Douglas Gordon (Part 2):
The troubles with Typhoons

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

If the Germans didn’t get you, the Typhoon just might.

Flying Officer Douglas Gordon knew it only too well. Between June and August 1944, 19 Allied squadrons—his own among them—lost hundreds of the hulking aircraft and 150 pilots, many of them due to engine or structural failure.

“She was a monster; she was just a real miserable aircraft,” said Gordon, a 95-year-old native of Lachute, Que., who survived 99 combat missions at the stick of the Hawker-built plane. He flew multiple sorties on D-Day and into the Falaise Gap with 440 (City of Ottawa) Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force.

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Maggie delivers peacekeepers to the Suez Canal

On Jan. 12, 1957, HMCS Magnificent arrived at Port Said, Egypt, delivering Canadian peacekeepers for the UN Emergency Force policing the Suez Crisis.

Light aircraft carriers built in Britain during the Second World War, Magnificent and HMCS Warrior were earmarked for Canada, in anticipation of an expanded role in the Pacific. Only one carrier was required after the war ended and Warrior was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1946.

After the war, Canada signed the NATO agreement, pledged to an anti-submarine role. An aircraft carrier also increased the navy’s capability in the air defence of North America, including the Arctic, at the beginning of the Cold War. But Warrior, a Colossus-class vessel, was not designed for cold climate operations and was exchanged for the Majestic-class Magnificent in 1948.

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January 9, 1990

Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-32 launches to retrieve material left in orbit for six years, including space durability experiments for the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies.

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