There was a lot of Canadian airplane manufacturing through the war. Keeping that ability going afterwards has proved difficult. What has helped was developing planes suited to Canada’s needs, and then allowing them to find a wider market. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Water bombers are very useful in fighting forest fires in remote areas. Canada has a lot of areas like that so it is understandable that they take a special interest in this type of plane. This stamp issue shows the interesting progression of water bombers in Canada. From water bombers imported from the USA, through Canadian assembled and modified versions culminating in the CL-215, a Canadian design sold worldwide. Progress is a wonderful thing to display on a stamp.
Todays stamp is issue A405, a 17 cent stamp issued by Canada on November 15th, 1979. It was a four stamp issue showing water bombers in Canada. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
Water bombers are large flying boats that scoop up water from lakes, mix the lake water with fire retardant, bombard a fire with the water and then repeat. Canadair Aircraft grew out of an operation of the British Vickers aircraft operations out of the old airport in Montreal, Quebec. The operation were nationalized by the Canadian national government. In the 1950s the operations were merged with General Dynamics, a coming together of many old American aviation and ship building names. Among the designs under General Dynamics control was the aging Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat. Canadair began to to make these as the Canso in Montreal.
Canadair realized their might be a market for a more purpose built water bomber. They designed a more modern airframe and had the CL-215 Scooper first flown in 1968. One interesting choice they made was to use the old Pratt and Whitney radial engine from the Catalina. This engine was actually no longer in production, so the new plane came with rebuilt old engines. This made the plane cheaper and shows how much the new relied on the old. By then it was the only new build flying boat anywhere in the west and found a small but steady world market for many years.
To keep Canadair going in the 1970s, the Canadian government bought it from General Dynamics and invested heavily in the Challenger business jet. The more right wing 80s Canadian government sold off Canadair’s Montreal operations to Toronto based Bombardier. This included the tiny water bomber flying boat business. The flying boats finally gained a turboprop engine in the 1990s and remained in production until 2015 with a total production run of 215 airplanes over 46 years. Bombardier had by then run into trouble making low margin regional jet airliners based on the higher margin executive jets competing with lower cost Embrear of Brazil.
The story does not end there, British Columbia based Viking Air bought the rights from various failing Canadian plane makers to most all the old bush planes like the Beaver the Otter the Dash 7 and even the Northern Irish Skyvan. Over the years there were many of these planes built but with nothing more modern replacing them they went on. Viking gradually developed the capability to build new, modernized copies of the old planes. Viking has now received a few orders for their CL-515 upgrade of the old CL-215 so the story of Canadian flying boat water bombers goes on. They are now called Super Scoopers.
Well my drink is empty and one can imagine it requires a great deal of government subsidies to keep a production line existing on such tiny volume. Bet they vote left. Come again soon. for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.
Corona Virus update. This is something I never thought I would write. Since I wrote this article a few weeks ago, the Scooper has been in the headlines. Examples in the service of Spain have been used to spray disinfectant over Spanish cities to fight the virus. I hope it helps as Spain has been very hard hit. Be safe out there. First published in 2020.