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Courtesy of the Schade family

Fokker Super Universal.

FOKKER SUPER UNIVERSAL

In 1927, its first year of business, Western Canada Airways carried a staggering 420,730 pounds of freight and 1,141 passengers. The figures proved James Richardson’s belief that aircraft could open up the north for mineral exploration. His company needed not just more aircraft but machines specifically designed for the Canadian climate and bush conditions, with more reliable, air-cooled engines, metal fuselages, and greater cargo-carrying capacity. The three Fokker Universals used in the Churchill airlift were soon too small and underpowered, and Richardson purchased fourteen Super Universals. The competition between Fokker and Fairchild in the 1930s was as intense as that between Boeing and Douglas in the 1950s, each superseding the other with a new model. The aircraft was built under licence by Canadian Vickers in Montreal, its Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine of 420 hp giving it double the power and endurance of its predecessor. It had a range of 675 miles and a higher ceiling than the Universal (18,000 feet compared with 11,500 feet). Most importantly, the pilot and six passengers were now enclosed from the elements. The first of the Fokker Super Universals arrived at the WCA base in Winnipeg in the summer of 1928. With these, WCA pilots could pioneer flights deep into the far north. On August 12, 1928, A.H. Farrington flew his Super Universal more than one thousand miles along the west coast of Hudson Bay from Winnipeg to Eskimo Point to pick up a prospecting party. Without aircraft, such a trip over land would have taken three months.

In 1929, a prospector called Gilbert Labine convinced Richardson that there were large mineral deposits in the Great Bear Lake region of the Northwest Territories. Wilfred Leigh Brintnell was flying Super Universal G-CASK to the Yukon and took Labine to the lake. When C.H. “Punch” Dickins picked him up three weeks later, Labine had discovered the richest deposit of pitchblende in history, and his Great Bear mine was responsible for many years of silver, radium, and uranium.

The MacAlpine Expedition and its rescue were feats of endurance that tested both men and aircraft. The president of Dominion Explorers, Lieutenant Colonel C.D.H. MacAlpine, planned to explore the Canadian Arctic in 1929 to assess the viability of mineral exploration. The year before, Dickins had flown him in G-CASK on a similar trip, covering four thousand miles in twelve days. This time, to transport a party of seven mining engineers, MacAlpine used his own Fairchild FC-2W-2, CF-AAO, and leased the WCA Super Universal G-CASP with G.A. “Tommy” Thompson as pilot and A.D. Goodwin as engineer. Aware that the trip had to be accomplished before winter set in, the two aircraft left Winnipeg for Hudson Bay at 10:00 A.M. on August 24, 1929, flying north to Norway House. With fuel low, they landed offshore at Churchill harbour on the twenty-sixth to await the supply ship Morso. In what would be the first in a series of calamities, they discovered that the schooner had caught fire at sea and blown up because of a cargo of dynamite. That night, G-CASP dragged its anchor and was swept into the sea by the tide. Its float torn open by ice, the aircraft sank, beyond repair. They radioed their plight to the WCA office in Winnipeg, and Francis Roy Brown flew G-CASK out on September 6. Both machines were loaded up, and the party continued on to a fuel cache at Baker Lake, where condensation in G-CASK’s fuel tank caused frost particles in its radiator, and the party was delayed. They flew on and passed Pelly Lake, where they saw that the lakes that were to be the landing areas had started to freeze over earlier than expected. Faced with being trapped overnight in the ice, the pair of aircraft made for the open sea of the Arctic coast, hoping to land at one of the coastal settlements, where they could get a ship.

Courtesy of the Schade family

“G-CASK” with pilot and passenger.

