant Marx, who couldn't tell one end of an aircraft from another. Still, the Mosquito must be back at Gloucester by now. And he ought to know that despite everything, I was alive.

AM "Gloucester?" said the operator. "At this time of night!" "Yes," I replied firmly. "Gloucester, even at this time of night." The duty meteorologist took the call and I explained the position to him. "I am afraid there must be some mistake, Flying Officer," he said. "It could not have been one of our Mosquitos went out of service three months ago. We now use Canberras." I stared at the telephone in disbelief. Then an idea came to me. "What happened to them?" "They were scrapped I think or sent off to a museum is more likely." "Could one of them been sold privately?" I asked. "I suppose it's possible." "Thank you. Thank you very much. And happy Christmas." I put the phone down and shook my head in bewilderment. What an incredible night. First, I lose my radio and all my instruments. Then I get lost and short of fuel. Then I'm taken in by some moonlighting hair-brain with a passion for veteran aircraft, flying his own Mosquito through the night, who happens to spot me, comes within an inch of killing me, and finally a half drunk ground duty officer has the sense to put his runaway lights on in time to save me.

AM: Luck doesn't come in much bigger slices. Flight Lieutenant Marx put his head through the doorway. "You're room is ready," he said. Number 17 just down the corridor. Joe’s making up a fire, and bath water is heating. If you don't mind I think I'll turn in. Be all right on your own?" "Yes, sure I'll be fine. Many thanks for all your help." I took my helmet and wandered down the corridor. From the doorway of 17 a bar of light shone into the passage. As I entered the room an, elderly man began to rise from his knees in front of the fireplace.

AM: "Good evening, sir," he said. "I'm Joe, sir, the mess steward." "Yes Joe," Mr. Marx told me about you. Sorry to cause you so much trouble at this hour of the night. I just dropped in, as you might say." "Yes, Mr. Marx told me. I'll have your room ready directly, soon as this fire burns up it’ll get quite cozy." I ate the plate of sizzling bacon and eggs. The old steward stayed to talk. "You been here long, Joe? "I asked him, more out of politeness than genuine curiosity. "Oh yes sir, nigh on twenty years now. Since just before the war, when the station opened."

AM: He told me of the days where the rooms were crammed with eager young pilots. The dining room noisy, the bar roaring with songs of months and years when the sky above the airfields snarled to the sound of piston engines driving planes the war and bringing them back again. I rose from the table, fished a cigarette from the pocket of my flying suit, lit it, and sauntered around the room. The steward began to tidy up the plates. I halted before an old photograph in a frame standing on a mantel above the crackling fire. I stopped with my cigarette half raised my lips, feeling the room go suddenly cold. The photo was old but it was still clear enough. It showed a young man in his early 20s, dressed in flying gear, but not the gray suits and plastic crash helmets of today. He wore thick sheepskin-lined boots, rough Serge trousers and a heavy sheepskin zip up jacket. From his left hand dangled one of the soft leather flying helmets they used to wear with goggles attached instead of the modern pilots’ tinted visor. He stood with legs apart, right hand on hip, a defiant stance. But he was not smiling. It was something sad about his eyes. Behind him stood his aircraft, there was no mistaking the lean, sleek silhouette of the Mosquito fighter-bomber. I was about to say something to Joe and I felt the gust of cold air in my back. One of the windows had blown open. It took me two strides to cross to where the window swung on its steel frame. To get a better hold I stepped inside the curtain and stared out. Somewhere far away in the fog I thought I heard the snarl of engines. But it was probably just a motorcycle of some farm boy. I closed the window, made sure it was secure, and turned back into the room. "Who's the pilot, Joe?" I nodded toward the lonely photograph on the mantel. "That's a photo of Mr. John Kavanagh, sir. He was here during the war, sir. An Irish gentleman. Very fine man if I may say so. As a matter of fact, sir, this was his room." "What squadron was that, Joe?" I was still peering at the aircraft in the background. "Pathfinders, sir. Mosquitos, they flew. Very fine pilots all of them, sir. But I believe Mr. Johnny was the best of them all. But then I’m biased, sir. I was his batman you see." There was no doubting it. The faint letters on the nose of the Mosquito behind the figure in the photo read 'JK’. Not “Jig King”, but “Johnny Kavanagh”. The whole thing was clear as day.

