WELCOME TO RCAF STATION PLAYGROUND, ONTARIO
When I was a child, we lived at the very edge of the city, the outermost ripple of the postwar suburban tract home malaise. We lived in a sweetly named, Mayberry-esque development called Elmvale Acres, a former farmer's hay field, just recently sown with the bland, unimaginative, yet solid houses from the era before marketing latched on to the enterprise. The homes did not have the euphonious monikers we find today – the Winchester, the Westwind, or the Appleton, but rather, my parents selected the B-2 floor plan as more suitable for their needs over the C-1 or A-2. It was a simpler time, before seat belts, timeouts for the kids, yoga, hybrid cars, reality TV and hockey helmets. Parents on our road were only responsible for getting their kids up, feeding their brood (and all the families were big in our neighborhood), dressing them, and sending them out. There was no reasoning with such numbers. Punishment, both bedroom incarceration and corporal were not seen as even remotely wrong… it was the simple and workable world of the wooden spoon, Dad's belt and “You wait till your father gets home”.
In those days, especially in the summer, I and my siblings left the house in the morning and only came home for meals, sleep and for a bath (once a week whether we needed it or not). Our clothes were ragged, our days were long and our imaginations were free… oh so free. We were expected to and we did indeed look after our own entertainment and personal interests. We were independent, free ranging urchins free to explore dangerous construction sites, road machinery, wrecking yards and abandoned farm houses.
The era was only a decade or so after the Second Word War, and our boyish imaginations were always turning our play into battles and our environments into battlefields. Living halfway between RCAF Station Uplands and RCAF Station Rockcliffe, the skies were always busy with Lancasters, Harvards, Canucks and Sabres. All my friends asked for binoculars for Christmas, and for a few summers, we carried them slung over our shoulders at all times, ready to train them on the silver belly of a low flying Lancaster. Abandoned bulldozers were tanks, treetop forts were bomber cockpits, ditches were foxholes. We frolicked in toxic industrial ponds, floating battleships made from construction scraps with spikes for guns, we carried guns carved from two by fours, “killing” each other when ever we got the chance and we constructed forts both in trees and underground. We developed written codes so our “enemies” could not figure out our plans. We were ready for anything.
For me, the summers spent in this landscape were paradise – endless, creative, exuberant, dirty and slightly dangerous. I used to think there was no better place in which to grow up… that is until a couple of weeks ago when Vintage News contributor David Russell sent me a small collection of his family photographs showing him and his brother Arnie when they were young boys of similar age to my aforementioned Elmvale Acres bliss. The images however dated from 1947 to 1949 when his father was stationed at the former RCAF training base at Picton, Ontario to maintain and care for the large numbers of surplus aircraft and military equipment stored in its hangars and on its ramps. Half of the hangars contained RCAF aircraft while the other half sheltered Canadian Army equipment, mostly antiaircraft guns. If this wasn't a fertile petrie dish for a boy's imagination, then nothing was.
One glimpse of the wild looking, shirtless and shoeless brothers roaming the runways and hangars of Picton and I knew that Elmvale Acres was not heaven after all, barely qualifying as a shopping mall nickel-a-ride mechanical horse in comparison to the full-scale amusement park that was Picton. For an airplane-addled, machine-loving, gun-carving post-war boy, there could never be a better place to grow up in than RCAF Station Picton, surrounded by aircraft, guns, used ammo, the ghosts of airmen and the echoes of thundering aircraft.
Picton was a typical British Commonwealth Air Training Plan air base, laid out with the familiar triangular runway configuration, the standard BCATP hangars, H-huts, maintenance facilities, gun butts and guard houses. During the Second World War, Picton was home to Number 31 Bombing and Gunnery School from April 1941 to November of 1944 operating aircraft such as the Bolingbroke, Anson and Lysander. After the Bombing & Gunnery School was disbanded, the RCAF established the No. 5 Reserve Equipment Maintenance Unit at Picton. This unit was responsible for aircraft storage and maintenance of the airfield itself. No.5 REMU operated until January 1946 when the unit disbanded and its functions were taken over by RCAF Station Trenton. However, aircraft remained in storage there during the following years that David and Arnie Russell lived at the base and enjoyed ranging over the place. The base was partly taken over by the Army for use as the Royal Canadian School of Artillery (Anti-Aircraft). The school provided training for anti-aircraft gunners, gunnery radar operators, technical assistants and artillery instructors. A number of operational artillery units were also located in Picton, including the 127th and 128th Medium AA Batteries, Royal Canadian Artillery (RCA) and the 2nd and 3rd Light AA Batteries of the 1st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, RCA. The RCAF also maintained a small detachment at the base to provide aircraft targets for the gunners.
Of those years, Russell writes,
“For 21/2 years in the late '40s my father was stationed at RCAF Picton, then a satellite of RCAF Station Trenton's Number 6 Repair Depot. Picton was essentially a storage depot with three hangars operated by the RCAF and the other three by the army (ack-ack, I believe). The hangars contained aircraft worth saving (in the air force's opinion) such as Cansos, Daks, Expeditors and Harvards The infield was filled with those that were destined for destruction or sale. Mainly they were Anson V's, but there were also several Walrus's, Hurricanes, Cornells and a number of Mosquitoes. At one point the infield was full of aircraft. Most of these were destroyed by burning after the engines had been removed; or they were sold to local farmers.
