Victory Celebrations at the
Bomber Command Museum of Canada

Story and photos by John Chalmers
June 2025
Among the special events held at Canadian aviation museums in May was a full day’s program at the Bomber Command Museum at Nanton, Alberta on Saturday, May 10, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. The museum’s Victory in Europe “Engine Run Day” featured engine run-ups of aircraft at the museum, music performed by the air force band from 4 Wing Cold Lake, and a flypast of a Hornet CF-18 jet from the Cold Lake base making two passes over a large crowd in attendance on a perfect day for the event.
Prior to the special celebrations on May 10, on the afternoon of May 9, Karl Kjarsgaard and Todd Lemieux, both volunteers at the museum, raised the world’s largest RCAF flag, 40 feet by 20 feet, to have it proudly displayed in honour of the air force. The new flag, replacing the previous one that showed its age and the effects of weather, was cranked up to the top of the 103-foot mast beside the museum.
The volunteer RCAF band from 4 Wing at Cold Lake, Alberta, comprised mainly of regular force personnel, gave three performances on May 10, two during the day and again in the evening, prior to a night engine run of the museum’s Lancaster bomber. A book sale, bomb-sight demonstration, rear turret gun demo, featured talks and plenty of opportunity to tour the museum and see the displays were all part of the day’s appeal.
First engine to be run-up was the five-cylinder Kinner radial engine on the Fleet Fawn, a wartime pilot instructor trainer aircraft used by the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). As the engine is not self-starting, it needs a spin of the propeller to get it started.
The next engine run was both Jacobs nine-cylinder radial engines of the Cessna Crane, an aircraft donated to the museum in flying condition. Now repainted in the familiar yellow of training aircraft of the BCATP, the Crane had a steel tubing fuselage that was fabric covered. First flown in 1939, it was used to give pilots multi-engine flying experience.  In the background is a Canadair CT-33 Silver Star, used for post-war pilot training by the RCAF for some 25 years, starting in the early 1950s.
In one of the presentations of the Victory in Europe program, museum curator Karl Kjarsgaard spoke of the role played by Bomber Command in his talk about “The RCAF Squadrons at War’s End.”
While spectators lined up to take a tour of the Lancaster, the RCAF band gave its afternoon performance in the shade of the bomber’s wing.
Special event days at the museum in Nanton always draw a good crowd, with folks coming from southern Alberta including the Lethbridge and Medicine Hat areas, as well as from Calgary and north. The museum’s Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck is mounted by the RCAF memorial wall that names over 10,800 young men who lost their lives in air force service with Bomber Command during the Second World War.
A puff of smoke from a 12-cylinder liquid cooled Merlin engine signals the start-up of the third engine, in a demonstration run-up of all four engines, a main attraction of the day. Later, the year’s first night run-up of the engines was done as a conclusion of the day’s events. With books and merchandise available from the museum’s excellent gift shop, opportunities to see restoration work being done on the Mosquito twin-engine fighter/bomber as a project of the Calgary Mosquito Society, and a book launch of The BCATP in Calgary, visitors were rewarded with a total program that included breakfast, lunch and dinner available at the museum.
Another bomber at the museum is the Bristol Blenheim, a type used in the first two years of the Second World War, flown with a crew of only three – pilot, wireless operator/gunner and the navigator/bomb aimer, who sat in the nose of the aircraft. Canadian-built versions of the bomber were called the Bolingbroke, used by the RCAF starting in 1939, in coastal patrols and training aircraft at bases of the BCATP across Canada. Built as a Bolingbroke, this one was restored as a virtually identical Blenheim bomber.
Always a crowd pleaser is a run-up of a mighty twin row 14-cylinder Bristol Hercules engine, the type used on four-engine Halifax bombers. Handling the starting controls of the 1,620 horsepower engine is Karl Kjarsgaard, standing. The air-cooled sleeve-valve radial engine was obtained in England, virtually new, with just over half an hour of running time on it. Karl is heading up the museum’s efforts to recover parts and build new ones to complete a Halifax four-engine bomber for the museum. An afternoon repeat run of the Cessna Crane engines completed the daytime run-ups.
A night run of all four engines on the Lancaster is a dramatic demonstration of what the bomber looked like before taking off from England for night bombing of Germany. The spectacle is also a sobering reminder of all the young men who flew with Bomber Command during the Second World War, and gave their lives in defence of freedom.
 
Of 7,377 Lancaster bombers built for the war, only 26 remain, including 7 at Canadian aviation museums. Only 2 Lancasters are still flying, one in England, and one from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario. Nanton’s Lancaster is one of only four in the world with all engines in running condition.
 
In addition to regular opening hours, from April through September, the Bomber Command Museum of Canada holds several special events that attract large crowds to celebrate the service of the Royal Canadian Air Force.