Don Rogers, Avro Canada test boss in 1950s dies [Archive]

keel beam

29th Jul 2006, 00:32

And from the Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060727.OBROGERS27/TPStory/?query=don+rogers

DON ROGERS, AVIATOR 1916-2006
The chief test pilot for A.V. Roe was the last of his breed, a brotherhood of fliers who helped set Canada on the leading edge of aviation technology. For all that, he was no swashbuckler -- and proud of it
PETER CHENEY
With files from Canadian Press
TORONTO -- As a test pilot, Don Rogers had known plenty of colleagues who died on the job. One was flying a new aircraft that came apart within sight of the airport. Another was trapped inside a fighter that went down in flames. But Mr. Rogers himself was fated to survive -- and was killed by cancer, not by an airplane.
Mr. Rogers was the last remaining member of a brotherhood that defined a Canadian Golden Age. As chief test pilot for the A.V. Roe company, Mr. Rogers lived with risk, and helped create iconic aircraft that once set Canada on aviation's leading edge.
The contributions of test pilots to aviation and Canadian heritage should not be taken lightly, says Andrew Hibbert, president of Arrow Recovery Canada.
"All we ever talk about now is astronauts and people like that, but these were the astronauts of their day," Mr. Hibbert said. "They were the most advanced and well-trained pilots in the world at that time."

In his own way, Mr. Rogers also personified a particular brand of Canadian gentility -- he was a "gentleman's gentleman."
"He was very old-school," said his son Raymond, 65. "He was quiet, he was unassuming, he was extremely modest about what he's done and accomplished."
Mr. Rogers was no swashbuckler, and had no time for those who regarded test-pilots as heroes. He said his success wasn't based on skill or nerve. Instead, he chalked it up to being "in the right place at the right time."
He was defined by flight. He grew up in Hamilton, Ont., during a time when pilots enjoyed celebrity status, and new aircraft designs captivated the public. He learned to fly at the Hamilton Aero Club and got his pilot's in 1936. It was also where he found love of a different kind. In 1940 he married June, the sweetheart he had met there.
As war loomed in the late 1930s, he took an instructor's course with the Royal Canadian Air Force and later became assistant chief flying instructor at an RCAF school in Mount Hope, Ont. In 1942, he transferred to the National Steel Car plant and tested military aircraft that would be shipped to Europe for the war effort. His logbook soon read like an airplane buff's wish list -- he flew Lysanders, Avro Ansons, Lancaster bombers, and B-25 Mitchell bombers. Mr. Rogers also flew two transatlantic ferry flights, now routine, but then a genuine adventure when radial piston engines leaked so much oil they had to be topped up after every flight.
His reputation as a cool and gifted pilot landed him a job at A.V. Roe, a Toronto company that would describe a tragic arc -- it became shining symbol of Canadian enterprise, only to crash and burn thanks to a combination of political machination and corporate myopia. Mr. Rogers's arrived at the company in 1945, just as it prepared to enter a period of unparalleled inventiveness and energy.
Mr. Rogers' position was chief test pilot. Although the title conjured up images of Errol Flynn in a white scarf, Mr. Rogers was modest about his role: "Daredevil stunts of our Hollywood and Sunday supplement counterparts have distorted the picture most people have of my profession," he once said. "Although I have always found test flying to be interesting and stimulating, I have yet to jump out of a burning plane into the arms of a beautiful woman -- worse luck."
The A.V. Roe plant was a vast manufacturing plant with a huge engineering department that was drawing up plans for such amazing projects as the C-102 Jetliner, a jet-powered airliner designed to hit speeds of to 800 km/h -- almost three times faster than the propeller-driven airliners of the time. The Jetliner flew for the first time in 1949, with hundreds of cheering A.V. Roe lining the runway. Mr. Rogers took over the testing on the Jetliner's 16th flight, and soon discovered the first major gremlin when the landing gear refused to extend. (An engineer flying with Mr. Rogers broke a rib trying to get the wheels down with an emergency handle.) The airport manager urged him to ditch the Jetliner in Lake Ontario, but Mr. Rogers was bent on saving the airplane, and made a belly landing on the runway.
The problem was quickly traced to an easily fixed design flaw. Mr. Rogers minimized the drama of the wheels-up landing: ". . . there was no problem at all as far as we were concerned," he said.
Over the next two years, Mr. Rogers broke speed records in the Jetliner and made the first international air-mail flight in a jet transport when he flew mail from Toronto to New York. Included in the cargo was a peace pipe that the mayor of Toronto told Mr. Rogers and flight engineer Bill Baker to deliver to the mayor of New York. "I didn't know which one of us was supposed to puff on the thing to keep it going," Mr. Rogers said. "I think Bill lighted it just before we landed."
In 1951, Mr. Rogers demonstrated the Jetliner to the American military and several U.S. airlines -- interest in the jetliner was soaring. Then politics got in the way and Ottawa ordered Avro to stop working on the Jetliner and concentrate on getting the new CF-100 jet fighter and the Orenda jet engine into production so they could be used in the Korean war.
A.V. Roe executives put the project on the backburner, against the objections of Mr. Rogers, who believed the company was poised to dominate a new market. There was only one other jet airliner in the world (the DeHavilland Comet, which flew 13 days before the C-102, but was cursed by a design flaw that caused a series of crashes). The Jetliner was ready almost a decade before the Boeing 707, which would define the age of jet travel.
But instead of continuing with the Jetliner, Avro shifted its focus to keep Ottawa happy -- and missed the jet market, in a move that might be compared to Bill Gates deciding to get out of the software business in the mid-1970s. "I personally feel that the company made a very bad decision at that point," Mr. Rogers said later.
Even so, the Jetliner exerted a powerful mystique. In 1952, Mr. Rogers was asked to fly the airplane to California at the request of Howard Hughes, who wanted to use it to develop new equipment. Mr. Rogers soon found himself drawn into the world of the brilliant and eccentric tycoon.

