The Harvard flies today as a symbol and reminder of all who served to preserve our freedom and as a living memorial to those who made the supreme sacrifice in order that we could live in a free country.

The Harvard is probably the best known and most successful training aircraft of World War II. It was from the “pilot maker” that the youth of the free world graduated to fly single-engine fighter aircraft and is sometimes referred to as the “Yellow Peril”. The Harvard was a transitional aircraft. The pilots cut their teeth on the Fleet Finch, de Havilland Tiger Moth and Fleet Cornell before flying the Hurricane, Spitfire and Mustang in which “our boys” went on to turn the tide of war.

The Harvard was originally designed by North American Aviation which was later famous for the B-25 Mitchell, P-51 Mustang, F-86 Sabre. It was a British Commonwealth version of the AT-6 advanced trainer known as the SNJ by the US Navy. Over 17,000 Harvards/AT-6/SNJ’s and variants were built by North American in Inglewood, California and Dallas, Texas, origin of the AT-6’s nickname ‘Texan’ and were licenced in Canada, Australia and Sweden from the late 1930’s to the mid 1950’s. Of these, 2,377 Harvards (or variants) were flown in RCAF service.

The Harvard was the single-engine advanced trainer for pilots who came to Canada from all over the world to train and earn their wings under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). The first graduates of BCATP received their wings in 1940 at Camp Borden, the birthplace of the Royal Canadian Air Force. One of the graduates of that initial course is Flight Lieutenant Glen Rawson who is a proud CHAA member.

The Royal Canadian Air Force took delivery of its Harvard from North American on July 20, 1939. This version, called the Mk I (Mark One), was the RCAF’s first trainer with retractable landing gear. There were 30 Mk I’s delivered to Canada before the upgraded Mk II came into production. Just over 1000 Mk II’s were delivered to the RCAF from North American. From 1940-45, the Harvard also was built under licence by Noorduyn Aviation near Montreal (best known for their ‘Norseman’ bush plane). These were known as the Harvard Mk IIB as well as the AT-16 for those produced under the ‘Lend-Lease’ plan. 1,710 Harvard’s were built by Noorduyn, of which 859 served with the RCAF.

Today, there are fewer than 50 Harvard’s flying in Canada and CHAA is proud to be home to the largest fleet of Harvard’s in North America.

CHAA is based at the Tillsonburg Regional Airport, located on Airport Road north of Tillsonburg, Ontario. We are home to eight Harvards and a Yale.