{"id":24038422,"date":"2026-09-22T12:05:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/cs2f-tracker-de-havilland-canada-royal-canadian-navy\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T12:05:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T10:05:03","slug":"cs2f-tracker-de-havilland-canada-royal-canadian-navy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/cs2f-tracker-de-havilland-canada-royal-canadian-navy\/","title":{"rendered":"CS2F Tracker: The Submarine Hunter de Havilland Canada Built 99 Of"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n\n\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\n<p>The Royal Canadian Navy bought the Grumman Tracker for one reason above all others: it was short enough to fit on HMCS <em>Bonaventure<\/em>. Then de Havilland Canada built ninety-nine of them at Downsview, the only Canadian-built aircraft the RCN ever ordered. The carrier they were bought for was paid off in 1970. The Trackers went on flying for another twenty years &mdash; stripped of their sonobuoys, their torpedoes and eventually their arrester hooks &mdash; policing a two-hundred-mile economic zone that did not exist when they were designed. The last one came off strength on 31 March 1990, thirty-four years after the first one flew.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f4f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:26px 0 28px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;color:#0d1117;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts: the Canadian Tracker<\/p><ul style=\"margin:0;padding-left:18px;font-size:15.5px;line-height:1.65;color:#333\"><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Type:<\/strong> Grumman CS2F Tracker, later CP-121 &mdash; carrier anti-submarine aircraft<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Built by:<\/strong> de Havilland Canada, Downsview, Ontario, under licence<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Number built:<\/strong> 99, serials 1502&ndash;1600, plus one Grumman-assembled pattern aircraft<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>First flight:<\/strong> 31 May 1956 at Downsview; first taken on strength 12 October 1956<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Variants:<\/strong> 42 CS2F-1, 57 CS2F-2, 45 converted to CS2F-3 by Fairey Aviation 1966&ndash;68<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Crew:<\/strong> Four: pilot, co-pilot, MAD operator, radar operator (three after re-roling)<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Powerplant:<\/strong> Two Curtiss-Wright Cyclones, licence-built by Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Endurance:<\/strong> About 8 hours; patrol cruise 159 mph; ceiling 22,000 ft<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Sensors:<\/strong> MAD boom, sonobuoys, retractable radar radome, ECM, 70-million-candlepower searchlight<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Squadrons:<\/strong> VS 880, VS 881, VU 32, VU 33, 420 Air Reserve, VX 10<\/li><li style=\"margin:0 0 7px\"><strong>Withdrawn:<\/strong> Last aircraft struck off strength 31 March 1990<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Forty-two feet, and not an inch more<\/h2>\n\n<p>Around 1954 the RCN began looking for a replacement for its Grumman Avengers. The requirement that shaped everything was not range or sensors or endurance. It was length. As one detailed study of the type puts it, &ldquo;A prime requirement of the new aircraft was that it had to be small enough to operate from a British Majestic class aircraft carrier.&rdquo; The ship in question was <em>Bonaventure<\/em>, which Canada was about to acquire.<\/p>\n\n<p>The Grumman S2F Tracker fitted, exactly: forty-two feet long, the same as the US Navy&rsquo;s S2F-1. That number decided the next thirty-four years. When the Americans later stretched the design into the S2F-3 &mdash; eighteen inches longer, fourteen of them ahead of the bomb bay and four behind it, for more internal volume &mdash; Canada could not have bought it. It would not have fitted the ship.<\/p>\n\n<p>Getting a twin-engined aircraft with a seventy-two-foot span onto a light fleet carrier took some work. The wings folded asymmetrically above the fuselage, hydraulically, reducing the span to about thirty-two feet. Flaps ran across more than eighty-five per cent of the trailing edge, fixed leading-edge slats added lift, and circular-arc spoilers supplemented undersized ailerons. Carrier take-off distance was a little over three hundred feet.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The rudder that split in two<\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/rcn-s2f-tracker-1956-57.jpg\" alt=\"A Royal Canadian Navy Grumman S2F-1 Tracker photographed in 1956 or 1957\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An RCN Tracker in 1956 or 1957, the year Canadian production began at Downsview. Photo: US Navy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>The real hazard of a twin on a small deck is losing an engine on one side at low speed and high power. The Tracker&rsquo;s answer was a large fin and a rudder divided vertically into two sections. The forward section was hydraulically actuated for take-off and landing and supplemented the manually operated rear section during single-engine work, with an additional hydraulic booster in the tail to cut the pedal force required. The system was called SERA &mdash; Single-Engine Rudder Assist.