Floats first, wheels last

Robert Noorduyn, born in Nijmegen in 1893, had drawn for Sopwith, run Fokker’s American plant and designed for Bellanca and Pitcairn. In 1933 he and Walter Clayton set up Noorduyn Aircraft in Montreal, and in 1934 took over the Curtiss-Reid factory at Cartierville. His Norseman was a bush plane built for operators who had to make money in the north, and it was fitted first with floats, then skis, and only then wheels. It first flew on floats on 14 November 1935.

Into the war

By 1940 Noorduyn had sold just 17. The war changed everything. Bernt Balchen, building a ferry route across Greenland for the USAAF, chose the Norseman, and the US military ordered 749 as the C-64A. The RCAF bought them for radio training and transport. On 15 December 1944 bandleader Glenn Miller boarded a UC-64A Norseman in England; it disappeared over the English Channel. Noorduyn also built Harvard trainers, about 2,557 including 1,800 AT-16s for lend-lease.

Harvards and the long afterlife

In early 1946 Canadian Car & Foundry took over the company and the Norseman. Noorduyn bought the jigs back in 1953 with a new company, which built three more before he died in 1959. In all 903 Norsemen were built. They have flown in 68 countries, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and Red Lake, Ontario, still calls itself the Norseman Capital of the World.

Fabrieken

• Cartierville · Cartierville, Montreal, Quebec — Former Curtiss-Reid factory, acquired 1934

Mensen

• Robert B. C. Noorduyn · founder, designer — 1893–1959; formerly with Sopwith, Fokker, Bellanca and Pitcairn
• Walter Clayton • medeoprichter
• Bernt Balchen · USAAF colonel — Recommended the Norseman for the Greenland ferry route