(This excerpt about the Harvard Mark IV military trainer aircraft XEN is from the biography Edward Hadgkiss: Missing In Life, an aviation adventure available from Mac’s Fireweed Books in Whitehorse, Yukon.)

Instrument panel of Harvard Mark IV, CF-XEN (Photo by Ed Hadgkiss)

Ed was in heaven that memorable February evening 1968 when he first ushered the Harvard over Whitehorse. His dark eyes twinkled like the billions of miniature lights blinking from the black velvet sky.

The earth beneath him was covered with a colorless quilt and reflected Grey Mountain's outline that tapered into low hills like a plucked eyebrow.

Ed's emotions were a mixture of indescribable excitement and thrill. Blood pounded in his veins to the Pratt & Whitney's great pulsations. Flying this powerful airplane was like having a love affair.

Inside the spacious cockpit, the only light came from the instrument panel which held a wide array of gauges and dials, tucked safely behind glass cages. Needles pointed in every direction, indicating what was happening inside the engine and outside in the air. The timepiece showed seven o'clock.

The cockpit offered plenty of elbow room. After flying small planes, the Harvard equipment seemed great and large. The rudder pedals were extra big--one wide enough for both feet. On his right was a multi-channel radio, complete mostly with military and emergency frequencies.

The overstuffed, roomy pilot's seat, upholstered in grayish brown cloth, was comfortable and curved to accommodate a bulky parachute. He would buy one soon. A pilot in either cockpit could slide the canopy back, unfasten the shoulder harnesses and bail out of the Harvard. In any emergency other than fire, it was best, however, to stay with the sturdy plane that was built to crash.

Ed was clad in a blue air force flying costume with its assortment of pockets, zippers, snaps and compartments. He had brought back two nylon suits, which looked nice, were easy to care for and handy to wear on long trips.

Two weeks had passed since Ed had bought an airline ticket to Edmonton and had driven a rented car to Saskatoon, where the Crown Assets Disposal Corporation had mothballed some Harvards more than two years before.

The wingless Harvards--the color of a corn kernel--looked forlorn stuffed inside the hangar, waiting for civilian buyers. They were Mark IV models, built less than sixteen years ago, in 1952. The air force had replaced the Harvards with more modern, sophisticated aircraft.

Six thousand post-war pilots had learned to fly the Harvards, used exclusively as advanced trainers. Pilots ranked them as a love or hate relationship. White or black. No gray area.

The oil and gas smells and exhaust fumes caused some students to turn a ghastly pallor, and they would heave violently over the side or down the hollow steel tubing that supported the cockpit inside. They detested the horrible engine noise that deafened many long-time Harvard pilots.

Other pilots inhaled the same smells like they were intoxicants and aphrodisiacs and would dreamily say, "the Harvard was my pet". To them, the noise was music, and their skin tingled with excitement when the throaty engine thundered into life. The Mark IV version followed the basic design of its Mark II predecessor. The IVs included more instrumentation and radio equipment; increased engine horsepower; and more fuel capacity for longer-range flying.

Ideal for the job, the Harvards were equipped with all the necessary features to train military student pilots to be future fighter pilots in a complex aircraft. All the equipment was duplicated for front- or back-seat flying.

Ed's choice, identified with the military serial number 20305, was one of two hundred Harvards built at the Canada Car and Foundry plant in Fort William, Ontario, and number ninety-six off the assembly line. It was designated by the manufacturer as CCF4-96.

On May 15, 1952, the Harvard had arrived at the Royal Canadian Air Force No. 4 Advanced Flying School in MacDonald, Manitoba and served as an advanced trainer until June 7, 1960.

It was then transferred to Alberta for storage--first to Calgary, then to the No. 4 Flying Training School at the Royal Air Force station at Penhold.

On May 19, 1965, the last Harvards flew their final training missions and were retired from air force service. On July 26, 1965, Ed's Harvard was flown to Saskatoon for longterm storage, pending disposal, and was available for less than two thousand dollars. The yellow Harvard was removed from storage. Fluorescent red trimmed the engine cowling and wing tips and red roundels decorated either side of the fuselage. The air force had chosen the bright color combination and insignia so the airplanes, piloted by green students susceptible to crashing, would be easier for searchers to detect from the air.

