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A few (well, many) words on the Boeing Steel-Truss Glider, the first unpowered aircraft to be produced in series in Canada and the first glider in Canada to be towed into the air by a powered airplane - an event that took place on 31 July 1930 at Vancouver (British Columbia).
The story of this primary glider began in the spring of 1930 with a series of free evening classes organized by Boeing Aircraft of Canada Limited of Vancouver - a subsidiary of Boeing Aircraft of Seattle (Washington) incorporated in May 1929 - for the benefit of its apprentices. As this was taking place and apparently for their own amusement, some of these young men set out to build a single-seat primary glider. This aircraft was in fact designed by the company's chief engineer, E.F. Elderton. It was flown for the first time on 25 May by Leo Ducoffre, a young employee who had received both aircraft and glider training (in his native Germany?). By then, the management of the company, intrigued by the project, seems to have concluded it had commercial prospects.
Indeed, a Boeing Aircraft of Canada ad published in the June issue of the monthly magazine Canadian Aviation included a small paragraph on the company's latest product. The Boeing Steel-Truss Glider, a name chosen to ensure that potential buyers would notice how different the new design was from its foreign competitors, was said to be already in production. The aircraft's open fuselage was made up of welded steel tubing. Its fabric-covered wing, on the other hand, had spruce spars and aluminium alloy ribs. It could be purchased for $ 495. In September 1930, a full page ad appeared in Canadian Aviation. Another Canadian monthly, The Canadian Air Review, had published the same ad in its August issue. It also carried it in September and October. In all cases, the company also said it was offering flying instructions, information of various types of gliders as well as a booklet entitled How to Form a Glider Club.
It should be noted that this was not the first time Boeing Aircraft of Canada's management had been involved with gliding. Its president, Henry S. Hoffar, for example, was president of the Vancouver Glider Club in 1930.
The unusual speed with which the primary glider project was developed was to a large extent caused by the absence of government regulations to control gliding in Canada. As a result of this, a manufacturer like Boeing Aircraft of Canada did not have to go through any certification procedure whatsoever. This situation greatly reduced the cost to a company of designing a glider. By comparison, gliding in the United States was seemingly controlled by the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce. In turn, the British Gliding Association carried out airworthiness inspections and performed pilot examinations in Great Britain according to standards established by the Air Ministry. Its authority to do this was derived from the Royal Aero Club and the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.
To publicize its new machine, Boeing Aircraft of Canada organized a series of daily demonstration flights in August during the 1930 Canadian Pacific Exhibition in Vancouver. The chief instructor of the Aero Club of British Columbia in Vancouver, A.H. "Hal" Wilson, was hired to pilot the original prototype. A number of flights were made without incident. Interestingly, Wilson was the pilot who, at Vancouver, on 31 July 1930, took part in the first airplane-towed glider flight in Canada.
As had been planned before the opening of the exhibition, Boeing Aircraft of Canada then turned the glider over to the club. Interestingly enough, two Steel-Truss Gliders were given away as prizes by the organizers of the Canadian Pacific Exhibition. How these aircraft were obtained remains unknown. They may have been donated by Boeing Aircraft of Canada or else the Exhibition Association purchased them from the company. Also in 1930, a second attempt was made by the company to promote its glider. In late August, an aircraft left for a tour of the interior of British Columbia. This venture was financed in part by air minded residents of Salmon Arm, a city located 325 miles east of Vancouver, who thought that glider flights would draw crowds to the Salmon Arm Labour Day Sports. The aircraft's pilot was Leo Ducoffre.
Unfortunately, while taking off for its first display flight, the aircraft was hit by a crosswind and ran into a fence. Once repaired, it flew several times during the following weekend. The glider was then put back on its trailer and moved to Armstrong for static display at the local fair. Moving south and then east, Ducoffre and his helper performed display flights at Vernon, Kelowna and near Grand Forks. Gliding was fostered at every opportunity and a number of articles on the new sport appeared in local papers. There was even talk of using the area's lakes as bases for gliders mounted on floats, a possibility already tried out by Boeing Aircraft of Canada. All in all, the tour lasted about four weeks, during which the team travelled a distance of about 1,200 miles.
Sadly enough, these attempts by the company to promote the Boeing Steel-Truss Glider did not prove successful. Gliding clubs in Western Canada and elsewhere did not have much in the way of financial resources. As we have already seen, many of them chose to buy plans and make their own machines out of wood rather than expensive steel tubes. This being said, the Chilliwack Glider Club, in British Columbia, did purchase a Boeing primary glider in the spring of 1931. Even though it only had two thousand inhabitants, Chilliwack was a surprisingly air minded community. It was unequalled in Canada according to Canadian Aviation, thanks to its gliding club, a flying club and a branch of the Model Aircraft League of Canada.
Carl B. Gruninger, a fifteen-year-old boy from Trois-Rivieres (Quebec), bought another glider as a kit in 1932. A year before, he had actually begun to build a Mead Rhon Ranger only to abandon the project before completion. Gruninger completed the Boeing glider in May 1933 and taught himself how to fly on it. This machine was destroyed in the winter of 1933-34 when the roof of the garage it was stored in fell upon it. This being said, these two Boeing Steel-Truss Gliders were not the only aircraft of their type to be sold by the company.
