Last week the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum (CATPM) announced the arrival of a number of aircraft gifted to them from Winnipeg's Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada.
The CATPM is located just north of Brandon on the Brandon Airport grounds.
The addition of these vintage aircraft to their current collection has been a welcome sight. All date back to the 1940's when Canada trained flight crew during World War II.
Jeff Bell, Chief Pilot for the CATPM, says it's very special for everyone who takes part in the restoration and the actual flying of the aircraft, putting huge amounts of effort into the museum. He says it's also very special to take others up who have connections to the different planes, such as family members or friends who served.
"There are not as many of the veterans that are around, but taking family members and them having that connection, it's a big part of their lives. It's pretty important."
"The Harvard that we have at the museum, that I fly, my wife's grandfather instructed on that exact airplane during the war," shares Bell. "So, we have a little bit of a family connection to that which is always special to us."
Bell says the Brandon CATPM is a museum of a program that was basically designed to train air crew for the war. That program was called the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) and primarily took place in Canada. About 131,000 air crew were trained in Canada from all over the British Commonwealth.
"They would come to places like Brandon to train," he adds. "Our museum is the only one in the world that focuses exclusively on that program."
The following aircraft and aircraft parts have been recently added to the CATPM by the RAMWC:
- Bolingbroke Mk IVT – 9869 (3 photos of this aircraft are below)
- Fairchild Cornell II – FV705
- North American Harvard II – AJ555 (the yellow/green aircraft picture below)
- North American/CCF Harvard’s 2516, 2937, and an unknown Mark 4.
- Fleet Fort
- Armstrong Siddley Cheetah engines
- Jacobs L4 and L6 engines
- Kinner B5 engine
Please listen to more with Jeff Bell below!