June 8, 2025 - Driving to Alaska
Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada - Brandon, Manitoba
It's the Royal Aviataion Museum of Western Canada.
With over 90 aircraft, the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada has one of Canada’s largest and most historically significant aviation collections.
Bush flying is hard on airplanes and pilots.
I checked out the fascinating exhibit on "The Ghost of Charron Lake”
The Fokker Universal was the first aircraft type purchased by James Armstrong Richardson’s Western Canada Airways Ltd. (WCA; later Canadian Airways Ltd. (CAL)) after its founding in 1926. Featuring a rugged, easy-to-maintain wood and steel-tube structure, the aircraft was ideal for operations in northern Canada. However, while passengers and cargo flew in an enclosed cabin, pilots sat in an open cockpit, which provided good visibility but left them exposed to the elements.
Purchased by WCA in 1928, G-CAJD is the last surviving Fokker Universal anywhere in the world. The story of how it came into the RAMWC’s collection is one of survival, heroism, and decades of dogged persistence that finally solved a 70-year-old mystery.
On December 11, 1931, CAL pilot Stuart McRorie and air engineer Neville “Slim” Forrest were flying supplies from Winnipeg to a team of prospectors at Island Lake, Manitoba. Suddenly, a violent snowstorm blew in, forcing the airmen to put down on the frozen surface of Charron Lake. Immediately upon landing the aircraft broke through the ice and sank down to its wings. McRorie and Forrest managed to scramble out, and, after recovering what supplies they could from the aircraft, set up camp on the lakeshore.
A week later, the airmen’s campfire was spotted by Tom Boulanger, a Cree trapper, while he was checking his traplines. Boulanger took McRorie and Forrest to his cabin, fed them, and rounded up two dog sled teams to take them to the Hudson’s Bay Company post at Little Grand Rapids. En Route, the pair were spotted by passing CAL pilot Alfred “Westy” Westergaard, who swooped down to pick them up. The two airmen arrived safely back in Winnipeg on Christmas Eve.
Meanwhile, G-CAJD remained frozen in the ice until around March 1932 when, during the spring thaw, it quietly slipped below the surface of Charron Lake. There it remained, its location a mystery, for more than seven decades.
In 1974, the newly-founded Western Canada Aviation Museum launched the first of many expeditions to locate G-CAJD, now known as the “Ghost of Charron Lake.” However, the aircraft proved elusive, evading dozens of searches over the next 30 years. Then, on July 4, 2005, the ghostly outline of G-CAJD finally appeared on the search team’s sonar screen. The aircraft lay nearly a kilometre from where McRorie, Forrest, and Boulanger had reported it sinking, the aircraft having “flown” through the water on its way to the bottom.
When divers were sent down to investigate, they discovered much of the aircraft’s structure intact – including its fuselage, engine, skis, and the remains of its cargo. Its wooden wings, however, had long since disintegrated. Since the surviving structure was deemed too fragile to raise in one piece, it was decided to cut the wreck into smaller sections for recovery. Over the next two years, recovery teams raised the wreck from the lake bottom piece-by-piece and transported it to Winnipeg for conservation.
The Ghost of Charron Lake now takes pride of place in its own dedicated gallery at the RAMWC, a testament to the pioneering men and machines of Canadian Airways Ltd. and the passion and persistence of the Museum’s staff and volunteers.
An enlarged and improved version of the Fokker Universal was the Fokker Super Universal, pictured below and beautifully restored.
Introduced in 1928, the Super Universal was an improvement on the older Fokker Universal. Featuring an enclosed cockpit for the pilot, a strong, unbraced cantilever wing, and a more powerful engine, it was able to carry nearly 50 percent more cargo. With its rugged steel-tube construction and robust fixed landing gear, the Super Universal proved ideal for operating from rough northern airfields and was extensively used as a bush plane and general cargo and passenger aircraft throughout the 1930s.
One airframe, G-CASK, had a particularly storied career. Purchased by Western Canada Airways Ltd. in 1928, in August of that year the aircraft was flown by legendary bush pilot Clennell “Punch” Dickins on a record-breaking 6,326 kilometre (3,956 mile) flight over the Barren Lands of the Northwest Territories (now Nunavut). In August 1929, G-CASK was one of the two aircraft flown by the MacAlpine copper-prospecting expedition when it ran out of fuel and was forced to land near Dease Point, NWT, sparking a massive search operation. The following year, the aircraft was salvaged and used by WCA pilot Walter Gilbert to complete the first overflight of the North Magnetic Pole on September 4, 1930.