AM: Kavanagh had been a fine pilot flying with one of the crack squadrons during the war. After the war, he'd made a pile of money, bought an old Mosquito in one of the periodic auctions of obsolescent aircraft, refitted it, and flew it privately whenever he wished. Not a bad way to spend your spare time if you had the money. So he'd been flying back from some trip to Europe, but spotted me turning in triangles above the cloud bank, realized I was stuck, and taken me in tow. Pinpointing his position precisely by crossed radio beacons. Knowing this stretch of the coast by heart, he'd taken a chance on finding his old airfield at Minton, even in the thick fog. It was a hell of a risk. But then I had no fuel left. So it was that or bust. I had no doubt I could trace the man, probably through the Royal Aero Club. "He was certainly a good pilot," I said reflectively, thinking of this evening's performance. "Oh, the best, sir said Old Joe. They reckon he had eyes like a cat did Mr. Johnny. I recall many's a time the squadron returned. He’d have his Mosquito re-fueled and take off again alone, going back over the channel or the North Sea to see if he could find some crippled bomber making for the coast and guide it home." "I've seen pictures of them," I said. "And he used to guide them back?" I could imagine them in my mind's eye, gaping holes in the body, the wings and the tail creaking and swaying as the pilot sought to hold them steady for home, a wounded or dying crew, and the radio shot to bits.

AM: I turned from the photograph and stubbed my cigarette butt into the ashtray by the bed. "Quite a man," I said, and I meant it. Even today, middle-aged, he was a superb flyer. "Oh yes, sir, quite a man, Mr. Johnny." I nodded gravely. The old man so obviously worshipped his wartime officer. "Well," I said. "By the look of it, he's still doing it." Now Joe smiled. "Oh, I hardly think so, sir. My Johnny went out on his last patrol Christmas Eve, 1943, just over 14 years ago tonight. He never come back, sir. Went down with his plane somewhere in the North Sea, he did. Good night, sir. Happy Christmas."

Part 2: Stories behind The Shepherd

Story behind the story

JD: Our annual reading of Frederick Forsyth's short story The Shepherd as first read by our late former host "Fireside" Al Maitland in 1979. For many of us, The Shepherd has heralded the arrival of Christmas for many many years. It has become nearly as essential to the experience as stuffing stockings and trimming the tree and a welcome time out from the last minute hustle and bustle of readying for the big day. But of course there was a time before The Shepherd on As It Happens and before The Shepherd itself. And since that initial 79' broadcast the story's author Frederick Forsyth has been a guest on the show several times and it was in 1994 that he first shared the story behind the story with then host Michael Enright.

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[Music]

FREDERICK FORSYTH: As it happens quite interesting -- there's a story behind the story here because in the winter of 75' I was staying in a hotel just outside Dublin with my ex-wife, then wife, and she was a lady who had a almost childlike habit of being extremely curious to know what the Christmas present was going to be. As we were in a hotel room, it was clearly very few hiding places so she got more and more perturbed -- inability to find what I had got her for Christmas. And kept asking me -- it happened to be a diamond ring. So the big box wrapped in store wrapping paper that she was looking for wasn't there. Anyway. Took a long story short -- Christmas morning came and I played a joke back now. I said look you know I've never done this before. But look the fact is I just didn't get out to the shops -- and look I get you a real nice one after the Christmas holidays. Face fell. And she said oh I see, all right well -- write me a ghost story. So that was ho ho ho and I gave her the ring. Oh thank you very much -- this is lovely. On the finger it went and so on. Christmas afternoon came and we'd had the turkey and the plum duff and everything. And my parents are with us -- they went to have a nap as they like to do. She took the dogs for a walk and I sat down and I thought hmm because I've never written a ghost story. And I began to think about ghost stories and ghosts and the traditional ghost stories. I thought I wanted to avoid old man, houses, and clanking chains, and headless cavaliers and whatever. And my mind went back to an article I'd read years before about an abandoned airfield in Lincolnshire in England where on certain nights when thick fog swirled over the fields, that had now been sown between the old runway's, people crossing on their way home from the pub taking a shortcut would sometimes find their dogs terrified and cowering on their feet. And on one occasion a man saw what he thought was a headless figure in Irvin jacket and boots and trousers, wandering disconsolately around as if looking for something. The upshot was that some psychic research people turned up and they couldn't find anything. But a local journalist with a rather more acumen -- he went into the records and he found that on that night in the middle of the war a Lancaster had come home with shot up fuselage -- crew dying. And rather than bail out and save himself and ditch over the channel letting the crew die inside the hull of the plane -- the 19 year-old pilot had brought it in wheels up. He had been decapitated in the crash but 7 of his 11 crew survived. Maybe it's -- I don't believe in this. I don't believe this is, etc. The way one says, what? I don't believe in this -- it can't be true. But my mind went back to the notion of a pilot who came back -- a Second World War pilot who came back. So I brought my sort of knowledge as a National Service pilot of flying Vampires to the notion of the pilot who came back because he could not rest on that night. And sat down and I wrote -- it was about 10,000 words. I think I wrote it in about a day and a half.