Although he was supposed to stay only 10 days, Mr. Rogers was soon placed on retainer by Mr. Hughes, who wanted him available at all times. Mr. Hughes flew in Mr. Rogers's wife and children, then rented them a luxurious former ambassador's residence in nearby Coldwater Canyon that had a swimming pool and fruit trees.
Mr. Hughes had the Jetliner moved to a guarded compound, along with several other treasured aircraft. Mr. Rogers would wait for weeks at a time, then find himself summoned for a flying session with Mr. Hughes.
Although he was an excellent pilot, the tycoon had a distinctive quirk -- "complete and utter disregard" for air traffic control in one of the most congested airspaces in the world. When Mr. Rogers asked him about his flight plan and other the proximity of other aircraft as they climbed up through the fog and smog of Los Angeles, Mr. Hughes replied: "Don't worry about that."
When Hollywood released the Hughes biopic The Aviator in 2005, Mr. Rogers was asked whether the movie corresponded with reality. Mr. Rogers said that the billionaire's eccentricities had been heightened in the film. "I had met and flown with a most outstanding man who was an expert pilot," he said, "and had seen something of a way of life much different than that to which I was accustomed."
From the mid-fifties onward, Mr. Rogers lived through a devastating decline at A.V. Roe. In 1956, the company decreed that the Jetliner be scrapped. Mr. Rogers stayed away from the hangar while the work went on: "I can't imagine anything more unpleasant than seeing an airplane that you have lived with for seven years and enjoyed flying -- a really beautiful machine -- being cut up with saws, axes and hammers, with pieces falling on the hangar floor," he said. ". . . it was a heart-rending experience."
Just three years later, the Diefenbaker government ordered the cancellation of the Arrow, a supersonic fighter that many saw as the apogee of Canadian technical achievement. Like the Jetliner, the Arrows were cut up for scrap.
The CF-100 jet fighter, one of its staple products, was discontinued the same year, and the company's aerial mojo was gone. Mr. Rogers became head of the company's new marine division, supervising the construction of aluminum boat hulls. Although he made the best of it, pointing out that the cockpit of a boat was far less cramped than that of the CF-100 jet he once test flew, Mr. Rogers still longed to fly, and rented private aircraft at a local flying club.
In 1962, A.V. Avro's British parent company was purchased by Hawker-Siddely, which closed the Toronto plant. The facility was later operated by other aircraft companies, including Boeing, but was demolished in 2005.
"I'm horrified to see the place going down," Mr. Rogers said. "It did a good job."
Donald Rogers was born
on Nov. 26, 1916, in Hamilton, Ont. He died of cancer on July 19, 2006, in Toronto. He was 89. He is survived by June, his wife of 66 years, and by his son Raymond and his daughter Connie. He was predeceased by his son Stephen.