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These Stars Traded Hollywood Glamor for Wartime Glory

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2022 37 min

20. “The Craziest Pilot in the Canadian Air Force“

A Taylorcraft Auster airplane, of the type flown by Doohan in WWII. Wikimedia

After he recovered from the injuries sustained in Normandy, Jimmy Doohan signed up to train as a pilot and fly an artillery observer aircraft. Soon as he got his wings, he was assigned to fly a Taylorcraft Auster Mark V plane for No. 666 Aerial Observation Post Squadron. He served in that billet until war’s end. Although he was technically not a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Doohan earned a reputation as “the craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force“.

Among other things, Star Trek’s engineer once got in serious trouble after he slalomed his plane between telegraph posts, just “to prove it could be done“. When the war ended, Doohan was demobilized and sent back home, where he resumed his technical education. One day, after he heard a crappy voice acting in a radio drama, he figured that he could do better. He turned out to be right, helped in no small part by a talent for accents that he had since childhood. So Doohan went to a drama school in Toronto, then earned a scholarship to study drama in New York City.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.