Richard Triner

JD: Author Frederick Forsyth recounting to host Michael Enright in 1994 how he conceived of The Shepherd one Christmas some 20 years earlier. Now as you heard Mr. Forsyth based his tale in part on a Lincolnshire legend he had heard about a ghost pilot who returns from the dead to rescue desperate airmen. Mr. Forsyth insists he didn't believe the stories -- but As It Happens found out just a few years later, folks in the neighboring East Riding of Yorkshire had good reason to put stock in something supernatural transpiring in the night skies. That is when host Mary Lou Finlay spoke with a former RAF pilot named Richard Triner in Fridaythorpe who confessed to a rather curious and spooky hobby.

SOUNDCLIP

MARY LOU FINLAY: Mr. Triner what have you been up to over there at night?

RICHARD TRINER: Well I'm a bit of an aviation freak. You know I've got a heck of a collection of photographs, slides, and do a lot of drawing and painting. It's just that when the conditions are right I like to go outside and just try and get the projected image up to the clouds.

MARY LOU FINLAY: What do you mean project images onto clouds?

RT: Sometimes when I'm sketching you I get a little bit sort of stale if you like and you know you get to that scratchy stage where you just can't quite sort it out -- so you just go out. And it's a way of half unwinding and half getting inspiration.

MARY LOU FINLAY: So you take a slide -- you have a slide?

RT: Yeah it's a slide projector. You know I've taken a lot of photographs of aviation nature and you know all I do is just project again -- I mean it is a very hit and miss affair. You don't get a picture every time.

MARY LOU FINLAY: That's a long way to project isn't it?

RT: Yeah I mean no you've got to look for the proper cloud there. I mean you are talking about a real dark evening when you know the stars and the moon and out but there is no way you can see them because it's just that dark.

MARY LOU FINLAY: But there would have to be clouds around to?

RT: Very very thick clouds. The conditions have got to be bang on. We'll look a little bit on the high ground in Fridaythrope.

MARY LOU FINLAY: I think some of us are familiar with projecting things onto the bedroom ceiling for children [laughs].

RT: [Chuckles] I know it sounds ridiculous but it is like fishing. You know you can't go out and expect to get something every time.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Now do you do this so that you can sketch the way they look up in the clouds?

RT: Well no -- it is inspiration mainly. I mean [inaudible] there long enough if you do out to just get the right image, it doesn't last long enough anyway.

MARY LOU FINLAY: It just gives you a certain feeling.

RT: Yeah that's right. Being an enthusiast it gives you inspiration.

MARY LOU FINLAY: What kind of planes?

RT: Well the one that's the main subject at the moment is the Halifax Mk 3.

MARY LOU FINLAY: And have you projected that one?

RT: I have indeed yes. What I did I built a model of the Halifax which was based on the 158 Squadron -- I mean there were Halifax squadrons all around this area during the war including a couple of Canadian and Australian squadrons. Well you probably know that anyway [chuckles]. It is a theme that everybody sort of likes in the area if you like -- if you're into aviation history...

MARY LOU FINLAY: Speaking of the area now -- you must have heard the story of the ghost bombers then?

RT: Well that's but only recently. [Chuckles] I mean it's not something I've been looking for to be honest with you. I mean I moved into Fridaythrope in the summer of 1990 you know -- certainly I've not really heard anything about ghost bombers. I mean we forever getting for the Hercules aircraft flying over -- and someone will have a nickname them 'whispering giant.' I mean they come over and gone before you even hear them.

MARY LOU FINLAY: So nobody ever told you that they'd seen a ghostly bomber flying over the coast?

RT: Not until a couple of weeks ago.

MARY LOU FINLAY: And then what did you hear?

RT: Well as you said somebody reported it in the local newspapers.

MARY LOU FINLAY: And that it's been going on for about...

RT: It's been going on for seven years in this area about that particular aircraft.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Just about as long as you've been in the area.

