Warbird Information Exchange

Hi... I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this matter for me...

I'm working on a Canadian Car & Foundry built Harvard IV which according to a plate riveted onto the fwd fuselage tubular structure (rear cockpit R/H aft diagonal) has a serial number prefix of FW4-, however I thought that being a CCF manufactured aircraft, it should have a CCF4- serial number prefix?

Can anybody shed any light on the FW4- prefix?

Jason

Could FW stand for Fort William, since Thunder Bay, where CanCar is located today, was originally the two cities of Fort William and Port Arthur?

Randy

Jason, what comes after the FW4? Is there a date on the placard? All the Mk 4s were built at Fort William (now Thunder Bay) Ontario and that would seem to be the obvious answer, but I have not seen that before.

Doug

Looks like I was a few seconds too late with my response!

Fort William is what I was thinking too. I'll have to check our Mk 4s on Friday to see if they also have the 'FW4-' on the plate.

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Hi guys, the serial number is FW4-490 and it's manufacture date is 10-2-54.

Thanks for the info so far, it sounds very feasible.

Jason

Hi Jason. Canadian Car & Foundry in Fort William built 555 of these aircraft, the first 270 as Harvard Mk 4s for the RCAF and the remaining 285 were variously known as T-6J and T-6H depending on who received them. This last group was paid for by the US government and distributed to allied countries under the Mutual Defense Aid Pact. It looks like what you have is (if my mathematics serves me correctly) the 220th aircraft of the 285 built for distribution by the americans. I am sending the url for this discussion to a good friend in the Netherlands who will likely be able to give us more definitive information.

In my own records I find some of the relevant information: 52-8493/8612 (T-6H), 53-4615/-4636 (T-6J) All of which went to W. Germany. Now we need to tie up the serial numbers to the construction numbers to get a little closer to the truth.

cheers
Doug

According to the book I have about Harvards in German service, your Harvard is T-6J 52-8569 and originally went to the West German Air Force.
It was coded AA+067 and later BF+067. (there's a photo of it on the cover!)

Hope this helps.

Shane

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Well, folks, this gets more and more mysterious. At first glance it might seem to be 52-8569, but that aircraft was scrapped, according to my chum Benno Goethals. His concern is that after investigating these aircraft for several decades, he has found that data plates on the tube frame do not necessarily tie in with those on the completed aircraft. He thinks this might be an aircraft (not identified for the moment) that has been in storage in Oz for some time, after being imported from South Africa.

Doing more digging.

Doug

Just out of curiosity does anyone have any original USAF or CCF documentation that states that the CCF Harvards were designated T-6J? What do the USAF record cards say? Any idea what the designation was on the handful of Harvard 4s returned to the USAF to make up for the lost loaned RCAF Texans?

Jim

The designation T-6J first showed up on the manufacturing/construction documents forwarded from NAA to CC&F under the NAA designation NA-186. It also appears on MDAP data plates, so the designation is correct. There is a famous photograph of an aircraft sitting on a snowy airfield at Fort William and the offical CC&F caption labels the aircraft as T-6J.

Doug

The photo mentioned above, cropped from my book 'Harvard! The North American Trainers in Canada', published in 1990.



To quote from that book, "In a parallel to its wartime Lend-Lease contracts, the United States government placed a $22,800,000 order with CC&F for a further 285 similar aircraft * to be designated T-6J, as well as the associated spares.The T-6J order was for distribution to friendly powers under the Military Defense Aid Pact."

*the reference is to the Harvard Mk 4s for the RCAF

Doug

G'day again guys... yes, from my research I also came up with the serial number 52-8569, and I know that the aircraft is ex West German, Portugese & Mozambique. Somewhere I think I have a supposed number for it while it was in Portugese service?

rcaf_100.. can you tell me the title of your book about Harvards in West German Service, I already have a couple of good reference books, but would be interested in trying to track down a copy of that.

MacHarvard.. I also found some information that BF+067 was scrapped (or verschrottet in German), however I think that is a pretty open ended term to use with aircraft sometimes.. I'm thinking that the aircraft was probably converted to parts (to some degree) and went with the rest of the West German Harvards to their next owner. I have learnt that by the time the aircraft were recovered from Mozambique some (but I think probably all) had mismatched major assemblies (such as fwd fuselages/rear fuselages/centre sections etc).

Anyway.. thanks for the replies and I'll standby to see if anyone can confirm if the FW prefix commonly stood for Fort Worth?

Jason

Sorry.... Fort William!!

Hi Jason. I hate to be a party pooper, but 52-8569 was scrapped and did not go to Portugal with the rest of the transferred aircraft. I'll keep looking for more detail and I would appreciate you passing on anything you find as well.

cheers
Doug

Hi Jason, I'm guessing there's no dataplate on the side panel next to the throttle quadrant in the front cockpit, is there?
If there was that would make things much easier for finding the identity.

Sure! It's called 'C.C.F. Harvard Mk. IV (T-6)' by Siegfried Wache and I'm guessing it's part of a series as it has a large 'F-40' on the top of the cover.
It's 28 pages and is mostly in German but has quite a few English subtitles.
No ISBN number but it was printed in 1989 by Flugzeug Publikations.

Hope this helps.

Shane


here's an idea...maybe if the CanCar guys knew it was going to W. Germany they put 'FW' on for Focke Wulf!

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