A famous canadian actor from the beachcombers show, was actually a Bomber pilot in real life, during WW2. Amazing!! 1000 hours flown Lancasters, B25 Mitchells etc. Wow! lived in BC, drove a jet boat. Maniac. Relic flew bombers <S> Robert Clothier "Relic"
Speaking of Canadian WW2 pilots that became actors, one that comes to mind and is not too well known as a pilot, is Vancouver's own: James Doohan ! Yes the famous Star Trek's "Scotty" !
Actually James Doohan was in the Canadian Artillery...He was shot 7 times..8th time a bullet hit his cigarette case..
Actually, George [Buzz] Beurling was a pilot in world war two. He was a natural pilot and a deadly shot. He wasn't very good at sucking up, he wasn't very good at kissing asses, he wasn't very good at a lot of stuff. But he was a hell of a fighter pilot. He failed in a lot of things. He had his George Cross taken away because he got shocked by war and reacted badly to it, saying crazy things like, "You should have seen the blood spatter in the enemy's cockpit when I shot him." and stuff like that. It is pretty typical in Canada for a guy to lose everything because he is real, normal, not connected correctly and not a BIG FUCKING SUCKHOLE. No disrespect meant for that actor guy. [I mean that] Most heroes you would never know are heroes, they live next door to you. And then there was that fuckin guy, what was his name, um, William Bishop, Son of Billy Bishop. What a fucking idiot he was. Read his book. He WAS connected, He DID say the right things, he WAS a big suckhole. And still.... what a goof. I don't know what I am trying to say.
Yes, shot by a fellow Brit army soldier with a bren gun ... during D-day. Doohan himself shot two snipers and lead his group to safety. While he patrolled the perimeter that night one of his own shot him 6 times. Must have been his DM wasn't working well that night. However he then went to pilot school and became pilot observer for the artillery. He was called by many the craziest pilot in the Canadian Army ! He flew low level slolems around power poles just to prove it could be done !!! So he was not a RCAF he was trained and a WW2 front line pilot for the artillery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Doohan "... At the beginning of the Second World War, Doohan joined the Royal Canadian Artillery. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the 13th Field Artillery Regiment of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Doohan went to the United Kingdom in 1940 for training. His first combat was the invasion of Normandy at Juno Beach on D-Day. Shooting two snipers, Doohan led his men to higher ground through a field of anti-tank mines, where they took defensive positions for the night. Crossing between command posts at 11:30 that night, Doohan was hit by six rounds fired from a Bren gun by a nervous Canadian sentry:[3] four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger. The bullet to his chest was stopped by a silver cigarette case. His right middle finger had to be amputated, something he would conceal during his career as an actor.[4] Doohan trained as a pilot (graduating from Air Observation Pilot Course 40 with 11 other Canadian artillery officers)[5], and flew Taylorcraft Auster Mark V aircraft for 666 (AOP) Squadron, RCAF, as a Royal Canadian Artillery officer in support of #1 Canadian AGRA (Army Groups Royal Artillery). All three Canadian (AOP) RCAF Squadrons were manned by Artillery Officer-pilots and accompanied by enlisted RCA and RCAF personnel serving as observers.[6][7] Though he was never actually a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he was once labeled the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces." A story from his flying years tells of Doohan slaloming a plane — variously cited as a Hurricane or a jet trainer — between mountainside telegraph poles to prove it could be done, which earned him a serious reprimand. (The actual feat was also performed in a Mark IV Auster on the Salisbury Plain north of RAF Andover, in the late spring of 1945).[8] ..." (1)# ^ "Obituary: James Doohan". BBC News. 2005-07-20. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1493093.stm. Retrieved 2007-04-29. (2)# ^ James Doohan Biography (1920-) (3)# ^ Graves, Donald E. (2005). Century of Service. New York: Midpoint Trade Books Inc.. pp. 244. ISBN 1896941435. (4)# ^ Despite his efforts, the injured hand can be seen in the Star Trek episodes "The Trouble With Tribbles", "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", "The Enemy Within", "The Ultimate Computer" and "Catspaw", as well as in The Search for Spock when giving parts from the USS Excelsior to Dr. Leonard McCoy, in The Final Frontier when Nyota Uhura brings him dinner on the bridge of the USS Enterprise-A, and in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics", when the missing finger is clearly apparent as Scotty offers Captain Jean-Luc Picard a drink while on a re-creation of the original Enterprise bridge. (5)# ^ Knight, Darrell (2010). Artillery Flyers at War. Bennington: Merriam Press. pp. 482. ISBN 9780557329649. (6)# ^ Battle History 666. Calgary: Abel Book Company. 2006. (7)# ^ Fromow, D.L. (2002). Canada's Flying Gunners: A History of the Air Observation Post of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. Air O.P. Pilot's Association. ISBN 0973005505. (8)# ^ The Making of Star Trek. New York: Ballantine Books. 1968.
Actually, James Doohan was trained to a superior level of flying standard by the RAF, over and above that training he might have received had he been training in Canada. After convalescence, Doohan was sent to #22 EFTS Cambridge (Marshall Field, Cambridgeshire), where he received roughly 60 hours of training and mastered the dH 82 Tiger Moth. Afterward, he was sent on to #43 Operational Training Unit, RAF Andover, where he became intimately familiar with the Mark III, Mark IV and Mark V Taylorcraft Auster - at extreme low level, day and night, and fully trained in instrument flying - through another 60 hours, before being posted to his squadron and "going operational." In the RCAF at this stage, it was the "norm" for most pilots to be trained in VFR flight operations only, except if they were being sent on to a special instrument school...all Canadian AOP pilots (78 in all) had the good fortune to be trained to fly by the RAF. Doohan suffered no such shortfall (with respect to IFR flight) and became one of the most accomplished pilots in 666 Squadron, RCAF, before going on "repat" (back to Canada) in August 1945 after V-J Day.
Other stories I heard was that in the Star Trek days, Doohan was invited to Gene Roddenberry's sailing ship/yacht and he would always get lost. It was Doohan who would take control and bring the boat back to harbor. Doohan would be heard joking to Roddenberry; "And you call yourself a pilot.." Roddenberry had been a B-17 pilot who crashed his plane and after the war became a pilot for Pan Am and also crashed his plane. thanks for the extra info. Doohan was a great person. The best of the Star Trek people.
