I grew up knowing his story: he was born in Mikado, Saskatchewan, and didn’t speak a single word of English when he started school in the early 1940’s. When his sister, my great Aunt Betty, came home from school speaking another language, he cried because he couldn’t understand the words. Slowly but surely, he learned English and eventually refused to speak Ukranian, because it wasn’t cool or Canadian.
After school he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and went on to fly against the Soviets during the Cold War. It was like Miracle, minus the hockey. Also, it was in France.
I learned about these stories mostly secondhand, through my grandmother’s retellings of her late nights with other pilots’ wives. Sometimes these nights were long and the women were nervous, unsure of whether or not their husbands would come home the next day, but sometimes these nights were just another day in the life. As a child, I knew the name of the plane my grandpa flew before I knew what type of car my family owned. It was the F-86 Sabre.
Because of the kind of child I was (see: dinosaurs, Star Wars band-aids, and Top Gun) I had delusions of what the plane was like. But when I finally saw the Sabre outside of the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, I was kind of disappointed.
In my 12-year-old mind, the Sabre looked like someone had been shown a child’s drawing of what an airplane was supposed to look like and then told to build it blindfolded. The F-15, on the other hand, was what an interceptor aircraft was supposed to be: sharp angles, high speeds, the kind of airplane all the other planes hated in high school. In my mind, the F-86 was the 1994 Ford Sedan of fighters: it wasn’t old enough to be retro-Spitfire cool, and it wasn’t new enough to look good.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to finally appreciate the beauty of the F-86; not necessarily the outward aesthetic of the craft, but the intrinsic beauty of its design and its long history. It was arguably the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in 1948, and was the vehicle of choice for Jackie Cochran, who was the first woman to break the sound barrier in 1953.
It was a pioneer for the jet age and the first swept-wing aircraft, with a reported 10:1 victory ratio over Russian-built MiGs during the Korean War. Its all-flying tail allowed the pilots more maneuverability compared to planes with a rudder or horizontal stabilizer. From an engineering perspective, it was a key stepping-stone in the evolution to the modern fighter.
So while it may not be an F-14, or 15, or 16, or 18, and while it may look like it was designed by someone who was told to make an engine fly, it was undoubtedly important worldwide: the jet served in over a dozen countries on every continent except Antarctica. Buzz Aldrin, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, and Gene Kranz – my NASA heroes of the Mercury and Apollo eras – all served in the F-86.
And most importantly, once upon a time, my grandpa flew this aircraft in the RCAF.
So here’s to the Sabre.