The Harvard was towed to Ray's Flying Service for a certificate of airworthiness inspection. A hundred hours' flying time remained on the six-hundred-horsepower Pratt & Whitney that would be due for a major overhaul at twelve hundred hours. The mechanics replaced the wings. They replaced bolts, rigged the control cables and placed a fire extinguisher inside the cockpit. They removed the propeller and replaced seals; removed the battery and cleaned the compartment; checked the surrounding area for corrosion; inspected the exhaust system; removed the lower No. 2 cylinder to inspect the engine's interior; checked the link rods for corrosion. All inhibiting oil was drained from the engine and fuel system. And the hundred-hour inspection was completed.

When the Harvard was ready for a ground run-up, the long-idle engine balked. A mechanic cranked the inertia starter, located on the port side near the nose, that produced a high-pitched whine.

Inside the front cockpit, Ed, who had a way with machinery, set the mixture, throttle, fiddled with the controls and hit the starter. The engine spluttered and belched a few false starts like a gallant lady still groggy with sleep.

Finally, a backfire of black smoke puffed from the exhaust. There were a few grunts and a cough, and the nine-cylinder radial engine came to life with a lusty bellowing guffaw. The blade started to swing so slowly that the revolutions of the yellow tips could be counted until the Hamilton-Standard picked up speed and was soon an invisible gray blur out front.

Ed was anxious to get into the air, but there were still a few bugs to be worked out and paper work to be finalized.

The next day a check pilot named Thompson rode in the back seat while Ed flew the Harvard for the first time over Saskatoon.

On Valentine's Day, the government paperwork was in order for CF-XEN (Xray-Echo- November). Ed started the flight home. He refueled at North Battleford, Saskatchewan, then at Edmonton Industrial Airport and made an overnight stop in Grande Prairie, Alberta.

The next day he pointed the Harvard toward Fort St. John, British Columbia, and Watson Lake, Yukon. When he flew over Whitehorse everybody who knew Hadgkiss had gone out to buy an old skybuster knew he had bought one and was home. His friends laughed.

The shell-shocked veterans, who didn't know, were petrified by the first high-pitched whine.

The Harvard made an incredible racket as it swooped down over Second Avenue at high speed, then pulled up at the other end and turned base leg of the traffic pattern. The rows of white runway and blue taxiway lights looked like a Broadway stage when they were illuminated to accommodate his landing at Whitehorse airport. Later, the Department of Transport issued an invoice for a landing fee, the penalty Ed would have to pay for owning an airplane that weighed fifty-seven-hundred pounds. The homecoming excited gossip. People remembered what they were doing the night before when the Harvard had interrupted. Stunned residents claimed the Harvard had sucked shingles off rooftops, rattled windowpanes, splintered fragile China teacups...and flown under the bridge!

The low bridge spanned the Yukon River to connect hospital services and the Riverdale residential section with the downtown core. During high water one could stand up in a rowboat and practically touch the structure underneath. And the pilings were set much too close to permit clearance of a forty-four-foot wingspan.

Ed, who never tried to squelch rumors about himself, liked the story and perpetuated the myth...when the Harvard's paint was damaged by the prop wash from a Canadian Pacific DC-6 making a full-engine run-up in the wrong place, the discussion Ed had with the airport manager and the story he told gullible listeners were two different things. Ed would say, "Oh, uhhh, the paint got a little scratched when I kinda misjudged my distance...flying underneath the bridge."

It was the deliberate halting between words...and the twinkle in his eyes...and the angle he cocked his head...which meant the listener was supposed to know the pilot was resorting to a little leg-pulling. The tale earned Ed a reputation as a bold and reckless wild man. Only the people who flew with him knew the labeling did not fit. Ed was as proud as a new father who had brought his first-born home from the hospital. The Harvard was a showpiece that Ed played to the hilt. He giggled, calling it "The Yellow Peril".

But Ed had bought the Harvard for practical reasons. He wanted to gain experience flying complex aircraft while accumulating hours toward a professional aviation career. He liked the challenge of the Harvard as an unforgiving aircraft. It was not like the little Cessnas and Fleets, designed to allow students to make a chain of mistakes and still land to tell about them.

Buying the Harvard could be equated with stepping from his Model A Ford into the red International. He had learned to shift gears and become a more proficient driver in his own vehicle as preparation for learning to drive transport trucks.

