THE LAST DUKE — Douglas Warren dies at 89
Doug Warren,the last of the Second World War's Warren Twins, dies at age 89 in Comox, BC.
FIDELITAS — Bunny McLarty dies at 89.
Born in Newcastle, England, McLarty moved to Buenos Aires as a boy. In response to Hitler's invasions, Don volunteered as an Argentine national for the Royal Canadian Air Force…
IN HIS NAME
Certainly, the most spectacular things about Vintage Wings of Canada are the exquisitely restored and meticulously maintained vintage aircraft of the collection. Pilots love and live to fly them,…
THE END TO HOPES AND PLANS
On the lovely summer's evening of August 5th, 1944, fifteen year-old Gerald Plant was walking to the home of his best friend in the English village of Creswell in Derbyshire.
THE ANGELS’ SHARE — Tragedy on the Whiskey Trail
Scotch, especially the single malts of Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, Bruichladdich and Bowmore, drew me to Islay, the most southerly of the islands of the Hebrides. With eight active distilleries,…
BATTLE SCARS — Blind Landing at Mossbank, Saskatchewan
The Fairey Battle was a British single-engine light bomber built by the Fairey Aviation Company in the late 1930s for the Royal Air Force. The Battle was powered by the same Rolls-Royce Merlin piston engine that gave…
REVENGE OF THE SHANG
It’s Christmas Eve and though just early evening, the dim light of winter is long receded, replaced by the orange vapour darkness of an urban night. Outside my house a Canadian hibernal front descends
JUST ONE LIFE — The Life and Death of Tommy White
The stark, compelling aerial photograph above was taken on July 3, 1944, during an American bombing mission over Timisoara, Rumania. Unlike so many aerial combat photos, whose exact date and location…
METAL OF HONOUR — Op MOBILE Flying Tribute
Last week, on November 24th, 2011, I was sitting at my desk in my office just a short seven iron from Parliament Hill, slogging through some work for Vintage Wings. I leaned back from my constant myopic squint at my computer screen,…
SKIP HIT — Low Level Flying in West Germany
Seems a long time since we had enemies we could trust! The Cold War was real: a long, bi-polar stand-off stretching from the end of the Second World War until 1989 - when the time was right for The Wall to be taken down…
ROUNDEL ROUND-UP
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, during a tour of Vintage Wings of Canada or at an air show: “Whaddya call that bullseye thingamajig there?” or “How come the bullseye on the wing …
MIRACLE OF THE HUDSON at Sainte Cécile de Masham
This is a story of two worlds. One, a world of isolation for a tiny farming community in Québec during the Second World War; the other, a world of global communications and social networking employed to solve a mystery which involved the first world…
A TERRIFYING BEAUTY - The Art of Piotr Forkasiewicz
In the black of night of 8 June 1944, two days after the D-Day invasions of Normandy, the dark hulk of a four-engined Lancaster bomber of 15 Squadron, Royal Air Force, trailing a blow-torching curtain of livid flame, lurches heavily…
LA GUERRE SELON DONALD LAMBIE- Troisième Épisode
La dernière fois que nous avons vu notre ami dans La guerre selon Donald Lambie Épisode 2, il était en route pour Bellaria depuis un centre de transit du personnel dans le sud de l’Italie, après avoir terminé un bref cours de remise à niveau pour pilote de Spitfire à Guado, en Italie.
BULLDOGS ON THE COAST
For most young testosterone-fueled, newly-winged pilots of the Second World War, being a fighter pilot was the plum assignment, the glory job, the best of the best - a fighting man with the fastest and the…
WOOD FOR WOOD
n what could easily be the finest and boldest example of death-defying and cheeky nose-thumbing during the Second World War or any conflict for that matter, bomber and intruder crews of the Royal Air Force …
KITTYHAWK DISCOVERY — Found after 70 years
Some time in 1942, a lone Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk bearing the 260 Squadron “HS” squadron code and the aircraft letter “B” settled down over a wide and remote expanse of North African sand desert called Al Wadi al Jadid…
GLASGOW’S OWN — Honouring Harry Hannah
Harry Hannah, is a friend of mine. He was a Spitfire pilot flying for 602 City of Glasgow Squadron, one of the most vaunted and storied fighter squadrons of the Second World War. Some of the greatest and most highly decorated aces…
CLUB RUN TO MALTA
Leaning against the merchantman’s railing near the aft 4-inch gun emplacement, 23 year-old Sergeant Pilot Calvin Taylor and his travel mate were taking in the late spring ocean air and enjoying the sea voyage to Gibraltar…
HERO — A Flying Tribute to a Missing Aviator
Vintage Wings of Canada's core program called In His Name dedicates each of the eighteen aircraft of the collection to a Canadian veteran, famous or otherwise, native or foreign born, who had an association with …