<\/p>\n\n<p>It was not a refinement. It was the thing that kept pilots alive.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;Those engines and props were something else on such a small airframe and without the big rudder and SERA, a torque roll was almost guaranteed unless the pilot REDUCED power on the good engine.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Jerry Proc<\/strong> &mdash; From his technical study of the Tracker in Canadian service<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p>SERA turned out to be ahead of its time: rudder limiters of the same general family are now standard on jet transports.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Built in Canada, on purpose<\/h2>\n\n<p>There was an obvious cheaper option. As the record has it, &ldquo;Initially there was talk that the RCN aircraft would be acquired directly from Grumman, however, the Canadian political community wanted them to be built under licence in Canada.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>So de Havilland Canada built them at Downsview: <strong>ninety-nine aircraft<\/strong>, serials 1502 to 1600, constructor&rsquo;s numbers DH-01 to DH-99. A hundredth airframe, assembled from Grumman-supplied components to prove the jigs and tooling, was serialled 1500 and later reserialled 1501; it never counted in the production run and survives today at the Shearwater Aviation Museum. The engines &mdash; Curtiss-Wright Cyclones &mdash; were built under licence by Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada. <em>The Canadian Encyclopedia<\/em> records the result simply: the CS2F was &ldquo;the only Canadian-built aircraft ever ordered for the RCN.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>The first Canadian-built Tracker flew at Downsview on 31 May 1956, already fitted with the JULIE\/JEZEBEL acoustic search equipment that distinguished the Canadian aircraft from their American cousins. The first was taken on strength on 12 October 1956.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vYCgUx-RjT4\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin:-16px 0 24px;font-style:italic\">Royal Canadian Navy Trackers in service.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2>What it carried<\/h2>\n\n<p>Two Cyclones at 1,275 horsepower continuous, 1,575 for up to five minutes each. Four crew: pilot, co-pilot, MAD operator, radar operator. Eight hours&rsquo; endurance, a thousand nautical miles, and a patrol cruise of 159 mph &mdash; because an anti-submarine aircraft&rsquo;s job is to loiter, not to hurry.<\/p>\n\n<p>The sensor fit was the point of the aeroplane: a retractable magnetic anomaly detection boom, sonobuoys with a receiver and homer, an ECM suite that could pick up transmissions in the SHF bands, and an air-to-surface radar in a retractable &ldquo;dustbin&rdquo; radome under the rear fuselage &mdash; powerful enough to find a snorkel, small enough to stow. In the bomb bay, two homing torpedoes or depth charges; six underwing attachments for more.<\/p>\n\n<p>And, beneath the starboard wing, a steerable searchlight of seventy million candlepower. For the first time, the navy had an aircraft that could find a submarine at night and then light it up.<\/p>\n\n<figure style=\"margin:34px 0;padding:26px;background:#f4f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF\"><div style=\"font-family:Gilroy,'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;letter-spacing:.09em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#5a6069;margin-bottom:6px\">Downsview production<\/div><div style=\"font-family:Gilroy,'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:23px;font-weight:600;color:#1a1a1a;margin-bottom:20px\">99 Trackers, serials 1502 to 1600<\/div><div style=\"margin-bottom:14px\"><div style=\"display:flex;justify-content:space-between;font-size:15px;color:#1a1a1a;margin-bottom:5px\"><span style=\"font-weight:600\">CS2F-1<\/span><span>42 built<\/span><\/div><div style=\"height:22px;background:#e3e7ec\"><div style=\"height:22px;width:42%;background:#1a1a1a\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><div style=\"margin-bottom:14px\"><div style=\"display:flex;justify-content:space-between;font-size:15px;color:#1a1a1a;margin-bottom:5px\"><span style=\"font-weight:600\">CS2F-2<\/span><span>57 built<\/span><\/div><div style=\"height:22px;background:#e3e7ec\"><div style=\"height:22px;width:58%;background:#5C91FF\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><div style=\"font-size:15px;color:#1a1a1a;margin-top:16px;line-height:1.6;padding-top:14px;border-top:1px solid #dde1e6\">Of the 57 CS2F-2s, <strong style=\"font-weight:600\">45<\/strong> were later converted to CS2F-3 by Fairey Aviation of Canada between 18 July 1966 and 19 April 1968. Of those, 44 aircraft in total &mdash; 42 CS2F-3s plus the two carrier onboard delivery conversions &mdash; were redesignated CP-121 in June and July 1970.