Cold War Fighter Pilot - Ken Castle, CD, Flight-Lieutenant (ret'd)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.ย. 2024
- "Voices from the Canada Aviation and Space Museum", a new documentary film series produced by the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, in collaboration with Outsiders Films Inc., focuses the spotlight on men who have left their mark on Canada's aviation history.
Ken Castle reminisces about his experiences as a flight instructor for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, training pilots from all member countries. Mr. Castle flew aboard Canadair Sabres (day fighters most notably used in North Korea), and the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (a super-sonic interceptor, used by the Canadian Forces as a low-altitude tactical fighter).
Thank you Flt Lt Castle I enjoyed your interview and thank you for your service.
I could listen to these guys all day long. I recall watching the 104's out of CFB Trenton while at Air Cadet Camp. I was born too late :(
Excellent initiative of the Museum to capture personal experiences of our Cold Warriors. Having real people talk about it is much more effective than seeing impersonal old archive footage. Great video!
Great interview video. As a tanker in the army, I was attached to the RCD's in Lahr 3 different times for the annual NATO Reforger exercises in the late 1970's, and we saw Canadian zip splats (painted monotone dark green at the time) along with US Phantoms and Aardvarks regularily.
My dad was an IP on both the F-86 & F-104 (Williams & Luke AFB). It was quite a privilege to be a military brat in the 50's & 60's. The two most excitng sounds of that era: B-36's flying overhead and the J-79 powered F-104.
Ken Castle, I enjoyed your interview on the CF-104 very much! I was an AST radar tech back then first at 2(F)Wing with the 423 Sqn Clunks, then was sent to 3(F)Wing to do acceptance checks on the CF-104s when they arrived at Zweibrucken! Your name does not ring a bell but if you were at 3Wing we probably crossed paths either at 434 or 427 Squadrons! John Aires was one of our test pilots and he took the aircraft up after inspections before they were turned over for Squadron use! I was just a young kid back then and held the towering rank of LAC! Told the Yanks we were Dak pilots, ha! ha! I'm just reading the book, Kitty Hawk Pilot by Stocky Edwards that is alive and well living in Comox! A great book on the North Africa campaign! Albert ( Burt) Houle wrote the tribute! He was my CO at St. Hubert, my first ops station after training Command' Clinton and Camp Borden! A fine gentleman that is sadly no longer with us! He died in his 95th year in 2008!
The lowly LAC! I was one at Cold Lake from 1963-66. Radar Air Technician but mostly worked on the flight line. What an experience! Friday and Saturday nights we fought the Yankee tanker boys down at the local community centre in the grand town of Grand Centre before they pulled up and went back home.
You folks should really interview for posterity Capt. Clifford John (Hank) HENRY who lives in Vancouver. He flew and instructed on fighters from WW 2 to the Cold War in Europe. He flew prop fighters, Sabres and Cf-104s. He set air to air gunnery records never equalled to this day and his ability to dogfight is legend. He also returned 2 "unflyable" CF-104s to base at Cold Lake, for which no recognition was given, it being in his mind "all in a day's work. Hank is 93, sound of mind and can be reached
at 604-291-1140.
Thanks for the suggestion. the "Voices from the Canada Aviation and Space Museum" documentary film series was made over 5 years ago and is now completed and no more videos are being added to the series.
@@CanAvSpaceMuseum typical.
Excellent video! Good to see Canadian history.
Memories... the younger ones will wonder. But some of us still know.
Thank God you never had to throw that boomcracker after confirming authentication.... and thank you for your service, it worked!! We are all still here! I was nearly rendered deaf by that J79 in full open glory, and as long as the AOA was not too far out of happy, it could show some decent contrails just from tip effect. If the wing was twice as large, you might start to think U2.hehe
LOL @ your hearing.
I lived in West Germany from 62-72 as an army brat, and was located in Soest. I remember the armed forces day spectacle around 1967-68 on the parade square in Hemer..
Sitting in the bleachers about 25' from the edge of the parade massive square.......just after watching the fake blank filled "battle" between the red and blue infantry forces, complete with smoke grenades and thunderflashes, this CF-104 came ripping over my head in full burner at about 100' AGL and a huge smokebomb went off in the centre of the square...........the sight and sound has been burned into my memory since, it's like it was yesterday.
