Milt Harradence - Military Service & Aviation

Military Service & Aviation

From 1941 to 1943, during World War II, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). It was during his service that he was wrongfully "cashiered" for performing aerobatics with a Bristol Bolingbroke bomber-trainer, "broken" from the RCAF and sent to Alaska as a member of the Canadian Army. After the war he successfully overturned his "cashiering," had his flying status and honourable record renewed and moved to Calgary, Alberta to practise law.

Milt flew with 403 City of Calgary Squadron, RCAF for a number of years. In 1960 Lynn Garrison, also a pilot with 403 Squadron, obtained the contract to ferry 75 P-51 Mustang aircraft, retired from RCAF service, to their new owners in New York. Milt Harradence would take time off from his law practise to accompany Garrison on the trips. Flying without radios, most of the time, they navigated by following the CPR railroad tracks eastward. Some of the flights were very exciting. He and Garrison acquired two Mustangs as part of their compensation and registered them as CF-LOR and CF-LOQ, the first of their type registered in Canada. Harradence loved to do low-level aerobatics and participated in many airshows across Canada and the United States. He and Garrison had a long term relationship with the founders of the Confederate Air Force in Texas. Milt would trade his Mustang for a DeHavilland Vampire jet, obtained from New York by Garrison. This would be traded for Garrison’s Canadair F-86 which Harradence flew as CF-AMH, for a short time, before retiring from the aviation game in 1967.

While ferrying surplus Mustangs from the old RCAF Station Macleod, Harradence and Garrison noted a number of Lancaster bombers heading into the melting pot. Garrison purchased Lancaster FM-136 in 1960 and ferried it to Calgary where, with the help of Milt Harradence and Arthur R. Smith DFC, MP, created the Lancaster Memorial Fund. The Lancaster is a permanent display in Calgary as a memorial to those who served with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, during World War Two. Harradence and Smith received their pilot training under this scheme. Smith flew Lancasters.