Page 5 - Sept 2018

Yogi is never too proud to admit his own errors. “Kinda fun – in a way – unless you had to get somewhere
One of his students had done his Mach 2 run, came — because the maximum speed was 150 knots.”
out of afterburner and, to lose speed, raised his CF- Still, it was “a fun airplane to fly when you’re doing
104’s nose – and found himself at 60,000 feet. The
something in the mountains, like search and rescue.”
student reported he got out of this sticky situation
by rolling over and heading to a lower altitude, Yogi’s next posting was to the CAF’s 434 Squadron at
chastened — and frightened. Cold Lake, flying the CF-5 Freedom Fighter.
Yogi was doing some test flying on CF-104s so he
had a chance to replicate this flight. He used the
same flight profile, came out of afterburner, raised
the nose – and found his CF-104 “climbing like a
sunuvagun” until it reached 70,000 feet —
dangerously high. “The problem is that if you don’t
have a pressure suit and the engine fails or
something, your blood boils and you’re instantly
dead!”

“Kinda stupid on my part. But then, ‘lessons
learned’ and I could talk other people through it …
like, ‘When they’re going through the training,
don’t do this!’”

After flying the CF-104, Yogi went to the
Snowbirds as a solo, He called it a “political airplane” in that when the air
force went looking for a tactical fighter in the mid-1960s,
the F-5 initially didn’t make the first half-dozen or so
places on the list. (That list, according to Canadian
political folklore, included the Mirage, A-4, A-6, A-7 and
the air force’s favourite, a J-79- or RR Spey-powered
version of the F-4 Phantom.)
Yet the F-5 steadily moved up this list, perhaps because
it was cheap and could be manufactured at Canadair’s
plant in Montreal, creating plenty of jobs.

All in all, , Yogi said, it was “a fun airplane to fly,” but “a
then to his first staff job at CFB Edmonton, where Mickey Mouse” airplane for its selected role.
he had the opportunity to fly the CC-138 Twin Otter
And that role was as one of two Canadian squadrons
with 418 (Air Reserve) Squadron.
earmarked for deployment to northern Norway under
NATO plans to stop the Russian fleet from breaking out of
its base at Murmansk area in a conflict. For this, the CF-5
was woefully under-armed, with only two 20mm cannon
and CRV-7 rockets, but no navigation systems; it was
wired for a nonexistent version of the AIM-9A Sidewinder
air-to-air missiles. “People, I don’t think, ever realized
how roughly the military was being treated by the then-
government for equipment.” he said. “It was pretty sad.”