RT: Yes for particularly [inaudible]. I certainly don't want to put a damper on any stories that are going around or anything like that. I mean [chuckles] you know all I'm saying is you see the thing is I only do these projections on a very dark evening when the conditions are right if you like.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Just exactly the sort of evening you might be lost. Are you familiar with the story, the Frederick Forsyth story, The Shepherd?

RT: No. But I have read couple of Frederick Forsyth's books and he is a very very vivid writer.

MARY LOU FINLAY: This is his story that we play on our radio program every Christmas and it's about a pilot coming home late at night, I think it's Christmas Eve, and he's lost in the fog and he is guided home by a ghost bomber.

RT: Yeah I've heard this -- I've heard a legend pretty recently actually -- but you know certainly I wasn't familiar with it until all this came out.

MARY LOU FINLAY: I think that story predates your ghost.

RT: Oh of course by all means. I didn't even intend it as a ghost. I mean I was only mucking around with the projector to get a projection for my own drawing.

MARY LOU FINLAY: But this could be an annual event, a Christmas ritual -- you could put that Bomber up in the sky every Christmas Eve.

RT: You know most of the time it's just a lot of light against the clouds -- it's just you do hit it occasionally.

MARY LOU FINLAY: But if the conditions are right you'll do it again?

RT: Of course. Maybe not with Halifax next time though. [Laughs] I mean please believe me I've got a heck of a lot of respect for [inaudible] and I don't like the idea of them sort of being trapped and limbo around this area. I think they deserve a lot than that -- those are who gave -- you know made the ultimate sacrifice and end of the day she'll be at peace in a better place than we know about.

MARY LOU FINLAY: I think that's why the story of The Shepherd...

RT: Yes the guardian angels is a different thing...

MARY LOU FINLAY: It is so touching.

RT: Yeah well I would call that a guardian angel rather than a ghost. I mean that's a different thing you know. And certainly you know I wouldn't want to spoil them stories because I am sure that there might be an element -- something that we don't know about [inaudible].

MARY LOU FINLAY: Mr. Triner thank you very much.

RT: Oh you're welcome.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Bye bye.

RT: Bye now.

Bob Campbell

JD: Former RAF pilot Richard Triner in Fridaythrope making spirits bright by projecting ghostly images of World War II Bombers onto clouds in the night skies. You are listening to As It Happens our final broadcast before Christmas which this year happens to fall on Christmas Eve. We begin this edition of the program as we have nearly every year since 1979 with Frederick Forsyth's short story The Shepherd as read by our former host Al Maitland aka 'Fireside Al.' His reading of The Shepherd has of course become an indelible holiday tradition for this show in the nearly 40 years since it first aired. But it may surprise you to learn that it very nearly never happened. The executive producer of As It Happens at the time it was record it was Bob Campbell. And a decade ago Mr. Campbell shared the story behind the unlikely birth of a classic.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

BOB CAMPBELL: Al was an extraordinary character in the program. And I suppose the biggest thing that he brought to the program was his voice. This is what we counted on him for -- he was a virtuoso of the voice – in fact I think he started his career at the CBC as a singer just after the Second World War and you could tell that when he was reading stories you could see him -- you would watch him rehearse quietly and even with the shortest script he'd work on the thing and work on it and work on it until he was happy with the thing -- word by word the way it sounded. The Shepherd had some wonderful qualities to it -- of course it was set at Christmas, it was about a pilot, it was set at night, some poor fellow trying to find his way home on Christmas Eve, it had a spiritual component to it, a military component, and one of the highlights of our Christmas in past years on As It Happens was bringing a lot of military posts together across the country and around the world.

VOICE: [Soundclip] We would like to wish all our families and friends a very Merry Christmas. I would like to wish my husband, Randy, and our two boys Matthew and Ronny a very Merry Christmas [chokes up] and I love you all.

BOB CAMPBELL: It was a wonderful story and it fit in with a lot of the things we were doing. But there were a couple of issues. Funny thing about The Shepherd, it was our second choice. What we really wanted to do was a story about the Christmas truce in the First World War in 1914, but we couldn't find one. We did find the story eventually about The Shepherd. The problem with The Shepherd of course of course was that it was a long story -- and a program that we were used to running a long item at the time would be probably four and a half or five minutes -- and this story ran probably in excess of 20 minutes. So we had some discussion about whether this was the kind of thing that we could run and how it would sound in the program and decided finally that we would. Then the problem was with the cost. And of course most of the stories that we had, the Christmas stories, were in the public domain with no cost at all but this one we ended up talking to the authors agent -- the cost was extraordinary, I mean at least for us it was, it was a huge amount of money. So we'd still really wanted to run the story but we ended up going back to this fellow and saying well is there any way we could reduce the cost here at all we're a public broadcaster and this is a small program and it's a Christmas program – and come up with every reason we could think of to try and bring the price down a little bit. He called back in and in fact he did! They brought the price down to a far more reasonable level at least for our point of view. And then we had to convince the budget people here that it was a good idea to be running a Christmas story about an airplane.

