Page 4 - June2018

created as the RCAF's contribution to NATO.

Terry Lyons -- Interceptor pilot
BY Will Chabun
Whatever it was, it was big -- and slow.
Searching the northern Ontario were a young RCAF pilot
officer and his navigator, snug in the seats of an Avro CF-
100 interceptor.

Only during the first three years of the Second World
War has the RCAF formed and deployed more units.
Only one problem: Lyons and his fellow hotshots had
formed a poor impression of the CF-100, which had
been beset by production and testing problems --
and bore uninspiring nicknames like "Clunk" and
"Lead Sled". Lyons' course had been at North Bay
mere days when its members watched a CF-100 roll
onto its back and crash, killing both crewmen.

It was fortunate, then, that their mood was sensed
Terry Lyons' air force career typifies the RCAF in its by OTU instructors, headed by the highly respected
postwar "golden era". Raised in Regina, he found himself W/C Bob Braham, a 29-victory RAF night-fighter ace
a bit bored with high school. He graduated, then enlisted who emigrated postwar to Canada. He even solved
in the RCAF, moving through its aircrew selection unit in the mystery of that luckless CF-100's crash when his
London, Ont., and a succession of schools: own Canuck went into a similar roll. The veteran
Braham controlled and landed, whereupon the
* 3 Flying Training School at Claresholm, Alberta, soloing
in a Harvard (on March 16, 1953); problem was spotted: a broken actuator on a flap.
Another instructor, F/L Jimmie Dyer, put Lyons into
* 2 Advanced Flying School at RCAF Station Portage
the back seat of a CF-100, took him up to about
(where he was in the first course on the new T-33A-N jet
20,000 feet -- and shut down one engine. "You guys
trainer;
don't think you like this machine...I'll show you what
* 1 Pilot Weapons School at nearby Macdonald, and it's going to do," said Dyer, who proceeded to put
finally, in the spring of 1954; the Clunk through a series of strenuous aerobatics.

* 3 (All-Weather Fighter) Operational Training Unit at "I was convinced," Lyons said. "It was a good
North Bay, using then then-new CF-100 Mk. 3. machine if it could do all that on one engine".

So rapid was the buildup of the Cold War RCAF than SQUADRON LIFE
none of these training units was in existence three years.
As the RCAF's Air Defence Command (of which 419
The fighter squadron, No. 419, to which Lyons reported was part) gained aircraft and personnel it also came
on Sept. 1, 1954 was one of nine CF-100 interceptor
squadrons formed between April 1953 and November to grips with its assignment: protecting Canada from
aerial attack.
1954; these in addition to the 12 F-86 Sabre units being

When Lyons arrived, 419 Squadron was responsible for