Low Flying Incident in Flight School

Heroes Remember

Low Flying Incident in Flight School

Transcript

And one day after, this is after I finally got my solo and it took me I think it was seven hours of instruction from my instructor and then he said, "You're ready to go solo." so off I went and that was a great day to be up by yourself and feel that you've done it. So I guess about a week or two after I was, that I had soloed and I was flying pretty well every day on my own, I got an idea that I should go down and pay my respects to my old alma mater. So I flew down to Bishops, it was not a great long flight, probably about a fifteen minute flight and when I got down there it happened to be about, it seemed to me it was sort of two o'clock in the afternoon and I approached from the west and I came down and there's what we call a quadrangle, a huge quadrangle and the school, main school building was on the right, the big indoor hockey rink was on the left and at the head was a huge building which was a dining room and a library. Well I came down right into this quadrangle, touched my wheels and pulled up over the dining room library building. Well the school just turned out en masse, I mean just everybody was leaning out windows and waving you know they thought this was a wonderful thing. Well the reason I'm telling this story is that when I got back to Windsor Mills I got out of the air plane and I said to myself, "Finely, you are a horse's ass. You're just plain stupid. Somebody could report you for doing that and you'd just not only not get your wings, but you would be turfed right out of the air force, a low flying stunt like that." So that brought me to my senses, not that I could retract anything, it was done. Fortunately for me nobody did report it. But, years later there's a fella here in Ottawa who is a retired brigadier general and his name is Mike Doyle and Mike Doyle was at the school with me but he was a couple of grades behind me. So when I came in and made this pass and he was about to graduate from Bishops, he said, "That's for me, air force for me." And he said it was what I did that made him want to join the Air Force.

Description

Mr. Finley tells about the time he decided to give a thrill to the students at his childhood school by touching down his plane on school property.

Hartland Ross Finley

Hartland Ross Finley was born on August 19, 1921 in Montreal, Quebec. His father served in the First World War with the 42 Battalion (the Blackwatch of Montreal). Mr. Finley joined the Air Force shortly after the start of the Second World War. His training took place in Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island. After the completion of his training, he remained in Canada to be a flight instructor. One year later he went overseas into action. On his first mission his plane was damaged and crashed into the English Channel. Mr.Finley went on to fly many successful missions and he finished the War with five confirmed kills. Approaching the end of the War, Mr. Finley was shot down and evaded capture for two days. After leaving the service, Mr. Finley went on to have a very successful career as a commercial pilot.

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