[Al Maitland reading] The night was Christmas Eve in 1957 and I was a pilot trying to get home for Christmas.

BOB CAMPBELL: You know when we ran that story we heard radios and monitors up and down the hallways. People listening to the story as we walked past. I suppose it was at that point we realized that this had more impact than we'd realized when we chose to put the thing on the air. Then after we had letters and phone calls from people, listeners, saying this was wonderful and they were riveted to the radio and they sat there when they were expecting to be going out to cocktail parties and going about their business -- they couldn't get out of their cars -- they had to stay and hear how this story ended.

VOICE: [Caller] I'm phoning about The Shepherd. Our family tradition started when we lived in Prince George. Family friends had an open house on Christmas Eve. They were about 18 kilometres out of town. It became a tradition that the timing of our trip and the timing of Alan Maitland would coincide. Sometimes the driving was a bit fast and we would have to idle in the driveway waiting for Alan to finish his story.

BOB CAMPBELL: And of course as we approached the next Christmas people are writing again asking if we can please run the story that Al had read so wonderfully. And I think that's still true now. I still hear people talking about The Shepherd on As It Happens and I think the program has run this story just about every year since we started.

[Al Maitland reading] My Johnny went out on his last patrol Christmas Eve 1943. Just over 14 years ago tonight. He never come back sir. Went down with his plane somewhere in the North Sea he did. Good night sir. Happy Christmas.

JD: Former executive producer of As It Happens Bob Campbell with the story behind our traditional holiday reading of The Shepherd.

Part 3: The Mosquito

Richard de Boer Part 1

SOUNDCLIP

It was to be built of wood and would make only slight demands on the metal industries which were being so hard pressed. If successful, it might well revolutionize the pattern of aerial warfare.

JD: And revolutionize it did. They called it The Wooden Wonder -- with good reason. When the de Havilland Mosquito was introduced a couple of years into the Second World War it was like nothing ever seen before. A little later on in the show we will hear about some of the many Canadian connections to the airplane. But first here is part one of our deep dive into the mosquito.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The mosquito was actually born from the de Havilland company in England and it was the brainchild of the company's founder Geoffrey de Havilland -- later Sir Geoffrey de Havilland. My name is Richard de Boer and I'm the president of the Calgary Mosquito Aircraft Society. I've had a lifelong passion for the Mosquito --doing research and now restoration work on one of the few surviving examples. Geoffrey de Havilland's concept went against the thinking of the time -- he said let's make it light, let's make it fast, so we're not going to put all the guns on it, we're not going to put all the armour plates, and we're not even going to make it out of metal.

[Soundclip] This was a revolutionary proposal to fly a load of bomb across enemy country with not a gun to defend yourself. Would you really get enough speed to escape defending fighters? The mathematician said you would.

VOICE: He wanted a twin engine Bomber that would be relatively light and fast. But the thinking of the time was to put all kinds of defensive guns and armament and turrets and all this sort of thing on Bombers because Bombers tended to be slow when they were attacked by fighters.

[Soundclip] And the Bombers of their time armaments represented a sixth of a loaded weight.

VOICE: He said look we've got resources that are not being applied to the war effort and that's in the form of material like wood and all of these skilled woodworkers who are not currently contributing to the war effort. So he designed the Mosquito to be made almost entirely out of wood whereas you look at heavy bombers that required a crew of seven or eight up to ten people to carry their loads deep into Germany. The Mosquito could do it with just two people. It carried a very heavy load for its size. It was extremely fast. And could get in and out you know where it would take a heavy bomber twice as long.

[Soundclip] Build instead an airplane just big enough for a crew of two, four 250 pound bombs, fuel for 15-hundred miles, and it would certainly be a hundred miles an hour as fast as a fighter.

VOICE: Which was a revolutionary idea because it had only been five or six years prior that the British Royal Air Force had gotten their first all metal Bomber. So he went forward with the concept and said hey here's a slightly revolutionary idea that may look a little backwards. And he got a very firm no saying this is not what we want. You know this is old fashioned -- wood is not how airplanes are made anymore. So no we don't want to do this.

