With the topographical survey in the North over for the year, Carl left Vancouver in early September in CF-FZX and flew via Squamish, Lillooet, Williams Lake and Prince George to the Alcan base camp in a total flying time of 10 hours and 20 minutes. He went to work immediately, flying the surveyors over the proposed route and transporting the seven passengers and 19,300 pounds (8,754 kilograms) of freight required to set up the work camps at the base of Kildala Pass. After 40 hours flying time spread over 13 days, he returned to Vancouver for a major overhaul of the helicopter.
He was back in the Kildala Pass area by October 12. During his absence, construction crews had started to build a cabin at the lower test site to house the recording crews, and they had cut a trail between it and base camp for emergency maintenance during winter. Over the next eight days, Carl hauled the crew and all the freight needed to complete the tower construction and brought in the recording equipment. The towers, which had been prefabricated in Vancouver so they could be transported by helicopter, were delivered by ship to a large float at the mouth of the Kildala River where Carl had set up a base. One by one, the tower sections were strapped onto the carriers on each side of the helicopter and lifted to the construction sites. At the upper test site this required the helicopter to carry each load from sea level to 5,300 feet (1,615 metres). As the snow line was creeping steadily down the mountains, Carl was under a lot of pressure, but he completed the job by October 20.
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Meanwhile, in addition to more pilots and engineers, the company needed more space, and they built a hangar and offices at Vancouver’s south terminal at a cost of $120,000. They also needed someone to run the office, a job that both Carl and Alf hated, and they were happy when the wife of a friend jumped at the opportunity. Ada Carlson stayed with the company as the executive secretary until her retirement in 1963. “It wasn’t much of a job to begin with,” she recalled, “just a corner of the old Queen Charlotte Airlines hangar. They didn’t even have a ladies’ washroom; I had to go across to the airport terminal.”15
Unfortunately, the vice-president of OAS, A.L. Johnson, died suddenly about this time. Although he had only been with them a few years, he had taken charge of operations, releasing Carl from the administrative duties. Now as well as resuming those duties, Carl continued his efforts to consolidate the company, lobby the directors for more equipment, prepare the operations manual and develop a syllabus for a flight-training program. He also contacted Bell about the shortcomings of the Bell 47 for mountain and northern operations—shortcomings that included the machine’s open cockpit, its under-powered 175-horsepower Franklin engine and wheels rather than skids. Because he had become recognized as an expert in mountain flying and OAS was one of the few commercial operators in North America, Bell listened to his advice. At the same time, a young helicopter designer named Stanley Hiller, whose Hiller 360 had been the first helicopter to fly across the United States back in 1948, had been working on a new machine that was similar in size to the Bell 47 and already included some of the features that Carl had recommended. However, after his initial investigation of the Hiller machine, Carl decided it needed more testing in the field and instead chose to continue pressing Bell for further improvements.
The early 1950s also saw the start of the company’s unique Mountain Flying School in Penticton. As soon as Carl had started flying in the mountains, he had realized how many of the parameters such as winds, air pressure, altitude, temperature and airflow impacted the helicopter’s performance, and he had begun taking detailed notes. Those notes and his experience as an instructor led to the development of a training manual and eventually to the establishment of a training school. In addition to 75 hours in the air and large doses of ground-school training, to graduate each pilot had to put in time in the maintenance shop working on the helicopters to become familiar with the mechanical aspects of the machine.
▲ Igor Sikorsky and Orville Wright in 1943 at Wright Field for the handover of the first VS-300 to the US Army. Photo courtesy of Sikorsky Historical Archives
▲ Igor Sikorsky wearing his famous fedora while flying the VS-300, which was first flown on September 14, 1939. Photo courtesy of Sikorsky Historical Archives
1951
With more work pending, in 1951 OAS acquired Bell 47 CF-FJA from Kenting Aviation, an eastern Canadian company, for the sum of $15,000; CF-FJA had been the first licensed helicopter in Canada. Carl also contacted Igor Sikorsky about acquiring two S-55s, which Alcan wanted to purchase because of their increased payloads. Sikorsky, one of the world’s great innovators in fixed-wing aircraft design, had built one of the first successful helicopters in the world, the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, its single main rotor and small anti-torque rotor establishing the classic configuration for helicopter design. By 1942 a military version of the VS-300 was in production as the R4, but the machine really came into its own during the Korean War (1950–53) as the S-55. In 1951, when Carl approached Sikorsky, the S-55 did not have commercial certification and, with the military still absorbing all of Sikorsky’s output, none were available. However, he was confident that situation would soon change.
The new round of OAS recruits at this time included pilot Fred Snell, a former RAF wing commander who had flown just about every type of aircraft used for transport and combat. He had come to Canada after the war and held a number of jobs in the lumber industry and agriculture, ending up in Penticton where he met Carl, who hired him on the spot. Next came Pete Cornwall, a young fixed-wing bush pilot from Kamloops who had become enthralled with helicopters. Another highly qualified applicant, Don Poole, joined on May 18; an RCAF-trained pilot who had served with Bomber Command, Don later became the chief pilot of the Penticton Mountain Flight Training School, where he trained many military pilots.
On the engineering side, the company hired Bill Smith in April 1951; Bill went on to become chief inspector for Okanagan’s Vancouver base. The next hired was Gordon Askin, who had also trained in the RCAF and worked for QCA. In time Gordon would become the general manager of Canadian Helicopters Overhaul, the subsidiary company that specialized in component overhaul. Both men were highly qualified airline engineers who gave up secure jobs to become part of this new industry, one that challenged them with technology and terrain and required exceptional improvisational skills.
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On February 11, 1951, Bill McLeod and Jock Graham set off from Vancouver for Kitimat in the open-cockpit CF-FZN for the 405-mile (652-kilometre), seven-hour trip to Kemano. En route they landed at the dock at Butedale (now deserted) on Princess Royal Island for fuel. While Bill went off to see someone, Jock waited on the dock. A local man came down to look at the helicopter, moved the cyclic and wandered around to where Jock was sitting.
Jock addressed him in the Hollywood version of an Indian lingua franca. “How!” he said. “Heap big machine, eh?”
The Indian studied the small Bell for a few seconds. “Mmm,” he agreed gravely, “but not nearly as big as the Sikorsky S-51.”16
It seems that an S-51 had landed on Princess Royal on its way to look for the 12-man crew of a United States Air Force B-36, en route from Alaska to Fort Worth, Texas, who had bailed out after their plane had lost two of its engines to icing.
Once at their destination, Bill and Jock were put right to work positioning the survey crews before the arrival of the construction crews who were building a 10-mile (16-kilometre) road from the powerhouse on the Kemano River to the Gardner Canal. Bill also flew the engineers in to check the test towers. Their base for all this work was a barge anchored in Kemano Bay, which, in addition to acting as a landing platform, provided very