The museum’s aircraft, CF-AAM, was built in 1928 and purchased new by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (Cominco). From 1929 to 1934, it flew mineral prospecting flights out of Trail, British Columbia and assisted in the search for the missing MacAlpine Expedition, even flying several of the lost prospectors out of Cambridge Bay, NWT. In 1934, the aircraft was purchased by Northern Airways of Carcross, Yukon, and used to fly mail and passengers throughout the region. On December 5, 1937, the aircraft crashed on takeoff from Dawson City with pilot Leslie Cook and 6 passengers aboard. Though none aboard were injured, the aircraft was declared a write-off and abandoned beside the runway.
Nearly four decades later, in 1974, the aircraft’s remains were salvaged by the Western Canada Aviation Museum (now the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada) and taken to aircraft restoration expert Clark Seaborn of Calgary, Alberta. Seaborn agreed to restore the aircraft in exchange for the right to fly it for five years. Over the next 18 years, Seaborn and his team used the wreck and those of two other Super Universals found in the Yukon to restore CF-AAM to flying condition. The most painstaking part of the process was building the aircraft’s wings. This involved nailing sheets of plywood over wooden ribs using thousands of closely-spaced nails. The end result was an exacting recreation of CF-AAM as it appeared right before its final flight, down to the wood paneling and mohair seats in the cabin.
In 2001, Clark Seaborn flew the restored CF-AAM along its original airmail route in the Yukon before donating it to the RAMWC.
I've seen the famous Junkers JU-52 "Auntie Ju" trimotor many times, but I did not know that there was a single engine version. Well, here one is!
The Ju 52 was designed starting in 1925, in two versions, a single engine version for freight transport (Ju-52/1m) and trimotor version to carry 17 passengers (Ju 52/3m), both as civilian versions. Of course the JU-52 was used by the German military during World War II and was their primary transport.
The JU-52/1m was the largest single-engine aircraft ever to operate on floats and skiis.
Canadian Airways ordered a Ju-52/1m in the 1931 to haul heavy cargo such as mining equipment to northern outpots. But they soon found the original BMW engine underpowered and unsuited to harsh Canadian winters. They replaced tit with a Rolls Royce Buzzard engine. The original was scrapped in 1947. This is a replica, converted from a Spanish CASA-352 trimotor by Bristol Aerospace Inc. and museum volunteers.
This immaculately restored Bellanca Aircruiser, named the "Eldorado Radium Silver Express" was my favorite plane in the museum.
By the 1920s, exploration in the North began to open up rapidly with bush planes, which were capable of flying great distances and landing on both water and ice. In the early days at Port Radium, the uranium oxide concentrates were sufficiently rich to justify aircraft use to supplement the water route. For this purpose, the Bellanca Aircruiser was selected.
The Bellanca Aircruiser was a high-wing, single-engine aircraft built by Bellanca Aircraft Corporation in Delaware. The aircraft was a “workhorse” intended for passenger or cargo use. It was available as a land, sea, or ski plane. A total of 23 aircraft were built. A water-cooled engine originally powered it, but this was changed to a more reliable, air-cooled engine. The final version of the Aircruiser was the most efficient aircraft of its day and, with the air-cooled, supercharged engine, it could carry 4,000 lb payloads at speeds up to 155 mph. It was easily identified by the characteristic “W” appearance, derived from the aerodynamic, triangular lifting struts, which extended down from the bottom of the fuselage then up to a point outboard of the main wing.
CF-AWR was built in 1935 and was the first of five of its type used in Canada. It was operated for Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. by Mackenzie Air Service Limited of Edmonton and was the second-largest aircraft operating in Canada at that time. The aircraft was named the Eldorado Radium Silver Express. In August 1939, ownership of the aircraft passed to Canadian Airways Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba. It remained in the service of Eldorado until the radium mine was closed in 1940. In January 1947, while carrying a shipment of uranium concentrate, CF-AWR crashed in northern Ontario after running out of fuel. It was so severely damaged that the company abandoned it.
CF-AWR’s cargo, engine, instrument panel, and other easily removable bits and pieces were salvaged for use as spares for surviving Aircruisers. Other parts such as doors, windows, and fairings became furnishings in local trappers’ cabins in subsequent years.
