Mind you it’s below freezing and its snowing in Labrador.<\/p>\n
I have just seen now on the other carriageway of this highway – heading in the direction of Windsor a vehicle that I am absolutely convinced is one of the big Fiat 125s.<\/p>\n
If it is, and I cant think what else it could be, it gives a lie to the old story about “Fix It Again, Tony”, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n
And quite a bit later somewhere on the road to Niagara Falls I saw an XKE – an E-type Jaguar – heading towards me. This was one of the late-model hard-top coup\u00e9 version, and when was the last time that I ever saw one of those? <\/p>\n
It wasn’t a convertible, though. And when was the last time I saw one of those?<\/p>\n
And it was round about this point that I remembered that I had forgotten to take a photograph of the Ambassador Motel where I’ve been staying just now. I’m not doing so well, am I?<\/p>\n
My road took me towards Hamilton and the airport there. And, more precisely, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum based at the airport.<\/p>\n
Such as this Bristol-Fairchild Bolingbroke, which we Europeans know much better as a Bristol Blenheim. <\/p>\n This is a reconnaissance version, as you can tell by its elongated snout. When they were taken out of service they were sold off for scrap and the shells were very popular with farmers as chicken coops and the like.<\/p>\n Even today, you can still find them on farms and in scrapyards, and a total of eight of these “wrecks” have gone into assembling this one. It is of course a Supermarine Spitfire, and the cockpit and a few other bits and pieces tell you that it’s a late-model one too.<\/p>\n As I suspected, it is indeed a late-model – a Mark XVI from April 1945 but which never saw actual combat. Again, no prizes for guessing what this aeroplane is. It’s a Douglas DC3 – the legendary Dakota. <\/p>\n It’s always been a civilian aircraft – not a converted C47 “Skytrain” like so many were. She first flew in 1939 and spent the war years flying for Eastern Airlines. It’s a Westland Lysander and you may be surprised to learn that I’ve never seen one of these “in the flesh” before.<\/p>\n Built for an Army Co-operation role, there was a mix-up over the specifications and it turned out to be totally unsuited to the task. These were the planes that, painted black, used to fly out in the dead of night to land in lonely fields deep in Occupied Europe.<\/p>\n There, they would put down Resistance leaders, bring in supplies and pick up evading or escaping airmen and the like Not very successful against front-line German fighter opposition, their deployment was much more common in the Pacific and Mitchells were the first Allied aeroplanes to drop bombs on mainland Japan.<\/p>\n This one didn’t though – it wasn’t built until 1945 and so missed the war. It was discovered on a airfield in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1975, patched up, and flew in to Hamilton under its own steam for a programme of restoration. These were carrier-based fighters (hence the fold-up wings) and were two-seaters. They carried a navigator because it’s much more difficult to concentrate on navigation over the sea – with no reference points or landmarks that a pilot might immediately recognise.<\/p>\n Although dating from 1943, this one is a “peacetime” 1951 model and comes from Australia. Loads of other aeroplanes here, but there was only really one that I was interested in seeing of course.<\/p>\n My interest though was from another point of view entirely. I blagged my way in to see the assistant-director of the museum with the express purpose of talking to her about KB882<\/a>. <\/p>\n Her response was frightening. “Ohhh – we could use it as spares for ours<\/i>!” Don’t forget – KB882 flew over Germany on wartime missions – it has far more history than the one here.<\/p>\n I’m coming round more and more to the conclusion that the only hope for the future for KB882 is that if I put my money where my mouth is and buy it myself. That has to be one of the highlights of the voyage. <\/p>\n It cheered me up a little – but only a little. I was definitely shocked to the core. It can’t have been very pleasant for anyone to have sat here behind your twin .303s watching someone with a couple of 0.5mm cannon and a barrage of 8x.303s coming swooping down towards you and knowing that you might as well just throw stones at them for all the good that your defensive armament will do. Night-fighters did most of their stalking from the rear and it’s inevitable that the rear of the Lancaster is going to be the first aiming point of the night fighter.<\/p>\n I don’t care what anyone says, the Mark I eyeball was never as good as the Lichtenstein radar carried by the nightfighters and the first warning that the rear gunner received was a fusillade of cannon shells and machine-gun bullets. Just imagine one of Barnes Wallis’ Bouncing Bombs or 10-tonne “Grand Slams” stuck up there!<\/p>\n But I had to go. So much more that I wanted to see too but here they were, throwing me out. But what a place it is, though. A museum curator who “knows the price of everything but the value of nothing” – that’s a harrowing thought.<\/p>\n Makes me wonder what else have they cut up at that museum that they are keeping quiet about?<\/p>\n And now for my last night in North America, which I’m at Fort Erie.<\/p>\n That’s Buffalo over there, and we’ve been there before<\/a> – and it seems like 100 years ago now. <\/p>\n But here we have a railway museum, the start of the Welland Canal (that enables ships to by-pass the Niagara Falls) and a few other things too; Named to celebrate 100 years of peace between the USA and Canada, construction started in 1925 and was opened to the public on 1st June 1927.<\/p>\n At the time, it was the only bridge between Niagara Falls and Minnesota across the Canada-USA border that could take road-going vehicles. Altogether, it’s 5800 feet long, which is about 1.1 miles in real money and it spans a river where the average current is about 10 mph.<\/p>\n That’s actually quite a speed for a river.![\"bristol](\"http:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/1011\/1011332.jpg\")
<\/a>The Museum tells us that its mission is “To acquire, document, preserve and maintain, a complete collection of aircraft that were flown by Canadians and the Canadian military services from the beginning of World War II to the present …”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>When I say that this is “a” Bristol-Fairchild Bolingbroke, I’m being somewhat economical with the truth. It is in fact “many” Bristol Bolingbrokes. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>No prizes for guessing what this one is. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>Another aeroplane in here that never saw combat – although it certainly was old enough to do so, is this one.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>Now here’s an aeroplane that I’ve been looking forward to seeing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>However, its slow speed (stalling at only 65 mph), very short take-off and landing requirement and rather spacious interior soon found the aeroplane ideally suited for another role. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>Here’s another fine example of military aviation – the very-much unsung B25 Mitchell Bomber.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>I reckoned that this was a Fairey Fleet Air-Arm machine but wasnt sure quite what it was. Subsequent enquiries revealed that it’s a Fairey Firefly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>The museum is the proud possessor of one of the very few remaining Avro Lancasters – and furthermore one of the only three that still flies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>That is what I call sinister and that will be an even worse fate than that which it is currently experiencing. I rather wish that I hadn’t said anything now. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>I went off to seethe … "is this a typing error or a Freudian slip?" – ed<\/em> … aeroplane and had a wander around inside it and a sit at the controls.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>I actually felt quite sorry for the poor people who spent all of their air-time crouched over these guns.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>but the position which no-one wanted to occupy – unless he was a complete psycopath – was the rear gunner.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>The museum was in a hurry to close (have I been here THAT long?) but I had just enough time to stick my head inside the bomb bay.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a> Port Erie is just like Windsor – a Canadian city with a big American City just across the River Niagara there.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>Like a big bridge – the Peace bridge of 1927 in fact.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>As you admire the colour changes, let me tell you that the bridge is built of 9800 tons of steel – of which 9,000 tons is in the structure and 800 tons as reinforcement in the concrete.<\/p>\n
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