[Soundclip] When France fell the defense of Britain put all thought of new designs in the background and the Mosquito was dropped from the program.

VOICE: But his revolutionary thinking won the day -- he gained some support and went ahead with the design flying the first de Havilland Mosquito in November of 1940.

[Plane sound]

JD: Richard de Boer, founder and president of the Calgary Mosquito Aircraft Society. And we will be hearing more from him shortly. But first...

Jaye Edwards

Guest: Jaye Edwards

SOUNDCLIP

Kavanagh had been a fine pilot. Quite a man I said and I meant it.

JD: Quite a man indeed. Mr. Johnny Kavanagh is in a word or two...

SOUNDCLIP

Quite extraordinary!

JD: Jaye Edwards is likewise, quite extraordinary -- just about as rare as they come. Quite a wartime pilot too. But unlike Johnny Kavanagh, not a man. Ms. Edwards -- who turned 100 in October -- is one of three surviving "Attagirls" as they were known during the Second World War. Although women were forbidden from flying in the Air Force the"Attagirls" were civilian female pilots tasked with ferrying planes from the factories to the front lines. And like our Shepherd protagonist she once had to surrender to faith during a harrowing flight over England's north coast. We reached Jaye Edwards at her home in North Vancouver.

CO: Hi Jaye Edwards.

JAYE EDWARDS: Yes.

CO: This is Carol, how are you?

JE: Well I'm still here. [Laughs]

CO: I'm glad to know that.

JE: And I really am amazingly well.

CO: Jaye when did you first know that you wanted to fly airplanes?

JE: Well the first time I was introduced to planes really was when my mother flew to Paris to meet my father who had gone to Australia where he was born and had business. He was coming back but he was not going on a plane for anybody. So he and mother had a weekend in Paris and they came back. But when I saw an ad for national women's air reserve I thought oh I thought that sounded really interesting. And I joined them in January of 39. And said to mother, what would you think about if I said I was going to go flying? And my mother replied, we'll have to consider it. I said to her well I'll just wait till I'm 21. But I didn't have to wait that long because she actually paid for me to have my lessons. It was something nobody in the family did. I had one cousin who was a navigator but none of us were interested in flying at all.

CO: When you got to flying, when you went up in the air in one of these single engine planes, what did it feel like for you?

JE: Well I think I was just excited. So when [teacher] she tried to teach me how to do a stall turn -- my stomach said no way thank you. And I was very sick. And she was sitting behind me. So you can imagine what happened.

CO: [Laughs] I don't want to imagine what happened. You flew many kinds of single engine airplanes did you have any favourites?

JE: Well I always felt the Hurricane training plane had been hard [inaudible] -- and the end of the First World War fighter planes and were the forerunner of the Hurricane. They had the same body lines as the Hurricane but the Hurricane was the first plane you flew that you didn't -- never had anyone sit in the seat behind you. And we did quite a number of flights on the Hurricane before we moved on to the Spitfire and other types of planes.

CO: There were not many women who were pilots at that time when you became part of the Attagirls as they were called -- this was the civilian pilots, the female pilots, who were taking planes to the frontlines during the Second World War.

JE: Well we placed the planes that had been damaged, shot down, whatever -- we were supposed to get them safely to their new destination. And many times you were actually flying a plane that had come right out of being built to your airfield.

CO: There were 168 women among those on this civilian force of pilots and they were taking planes to the front lines -- you were among them, among the few women who were there. There were a lot of casualties among those pilots -- do you know how many women were killed?

JE: I believe that 15 of them lost their lives.

CO: 15 of the women lost their lives?

JE: That's right. I don't know how many of the men did. Some of them were as much beginners as we were. There were a number of us who were beginners -- well I say beginners not beginners -- who were single engine plane flyers only and then you went and took a different course and trained to fly twin engines. And I flew three types of twin engines one of which was also by plane.

CO: You had at least one really scary flight didn't you? When you were making a journey up to Scotland -- can you remember that -- this snowstorm you encountered?

JE: Yes I do. It arrived very shortly after I had took off. And I was sort of pushed out to the coast and I didn't fancy turning back because I would be flying straight into the storm. So I carried on up the coast and then got to the Firth of Forth which is quite a large stretch of water. I didn't fancy crossing it because you couldn't really see what was the other side. So planes are built to fly and you give a little bit of power and use your feet to turn and take hands and feet off -- it will fly, which it did. I don't know for how long. Not very long. And after all the snowstorm -- up in sunshine.

