From John Le May’s collection
On a very rare occasion on our base there was an uneasy feeling about rumors that the war was almost over. German pilots were landing at our airfield on a regular basis and German troops were surrendering by the thousand all around our region. All of a sudden all Hell broke loose, this piece of paper was received by our Signals officer on duty announcing the end of the hostilities the next morning. The word got around like a wild fire in BC…… and we all had to duck for cover because some jerks went wild, firing their Sten guns, rifles, whatever they could find and that kept us lying flat on the ground for good hour. More exciting (and more dangerous) than the Casino fireworks. Fortunately there was no beer or liquor on the base so no one got drunk.
We were ready to go home at last…but not yet…on the same night there was another rumor…we were going to leave very shortly for the Aleutians (north west of BC) and support the allies against Japan who eventually surrendered following the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 45.
VICTORY IN EUROPE ….this was printed for the troops to commemorate the end of hostilities in Europe….
On the reverse side is a message from Sir Arthur Coningham, the same person who gave me his autograph before leaving for the continent in 1944.
He later died in a plane accident…somewhere on the planet.
Editor’s notes
Production of this CD is the result of a collaboration
The hard work….scanning…cataloguing…photography…caption editing etc.., -: John B. Le May – rcaf127@gmail.com
The fun stuff….HTML and multimedia programming: – Marcel Lemay – lemaymanufactur@gmail.com
Some material on this CD may be copyrighted and is not to be distributed commercially
RCAF No. 403 Squadron 
You’ve done it again, Pierre!!
I’m still getting comments on the Alaska page I reblogged – I promised them I would make certain you knew how much they liked and appreciated the photos.
On 30 January 1948, he disappeared along with all the other passengers and crew of the airliner G-AHNP Star Tiger when it vanished without a trace somewhere off the Eastern coast of the United States in the Bermuda Triangle.
Coningham is chiefly remembered as the person most responsible for the development of forward air control parties directing close air support, which he developed as commander of the Western Desert Air Force between 1941 and 1943, and as commander of the tactical air forces in the Normandy campaign in 1944. However he is frequently lauded as the “architect of modern air power doctrine regarding tactical air operations,” based on three principles: necessity of air superiority as first priority, centralized command of air operations co-equal with ground leadership, and innovative tactics in support of ground operations.[2]