Far North Rambles #14: Norseman Flapping Wings
Far North Friday: Norseman Flapping Wings: When I flew, I was always reassured by the calm demeanor of the pilot’s face. Only once did I experience the look of terror in a pilot’s face. That happened when we thought the wing on a Norseman aircraft was ripping apart.
One summer, we were setting up a remote “fly” or bush camp north of Pickle Lake. We drove the gear from Pickle Lake north to a dock along what I recall may have been the Otoskwin River (my memory fails me), in northwest Ontario (Canada). We were met at the dock by two legendary Canadian aircraft on floats: the Beaver and the very noisy Norseman. They were to fly us and the camp gear to the remote area. I had never flown in a Norseman before. The pilot warned me that it would be noisy.
Loading the Norseman aircraft in preparation for our flight to a remote area where we would set up a bush tent camp in northwestern Ontario, Canada. This was the summer of 1976.
While loading the Norseman, I accidentally bumped my head on the wing. I commented to the pilot that the wing sounded a bit odd. The pilot smiled and told me the wings and fuselage were made of canvas, stretched over a wood and metal structure. Looking for reassurance, I asked how strong the wings were and if he had ever seen a rip in the canvas wing. He reassured me not to worry and that in all his years flying he had never experienced an issue with the wings.
We loaded what the pilot guessed was a safe load, given the hot, thin air and the relatively short straight stretch of river we had to take off from. When it was our turn to take off in the Norseman, I climbed into the co-pilot’s seat. I opened the window to let some of the hot air escape. The pilot cast off, climbed in, fired up the engine, taxied to the farthest end of the straight stretch, and applied full power to take off from the river. It was noisy! It seemed to take a long time to take off as we ploughed through the water getting closer to the trees ahead of us. Perhaps we had overloaded the plane? Maybe the straight stretch was not long enough? But, we did lift off, one float first, then the other.
About about 1 minute after lifting off, we heard a painful ripping and flapping - the kind of noise a flag makes in a gale wind. The pilot and I looked at each other. He had terror written all over his face. He yelled “look out your window. What do you see”. Now, I was not really amused to look out, so I took a quick look and reported “nothing”. The pilot yelled again “stick your head all the way out so you can see the full wing”. “Nothing” I yelled. Immediately the pilot’s face turned from despair to joy and epiphany. He pointed to my seat. I still saw nothing - except a very worried me. Then he yelled “my jacket!”. There was no jacket. That was the point. The pilot had draped his black nylon jacket on the back of my chair. When I leaned forward to count the number of pine cones on the trees when we took off, his jacket was sucked off my chair and out my open window. The jacket was caught by the float strut where it cried out for about 10 minutes, before being shredded to pieces by the propeller backwash.
The rest of the flight was uneventful.
It was the only time in my flying career that I saw terror in the eyes of a pilot. Thankfully, I never did see a flapping wing of the Norseman aircraft.
Photo of the mounted Norseman aircraft CF-DRD monument, Red Lake, Ontario - the Norseman Capital of the world. Image by Andy Fyon, Oct. 25, 2007.