CO: Into blue skies and sunshine.

JE: Which was a relief I have got to admit. Although I had confidence I'd done the right thing. So it really was a very peaceful -- be up in the air and the peace and quiet.

CO: But you were in the middle of a war and you found peace and quiet.

JE: That's right. Not many people had the opportunity. I was lucky.

CO: Happy Christmas to you.

JE: And to you and Happy New Year.

CO: Thank you, you too.

JE: Thank you. Goodbye now.

JD: Centenarian Jaye Edwards who flew planes from factories to the frontlines during World War Two as a member of the famed 'Attagirls.' Ms. Edwards turned 100 years old in October.

Richard de Boer Part 2

SOUNDCLIP

There was no mistaking the lean, sleek silhouette, of the Mosquito fighter bomber.

JD: And make no mistake that lean sleek silhouette may not have been possible without Canada's contribution. Here once again as Richard de Boer, founder and president of the Calgary Mosquito Aircraft Society to tell us about Canada's indelible role in the design and legacy of the de Havilland Mosquito.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Canada's contribution to the mosquito happened in several ways the first of which was the material. So the wood that was being used was birch wood, spruce, fir, and balsa. And with the exception of balsa all those woods were available mostly out of western Canada. So even before Canada started up production of the Mosquito at their Downsview plant, we were supplying the wood -- the basic raw material for Mosquito production that was happening in England.

[Soundclip] Canada's newest light Bomber, called the Mosquito -- is shown to the public for the first time. Built of wood, it's said to out-maneuver and out-distance many fighter planes now in action. Test pilot de Havilland, son of the famous designer takes it along.

[Plane sound]

VOICE: Shortly after the Mosquito began flying de Havilland which had its factory also in Downsview, Ontario said hey why don't we start making them in Canada as well? So we started picking up production. We ended up building eleven hundred and 34 Mosquitoes out of the total of almost 78-hundred that were made.

[Soundclip] At the Canadian de Havilland factory engineers from the home company arrived by air to organize the building of Mosquitoes in the new world.

VOICE: Now after World War Two, Canada continued to produce Mosquitoes for other countries that wanted to add them to their Air Force. Some of the returning Canadian Air Force personnel wanted to stay in the aviation business and one company in particular Spartan Air Services got a very large contract from the Canadian government to do the first complete and comprehensive mapping of all of this country. And the airplane that they eventually settled on after some unsuccessful attempts with other types was the de Havilland Mosquito. So one of their people went to England, ended up buying a bunch of retired Mosquitoes, bringing them to Canada, mounting large aerial mapping cameras in them, and they photographed over 2-million square miles of Canada from which we got our first complete comprehensive set of maps of this entire country. There are currently two Mosquitoes under restoration in Canada: one is in Windsor, Ontario -- and the other is in Calgary, Alberta -- it is the one that my organization is looking after right now. Both of these airplanes used to work for Spartan air services or at least the basis of the one in Windsor did. In Windsor they decided to go in a slightly different direction so they are no longer restoring Spartan air services Mosquito, they're essentially building new but using some of the original material. Their intention is to fly that airplane. The airplane that's in Calgary as I said was a former Spartan air services airplane that did the incredible job of photo mapping all of Canada. Well our mandate is to restore this Mosquito as it actually served in Canada after World War Two and as such it will be the only civilianized Mosquito in the entire world. There are presently about 30 surviving Mosquitoes in the world and every one of them is done up in former military colours. So we are honoring the actual history of this particular Mosquito as it served here in Canada. So you'll see it with the camera mounted in it and with the lovely Spartan logos and colours and all that sort of thing. Unfortunately our airplane had a very rough life after it finished work with Spartan air services so it cannot be made airworthy. We will be able to fire it up and move it around, but we won't risk it by actually taking it up into the air. Structurally it's just not capable of being flown again.

JD: Richard de Boer, president of the Calgary Mosquito Aircraft Society which is currently spearheading efforts to restore a de Havilland Mosquito to non-flight working condition.

George Stewart

Guest: George Stewart

SOUNDCLIP

They reckon he had eyes like a cat did Mr. Johnny.

JD: As the ghost in The Shepherd Johnny Kavanagh spends an eternal afterlife flying his mosquito to save desperate pilots from otherwise untimely ends. Well George Stewart may not have spent forever in a Mosquito but he's come pretty close. Stewart who turns 95 next month, flew 50 sorties over Germany during the war from his base just north of Norwich. That is just a few miles from where the fictitious Merriam St. George airbase in the story would be located. We reached George Stewart in Hamilton, Ontario.

