SC airport memorial honours wartime fatalities at flying training school
Seventeen young aviators lost their lives in flying accidents while stationed at the flying training school at the Swift Current airport during the Second World War.
A memorial was installed at the airport during Remembrance Week to recognize and honour their wartime sacrifice.
The display featured 17 white crosses and an engine cowling from a wartime aircraft similar to the planes used for training at this aerodrome.
Airport Superintendent Todd Schultz said the No. 39 Service Flying Training School at Swift Current was one of approximately 100 British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) training bases across Canada. “We set up the display out of respect for Remembrance Day and to honour those that lost their lives, but also to educate the public of the rich military history that this airport and this community has,” he said. “Many of these BCATP airports function to this day as a community or a municipal aerodrome, and I think there’s a lot of people that still aren’t aware of where they originated.”
The flying training school at Swift Current was in operation from December 1941 to March 1944 and over 1,000 pilots earned their wings here.
“Although it was far removed from the theatre of war in Europe at the time, it was not immune to hazards inherent with flight training,” he said. “These were young men flying relatively powerful aircraft. So 17 personnel were lost throughout the course of the operation of the base.”
According to Schultz the flight training at Swift Current initially took place on single-engine Harvard aircraft, but it then became a site for twin-engine flight training on mostly Airspeed Oxford and also Avro Anson aircraft.
“It was intermediate training here,” he said. “So everybody arriving here would have begun their training at an elementary flying training school and progressed on to intermediate aircraft here. What began as North American Harvard aircraft being flown, eventually changed to twin-engine aircraft to train bomber flight crews.”
The memorial display at the airport featured a pole with a British flag in recognition of another historical aspect of the flying training school at Swift Current.
“This site was somewhat unique in that it was staffed with Royal Air Force members,” he said. “So those would be British officers at this particular base. The flight training candidates came from throughout the Commonwealth. So New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Canada. But this one was staffed with British officers.”
The 17 aviators killed during training at Swift Current included trainees as well as flight instructors. Their ages varied between 19 and 28 years old. One came from New Zealand and all the others were from the United Kingdom. They are buried in the military section of the Mount Pleasant cemetery in Swift Current.
The memorial display was installed by Kelly Peterson, who is the airport operations coordinator. It has been put up for several years, starting around 2018.
However, he was unable to do it last year, because the ground froze too early. He believes it is important to remember the individuals who lost their lives while attending the flying training school at Swift Current.
“I have nobody in my family that served in any type of military that I know of, but these people put their time and effort into training,” he said. “They came from overseas to Canada. They knew what they were training for, but they didn’t know what they were coming to. So I just think it’s something that we just don’t want to forget.”
He became aware of the wartime history of the airport when he began working there and then found out about the 17 fatalities.
“So it sparked my interest more and that it would be nice to keep that history and to give it a bit of a memorial,” he said. “So I just decided one day to go get some lumber and make up some crosses. And with Remembrance Day around the corner when I was doing it, I thought it would be perfect to display it right on Remembrance Day. … I just added to and built it. We found the engine cowling and made it a little more presentable.”
The engine cowling is from an Airspeed Oxford or Avro Anson, but which one has not been determined. It has the distinctive yellow paint colour associated with aircraft at BCATP training bases.
The cowling came from a farm in the area. Pieces of these wartime airplanes ended up on farms after the war, because the Swift Current airport became a decommissioning site. Farmers acquired these disabled aircraft to salvage any materials from them. In recent years some items have been donated to the airport, including several engine cowlings and a section of an aircraft wing.
Several years ago, the remnants of a twin-engine Avro Anson were relocated to the airport from a farmer’s field south of Swift Current. It is now sitting on a cement pad next to the remaining Second World War aircraft hangar at the airport.
Another wartime structure still standing at the airport is a 25-feet tall and 75-feet wide cement wall that was part of a firing range for air gunner training. There is also an interpretative trail with 14 panels on the airport grounds that can be visited by the public. Each panel contains historical images and provides details about an aspect of the wartime use of the airport.