Down The Rabbit Hole
Identifying old airframes can be a lot of fun when a mystery is solved to one’s satisfaction and it can be a dive deeper into confusion at the same time! This was the case when visiting a museum storage facility at the end of April.
The Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada is waiting to move into a brand new, purpose built location at the Richardson International Airport in Winnipeg, Manitoba. At present, the aircraft collection is stored at various indoor and outdoor sites. Immediately west of St Andrews airport are a couple buildings and storage yard where three Norseman airframes are located and the goal was to positively identify the two weathered frames out in the yard.
Initially the airframe we thought was CF-CRT turned out to be CF-GTM! The mystery airframe right beside it was actually CF-CRT.
CF-GTM, Serial 828 is a Mark VI and the next picture shows what remains of its fuselage airframe.
Now it gets more interesting because CF-GTM was believed to belong to Joe McBryan and stored at his Red Deer, Alberta maintenance base. See Keep them Flying? from February 2019. So now another project starts! Although trying to be accurate and confident in identifications, there’s always the possibility records will be crossed up and some parts will just need to languish in the mystery category.
Last airborne over 72 years ago, CF-CRT is a Mark IV model, Serial 15 and was also with the RCAF as 696 and prior to then registered as CF-BFR.
Inside the storage building is CF-BTC, Serial 29 and longer term plans are to have this Norseman fully restored for static display to complement the museums extensive focus on the early days of Canadian commercial aviation.
CF-BTC fuselage. The wings appear to be in great shape and are on an upper storage shelf.