Indeed, Boeing Aircraft of Canada had apparently received an order for one of their glider as early as April of 1930, at the very beginning of the project. This contract, worth $ 500, was sent in by a group formed on 25 March, the Foothills Gliding Club of Calgary (Alberta). The man behind the project had learned how to fly in the Great War. First instructor of the Calgary Aero Club and now head of Rutledge Air Service, a local flying school and charter service, he was W.L. "Bill" Rutledge. Among the members were other pilots who had fought during the conflict. Officers of the club included Herbert "Bertie" Hollick-Kenyon, a Great War pilot now flying for Western Canada Airways, as well as the first licensed woman pilot in Alberta and manager of the Calgary Aero Club's newsletter, Gertrude de La Vergne. The Boeing glider arrived in Calgary by train on 7 May 1930 and was test flown four days later by Rutledge himself. It made a number of flights during the next few months before crashing in mid-October. Little information has come to light regarding its subsequent career, if any. In fact, the collapse of Rutledge Air Service in the fall of 1931 brought the entire project to a close.
An interesting story concerned one of the Boeing primary gliders given away as prizes at the 1930 Canadian Pacific Exhibition. Some time in 1931, the winner, a woman who did not have the slightest intention of flying the aircraft, sold it to four teenage members of the Glider Club of Vancouver: Ewan Boyd and Brian Mahon, current owners of the club's assets, as well as Ross Farquharson, or Farquarson, and Aubrey Roberts. At $ 100 it was a real bargain. This machine was flown regularly before it was seriously damaged in a crash on 29 August 1932.
Later in the decade, Boyd and Mahon seem to have acquired a second Boeing glider, possibly the one operated by the Aero Club of British Columbia. They took this aircraft to the Columbia School of Aeronautics, a training establishment for aircraft mechanics they had opened in 1933 with the help of a gentleman named Robert Pike. Hoping to improve its performance, they instructed the students to build a fabric-covered steel structure around the original fuselage. When tested, the modified machine proved to be worse than before. The added weight was probably the main culprit. The school closed its doors in 1936 and nothing more was heard about its primary glider.
Components for five or six gliders seem to have survived in the Boeing Aircraft of Canada factory until 1937. At that point, the company obtained a contract to produce a number of Blackburn Shark single-engined biplane torpedo bombers for the Royal Canadian Air Force and the glider material was sold off to free factory space. Five Boeing gliders were offered for sale by Service Auto Metal of Vancouver, in an ad published in the February 1938 issue of Canadian Aviation. Some time later, three young men from Vancouver, John Churchland, Sid Conroy and Jim Cameron, contacted Service Auto Metal and bought enough parts and components to build a complete aircraft. It flew for the first time only in 1940. Damaged later that year, the Boeing glider remained firmly on the ground until 1942. As well as being repaired, it had been fitted with an improved wing and a streamlined fabric-covered nacelle for the pilot.
After two years in operation, Churchland, the only member of the original trio, sold the modified glider to a group headed by Johnny Watt. The ten member group, which soon founded the Vancouver Gliding and Soaring Club, did not enjoy their new aircraft for very long, however. After two accidents, it was put in storage in Kitsilano (British Columbia) before being sold in 1945 to a glider enthusiast, Fred Simpson, who was in the process of making a Northrop single-seat primary glider. Simpson thus stopped working on his earlier project and devoted all his energies to his new acquisition. The Boeing glider was repaired and received a streamlined nacelle, covered with fabric, to better protect the pilot.
Around that time, a Canadian Aeronautics Act was coming into effect with the result that all gliders in Canada had to be registered. Simpson's machine thus became CF-ZBB, the first unpowered aircraft to be registered in British Columbia. The Boeing glider was operated by the Gulf Gliding Club between November of 1947 and the middle of 1949 when it was badly damaged in a crash. In 1952, the remains were sold to a teacher who intended to use them for a manual art school project. No one knows what happened to the airplane after this. This is most unfortunate indeed given the fact that this aircraft had been the base upon which the gliding movement in the Vancouver area developed over the past half century.
A dilapidated and otherwise unidentified Boeing Steel-Truss Glider was acquired by the Thunderbird Gliding and Soaring Club at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver some time in 1946. Once restored, it was test flown by the club's president, Frank Woodward, in May 1948. Later in the season, the glider was flipped on its back by a strong gust of wind and severely damaged. Given this and the fact that many club members had graduated and were in the process of leaving the university, the twisted remains were left unattended. They too vanished sometime before the club closed its doors, in 1949. Thunderbird was the name adopted at the University of British Columbia in 1934 to identify its various sport teams.
Intriguingly enough, an aircraft referred to as a Canadian Boeing glider, serial number RL-6, was given the American civil registration number 13379. A Boeing 1929 (?) glider, serial number 40, received the registration number 13380.
All in all, it seems that seven or eight Boeing Steel-Truss Gliders were actually flown at one time or another. As well, the company apparently produced enough components to complete a minimum of five additional aircraft.
Hoping this helps,
Renald Fortier
Canada Aviation and Space Museum
Ottawa
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and thought it would be a hoot if someone found one in great grandpas barn rafters in Regina.