Story by Jack Meadows
First Published in Aeroplane Monthly, March 1994
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History Main Page
At 16, lying
about his age,
he joined the
Royal Canadian
Air Force, but
was found out
and discharged.
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The loss of the airship Macon on February 12, 1935, marked the end of the US Navy's inter-war dirigible programme. Eventually it was decreed that aeroplanes were to be built to use up the remaining stocks of duralumin and other materials. The Naval Aircraft Factory N3N primary trainer of 1938 was the result.
More than 50 years later, a rare survivor flies regularly on Canada's West Coast, out of Garden Bay in Pender Harbour. Its owner is Bill Thompson, a retired Master Mariner.
In 1941, aged 14 and with his eyes on the sky, Bill was an aircraft cleaner at Vancouver's airfield. At 15 he was a fabric worker in Boeing's factory there. A photograph taken at the time shows him in a leather jacket, helmet and goggles, the aspiring birdman gazing skywards, half standing in the cockpit of a Fairchild 21, right hand on the coaming, left on the upper wing centre section. Alongside is an identical 1992 portrait of Bill in his N3N.
Wartime restrictions cut short Bill's early flying lessons. At 16, lying about his age, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but was found out and discharged. He tried again at 17, asking to be an air gunner because the six-week course was the shortest way to the war, which might soon end. The recruiting officer said that his ability to identify a gooseneck spanner showed mechanical aptitude, and that he should be a flight engineer. Bill walked out and joined the Merchant Navy instead.
 Halfway through his first transatlantic trip in 1945, the lights went on; he had missed the war after all. Later he sailed to the Pacific, finally returning to a job as a tugboat captain, mainly towing logs on the coast of British Columbia. Soon he had his own business, operating five tugs out of Pender Harbour.
Bill never lost the flying bug. In 1960 he bought an Aeronca Champ, gained his licence, and then converted it to floats. Most of his 4,000 plus hours have been on floats - "This is floatplane country," he says. After three years he traded the Aeronca for a Cessna 172 which he still owns; it is now flown by "number two son". Another of his four sons (he has a daughter as well) also flies.
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