The Immortal Beaver. Sean Rossiter

      The Immortal Beaver

       THE WORLD’S GRATEST BUSH PLANE

       SEAN ROSSITER

      Copyright © 1996 by Sean Rossiter

      First paperback edition 1999

      99 00 01 02 03 5 4 3 2 1

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (Canadian Reprography Collective), Toronto, Ontario.

      Douglas & McIntyre

      2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201

      Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 4S7

       Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

      Rossiter, Sean, 1946–

       The immortal Beaver

      ISBN 1-55054-724-0

      1. Beaver (Transport planes). I. Title.

      TL686.D4R67 1996 387’.73343 C96-910459-6

      Editing by Robin Brass

      Cover & text design by Peter Cocking

      Front cover photo by Graham Osborne

      Airplane diagrams by Rhonda Ganz & Peter Cocking

      Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

      Printed on acid-free paper

      The publisher gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and of the British Columbia Ministry of Tourism, Small Business and Culture. The publisher also acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

      Contents

       Acknowledgements

       Preface Beavers return to Dick Hiscock’s watery backyard

       Chapter One The Beaver takes off

       Chapter Two First to fight: Jaki Jakimiuk and the PZL fighters

       Chapter Three Downsview goes to war

       Chapter Four One thousand Mosquitoes

       Chapter Five Fred Buller joins DHC

       Chapter Six DHC-X: Halfway to greatness

       Chapter Seven Phil Garratt’s half-ton flying pickup truck becomes the Beaver

       Chapter Eight But will it fly? Testing the Beaver

       Chapter Nine Russ Bannock takes the brass fishing

       Chapter Ten Fort Rucker, Alabama, to Wanganui, New Zealand

       Chapter Eleven The Turbo Beaver

       Chapter Twelve Adventure stories from the moody Pacific Coast

       Chapter Thirteen Beavers better than new

       Chapter Fourteen Under the weather

       Chapter Fifteen FHB’s last flight

       Appendix

       Endnotes

       Bibliography

       Index

      Acknowledgements

      This project originated with the photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, who caught me in a moment of weakness—leaving a downtown Vancouver bar, where he had been drinking soda water and I beer—and asked me to write a magazine article about the de Havilland Beaver. He wanted to photograph the aircraft and needed someone to write an article for him to illustrate. I said sure. This is one of the few promises made in bars that I have kept.

      The article, headlined “The Beaver Then and Now,” appeared in the Georgia Straight. It explained the Beaver’s importance as today’s sole means of transport to many outposts along the British Columbia coast and was a finalist for a 1995 Western Magazine Award. Straight editor Charles Campbell deserves credit for buying an arcane idea, and the final result reflected careful editing and fact-checking by Martin Dunphy and Naomi Pauls. Scott McIntyre read that article and suggested this book.

      In a coincidence that is unprecedented in my twenty-three years of freelance writing, Western Living magazine’s Sue Fisher asked me to write a Canadian Classics column on the Beaver at the same time. Editor-in-chief Paula Brook gracefully confirmed the assignment anyway, and that piece focused on the engineering decisions that resulted in the Beaver’s distinctive silhouette.

      Aside from Dick Hiscocks, who has been available to me over more than two years for several formal interviews and numberless editorial chores, a number of survivors from the impressive de Havilland Canada team that conceived, designed and built the Beaver were generous with their time, memories and materials. First among these is Russ Bannock, the Beaver’s first test pilot and later president of the company during the difficult period of its ownership by the federal government. George Neal followed Bannock into the left-hand seat of CF-FHB, the prototype Beaver, certified it for float operation, and gave me an account of his occasionally-dangerous test flights. Neal is, like Bannock, a member of Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame.

      CF-FHB was registered in honour of Fred H. Buller, its chief design engineer and the man who more than any other was responsible for DHC’S successful postwar line of Short Takeoff and Landing (STOL) aircraft. His widow, Betty, and son, Christopher, offered personal insights into the wide-ranging mind and creative engineering approach of their husband and father. Chris, a heart surgeon, met Ernest Krahulec after performing a quadruple-bypass on his father’s wartime colleague, who filled me in on Fred’s pre-DHC contribution to the war effort and Krahulec’s own years working on FHB.

      Others from the DHC team who offered unique perspectives were Bill Burlison, whose experimental shop constructed FHB, and Charlie Smith, who worked all night in the stores