Prince County's forgotten military

past by Allan and Jess ie Graham

s one drives through the tranquil beauty of western Prince County, Prince Edward Island, it is hard to imagine the wartime military impor-tance of this area thirty years ago. Prince County formed one of the main strategic zones of the Atlantic region during the Second World War, sup-porting four installations. The only one which remains in use is Canadian Armed Forces Base Summerside. Gone and almost forgotten are the airport and bombing-gunnery school at Mount Pleasant, the emergency land-ing strip and hangar at Wellington, and the radar base at Tignish. Other mili-tary locations — the search and rescue stations at Tignish Run and at Alberton South, and the target areas at Higgins Wharf and on Hog Island—are simi-larly remembered by few. This article shall deal primarily with the Mount Pleasant and Tignish military installa-tions, while giving mention to the little airstrip at Wellington.

Prince County benefited greatly from the political games of the 1930's. Prime Minister MacKenzie King wanted R.L. Ralston of Amherst, Nova Scotia, to be his Minister of Defense. But Ralston could not win his own Amherst riding in an ensuing federal election. In desperation, an uniden-tified party member asked the Prince County Liberals to drop the candidates they had considered locally and to nominate Ralston. He was accepted

and, after a quick campaign conducted by train, was elected. Prince County now had a Minister of Defense all its own. Ralston never forgot his adopted Island constituency when the time came to construct military bases.

The Summerside Journal first re-ported the impending construction of airports on January 13th, 1940, just a few months after the commencement of hostilities in Europe:

EMPIRE AIR SCHEME UNFOLDS — Altogether there will be need for 80 airdromes.

On April 4th it was announced that Prince Edward Island would participate in the training of pilots under the new British Commonwealth Air Training Program. And a few weeks later, on May 2nd, the Journal's front page blurted out the "great news" that Summerside (St. Eleanor's), Mount Pleasant and Wellington had been named as air installation sites.

Imagine the surprise of local resi-dents when they heard this news. The Tignish radar base was not mentioned by the press because of its top secret nature. It was stated that Mount Pleas-ant, and Wellington were to be only "relief" bases—alternate landing sites in the event of inclement weather. A relief airport was all that Wellington became, but Mount Pleasant was des-tined for greater things.

The Mount Pleasant Airport In early June, 1940, the contracts

were let for the initial construction of the Prince County airports. At Mount Pleasant work was confined to the Ellerslie side of the Western Road and only a simple landing strip and service area were planned. Although the R.C.A.F. was committed to spending $188,200 at this site during 1940-41, almost nothing was spent that year. In 1941-42, however, the building of an airport at Mount Pleasant was under-taken seriously. The site chosen was a well-elevated plateau overlooking the Northumberland Strait, chosen so that pilots would be able to see the run-ways from a long distance. Because the land was almost perfectly flat, little levelling needed to be done, and dry soil precluded any problems with mud.

Municipal Paving and Spraying of Halifax did the stumping, clearing, fencing, filling in of a few small depressions, tiling of drains, and laying of sewers. M. F. Schurman's of Sum-merside then erected a hangar, an H-barracks, a water tank, and a garage on the North side of the Ellerslie road, one-quarter mile from the main road. In total, almost $217,000 was ex-pended at Mount Pleasant during the 1941-42 fiscal year. All that now re-mains of this original location is an underground tank and the rubble of concrete floors.

After the construction of the Mount

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Pleasant base, to the amazement of everyone, it was announced that the emergency landing strip would be turned into a huge air-training school. This resulted in some dislocation for local residents. Since the Western Road lay right in the middle of the proposed training school, a diversion road had to be built around the west side of the military property. The people who lived in the western sector of the planned site had to be relocated and their houses moved. The construc-tion of buildings for the "Number 10 Bombing and Gunnery School" began in 1943 and work proceeded at a furious pace. According to figures pro-vided by the Directorate of History at the National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa, the total capital costs of the Mount Pleasant training school were as follows:

Land $ 23,400 Aerodrome

development 770,495 Construction 2,535,466 Total cost $3,329,361

The school at Mount Pleasant was occupied by the R.C.A.F. on June 26th, 1943, while still incomplete. Wing Commander R C. Mair assumed command in early October of that year. Soon after, the first airplanes arrived along with 46 young trainees. (The peak employment strength at the base was 1,860, reached on January 31st, 1944). The first entry from the official base diary tersely describes the launching of operations:

Saturday, June 26th, 1943 Weather—fair and warm C.A.V.U.* No. 10 Bombing and Gunnery School was taken over this date by the advance party under the com-mand of F.L.S. Guillon . . . Moving pictures were shown in the airmen's mess through the courtesy of the Auxiliary Services.