There was less than a few hours of fuel in either of the aircraft when the coast appeared. Both aircraft made it to Dease Point on the mouth of the Koolgaryuk River and set down there, marooned until help arrived. Everyone was reassured that it was still early September, with a month before the freezing temperatures were to begin. The crew built a small house out of stones, moss, and parts of the Fairchild’s wing, with an engine cowling serving as a stove. On September 12, they tried to get G-CASK into the air with the few pints of fuel left, but once more its carburetor gave trouble. The nearest settlement was a Hudson’s Bay post at Cambridge Bay, estimated by visting Natives to be three days’ walking distance — but only if the shoreline ice was strong enough to bear their weight. By October, when the first of the snowstorms struck on schedule, there were still no rescue aircraft to be seen, and food rations were almost gone. The Native diet of dried fish, while generously shared, gave the white men severe cramps. It was not until October 18 that the ice was judged thick enough by the Natives to cross along the coast, and two days later, employing Native guides, the party began its trek to Cambridge Bay. They made it to the Kent peninsula on October 24; across the Queen Maud Gulf was the outpost of Cambridge Bay. By now they had run out of food and sent the Natives back to Dease Point for more. They returned with the encouraging news that while they were there, an aircraft had flown over the hut.

Courtesy of the Schade family

Photo taken in 1932 of children at Eskimo Point, District of Keewatin, by pilot of “G-CASK.”

Both WCA and Dominion Explorers mounted aircraft searches for the party, despite the imminence of the fall freeze-up period, when no flying was usually possible. Two search teams were organized: a main one with five float-planes to operate as far north as they could, and a secondary group that would ferry fuel and supplies to them. Brintnell was put in charge of the overall search, and he, C.H. Dickins, Francis Roy Brown, Andy Cruickshank, Bill Spence, and Herbert Hollick-Kenyon searched the vast Mackenzie district, flying as far west as Fort Norman and Coppermine, and as far east as Baker Lake.

It was a race against the winter, as more of the inland water froze below the searchers daily, the crews very careful not to get trapped in it wherever they set down overnight. By October 13, all the lakes were frozen and the conversion to skis began. Baker Lake was used as a base, with all five aircraft hauled up on shore and fitted with skis. A severe gale lashed the thin ice against the beach on the seventeenth, damaging the aircraft, and it would not be until October 24 that four were serviceable enough for the search to continue. This time they reached the coast and landed their aircraft at a fuel cache on the frozen Burnside River. Three made it down safely, but Andy Cruickshank in Fokker G-CASQ misjudged the strength of the ice, and it plunged through, settling nose down in the water with only the wings showing. It was abandoned until the MacAlpine party could be found, and the other aircraft pressed to the Arctic Sea, flying over the now-empty hut at Dease Point.

At Burnside, despite sub-zero conditions and a cruel blizzard, G-CASQ was raised by block and tackle, the engine overhauled, and the aircraft made ready to resume the search when, on November 5, a Native dog team arrived with the news that the MacAlpine party had been found. The schooner Fort James at the Magnetic North Pole had intercepted a message from Amundsen’s old ship, the Bay Maud, which was being used as a Hudson’s Bay Company supply depot at Cambridge Bay. On November 3, at 4:30 P.M., with the temperature at twenty-seven degrees below zero, the MacAlpine party had staggered into the post, starving and suffering from frostbite. The four rescue aircraft landed alongside the Bay Maud, and the men were flown out in relays. But with the ferocity of winter, it would not be until December 4 that the entire MacAlpine Expedition party could be landed at the railway station at Cranberry Portage for the train to Winnipeg. Although the sunken G-CASP was insured and G-CASK recovered and made airworthy, WCA made little money on the epic flights. But much of northern Canada had been flown over for the first time, and the heroism of WCA’s pilots and the durability of their Super Universals is worthy of recognition.

If this wasn’t enough, the next year the Super Universal G-CASK would be involved in another flight into the high Arctic. Major L.T. Burwash was leading a government expedition to record the magnetic properties near King William Island and to check on the location of the Magnetic Pole. He was also anxious to find out what happened to the ill-fated Franklin expedition, which had disappeared in the region eighty years before. Pilot Walter Gilbert and engineer Stan Knight flew Burwash and his party in the Fokker up the Arctic coastline, overflying the Magnetic Pole. Gilbert was later honoured with a Fellowship in the Royal Geographic Society and the Trans Canada (McKee) Trophy.

Brintnell would leave Richardson in 1932 to begin his own air company, Mackenzie Air Services, also using Super Universals. Sadly, the following year, Canadian Airway’s most famous Super Universal, G-CASK, would be accidentally set on fire at Fort McMurray. A total of eighty Super Universals were built, twenty-nine by Nakajima in Japan.

Courtesy of the Schade family

Fokker Super Universal.