The wreck lay abandoned until 1973 when it was retrieved by the museum, assisted by a helicopter from the Canadian Forces. At that time, most of the woodwork had rotted away, steel parts were severely rusted, and trees had grown up through the skeletal remains. CF-AWR is one of only two aircraft of this type known to exist today. The second aircraft, CF-BTW, served into the 1970s and is presently located in the Erickson Aircraft Collection, Madras, Oregon.
Of course, no Canadian aircraft museum would not be completely without a De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver.
THE DE HAVILLAND BEAVER was designed and built in Canada and first flew on August 16, 1947. It is an all-metal bush plane operable on skis, wheels, or floats and was the world’s first aircraft designed specifically for short takeoff and landing (STOL), making it ideal in bush conditions. Its exceptional performance and rugged reliability made it a favourite of bush pilots and operators around the world.
The Beaver’s STOL capability allowed it to land and takeoff from lakes and rivers, which provided an enormous advantage to Canadian bush flying companies who routinely flew to remote northern areas where paved landing surfaces did not exist. Finding suitable lakes or rivers large enough to land conventional bush planes was problematic. The Beaver allowed these companies to bring passengers and equipment much closer to their destinations and enter areas that would have previously been inaccessible to aircraft. The Beaver is considered by many to be the best bush plane ever built. Even though many of them have been retired to museums worldwide, the demand for this “half-tonne truck of the air” is still as strong as ever.
The original selling price was US$32,000. In 1997, a Beaver–over 40 years old and in good condition–was selling for up to US$300,000. Production ceased in the 1960s.
The secret to the Beaver’s successful design was the direct involvement of “Punch” Dickins and other Canadian bush pilots during the plane’s development. Dickins was an early bush pilot who flew many landmark flights, including being the first to fly over the Northwest Territories Barrens and being the first to fly the entire length of the Mackenzie River. Dickins joined de Havilland in 1947 as a director and international sales representative. He circulated a questionnaire to bush pilots around the country; their recommendations influenced all aspects of Beaver design.
The Association of Industrial Designers has named the Beaver one of the best designs in all categories to come out of Canada. Over the years, 1,962 Beavers were built and exported to 62 countries, including 981 to the U.S.A. for civil and military use. The Beaver was the first aircraft built outside of the United States to be purchased by the U.S. military. Approximately 900 “Flying Jeeps,” as U.S. military personnel called them, were employed in medical evacuation and support roles.
The Beaver was invaluable to the U.S. military during the Korean conflict as a reconnaissance plane and for extracting wounded soldiers from remote areas thanks to its STOL capability. The remote regions of the Korean peninsula, where much of the fighting took place, are heavily forested and mountainous, terrain similar to that found in northern Canada, where the Beaver was designed to operate. The Beaver proved to be highly reliable in situations of limited maintenance and punishing use.
The museum’s de Havilland Beaver, C-FMAA (production number 1,500), flew with the Manitoba Government Air Service and was donated to the museum after becoming surplus.
The early 1930s saw a revolution in commercial aviation as aircraft companies began introducing all-metal cantilever monoplanes – sleek, modern designs which promised to make safe, reliable, and profitable passenger airline service a viable reality. First out of the gate were the Boeing Model 247 and Douglas DC-2, which stunned the world in 1934 by placing third and second respectively in the epic England-to-Australia MacRobertson Air Race. The DC-2 design would eventually evolve into the legendary DC-3, the first airliner to turn a profit carrying only passengers and one of the most successful aircraft designs of all time.
In response to its competitor’s offerings, in 1935 Lockheed Aircraft introduced the sleek Model 10 Electra for use on short domestic routes. The Electra was the first project assigned to young engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, who would later go on to head Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works” division and produce such cutting-edge aircraft as the F-104 Starfighter and the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. During wind tunnel testing, the initial Electra design exhibited severe lateral instability, which Johnson solved by fitting the aircraft with its now-iconic twin tail. This prompted Johnson’s supervisor to exclaim “That damned Swede can see the air!” In line with its competitors, the Electra also boasted a host of modern features including fully-retractable landing gear, streamlined NACA cowlings on the engines, and inflatable de-icer boots on the wing leading edges.
