By Jasmine Franklin
What started as an alternative to failing high school, turned into a life journey in the air for a man who has flown around the world.
An air force pilot, staff officer pilot and check pilot, Ponoka’s Walter Burchnall was celebrating the last day of one tour when the first atomic bomb was dropped Aug. 6, 1945.
“I still have dreams about flying,” said Burchnall, a retired air force pilot. “As a check pilot, you really learn from watching the mistakes of others.”
The 85-year-old veteran has flown 12,000 hours accident free between the Second World War, the Korean War and running various training exercises for new pilots.
His story begins in Ponoka in 1943 when a young, almost 19-year-old Burchnall realized he wouldn’t be able to graduate high school after falling short of the 200-day graduation requirement. So, he turned to the air force.
With prior air cadet training and a first aid certificate from Ponoka already under his belt, Burchnall took off to Manning pool, Edmonton, for training and drills. Thanks to his prior experience, he was awarded with a K in front of his name that stood for ex-air cadet; all other trainees without prior experience were given an R in front of their names. This he said, made a huge difference.
“You were recognized and stood out from the others you know,” said Burchnall.
After the initial training stages, the men were up for air crew selection. They did further training at the University of Alberta for Initial Training School (ITS) where he was selected for pilot training.
Burchnall and the others selected continued on to High River, amd he still recalls the feeling of his first solo flight.
“It was just exhilarating,” he said with a smile.
After just over a year of training, Burchnall received his pilot’s wings. Nine pilots from the course were then selected, Burchnall included, to receive a commission that recognized them as a pilot officer.
It was early July in 1944 when he and his crew of four or five flew over the Atlantic, out of range of German fighters, and into Kurachi, India, where many of the crew came down with dysentery — acute diarrhea.
“We were all pretty sick,” Burchnall said. “Everyone was pretty tender from constant wiping — and I mean damn tender,” he laughed.
But December 1944 was the time when Burchnall was put to the test and sent out on operational flights as a supply dropper. Stationed out of Innisfail, India, he and his crew were to fly twice a day, every second day, dropping supplies to support the British army which was pushing back the Japanese.
“We were supply dropping from 100 to 400 feet,” he said. “It always depended on whether the stuff was free-falling or on a parachute.”
The last day of his first tour, Aug. 6, 1945, was something Burchnall will never forget.
“I ended my tour the day the first atomic bomb was dropped,” he said. “I remember that none of us believed it had actually happened — we couldn’t grasp the par of it.”
After the war ended, Burchnall ended up in Bombay by himself where he said it was “hotter than hell.” He eventually caught up with a Royal Canadian Air Force bomber plane that had been converted to haul troops home. He “lucked-out” in becoming co-pilot while flying back to England and was eventually promoted to senior officer.
Because there was no paper record of Burchnall for some time, he was kept on the plane to assist in flying, and hadn’t earned enough credit to be one of the first let off the plane.
He didn’t return to Canada until January and was officially discharged March 14, 1946 at age 22.
Some memories Burchnall shared from the Second World War were painful. He talked about the two different types of crews: the A-flight and B-flight. He was A-flight but recalls when a B-flight aircraft was shot down by Japanese fighters and been forced into a crash landing in which the plane exploded. Everyone on the aircraft died.
The biggest challenge of all he said was the weather.
“There were severe, severe thunderstorms. You really had to try and pick your way through it,” Burchnall said. “We actually lost one crew and craft in a storm one time. In weather like that, we would drop the supplies and get out of there as quickly as we could.”
The last day of his tour was also one of the riskiest flights for Burchnall. He decided to do an extra (third) trip that day, but the weather was so severe they had to abort the mission.
“It scared the hell out of me,” he said. “I just remember thinking ‘I didn’t even have to do this — holy smokes, am I stupid.’”
For the next five years he would be a farmer until Canada entered the Korean War in 1951 and he re-enlisted at the age of 27.
He took refresher training and then began to fly domestically in the Arctic for operational work. Burchnall was then transferred to Trenton, Ont. to instruct operational training as a check pilot.
He was then transported to command headquarters as a staff officer pilot and a training and command instrument check pilot.
From here Burchnall did three tours back-to-back doing training and he came to Edmonton in 1964 by choice, even after the armed force asked him to stay.
Here he flew C130 planes worldwide, and officially retired in August 1969 at the age of 45.
Some of Burchnall’s highlights include taking Lord Edward Schakleton — the man responsible for leading the expedition that discovered and named Mount Oxford on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut —back to Mount Oxford.
“It was in the 1960s and we were on Ellesmere Island where we tracked the northwest land, the same location he had taken to discover the mountain,” Burchnall said. “He wrote a book and had the picture of the mountain open. When we reached the mountain, there it was. He was so damn happy.”
Shackelton later wrote Burchnall thanking him and mentioning how impressed he was with Burchnall’s flying, so impressed in fact that Shackelton later bought several C130 planes from the RCAF.
After retiring from the force, Burchnall lived in Edmonton for some years where he owned a pool hall, was a bookkeeper, a salesman, an auction clerk and settled down into becoming the northern Alberta manager of claims with an insurance company.
In 1993 Burchnall returned to Ponoka and received his life membership in the Royal Canadian Legion in 1995. Today he still serves as legion service officer to Ponoka veterans.
“I have absolutely no regrets about moving back here,” Burchnall said. “I think being in the air force is a good career and I’d recommend attending Royal Air College to receive a degree.”
From a man with various and extensive experience with war, Burchnall passed on this message:
“War is not a good thing. The economic impact and accelerated consumption of resources is bad enough. But the loss of life, not only in the military but also the millions of innocent civilians, is tragic. In the long run, you wonder is there are actually any real winners.”