For the same reasons, he wanted to graduate from the little Cessna bug into the heavy, sophisticated Harvard which was like going from a Volkswagen into a hot, fast-lane Corvette. The heavy Harvard with its big engine was about four times the weight of the Cessna with seven times the power. Its minimum landing speed was twice that of small planes.

The rub was the expense to operate and maintain a Harvard. Only rich civilians or the military could comfortably afford the big brutes.

There were parking fees to pay even when the craft was tied down with yellow polypropylene ropes and resting on two-wide tread tires in the parking area or nuzzled inside a heated hangar; landing fees at all regulated airports; and heavy maintenance and operating costs.

The mighty engine gulped forty gallons of fuel an hour. To start the engine was an atrocious cost. To put the plane in the air and keep it there was an incomprehensible amount.

But Ed made it was business to afford the Harvard. Anybody can afford whatever he wants, for each person harbors his own priorities and dreams.

Ed also made it his business to learn to fly it. While the engine remained patiently quiet, he spent endless hours inside the cockpit memorizing where each of the multitude of instruments was located in the panel before him. During take-offs and landings, the cockpit was a busy place, and he didn't want to spend time fumbling or looking. He had to know.

With nobody around the hangar to disturb his concentration, he sat night after night in the cockpit, manuals and a pilot handbook open on his lap. He touched, clicked and flipped switches, gauges, gadgets, knobs, levers and valves.

He learned the systems, especially the emergency ones. A bit less knowledge could mean the difference between squeaking through or ditching the plane.

He had been told the Harvard would float at least a half hour. He had to revise his thinking about sea landings when a coastal Harvard owner tested the theory unintentionally and found submersion time was under four minutes.

He noticed how the ailerons and rudders responded to his hands and feet and what produced the best and fastest results. As though a living organism, the Harvard had distinct characteristics and a changeable personality.

When the Harvard was good it was the height of joy, but when it was bad it was a vicious wildcat. The pilot had to be constantly in control to avoid a sudden, unexpected mood swing. Harvards were always waiting to groundloop and dump an unwary pilot without warning or ceremony.

At midnight, after socializing with friends, Ed would spirit to the hangar, like a young boy going to the barn to visit his horse. In the eerie dim light, the sounds of clinking tools echoed against the emptiness of the hangar's high-beamed ceiling and cold concrete floor.

He looked and poked. He kept asking questions. He read more. He wanted to know how the Harvard flew and why, what it could do and could not do. His curiosity about airplanes could never be satisfied.

He loved the iron engine--durable and reliable--that contained only necessary parts and was easy and logical to work on.

Dzus fasteners held the aluminum cowling together and made the Harvard a mechanic's delight. A single turn of the fasteners let the yellow sheets fall away easily.

On a summer day he would stretch out on the low cantilever wing to sunbathe while the sun glinted blindingly on the metal; on rainy days he would crouch under the wing reading flying magazines; or tinker through the night inside the hangar.

He washed the windshield and the many Plexiglas panels in the sliding greenhouse canopy; or swept the floorboards. Sometimes he just sat, admiring his friend. Every time the Harvard came home from a practice flight, Ed played to an audience. Retired war pilots, whose days were filled only with meaningless missions, gawked wistfully through the terminal plate-glass windows and argued lightly whether the final approach was too hot or too slow; too high or too low. They ached for by-gone days and the smells associated with the old planes.

Ed was getting fairly proficient and anxious to make a cross-country flight. He wanted to visit Anchorage, the airplane capital of the world, where Americans would give the antique gem lots of attention.

The wheels are tucked inside the wells as Harvard XEN lifts off, 1968 (Photo by Jane Gaffin)

The Harvard is an excerpt from Jane Gaffin's illustrated, northern adventure book Edward Hadgkiss: Missing in Life. It is available from Mac's Fireweed Books in Whitehorse, Yukon, by calling the toll-free order line 1-800-661-0508 or visiting www.yukonbooks.com. Author contact is Jane(at)diArmani.com or visit her at www.diArmani.com.

-------

See related excerpts: The Cessna; The Percival Prospector; The Super Cub; The Harvard: Cylinder with a History; and The Harvard: Rock of Eternity.

-- 30 --

Copyright 2007 diArmani.com