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Aviation Memorabilia Newsletter Since 1995

Aviation Memorabilia Newsletter

Since 1995

Betty Draper has located some more information of the early days in aviation in Canada.

From the Leader-Post issue March 1st 1938. Regina, Saskatchewan

tmb cf azy mail service

Through fog at three miles a minute.
For the first time in eight years a mail truck met a mail plane at the Regina airport on Tuesday March 1st 1938. The photo shows the "big" Lockheed Electra towering above the truck.

(Notice the registration at CF-AZY and the Trans-Canada Air Lines emblem on the nose - eds)

tmb cf azy unloading mail

This photo shows the arrival of Regina's air mail on Tuesday March 1st, 1938. At the left, a mechanic is shown unloading bags from the plane, while George Bennett, postal employee, holds two bags. At the right is shown Leo LaBelle, Regina postmaster, with Herbert Seagram, centre, and Robert M. Smith, youthful pilots who flew the machine from Winnipeg to Regina and westward.


Plane Circles Regina 45 Minutes in Fog As Mail Tests Start.
A big silver plane nosed through a hole in a fog bank over the Regina airport on Tuesday morning March 1st, 1938 to deliver the city's first air mail in eight years. For a time it looked like Regina would be robbed of its place as a port of call on the first air mail flight over the west as the big Lockheed plane circled the city at 110 miles an hour for 45 minutes before the fog cleared sufficiently to enable the crew to land.

Previously arrangements had been made for the crew to bring the plane down at Moose Jaw, where visibility was good, in the event the fog did not lift over Regina. After delivering two sacks of Winnipeg mail to Regina postal authorities. pilots Herbert Seagram and Robert M. Smith took off at noon sharp for Lethbridge with visibility unlimited the entire distance.

Other planes turn back.
The weather, however, played havoc with the eastbound flight out of Vancouver and pilots Bruce Middleton and Malcolm Barclay were forced to return to Vancouver because of fog over the Fraser canyon. The eastbound flight was subsequently cancelled.

The westbound machine flew into Regina along the radio beam emitted from the old radio range station on Dewdney Avenue. When the new station south on the no. 6 highway was in operation the beam will guide the planes right into the airport doing away with delays occasioned in landing.

(To be continued in NetLetter nr 1326 – eds)

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