The Mount Pleasant installation was part of a joint agreement signed in December, 1939, by the Governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Au-stralia, and New Zealand. Its sole purpose was to train pilots and other personnel needed to maintain air superiority in the war. By 1940 it had become impossible to train pilots in Great Britain because of interference

*ceiling above measure and visibility unlimited

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from enemy aircraft. In two short years, eleven new schools were estab-

i lished in Canada and twenty-six R.AF. schools were transferred across the Atlantic.

Air gunnery at Mount Pleasant was practiced by shooting at large "drogues" which were towed behind

| aircraft. A drogue was made of white nylon or silk and was about twenty-five feet in length, with a six-foot opening in the front tapering to a two-foot opening at the back. The bullets were marked with coloured ink which left a distinct impression on the drogue. The number of spots of a certain colour on a tattered drogue indicated how accurate a particular gunner had been. Drogues were hooked to the tail end of an airplane by a 100-foot steel cable. They were released after being shot full of holes, and new ones were inflated as the aircraft flew along. During good flying conditions over 35,000 rounds of ammunition might be fired at drogue targets in a single day. The types of aircraft used during these training ses-sions were Bolingbroke, Anson, Fairey Battle, Harvard, Hurricane, and Norseman.

Stationary targets were also used in shooting practice. One such target was located on the sandhills in the area commonly referred to as Hog Island. Pilots would swoop down on the tiny

island and fire away at it. Because more ammunition was lost in the sea than actually hit targets, and because of the resulting danger to fishermen, a large area of the Gulf of St. Lawrence adjacent to Hog Island was declared out-of-bounds to all mariners.

As might be expected, military air-training at Mount Pleasant was not without accidents, although much re-search needs to be done before exact information is available. Crashes are known to have occurred at Springhill, Alaska, McNeill's Mills, Milligan's Wharf, Enmore, Richmond Bay, and Ellerslie. The war needed trained pilots in a hurry and most "reliable" equip-ment was in the air over Europe. But trainees came from all over and, as the following newspaper report confirms, most did get their "wings":

The first class of graduates to be turned out from No. 10 Bombing and Gunnery School at Mount Pleasant were awarded their win decoration last Thursday after-noon. . . . The class was a fairly large one, and comprised young men mainly from Western Yukon and several from the United States.

The function took place in one of the hangars, Wing Commander R.C. Mair, the Commanding Officer of the base, personally, at the parade,

Roads Scale 1" = 20 chains Airport Boundaries S c a t e , 1 5 8 4 o Farm Lines „ _ , Dividing lines between S c a l e 1 ~ ' m i l e

first and second phases of airport construction Z l : : i

Airport area West of Western Road 206 acres East of Western Road 450 acres

Total area 656 acres

Hard

Mrs. Ella Gillis

Chas. Stewart

James Ford 100a Ellerslie Road

Site of Mount Pleasant airport in 1938 showing eventual airport boundary and diversion road.

attaching the coveted wing ensignia upon the uniform of each graduate.

The class made a smart appear-ance as they formed up for the occasion . . . . This splendid aggrega-tion of young men left the following morning for their destination elsewhere in Canada and others will take their place. The day of this function was bitterly cold and no visitors were present. The best wishes of their officers, comrades and other friends will follow the brave graduates wherever they go.

As the number of men stationed at the St. Eleanor's and Mount Pleasant airbases increased, a need was seen for an efficient transportation system to serve these areas. In 1941, a Summer-side town councillor and businessman, W.E. Smallman, began a bus service to the St. Eleanor's base using two small sedan buses. Two years later, the Airways Bus and Transfer Com-pany extended its routes to include the Mount Pleasant airport. Eight modem 30-passenger buses were added to the fleet and in one month the local bus company carried 40,986 passengers over 27,000 miles.

The No. 10 Bombing and Gunnery School had one of the most advanced military newspapers in Canada. Called The Gunnery Leader, it began in 1943 as a mimeographed monthly, lasted in this format for four issues, then be-came a 16-page two-colour magazine.

At the close of the war, early in 1945, rumours began to circulate that the Mount Pleasant airport would soon be shut down. No one took these reports seriously, of course, for the training school had quickly established itself as being of major economic and social importance to western Prince County. The base employed a large civilian staff and purchased foodstuffs from local farmers; in addition, airmen had won the goodwill of native Island-ers by assisting with the annual har-vests and staging amateur theatre pro-ductions throughout the province.