Lockheed’s timing could not have been better, for in October 1934 the United States Government had banned the use of single-engine aircraft (including the museum’s Bellanca Aircruiser) for carrying commercial passengers. The Electra fit neatly into the market gap left by this ruling, and the 150 produced served dozens of airlines and militaries around the world throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
Perhaps the most famous user of the Electra was famous American aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who selected a Model 10E for her attempted round-the-world flight in 1937. On July 2, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared en route from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island in the south Pacific Ocean. Neither Earhart, Noonan, nor the aircraft were ever found, sparking a mystery that persists to this day.
The museum’s aircraft, CF-TCC, was one of the first six aircraft purchased by the newly-formed Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA) in 1937. These aircraft were used for pilot training in Winnipeg before serving on TCA’s first scheduled passenger service between Vancouver and Seattle, the first 55-minute flight taking place on September 1, 1937. However, by 1939, TCA’s Electras had all been replaced by the larger Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra. After passing through multiple hands throughout the 20th Century, CF-TCC was discovered in Florida in the 1980s by a vacationing Air Canada (the successor to TCA) employee. The airline purchased the aircraft and had it transported back to Winnipeg, where it was meticulously restored by Air Canada personnel. In 1987, CF-TCC was flown across Canada to celebrate Air Canada / TCA’s 50th anniversary.
The aircraft entered the RAMWC’s permanent collection in 2022.
When Canada joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, it agreed to provide a European air contingent. The best aircraft then was the North American Sabre, the F-86. Rather than buying Sabres from the Americans, Canada obtained a license to have them produced by Canadair in Montreal. This aircraft launched Canada into the jet age.
From 1951 to 1963, the Sabre was the first line of defence against the spread of Communism in Europe. 12 squadrons were established across England, France, and Germany. Canadian pilots flew the N.A. F86-F Sabre and the Canadian-made Mk 6.
The Mk 6 was the last—and considered the best—Canadian Sabre variant ever built. Its first flight took place on October 19, 1954.
The additional thrust of Mk 6’s Orenda engine enhanced its altitude performance and climb rate over its predecessor, the Mk. 5, and its slotted wing gave it excellent low-speed characteristics. This wing design also gave the jet the manoeuvrability to make tight turns in midair combat.
Another unique quality of the Sabre was its bubble canopy, designed to give pilots a 360-degree view, something not many jets had at that time. On October 9, 1958, the museum’s Sabre, #1815, became the last Sabre aircraft ever produced, destined for the Luftwaffe. It served at Fighter Wing 72 in Oldenburg and its callsign was JB+372. In total, Canadair produced 225 Sabre Mk 6s for Germany.
Sabre #1815 last flew for the Pakistan Air Force (PA) and was donated to our museum in 1996 by the PA’s Air Commodore, Kamran Qureshi.
To pay homage to the Sabres flown by the RCAF, Sabre #1815 was painted with the livery of No. 441 Squadron.
Introduced in 1960, the Canadair CL-114 Tutor was designed by Canadair to serve as the Canadian Forces’ primary jet trainer. Powered by a single turbojet engine, the aircraft features docile handling characteristics and side-by-side seating with tandem controls for a student and instructor.
The Tutor was officially adopted by the Canadian Forces in 1963. 190 were built for Canadian use, serving in the primary training role until 2000 when they were replaced by the BAE CT-155 Hawk and Fairchild CT-156 Harvard II. 20 ground-attack variants known as the CL-41G-5 Tebuan were also built for the Royal Malaysian Air Force, serving from 1967 to 1986.
In 1971, the Tutor was adopted as the official aircraft of 431 Air Demonstration Squadron, better known as the Snowbirds. These aircraft were modified for aerobatic displays by fitting them with external tanks for diesel fuel, which is injected into the engine to produce smoke trails. In the early days a special dye was mixed with the fuel to produce red smoke, but this proved highly corrosive to the engine and was soon discontinued.
Though most Tutors have been retired, 25 are retained by the Snowbirds in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, Alberta. Several others are privately operated.
The Museum’s Tutor, CT-114004 was one of the earliest aircraft of the fleet to be taken into the Air Force inventory as a pilot trainer. It was stationed at 2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School at Canadian Forces Base Moose Jaw (now 15 Wing Moose Jaw) from the mid-1960s to the phase out of the Tutor as a training aircraft in 2000. During its career, it was also used as a ground trainer for ab-initio pilots. It was intended to be mounted on a pedestal in Winnipeg before being permanently loaned to the RAMWC for display.
The one and only original Froebe Helicopter!
