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Canadians will bear witness to an historic event in 2009 as one of the most famous aircraft to have served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) tours Canada as the mainstay of the Centennial Heritage Flight celebrating 100 years of powered flight in Canada.
The project is hailed as Hawk One and was conceptualized during a simple conversation among friends, a visionary group of aviators from both the military and civilian aviation communities. From an inspiration to salute Canada’s aviation heritage was born the nucleus of a team who are restoring and will soon fly a Canadair F-86 Sabre.
Their vision was to showcase to Canadians a tangible platform that will help commemorate Canada’s 100th anniversary of powered flight. And what better way to achieve this purpose than the rebirth of a legendary aircraft that served Canada exceptionally well during the fledgling years of jet aviation. Thanks to Vintage Wings of Canada and the Canadian Forces, in partnership with generous corporate sponsorship, that vision will become a reality.
The F-86 Sabre that will form the backbone of the Centennial Heritage Flight is a Canadair Sabre 5 that originally bore the RCAF serial number 23314. Manufactured in 1954, it was the 1,104th Sabre to come off the Canadair assembly line. It has been retrofitted with wings equipped with leading edge slats and an Orenda 14 engine, thus bearing all the resemblance of a Sabre 6. Purchased by Vintage Wings in October 2007, it is being refurbished in the colours of the RCAF’s most famous aerobatic team, the Golden Hawks, which thrilled millions of Canadians coast-to-coast from 1959 to 1963. Hence the moniker, “Hawk One.”
Among the 1,815 Sabres built under license by Canadair, 23314 had a long and varied history with the RCAF. It served with the RCAF’s No.1 Air Division in Europe with 441 Fighter Squadron in Marville, France and following its repatriation saw service at RCAF Stations Uplands (Ottawa) and Trenton, Ontario as well as Chatham, New Brunswick, birthplace of the Golden Hawks. Of significant coincidence, seven former Golden Hawk pilots (Flight Lieutenant’s Ed Rozdeba, B.R. Campbell, George Miller, Ed McKeogh, Al Young, Dave Barker and C.B. Lang), all flew the aircraft at some stage during their RCAF careers, the latter four while the aircraft was actually assigned to the Golden Hawks in Trenton as a training aircraft during the height of the team’s popularity. This same aircraft was also the F-86 flown by F/L Terry Elphick in 1967 as a member of the Sabre Transition Unit’s (STU) Centennial Sabre Team that toured Canada. He recalls those magical days:
“F-86 23314 was ‘my’ aircraft. My uncle, Maxwell Elphick, worked for Canadair and sent my father a series of pictures of 23314 in the 1950's. At that time I was drawing pictures of F-86s in my schoolbooks and when I saw these pictures I swore I would fly ‘314’ some day. Later my dream was to fly 23314 with the Golden Hawks. When I arrived at RCAF Stn Chatham and saw 23314, I flew it at every opportunity. By 1967 it was known as ‘Terry's aircraft,’ and it is the aircraft I flew with Bernie Reid, Mark Constantine and Reg Kendrick when we toured Canada in 1967. I often wondered what happened to it and was delighted to see it in ‘Going for Gold’ in the Fall issue of Airforce Magazine.”
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