“TAKE OFF TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH” RAN THE MEMORABLE SLOGAN OF BOB AND DOUG, CANADA’S COMEDIC “MCKENZIE BROTHERS.”
If ever an airplane was created to do just that, it was the Noorduyn Norseman. Designed and built in Canada for Canada, the Norseman was a simple and dependable airplane specifically intended to go places others couldn’t go and under conditions that would leave others grounded. The Norseman began doing that in 1935 and, to this day, a few are still doing it.
The Norseman’s creator, Robert Bernard Cornelius Noorduyn, was born in the Netherlands in 1893 to a Dutch father and British mother. Noorduyn was multilingual and the handicap of losing a leg as a child did not hinder his considerable peregrinations. He studied aeronautics in Germany in 1912 before moving to Britain in 1913. There he began his career during World War I, first working for Sopwith and then for British Aerial Transport under fellow Dutch aircraft designer Frederick “Frits” Koolhoven.
When B.A.T. folded after the war, Noorduyn moved back home to work for another Dutch aircraft designer, the legendary Anthony Fokker. In 1920 Fokker dispatched Noorduyn to the United States to