Doug, Nic and Theodore Froebe moved to Homewood, Manitoba, in 1921. Having a keen interest in aviation at an early age, the brothers educated themselves by reading flight manuals and aviation magazines such as Mechanics Illustrated. In 1933, they rebuilt a Barling NB3 and later constructed a Heath Parasol airplane from a home-built kit. This background gave them the confidence to build the first helicopter to fly in Canada from scrap and a broken-down truck.
Before the brothers began work on their helicopter, Doug Froebe travelled through the United States to meet with designers. Some experts were helpful, but many were not. Most of these designers were aware of a helicopter project that was going on at the Curtiss plant in which $100,000 had been spent without results. This gave helicopters a bad reputation. Doug hitchhiked to Dearborn, Michigan, to meet William Stout who was thought to be an “outside-of-the-box” sort of thinker. When Doug asked Stout for his recommendations on building a helicopter, Stout gave him a dollar and told him to hitchhike back to Homewood.
This did not stop Doug and his brothers from building what would prove to be the first helicopter created in Canada. The brothers purchased a four-cylinder, air-cooled Gypsy engine from a dealer in California for $100. The steel tubing for the frame was picked up from MacDonald Aircraft in Winnipeg. A Ford truck flywheel with a clutch that coupled the engine to the pinion gear was used to attach the other components together. The gas tank, which had been taken from a tractor on their farm, was placed on the back of the helicopter and filled half full for balance. The first flights began in the latter half of 1937. The first flight achieved a height of three feet above the ground. The last recorded flight at the same height was on March 2, 1939.
The Froebe Helicopter remains an astonishing achievement for three young men who grew up isolated on their farm and far away from the research and experimentation taking place in large cities. The Froebes’ success goes to show that a little confidence and determination can accomplish the impossible.
The Canadian Vickers Vedette was the first military aircraft designed and manufactured in Canada and it played an important role for the Royal Canadian Air Force and government in the 1920s. It was a single-engine biplane flying boat purchased to meet a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) demand for a smaller aircraft than the Vickers Viking with a much greater rate of climb, to be suitable for forestry survey and fire protection work. The type went on to have a long and distinguished career in civil operations in Canada. Most of the topographical maps in use in Canada today are based on photos taken from these aircraft.
Finding a Vedette for the museum collection was high on the wish list for the founders of the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada. When the founders went looking for a Vedette, it became apparent that no complete examples were in existence. They quickly concluded that if the museum wanted a Vedette, they would have little choice but to build their own.
Sixty-one Canadian Vickers Vedettes were manufactured, most of which were initially used by the Royal Canadian Air Force for aerial surveying and mapping. Unfortunately, many of the Vedettes were lost. Some sank to the bottoms of lakes, some crashed and others were turned into boats. A fire at the Vickers factory in Montreal had long since destroyed all of the designs and blueprints–further complicating matters for the museum’s founders.
Three separate Vedettes were used to generate information for the museum’s replica.
The first was Vedette, G-CASW, which had crashed into a mountain on Porcher Island in British Columbia while conducting a forest fire survey. The crew escaped the incident without injury, and their crash report led museum investigators to the site of the dilapidated wreck 70 years later. What remained of the wooden hull was lifted off the mountain by helicopter, and transported back to Winnipeg for examination and preservation.
The second was Vedette, CF-MAG, which was owned by the Manitoba Government Air Service. In 1937, the Air Service had already begun phasing out the aging Vedettes from the fleet and so when the engine failed–forcing the pilot to land in a swamp near Cormorant Lake in northern Manitoba–the Air Service decided to abandon and torch CF-MAG. This turned out to be a stroke of luck because the museum’s dive team–which found the wreck in 1975 and recovered much of the fuselage in 1977– discovered that charring from the fire had preserved many delicate wooden fragments of the wings and hull.
Preserved pieces of a third Vedette were loaned to the museum by the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. These fragments would form the groundwork for the creation of blueprints. Thankfully, restoration volunteer Doug Newey, who had recently retired from Bristol Aerospace, had worked at the Vickers plant in Montreal, building Vedette wing struts early in his career. By memory and painstaking examination of the assembled Vedette remains, Newey was able to reproduce calculations and drawings that were used to create a set of blueprints. These are the only set of Vedette blueprints in existence.
The powerplane was an Armstrong Siddeley Lynx IV 7-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 215 hp.
Despite all that horsepower, cruise speed was 75 mph!