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“Because the Air Force had not really dealt with married personnel prior to the Second World War, the concept of Private Married Quarters was just beginning to sink in. As a result there wasn't anyplace for the Russell family to live at Picton except the base of the control tower which was converted from an administration facility to our apartment. As might be expected, it was an idyllic place for two young boys who pretty well had the run of the place including the runways. The hangar adjacent to the control tower (Picton was built in the same manner as most BCATP stations with the control tower centred and 3-4 hangars on each side) contained my Dad's "office". He was, at that time a W.O.1, with 10-15 airmen as his charges, to maintain the aircraft for his superiors at Trenton. My late brother and I were allowed access to the hangar at any time as long as we didn't go past a chalk line he drew on the hangar floor. There was a fair amount of flying as pilots came from Trenton and other stations to deliver aircraft for storage or retrieve aircraft from storage. As well, there was constant maintenance taking place in the adjacent hangar. If only my parents had taken more photos of the aircraft instead of focusing on two geeky little boys!!”
Not only were there plenty of aircraft in storage both inside and outside hangars, there was always aircraft coming and going at their “home”… More than enough to keep a young boy enthralled every day. Russell recalls the first time he experienced the power a jet aircraft,
“On one occasion, probably in the late summer of 1948 we were visited by several new RCAF Vampires. It was exciting for me as I had never seen, and more importantly, had not heard a jet. The peculiar scream of the Goblin engine in the Vampire remains with me. My recollection is that these Vampires were an aerobatic team performing at the CNE. Why they spent the night at Picton rather than Trenton or somewhere else is beyond me. In any event the Vampires were allowed to spend the night in the hangar nearest the control tower. My brother and I were permitted to "help" the airmen push these aircraft into the hangars.”
Flight magazine of Great Britain, dated July 29th, 1948 contains a brief news article about 54 Squadron RAF Vampires displaying in Canada which may or may not account for the appearance of Vampires at Picton. The article states,
“AIR MARSHAL V. A. CURTIS, Canadian Chief of Air Staff, Mr. W;. Mills, Deputy Minister of National Defence for Canada, together with Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, British High Commissioner, were among 5,000 people who witnessed the first public aerobatic display by the transatlantic de Havilland Vampires of No. 54 Squadron at Trenton, Ontario, on July 21st. S/L. Oxspring used all seven of his pilots on this occasion: "Blue Section," led by the squadron leader himself, and "Red Section," led by F/L. Wooley, did formation aerobatics which brought spontaneous applause and F/L. "Jeep" Heal put up a spectacular individual display. … On July 22nd, the Squadron saluted the city of Toronto with a fly-past which took them below the top of the Commonwealth's tallest building—the Bank of Commerce skyscraper. An aerobatic display was later put on over the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. During the following day, the Squadron saluted Montreal City and performed at St. Hubert airfield, prior to preparing to depart for Washington. The six Vampires touched down at Andrew's Field, near the capital, last Sunday.”
Virtually all the memories that David Russell has of his and Arnie's halcyon days at Picton are of wonderment, freedom and imagination set free. There was one memory which, while certainly one of great visual significance to the boys was, in hindsight, an event of an almost tragic quality as surplus aircraft were fed into the “The Big Bonfire”. David Russell remembers:
“I think some of the surplus aircraft stored in the infield were sold in flyable condition. Some were sold to local farmers for chicken coops etc. The wings were cut off these, the engines removed and they were towed away. A lot of the rest were burned at the far corner of the airfield. It was a large fire. When we arrived at Picton or shortly after there were many aircraft stored outside. By the time we moved, my recollection is there were very few. Just think of the value of those burned aircraft, many of which probably had very few hours. Mostly they were Ansons and I think Anson V's for the most part, so they would be all wood and fabric.”
A simple wooden boardwalk (visible in the photo above) lead from the family's back door in the control tower to a "man door" in the hangar closest to the station's still functioning aircraft maintenance hangars. Russell tells us of his memories of the hangar:
“My brother and I were allowed to play in that hangar as long as we didn't cross a chalk line our dad drew on the concrete floor inside that door. Particularly on rainy days we spent a lot of time in that hangar with our toys and with maintenance work going on in the rest of the hangar. At one point a Canso - painted white - was resident in the hangar for quite a while. Nobody seemed to mind our presence even though my dad's superior from 6RD [No.6 Repair Depot, Trenton -ed] would occasionally make a flying visit to check on things. He would fly over in a Cessna Crane - very noisy - and have lunch with our family. The war had just ended, the air force was a shadow of its former self and everything was very low key and laid back. Some years ago our youngest son was finishing flying training at the Moncton Fying Club. He was required to do a cross country flight in a twin engine aircraft and asked if I wanted to go with him and if so, where did I want to go. I said "Trenton, if you can obtain permission". We had a great time, flying from Fredericton-Dorval-Trenton spending the night in Trenton. We drove over to Picton when I discovered the control tower has been destroyed, but that the adjacent hangar, happily, was still being used for air cadet glider training. I didn't check to see if the chalk lines were still on the floor.”
By Dave O'Malley and Dave Russell In memory of Arnie Russell