CO: George do you remember the first time you flew a Mosquito?

GEORGE STEWART: Carol I can remember that vividly. I was maybe 15 or 16 when a Mosquito was first brought out and it was magic -- the fastest airplane in the world. And I remember going out with my instructor the first time on the 1st of September 1943 to the aircraft. And having flown the Tiger Moth it had a little hand hole in the wing where people could hold it and guide it -- you could wiggle it up and down. I went and sort of wrapped my knuckles on the Mosquito it was like a cement bridge [laughter]. And you know as terrifying as it was I wondered how in the name of goodness could it ever get off the ground or stay in the air -- it was so heavy -- it weighed 11 tonnes. And you know I was 19 at that time and needless to say I was quite impressed. They had had problems with it before and lost some airplanes when it broke in half.

CO: That didn't strike fear in your heart flying a Mosquito given that it had those kinds of problems?

GS: Well I can't say that I wasn't nervous but I was more excited. Here I was Carol and I could not believe that my fondest wish was being answered to fly a Mosquito. It started up and that roar was something I will never forget of two engines -- you know sixteen hundred and fifty horsepower. But then taking off... wow. It just went from being just a lump to a racehorse. And the thing that impressed me -- I did a bit of a steep turn and I could see the streams of condensation coming off the wing tips you know just a normal flight doing 240 miles an hour just cruising. That was beyond my dreams -- with a Mosquito you're out of sight of the field in no time at 240 miles an hour but it just felt so solid and so responsive to the controls.

CO: You were just a kid. You were just a teenager at this point. It's been quite an experience to be in the air in that wooden plane.

GS: Well you know de Havilland wanted to make this aircraft and the air minister said well you're not getting any aluminum it's wanted too much for the other aircraft -- he said we'll do it in wood. And it just turned out to be remarkable. But it's a fifty four foot wingspan, it weighed 11 tonnes, when we took it off to war. This airplane and certain versions of it had a swollen belly so they could carry a 4000 pound bomb without any defensive armament or anything to Berlin. And there was a hard one for the enemy airplanes to catch. So it was very very successful and the German night fighters were terrified of us -- if they shot us down I counted double. So we were pretty careful there.

CO: But you made 50 sorties over Germany during the war. What were the nature of those missions? What were your objectives?

GS: Our job was officially called 'Bomber Support' -- people like me 'night intruders' would go to the German night fighter aerodromes from which the night fighters that were attacking our bombers had operated and we would circle that airfield from 500 feet up to about 3000 feet and just keep circling letting them know that we're there and the fighters would come back with no ammunition left, very short in fuel -- and to hear that there was an intruder in the circuit they would try to go somewhere else and sometimes wouldn't make it. And then to make matters worse we had four cannons, 20 millimeter cannons, we had four three machine guns and we carried two 500 pound bombs. So when we had finished our one hour patrol we would dive in and up comes the search lights and everything and drop these two bombs on their nice runway and get away as soon as we could. Now that was only sort of a scary part.

CO: Did you ever think you might die when you were out on those sorties?

GS: Well that wasn't in the main part of our memory but we thought there is a very good possibility that we might not live. And we lost a few airplanes in our squadron including our commanding officer from dropping and picking up spies at night in occupied France at that time -- 26 years old sticky Murphy. But my navigator and I had gotten sort of comfortable if you can call it comfortable even over enemy territory. It would be so black you couldn't see anything except you could always see the difference between land and water. So we looked for water: rivers and lakes and that sort of thing going in. But I got more out of World War Two than it got out of me. As I said at the time we were the fastest propeller driven airplane in the world. There were other airplanes that were faster of course but this was an exceptional airplane.

CO: George I really appreciate you sharing us... wow, just the thrill to be in one of these Mosquitoes and being in the air. And thank you for that. And happy Christmas to you.

GS: Happy Christmas to you Carol.

CO: I know it's your birthday in a couple of weeks so...

GS: Yes I'm going to be 95, isn't that amazing? [Chuckles].

CO: It's really great George I'm so happy for you.

GS: Thank you so much for the visit.

CO: Thank you. Take care.

GS: And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you.

CO: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

GS: Okay. Bye bye.

CO: Bye.

JD: That was George Stewart former RAF pilot who flew Mosquitoes out of Norwich and into Germany during the Second World War. You can find more on Mr. Stewart including some photographs on our website.

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December 24, 2018 Episode Transcript

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