Page 5 - June2018

having two aircraft on 15 minutes' alert. "At night, they "You didn't mind flying in the 'crud' because you
usually called it off and went to the bar. knew you'd be all right!"
Very quickly, though, ADC got more serious. One of the The 4B also featured improved engines and wingtip
hangars at North Bay was converted into an "alert barn" rocket pods. "Takeoff to 35,000 feet in six minutes,"
open 24 hours a day. A lounge, games room, and Lyons marveled. "The engines (Orenda 11s) were
sleeping quarters were were constructed and hot meals more powerful than the airframe could stand; that
brought over from the mess. In each 24-hour shift, an was the only drawback." Even better things seemed
alert crew spent four hours on 15-minute alert, four on in store when W/C Ireland got his charges into the
one-hour alert, four on five-minute alert (sitting in their Malton factory of Avro Canada, where Lyons sat in
cockpits) before repeating this cycle, "and then you were the cockpit of a prototype Avro CF-105 Arrow. "That
off for a couple of days." Lyons, logged his first scramble was our hope, we figured, coming from the CF-100
(a USAF B-47 at 36,000 feet) on Nov. 8, 1954. "I even when it became obsolete. We figured we'd transition
went in front of him and did a roll -- which I got reported onto it."
for. Nobody told me that I couldn't do that."
At the other end of the technological spectrum were
ADC's targets ranged from airliners that had gone off RCAF auxiliary squadrons' DeHavilland Vampires.
courses to B-29s ("at 500 feet!") to B-47s above 40,000 One particularly sad day saw one of the RCAF's
feet. Thusit was that he and his navigator found Montreal auxiliary squadrons, operating from North
themselves high over northern Ontario one night, rolling Bay on a summer exercise, have two aircraft collide
in for an ident pass on several bogies. (killing one pilot), while another Vampire went off
the end of the runway, with the tiny plywood aircraft
"Oh, Jesus! Our overtake is too much!" Lyons heard his
navigator say. "We're going to go right through him!" breaking up and killing the pilot. "They just packed
up and went home," said Lyons.
Dodging and slowing at the same time, they zipped past
one target, then another until Lyons bled off speed by Life in 419 Squadron was not all work, no sirree.
lowering the flaps. "What could it be?" they wondered -- Unmarried officers lived in the mess, making for "a
until the Clunk's landing lights showed the massive lot of activity and camaraderie" and an exhaustive
outline of a 10-engined USAF B-36. "I'd never seen one regime of sports and parties. W/C Ireland would
at that altitude and it was just hanging in the sky," Lyons appear in the ops room daily at 0700h, check the
recalled, marveling 40 years later at the B-36's sheer weather and inevitably get ready to fly, sending his
size. "I've talked to B-36 crews since then and they said, aircraft off -- including himself -- at 15-minute
yeah, they'd get up there and go around the world. It intervals, often with instructions to shoot landings at
would take forever." Uplands, home of 428 Squadron's CF-100s. He'd
phone W/C "Big Ed " Smith, (CO of 428) and say, "Ed,
Less spectacular targets included F-86 Sabres, the RCAF's
two DeHavilland Comet jet transports and occasionally is it noisy? There's nobody in the air there! This, of
course, made for rivalry. They really liked to do this
the CF-100's American USAF equivalent, the
at F-86 bases because those dudes never flew in bad
underpowered Northrop F-89 Scorpion. Lyons said Clunk
crews took great delight in getting up to, say, 35,000 weather."
feet, pulling alongside a wallowing Scorpion, "which had A deployment to Uplands while North Bay's runways
taken a week and three days to get up there, roll and were repaired saw the high-spirited Moosemen
then climb away from him. They couldn't believe that! deposit a 250-lb. boulder in a 428 Squadron NCO's
"Such things were particularly easy on the Mark 4B bed. "Not too surprisingly, a couple of nights later,"
version of the Clunk. "The difference (between it and the said Lyons, "there was a goat in our washroom."
4A) was basically that the autopilot worked," quipped
A visit by members of Bagotville's 440 Squadron to
Lyons. There were also upgraded electronics for
North Bay climaxed the disappearance of 419's
instrument flying, electric deicers on the wings and
windscreen and "alcohol (de icer) came on automatically venerable mascot, a huge stuffed moose head
and sprayed into the intakes." thought unstealable because it was wider than the
mess's door. Lyons, who had missed the Saturday