Replica fighters from Great War fly into city
Gord Cooper spent much of his Royal Canadian Air Force career flying fast jets — the Northrop F-5 and, following its retirement, the McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet, which was, and remains, the country’s newest fighter.
Now the veteran pilot, who spends his days steering Air Canada Boeings through the skies, is making the most of an opportunity to take the controls of Canada’s first fighter — a replica the Nieuport 11 that is much older, much slower and yet much more meaningful.
“When I flew over Vimy Ridge and some of the other cemeteries we did a flypast for, there was never a dry eye in any cockpit,” Cooper said this week in an interview.
“There’s so much Canadian blood on the soil of France,” he continued.
Cooper grew up near North Battleford and spent much of his youth reading about the exploits of such First World War “aces” from Canada as William Barker, Billy Bishop and Raymond Collishaw before earning his pilot’s licence as an air cadet.
Earlier this year, he became a member of Vimy Flight, which ex-military aviator Allan Snowie conceived as a way to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which Canadian troops stormed over four days in early April 1917.
In April, the 10 pilots took their 7/8-scale Nieuports to France and flew over the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, the limestone monument that has towered over the quiet battlefield since it was erected in 1936.
Because relatively few Canadians made it to France for the anniversary, Cooper said, the pilots are spending the summer flying across the country, stopping at local airports to show off their Nieuports and encourage people to remember.
“We want to get the message out to the younger generation,” he said.
“I’m 55 now and I remember as a young air cadet meeting World War One veterans and speaking to them first-hand, (but now) they’re all gone.”
The tour began in May at a Canadian Forces Base in Nova Scotia and is scheduled to end in Victoria in mid-October. Starting today, Cooper and the other pilots will spend three days at the Saskatoon airport.
“It’s educational, especially for the younger generation, and for the older generation it’s to remind them perhaps of the sacrifice that was given back then,” Cooper said of the tour, which includes presentations and some flying if the weather permits.
Introduced in 1916, the Nieuport 11 — nicknamed “Bébé by the men who flew it — was flown by Bishop and other Canadian pilots before being replaced by the larger, more powerful Nieuport 17.
Vimy Flight’s replicas include modern engines rather than the original Le Rhone rotary power plants.
But Cooper said the diminutive fighter is still a handful to fly — even for the Vimy Flight pilots who have 20,000 or more hours in the air.
Flying them across the country is a challenge in itself, as the Nieuports cruise around the same speed as cars on the highway, he said, adding that he wouldn’t have missed the opportunity for anything.
“I feel like I’m living in a dream right now. As a child I never imagined I could fly these same kind of airplanes, and fly over the battlefields and see some of the old trenches … (At Vimy) the scars are still on the earth down below.”