Although I was born in Canada, my folks moved to Seattle when I was two years old. When I was 20 years old I decided that I wanted to get into flying. The ’20s were kind of a romantic time as I and the rest of the country followed the flights of Lindbergh crossing in the Atlantic in 1927. That intrigued me as did the exploits of Jimmy Doolittle flying the Gee Bee racer. I started flying in 1939 at Boeing Field in a Piper Cup and a Fairchild 22.
As I started building up my flying time with the two airplanes my main objective was to go into commercial flying. My dreams however were derailed in 1939, when the War in Europe started heating up. As the Germans were making headway in Europe, blitzing into Czechoslovakia and Poland, I went down to McCord Air Force Base and talked to them about going into the aviation cadet program. Reluctantly I was informed that I had to have at least two years of college under my belt before I could apply. I just had a high school graduation along with a handful of hours in a Piper Cub.
A few weeks later, I was informed of a committee that was canvassing the U.S., talking to young guys like myself, telling them about the Royal Air Force and their need for pilots. By then I had about 100 hours of flying time, which was enough to get them interested.
In mid-1940 I entered the Empire Training Program and started out in a Tiger Moth, a tube and fabric, open cockpit biplane, and logged about 60 hours. I graduated from there in January of 1941 and was sent to advanced flight training in Dauphin, Manitoba. I flew the Harvard, which was the equivalent of the AT-6, one of the first advanced trainers of the Army Air Force as well as the Canadian Air Force. Flying the Harvard was pretty
