Pilot training

Heroes Remember

Pilot training

Transcript

The initial training, that was pretty well where you started to find out the parts of an air craft and rules and regulations, and deportment, and navigation, weather, everything went through. That would be about eight weeks. That was in Saskatoon. And then we were up to the initial flying, the elementary flying training school in Prince Albert, and that was again another about eight weeks and that was where you had your first experience with an aircraft and that was on Tiger Moths. And you were I guess about 40 hours on the Tiger Moth and you were able to safely taxi it and take off and circle around, go where you were supposed to, come back and land and park the aircraft back and not damage anything. And then we came back down to Saskatoon to the flying training, service flying training and we were on larger twin engines. By that time they seemed fairly large, they were Cessna Cranes, they were capable of holding five or six people. So they were an improvement over the Tiger Moth. And we ended up putting in, oh around 80 or so hours. I would have to check my log book to be sure, but around 80, 90 hours, and at the end of that we were graduated as pilots and presented our wings.

Description

Mr. Campbell discusses the various training steps necessary to become a pilot, and flying the Tiger Moth and Cessna Crane, two of the Air Force’s training aircraft.

John Campbell

John Campbell was born in October, 1923 in Coleman, Alberta. He was the younger of two brothers. His father was a coal miner and Mr. Campbell credits the mine’s support of the local school for his good education. Following the death of both his parents, he went into the mine. Because of the diverse ethnic mix in Coleman, the onset of war saw many miners return home to serve in their respective forces. He enlisted in 1942, joining the Air Force and becoming a bomber pilot. He finished his full complement of thirty-two missions with the same crew. After the war he remained in the Air Force and was a first responder on the DEW Line.

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