Following several denials by officials in Ottawa, it was announced that Mount Pleasant airport would, indeed, be closed down on June 6th, 1945. The closing entry in Commander R.J. White's base diary reads:

Effective this date, No. 10 Bombing and Gunnery School, Mount Pleas-ant, P.E.I, ceases to exist as an

R.C.A.F. Station Large drafts of men have been posted until the strength of the Unit is roughly 170 men and 10 officers . . . .

With the formal announcement of closure began a five-year phasing out of the Mount Pleasant installation. It first was turned into a storage area for unused aircraft that might supply the St. Eleanor's base with spare parts. Then on October 3rd, 1945, a mam-moth auction sale attended by thousands of people, was held in the largest hangar at Mount Pleasant. Over 500 individual lots of equipment and supplies were auctioned off, including everything from typewriters to sauce-pans.

A skeleton crew of servicemen re-mained at the base until the spring of 1946 when security was turned over to the Corps of Commissionaires. Mount Pleasant subsequently became property of the federal War Assets Corporation and for a few years was left relatively intact. Throughout this period hangars at the base were occa-sionally made available to farmers in the area for storing potatoes.

In 1950 the Charlottetown Salvage Company was given the job of dis-mantling the airport at Mount Pleasant. Fewer than ten of the buildings were sold intact, most being torn apart and sold piecemeal. The largest hangar was rented for two years to the El-lerslie Athletic Club as a rink before it passed into the hands of Morrison and MacRae Limited. In 1960 it too was dismantled. The buildings that were sold and moved are still extant

R.C.A.F. Tignish and the Wel-lington Emergency Strip

As far as can be determined, the Tignish base began operations in 1942. The usual name for the base was R.C.A.F. Tignish, but the names St. Felix radar base, R.C.A.F. Green-mount, and R.C.A.F. Alberton were also used. Its actual location was amongst a grove of trees, atop a high section of land on the Greenmount Road leading to Tignish. Physically, the base consisted of eight separate buildings - a technical building housing the radar equipment, an administrative building, an H-barracks, a guardhouse, a boiler room, a pumphouse, a motor

The rifle range. Airport bus awaiting passengers.

Mount Pleasant base under construction.

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transport garage, and an electrical generating plant. During the entire period the Tignish radar base was operated, from 1942-45, it had but three commanding officers — Robert Allen, William Brennan, and an as yet unidentified third man. The installation was self-contained and quite indepen-dent from Mount Pleasant. It drew its rations from the St. Eleanor's base.

The obvious purpose of the Tignish base was to search the skies for enemy aircraft; however, it also assisted navi-gation students from the St. Eleanor's airport who found themselves lost. There were usually sixty-five to seventy-five enlisted men stationed at Tignish. The base commanding officer was responsible for making sure that communication was maintained be-tween Summerside and the search and rescue squadrons located at Tignish Run and at Alberton South.

All mail was censored at the Tignish

Amateur Theatre group at No. 10 Bombing and Gunnery School.

• m

radar base and, as at Mount Pleasant, movies were shown on Saturdays and Sundays, with groups of civilians from the surrounding area frequently invited to attend. Dances were held on the base and in Alberton.

The only skills taught at R.C.A.F. Tignish were those needed by operators working in the technical building. Technicians had been trained at Trenton, Nova Scotia before being stationed at Tignish. When the base at the western tip of the Island was closed, all of the buildings were dis-mantled and sold. The street pattern is still visible, as are the man-holes with their metal ladders.

Wellington's claim to military prow-ess was simply a grain field with a path cleared and levelled for a runway. This emergency landing strip, located about halfway between Mount Pleasant and St. Eleanor's, was used at least twice, according to our research. The single

solitary building, consisting of a bar-racks room for crew and hangar space for the temporary storage and repair of stranded aircraft, is standing yet. Conclusion

Veterans are usually reluctant to talk about the horrors of war, and history books restrict their discussion to bat-tles, campaigns, military leaders, and the larger questions of cause and result. We hope that this article has illuminated the interesting wartime role played by military installations on Prince Edward Island during the 1940s. It is time that these sites were properly marked so that future genera-tions might know of their importance.

Authors' Acknowledgement The above article began as a project of the Ellerslie-Tyne Valley Community School. We would like to thank the many individuals who contributed to its research.

x i J L J L j fgiggp! ""* «

Heating plant and barracks buildings. :••'•: :?'• >vfH»; :\::;™' .... .. :;;..;,-;. ••;,,•;•.

Wreckage of "Anson" near Mount Pleasant.

Site of radar base at Tignish. 22

Training aircraft on tarmac at Mount Pleasant.