<\/div><div style=\"font-size:14px;color:#5a6069;margin-top:10px;line-height:1.5\">A hundredth airframe, assembled from Grumman-supplied parts to prove the tooling, was serialled 1500 and later 1501. It is not counted in the production run.<\/div><\/figure>\n\n<p>The Avenger had needed two aircraft to do the job &mdash; one to hunt, one to strike. The Tracker did both. It also carried no guns at all, the Avenger&rsquo;s wing armament having been judged of dubious value in post-war anti-submarine work.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Three variants, and a number that keeps getting wrong<\/h2>\n\n<p>Forty-two CS2F-1s were built, serials 1502 to 1543, the last taken on strength on 17 July 1958. Seventeen of them were transferred to the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1960, and two more &mdash; 1534 and 1540 &mdash; were stripped of armament and electronics in 1964 and converted to carrier onboard delivery aircraft, flying mail, staff and compassionate cases to and from <em>Bonaventure<\/em> with two crew and six passengers.<\/p>\n\n<p>Fifty-seven CS2F-2s followed, serials 1544 to 1600, entering service in January 1960 with Litton tactical navigation, improved MAD and radar, and around a hundred changes in all. Before it, the co-pilot had plotted the tactical picture by hand on a board.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then <strong>forty-five<\/strong> CS2F-2s were substantially modified by Fairey Aviation of Canada to CS2F-3 standard, the first completed on 18 July 1966 and the last on 19 April 1968. Forty-five is the figure the detailed serial research supports; a figure of forty-three circulates but matches no source we could find, and appears to be a garbling of the adjacent numbers in the same passage &mdash; forty-four aircraft were eventually redesignated CP-121, of which forty-two were CS2F-3s and two were the CODs.<\/p>\n\n<p>The CP-121 redesignation itself is later than usually stated. The reserialling into the 121xx range took effect on 11 June 1970, and the authorisation followed on 27 July 1970 &mdash; not 1968, and not as a direct consequence of unification. &ldquo;CP-121&rdquo; was not even a designation at first but a control number in a dual-designation system that survived until mid-1976.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/hmcs-bonaventure-flight-deck-april-1959.jpg\" alt=\"A view along the flight deck of HMCS Bonaventure past the island, with aircraft ranged aft with wings folded, April 1959\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\"><em>Bonaventure<\/em>&rsquo;s flight deck in April 1959, aircraft ranged aft with wings folded. Trackers were embarked at this period. Photo: US Navy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<h2>880 and 881<\/h2>\n\n<p>The squadrons that flew them have a lineage worth setting out properly, because the official record differs from the popular one.<\/p>\n\n<p>VS 881 was first into service with the type, in February 1957 &mdash; not 880, as is often assumed. The first Tracker came aboard <em>Bonaventure<\/em> with VS 880 in October 1957. <em>The Canadian Encyclopedia<\/em> notes that they were not fully operational until January 1959, which is a different question with a different answer, and that the carrier&rsquo;s air wing typically held eight Trackers.<\/p>\n\n<p>The Directorate of History and Heritage lineage for 880 runs: authorised on the RCN order of battle on 24 January 1946 as 825 Squadron, transferred from the Royal Naval Fleet Air Arm; redesignated 825 Anti-Submarine Squadron on 15 January 1951; 880 Anti-Submarine Squadron on 1 May 1951; amalgamated with 881 Squadron on 7 July 1959, retaining the senior designation; redesignated <strong>880 Maritime Surveillance Squadron on 9 June 1975<\/strong>; redesignated <strong>880 Maritime Reconnaissance Squadron on 3 March 1980<\/strong>; and reduced to nil strength between 9 March and 1 September 1990.<\/p>\n\n<p>That phrase is the official one. Not disbanded &mdash; reduced to nil strength. The motto was <em>Rep&eacute;rer et d&eacute;truire<\/em>, to seek out the foe and to destroy him. The battle honours on the record &mdash; Diego Suarez, Malta Convoys, North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Norway, Japan &mdash; are inherited from the Royal Navy&rsquo;s 880 Squadron and have nothing to do with the Tracker.<\/p>\n\n<p>Others flew the type too: VU 32 and VU 33 at Comox, 420 Air Reserve Squadron at Shearwater, and VX 10, the experimental squadron that did all the development work for the -2 and -3 conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r4XV10FXN38\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin:-16px 0 24px;font-style:italic\">A walk around a preserved CP-121 Tracker at the Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2>The aircraft outlived the ship<\/h2>\n\n<p>When <em>Bonaventure<\/em> paid off in 1970, the Tracker had nowhere to land at sea. What followed was one of the more thorough role changes in Canadian aviation.