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FAIRCHILD 71

The FC-2W-2 was so effective, especially in the bush, that Sherman Fairchild not only refined it as the Model 71 but also had it built in Canada for local conditions. He established Fairchild Aircraft Ltd. in the village of Longueuil, eight miles from Montreal, to do so. Here, a total of twenty-one Model 71s in “B” and “C” versions were built, each a variation of the FC-2W-2 in size and strength. The 71C would be the first Fairchild to have a metal-covered fuselage.

The RCAF bought twelve Fairchild 7IBs for photography and transport, using them from 1930 to 1941 then selling them to Canadian Airways, which, because of the war, was desperately short of aircraft. Richardson had some of his FC-2W-2s converted to 71s; G-CAVV, which crashed in 1938, was rebuilt as a 71C and re-registered as CFBJE. Flown by pilot Art Schade on “treaty flights,” it operated out of the Canadian Airways base at Sioux Lookout, Ontario. These were federally sponsored flights; under the terms of the native treaties, a party made up of an RCMP constable, a doctor, a justice of the peace, and an official from the Department of Indian Affairs met annually with aboriginal tribes to dispense the law, medicine, and money.

Fairchild continued the family with the Super 71 in 1935 and the Model 82 the following year. By the Second World War, most of the 71s had been reduced to spares or had crashed; the few remaining were used by the Ontario Provincial Air Service until the advent of the De Havilland Beaver. Sherman Fairchild died in 1971. Rather appropriately, one of his aircraft would figure in the Canadian bush again. In the 1950s, his C-119 Flying Boxcars would be used by the RCAF to build and supply the Mid-Canada Radar Line.

Courtesy of the Schade family

Fairchild 71.

Courtesy of the Schade family

Fair child 71 on treaty flight.

Courtesy of the Schade family

July 1937 treaty flight, with tribe gathered to meet plane.

Courtesy of the Schade family

RCMP constable, doctor, Indian agent, and pilot on treaty flight.