Coolest thing ever !!
Great video and wonderful story! Those Cold War days were something else! I grew up as a kid in those days in the 70s and 80s. A lot of tension between east and west, but as a avgeek kid a time I will never forget with all those fighter jets crossing the sky above my home in the Netherlands in Western Europe! Awesome! Saw fighter jets from all NATO countries passing over each weekday. We also had the Americans at Soesterberg AB with their F-15s, flying over my hometown every weekday. Just awesome! I will never forget that time. Hopefully such a time will never come back, but you never know with the Russians and North Koreans. And the Starfighter was a loud and fast jet. Awesome and beautiful! One of a kind! Enjoyed the video very much! Greetz from Holland!
104, impressive aircraft, even by today's standards. Took a few miles to turn it around, but flat out speed in a straight line, hard to beat. Mr. Castle provides a sober account of the Cold War. Mr. Putin appears to be on a track to revisit that era! Heaven forbid.
True, dangerous man, Putin! But hey, being an ex-KGB agent...never to be trusted!
aereo favoloso uno dei migliori ottimi piloti canadesi
VERY well done!!
Thank you very much.
Are you folks going to do more interviews like this?
These guys and the generations before are my heroes.
excellent interview
Thanks!
In December 1950 my father, as a young Engineering Officer, was posted to Portage as part of spooling up the NATO pipeline at Portage MacDonald and Gimli. He proposed and married my mother a few days later and they set off for Manitoba. With every promotion, the station supply officer issued a new child and by 1960 he was in command of a Pinetree Radar Station, the youngest Wing Commander in the RCAF with four sons. There were many families like mine. We went everywhere the RCAF asked and most of those places were on a Warsaw Pact/USSR target list. This included Ramstein Germany when 4ATAF was still there. I washed pots in the Kindsbach Cave one summer. The big map of Europe was on the other side of the wall from my sink, as I learned five years ago. World War Three would have started a few feet from my workstation!
Why won't the Civil Servants running the museum allow the use of the word 'nuclear'? The CF-104 was intended to strike with tactical nuclear weapons in response to a Soviet attack on Western Europe. There are still about 200 B-61 weapons on NATO airbases in Europe. Look for Vokel Air Base on Google Earth. Oddly enough, the German and Belgian bases are not obscured on the map.
Ken, we never met but I was at RCAF Station Portage too, outside in my pram in our brand new PMQ from July 52-55. Dad was part of the party that went out to open up Portage, Gimli and MacDonald in 1951. He was a newly minted mechanical engineer and F/O aircraft maintenance officer. I definitely heard you flying a T-bird at some point (along with the rest of NATO's fighter pilots).
Thank you sir ! F-104, my favorite airplane !
My grandpa, James Roy Garrow was a mechanic on the f-86 saber in those days, later went to CFB Cold Lake Alberta up untill the 1960s Died on the base in cold lake.
If you don't mind me asking, how did he die?
Subscriber,liker and commenter Heart attack. he liked to drink and smoke.
"In order to get mad at somebody"
Well said!!!
🤣.
I could listen to guys like this talk all day long.
Boomcracker: tactical nuclear bombs. The CF 104 Starfighters were initially in the nuclear deterrent role. Later were conventional strike/interdiction and photo reconnaissance.
Canada was a pretty tough customer at the end of ww2 through to 1968 when you know who came along.....😢
The CF-104 was not a good plane for bombing, the F-105 would have been a much more appropriate plane for that.
Ken Castle reminds me very much of my dad, Hank Henry. Similar eras. Oh, the "boomcrackers" he speaks of were Nukes destined for a city in Russia.
Not Russia. These Nukes were Tactical Weapons, not Strategic Weapons such as ICBMs and B-52s used. The NATO (4 ATAF) was tasked with tactical military targets in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland. Never ever a city...in fact, we planned deliveries to minimize fallout on civilian areas.
CF104...unforgettable howl of NATO's wolf in the air.
Out of curiosity, why would a guy with that many yrs of experience still be a flt lieutenant?
Thank gosh you never had to use them in combat could have costnyou the war
Was the boom cracker nuclear?
Hence the name yup