<\/p>\n\n<p>The immediate shift was from deep-water anti-submarine work to shallow-water and sovereignty surveillance. By 1973 the aircraft had been &ldquo;completely relieved of its anti-submarine responsibilities and was given priority as a maritime patrol aircraft&rdquo;. Then, in 1977, Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which created a two-hundred-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone off every Canadian coast &mdash; and with it a requirement to police fish, oil and gas across an area nobody had previously had to patrol.<\/p>\n\n<p>Between 1974 and 1981 the fleet was cut to twenty aircraft, and every one of them was stripped of its anti-submarine equipment <em>and its arrester gear<\/em>. The carrier aircraft was physically de-navalised. In its place went a high-powered radar, a day-night photographic pod under the starboard wing for pollution and fishery work, and a crew reduced from four to three. Anti-submarine flying finally ceased at Shearwater in the summer of 1981.<\/p>\n\n<p>What they actually did, for the rest of their lives, was fly over the Grand Banks and Georges Bank counting foreign trawlers for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, run northern sovereignty patrols, fly anti-drug patrols out of Summerside, and serve as the secondary search-and-rescue aircraft for the Maritimes &mdash; which in practice meant medical evacuations to Halifax and Moncton for people who would otherwise not have reached a hospital.<\/p>\n\n<p>In 1986 they were given a computer called Codfish, which stored communications logs, photographs and the current list of fishing licences.<\/p>\n\n<h2>One turboprop, then nothing<\/h2>\n\n<p>In 1988 the Canadian Forces and IMP Aerospace of Halifax began re-engining the Trackers with Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada PT6A-67 turboprops. The record is brief and brutal: &ldquo;just as the first Tracker was converted, the project was cancelled and the Trackers were retired from service.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>The 1989 budget cuts did it. The remaining eighteen aircraft were withdrawn, which &ldquo;had the immediate effect of cutting the Canadian Forces maritime surveillance capability by more than 50 percent.&rdquo; Anti-submarine work had ended in 1981; maritime reconnaissance soldiered on with 880 Maritime Reconnaissance Squadron at CFB Summerside until the last aircraft was struck off strength on <strong>31 March 1990<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<p>A date of 1994 circulates for the Tracker&rsquo;s retirement. We could not source it to anything at all, and it is not printed here. The nearby dates that <em>are<\/em> verifiable are 1989 &mdash; the year of the decision &mdash; 1993, when a Trenton museum airframe that had long since stopped flying was formally retired from instructional use, and the late 1990s, by which time the only Trackers still flying were civilian firebombers.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What the crews paid<\/h2>\n\n<p>The losses are documented only in part, and this piece will not invent a total. Two fatal accidents are firmly on the record.<\/p>\n\n<p>On 2 April 1959, CS2F-1 serial 1527 of 880 Anti-Submarine Squadron crashed off <em>Bonaventure<\/em>, killing all four aboard: Lieutenant George Boyd Daugharty, Sub-Lieutenant Gary Edward Logan, Petty Officer 2nd Class Allan Edward Moore and Able Seaman Joseph Almas Jean Paul Nantel. They were buried at sea and are commemorated on the Sailors Memorial at Point Pleasant and on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.<\/p>\n\n<p>On 3 February 1968, serial 1543 crashed with four more fatalities. We were unable to recover their names, and we would rather say so than leave the reader thinking the earlier four were the only ones.<\/p>\n\n<p>Other airframes were written off without loss of life: 1508 off <em>Bonaventure<\/em> on 18 October 1957, 1529 in December 1959, 1517 in January 1960, 1510 ditched in the South Atlantic in April 1960, 1524 in Aruba in August 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;Dedicated to those personnel who gave their lives while serving on the CS2-F\/CP-121 Tracker.