During the Second World War, trainee fighter pilots received primary flight training in the de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane before moving on to the more advanced North American Harvard. In 1948, both aircraft were replaced in RCAF service by the DHC-1 Chipmunk, the first aircraft entirely designed and produced by de Havilland Canada. Following the adoption of the Canadair CT-114 Tutor jet trainer in 1962, the RCAF decided that a propeller-driven primary trainer was no longer needed, and the Chipmunk was retired and not replaced. However, the Tutor proved more difficult to fly than anticipated, with trainee pilots suffering a washout rate of nearly 60%. In response, in 1967 the RCAF hastily reintroduced the Chipmunk while it searched for a more modern replacement.
In 1971, the RCAF adopted a militarized version of the popular Beechcraft B23 Musketeer light general aviation aircraft, under the designation CT-134. The type was chosen due to its docile handling characteristics and the RCAF’s longstanding relationship with Beechcraft, which produced the Air Force’s C-45 Expeditor twin-engined transport and navigation trainer. The aircraft was lightly modified for military use through the addition of strakes (fins) to the cowling, horizontal stabilizer, and lower fuselage to improve its stall / spin characteristics. An initial batch of 24 aircraft was purchased in March 1971, serving at No.3 Canadian Forces Flying Training School in Portage la Prairie and the Canadian Forces Central Flying School in Winnipeg. These were subsequently replaced in 1982 by a second batch of 24 aircraft based on the C23 Sundowner model, designated the CT-134A Musketeer II.
The aircraft was well-received by instructors and student pilots alike and significantly increased the pass rate for jet pilots training on the Tutor. The Musketeer trained around 5,000 Canadian pilots before being retired in 1992, when it was replaced by the Slingsby Firefly. Today, the RCAF uses the turboprop-powered Beechcraft Harvard II and the jet-powered BAE Systems Hawk as its primary flight trainers.
A Schweizer SGU-2-22E soars overhead.
Gliders or sailplanes have long been used to give prospective pilots their first taste of flight, while the sport of soaring is enjoyed by tens of thousands of enthusiasts worldwide. And one of the longest-lived and most successful manufacturers of both training and sport gliders is the Schweizer Aircraft Corporation, headquartered in Horseheads, New York State.
Brothers Ernie, Paul, and William Schweizer built and flew their first glider in 1930, working out of their father’s barn. The glider – and their subsequent designs – were single-seat, meaning the brothers had to effectively teach themselves to fly. Encouraged by these early successes, in 1937 the brothers moved to Elmira, New York, and founded the Schweizer Metal Aircraft Company. Sales were slow at first due to the ongoing Great Depression, with the company only producing 2-3 gliders per year.
This changed in 1939 when the U.S. Army learned of Germany’s advanced glider program. Due to the Treaty of Versailles signed following the First World War, Germany was forbidden from having its own air force. When the Nazis came to power, they began secretly re-arming the armed forces, using various deceptions to get around the conditions of the Treaty. This included designing civil airliners that could easily be converted into military bombers and transports, and setting up hundreds of gliding clubs to train future Luftwaffe (air force) pilots. The Germans even developed gliders into an effective weapon of war, capable of quickly and silently delivering a squad of fully-armed paratroops onto a target with pinpoint accuracy. The Germans would make effective use of combat gliders and conventional paratroops in their lightning invasions of Denmark, Belgium, and The Netherlands in the summer of 1940.
Upon learning of the German glider program, the U.S. Army decided it also needed combat gliders – as well as smaller aircraft to train glider pilots. Schweizer met this need with the two-seat SGS 2-8 and SGS 2-12, the latter of which featured wooden wings to free up valuable aluminum for other military aircraft. 170 of these aircraft were built during the war and used to train hundreds of glider pilots for the D-Day invasion and other airborne operations. After the war, many SGS 2-8s and 2-12s were sold off as surplus and became highly popular with private gliding clubs.
However, the war-surplus gliders were less than ideal for teaching first-time civilian pilots. They had high stall speeds and could only be launched by aero-tow and not winch or auto-tow as was commonly practiced by smaller gliding clubs. So, in 1946 Schweizer produced the SGU 2-22 specifically for the civilian market. It proved highly successful, with almost 260 being manufactured between 1946 and 1967.
The SGU-2-22E on display in the Museum, C-FACL, was built in 1965 and used by the Royal Canadian Air Cadets from 1973 to 1997.
