PLANE TALK


ROBERT MCCOMBIE – CANADA’S FIRST LICENSED AIR ENGINEER


The D.O.M. magazine principals are very kind to allow us a place to write about Canada’s fi rst licenced Air Engineer, a member of a group known today as Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineers in Canada. For this article, I partnered with Will Chabun of Regina. He is a long-time member of the Regina chapter of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society and editor of its Regina chapter’s newsletter. He recently retired after 40 years in daily journalism. Our objective is to educate


everyone who is interested in aviation about Canada’s fi rst licensed Air Engineer, Canada’s equivalent of Charles Taylor, America’s fi rst Airframe and Powerplant maintenance technician. Perhaps we can also get the Canadian Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) and the aviation industry to do more to honour Robert McCombie’s contributions.


THE BEGINNING So where do we go to fi nd the start of the licenced Aircraft Maintenance Engineer and Maintenance Technicians? A lot of parallel aeroplane development work took place in Europe and North America before the First World War. The earliest designers were a combination of what we today might call an engineering enthusiast interested in fl ight, and machinist/mechanic. These individuals designed and built the items needed to make the machine work. Unfortunately, we do not have much information on who constructed all the bits and pieces for the various attempts at fl ight,


20 DOMmagazine.com | aug 2019


except for American Charles Taylor. He was working with Orville and Wilbur Wright. We know that Taylor, a machinist by trade working in a bicycle factory, built the engine for the Wright Flyer and maintained it. He apparently completed the fi rst repair, so he in fact conducted one of the fi rst aircraft maintenance actions. The Canadian book Voyageurs of


the Air by J. R. K. Main is a fantastic source of information on early aviation and somewhat on early technicians in Canada. This book was commissioned by the Ministry of Transport to celebrate Canada’s centennial in 1967. About the same time, the ministry was renamed Transport Canada. I had long hoped Transport would do something like that again at the 150th anniversary of Confederation, but it did not, and that is another story.


ENGINEER Aviation maintenance technicians approved by the Crown to certify aircraft after maintenance were fi rst known as Air Engineers. By 1948 the title was changed to Aircraft Maintenance Engineers. Normally, both are prefaced by “licenced” indicating they held certifi cation authority from the Crown (government). Both were an outcome of the apprentice system of the 19th century, which originated in the medieval guild system. The title “engineer” had not yet been assigned to represent a class of university- trained engineers. The engineering professional association-certifi ed engineers who we know it today did not exist before the 1920s. Our


BY ROGER BEEBE AND WILL CHABUN


English-speaking ancestors then used the term to mean anyone who made something mechanical, maintained or operated it. Consequently, when ships went from wind power to steam engines and turbines, people applied the term “engineer” to those who maintained them. This practice carried over into aviation. Therefore, in 1921 the Canadian


government (through the Department of National Defence) adopted Air Engineer for the title of the newly licensed Air Engineer. Fortunately for those AMEs who dearly love the present title, the profession of engineering and the title engineer was not legally recognized in Canada until later in the 1920s. This term held on until around 1948. We can surmise that because we have found records from 1948, thanks to Steve Chamberlain who researched it for me. He found there are parliamentary records of the civil branch of the Department of National Defence that note, “Persons in possession of a valid Air Engineer’s licence in categories A, C and B or the New Aircraft Maintenance Engineer’s Licence A, C or B.” So, the practice of being called engineer continued in Canada and other British dominions. In the United States, the term mechanic became an honoured term and has remained so. There is a long trail of Royal


proclamations and early regulatory decisions, mainly in the military world, which lead to the historical licensing events in Regina, Saskatchewan, which became the recorded place of issuance of Canada’s fi rst Air Engineer’s licence. My friend


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