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>The Grumman Tracker Memorial<\/strong> &mdash; Slemon Park, Summerside, Prince Edward Island, unveiled 6 September 1987<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>The second career<\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/tracker-1501-pattern-aircraft-shearwater-aviation-museum.jpg\" alt=\"The Grumman-assembled Tracker pattern aircraft 1501 preserved at the Shearwater Aviation Museum in Nova Scotia\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Tracker 1501 &mdash; the airframe assembled from Grumman parts to prove the Downsview jigs and tooling &mdash; preserved at the Shearwater Aviation Museum. Photo: Colin Cooke Photo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>More than thirty-five Trackers, from the Canadian Forces, the province of Ontario and the State of California, were rebuilt by Conair of British Columbia as Firecat and Turbo Firecat water bombers. The conversion raised the cabin floor about eight inches, took out the military equipment, and put a retardant tank of roughly 870 US gallons where the torpedo bay had been &mdash; an aircraft some 1,500 kg lighter than the military version and well suited to mountain flying.<\/p>\n\n<p>France&rsquo;s S&eacute;curit&eacute; Civile took fourteen Firecats from May 1982 and a similar number of Turbo Firecats afterwards. In Canada, one ex-RCN airframe &mdash; 1539, which had served aboard <em>Bonaventure<\/em> &mdash; fought fires across British Columbia and the Yukon from 1981 until its last fire season in 2012, and was then donated airworthy to the Canadian Museum of Flight at Langley.<\/p>\n\n<p>Which means that the aircraft Canada bought because it was short enough for a carrier she no longer owns was still flying operationally in 2012, fifty-six years after the first one left Downsview.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QzMDMFK4c6g\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin:-16px 0 24px;font-style:italic\">The Tracker&rsquo;s second career: a Conair Firecat water bomber at work.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2>Where to find one<\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/tracker-12157-shearwater-aviation-museum.jpg\" alt=\"Preserved Canadian Forces CP-121 Tracker 12157 with wings folded at the Shearwater Aviation Museum\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Tracker 12157, briefly remarked in its old RCN serial 1557 for the type&rsquo;s retirement ceremony in 1989. Photo: Colin Cooke Photo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>The pattern aircraft, 1501 &mdash; the one assembled from Grumman parts to prove the tooling &mdash; is at the Shearwater Aviation Museum in Nova Scotia, alongside 12157, which was briefly remarked in its old serial 1557 for the type&rsquo;s retirement ceremony in 1989. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa holds 12187, donated in April 1990. The Canadian Warplane Heritage at Hamilton is restoring 1577 to flying condition, acquired in 1997 in exchange for an Antonov An-2. There are others at Trenton, at the Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum, and at Langley.<\/p>\n\n<p>And at Slemon Park in Prince Edward Island, where 880 Squadron flew its last patrols, Tracker 12131 stands on a plinth beside a granite slab put up on 6 September 1987 for the thirtieth anniversary of the type. It names nobody. It commemorates everyone.<\/p>\n\n<p style=\"font-size:15px;line-height:1.7;color:#5a6069;margin-top:36px;padding-top:18px;border-top:1px solid #dde1e6\"><strong style=\"font-weight:600;color:#1a1a1a\">Sources:<\/strong> Jerry Proc, <em>Radio Research Paper &mdash; Tracker In Canadian Service<\/em>, incorporating serial research by Jeff Rankin-Lowe; Directorate of History and Heritage official lineage, 880 Squadron, canada.ca; Canada Aviation and Space Museum (Ingenium); Shearwater Aviation Museum; Canadian Warplane Heritage and its CASPIR serials database; <em>The Canadian Encyclopedia<\/em>; R.W.R. Walker, RCN Tracker serial records; Veterans Affairs Canada, Grumman Tracker Memorial; National Air Force Museum of Canada; Canadian Museum of Flight; Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum. Figures that differ between sources, and the unsourced 1994 retirement date, are flagged in the text.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"undefined\">undefined<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"undefined\">undefined<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"undefined\">undefined<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\n\n\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently asked questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><details><summary>undefined<\/summary><div class=\"a\">undefined<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"undefined\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"undefined\"}}]}<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada bought the Grumman Tracker because it was short enough to fit HMCS Bonaventure, then built 99 at Downsview. The carrier went in 1970; the aircraft flew on until 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":24037397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24038422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>CS2F Tracker: The Submarine Hunter de Havilland Canada Built 99 Of | Afterburner - MiGFlug&#039;s Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Canada bought the Grumman Tracker because it was short enough to fit HMCS Bonaventure, then built 99 at Downsview. 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