Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Ferry Command: First Delivery

On 15 January, 1940 just west of Emerson, the silence of the early morning was broken by the sound of aircraft. A truck, loaded with 45-gal fuel drums, several cars, their motors running, a team of horses and half a dozen people, some with newsreel cameras, were waiting in the freezing cold. The bundled individuals were looking skyward just to the southern horizon. Suddenly two twin-engine planes became visible. They were the first of a consignment of eighteen planes. They came in low. The cameraman started shooting film. The planes circled, the pilots clearly visible in the cockpits. After a quick check of the wind sock they circled to the south and began their final decent. Touching down on the US side of the field, the dark camouflaged Lockheed Hudson bombers, without markings or ordnance, taxied up to the boundary line.

Joe Wilson, a local Emerson farmer, guided his team of horses, Prince and Fred, toward the planes. He attached a hook and tow rope to the aircraft’s wheel and dragged the bomber into Canada. The newsreel cameras rolled and newspaper photographers popped their flash bulbs. The sudden rush and the flashes were a slight annoyance to the team of horses, but Joe was an efficient teamster and within a matter of minutes both planes were on Canadian territory. The truck rolled up and the driver and a helper dressed in military-style coveralls, started filling the craft with fuel from the 45-gal drums. Moments after the planes were fueled up the flight crew emerged from the idling waiting cars. The engines roared into life and the Hudsons lumbered down the airstrip. Becoming airborne they circled once over the airfield and headed north for Winnipeg’s Stevenson Field.


Stevenson's Field circa 1929
- Excerpt from “Bombers Across the Border” by James McClelland. Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada Review, June 1996

3 comments:

  1. Hi Trisha, My Dad was one of the people that helped pull the lockheed across the border. The BBC interviewed him and others in the 70's but we do not have the footage.

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  2. Ted Beaudoin has written a book about the Ferry Command. Ted began writing about it in the 1980's, but has expanded it now, and just republished the first book PILOT OF FORTUNE as the first in a planned trilogy called WALKING ON AIR. He has some information online at http://ferrycommandwwii.blogspot.com/

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  3. As a lad of about nine, I remember Dad loading all of the family into his Ford V8 to take in this historic event. I do remember the thrill of seeing those planes up close, but not as thrilled as my sister. She and the other teenage girls made sure they got the autographs of the pilots while they giggled and flirted. This was my first upclose experience with airplanes and may have been a motivating factor in my later decision to make a career in the US Air Force. I still find it interesting that the politics of the day required the planes to land and be pulled across the border rather than flying across as we would do today.
    Ed Merck, Lt. Col, USAF (Retired)

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