RCAF Station Jarvis

Royal Canadian Air Force Station Jarvis was a Second World War British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) station located near Jarvis, Ontario. The station was home to No. 1 Bombing and Gunnery School and is usually known by that name. These schools trained airmen to be air gunners, wireless air gunners, air observers, or bomb aimer-navigators and this was the last step before the airmen received their wings and moved on to operational training. These airmen served as aircrew on bombers.

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was a temporary wartime measure and was scheduled to end on 29 March 1945. No. 1 B&GS opened 19 August 1940 and closed on 17 February 1945. During this time 6,500 airmen were qualified and received their wings at RCAF Station Jarvis.

Site and site selection
Like most of the BCATP airfields, the station at Jarvis was located in a sparsely populated rural area close to rail lines and highways. Like the other Bombing and Gunnery Schools, a body of water was nearby, in this case Lake Erie, which provided space for bombing and gunnery ranges.

In 1934, American Airlines built an emergency landing strip six kilometres southeast of Jarvis. This airstrip included a beacon light and radio. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) used this airfield as the site for the school. The school included two marine units and six bombing ranges over Lake Erie, from South Cayuga to Turkey Point.

The air navigation chart shows an elevation of 324' above sea level.

Personnel and aircraft
On 31 December 1942, the station had 1,449 personnel, including 93 officers, 977 airmen, 244 trainees, 121 civilians and 14 others. Aircraft on strength were 35 Ansons, 34 Bolingbrokes, 19 Lysanders, 9 Fairey Battles, 1 Yale and 1 Harvard.

Hollywood comes to Jarvis
The community and the school appeared in the 1942 Hollywood motion picture Captains of the Clouds. There was a brief scene of air training over Lake Erie, with the community name placed in captions.

American airmen at Jarvis
A Bombing and Gunnery School required a large number of staff pilots, who either flew aircraft with targets under tow, or who piloted instructional flights for trainee gunners and bomb aimers. In January 1941, 55 of the 70 staff pilots at Jarvis were citizens of the United States. Many Americans also joined the RCAF as volunteer airmen. On 19 May 1942, 23 American staff pilots and 11 American airmen left Jarvis and went to Toronto, Ontario, where they resigned from the RCAF and joined the United States Army Air Corps.

Norwegian airmen at Jarvis
In 1942 the first group of non-Commonwealth airmen, members of the exiled Royal Norwegian Air Force, trained at Jarvis.

Postwar
By 1947 the Crown Assets Disposal Corporation had scrapped the airplanes, dismantled the hangars and other buildings and sold them off, and cleared the site. For eight years it was leased to local farmers and then sold to Russell and Larry Hare, whose farm adjoined the airfield. In 1955 the site was turned into an automobile race track called Harewood Acres by the British Empire Motor Club of Toronto. Other uses were made until the property was sold in 1974 to Texaco Canada and turned into the Nanticoke Refinery which started producing oil products on 17 November 1978. As of 2014, the refinery remains in operation as an Imperial Oil facility.

An historical plaque is displayed by the roadside in front of the refinery. The reverse side of the plaque lists the name of the thirty-eight Commonwealth airmen and one civilian who died while serving at No. 1 B&GS.