Post War

On March 9th 1944 Joe joined TCA (the first of a handful of RCAF pilots) and his first training flight was with Capt. Herb Seagrim in Lockheed 1408. He finished training and was sent to Moncton on April 15th/44. He flew right seat for the remainder of the year and names like R Smith, B Trerice, D Lawson,
J Hattie, R Gunter, D Siple and many more are shown in his log.
Aircraft flown were the Lockheed 1408, 1808 and in March 1945 the DC3 shows up in his log. By April 45, Joe was taking Captains training from one of my favourites Capt. Jack Crosby. By May, he is shown in the left seat with

some of his early First Officers by the names of Burt Palmer, Laurie Paxton, Art Adamson, Dave Tribe, Ab Freeman, Gus Cirko, Bill Bredt, and many more familiar names. Notice that Percy Waddy flew with Joe on a practise flight in a DC3 in December 1946.
Transferred to the Trans Atlantic Service at Dorval in October 1947 and then completed conversion to the DC4M1 (North Star), route familization to the UK by late March 1947. More familiar names show up here as F/Os such as Hughes, Little, Kelsey, Cartwright, Lamont, Wallace, Laing, Muir, Penrose, and many more. March 1950 he transferred back to the Eastern Region on DC3’s and Joe stopped logging his time until December 1957 when the first entry is a Lockheed 1049 from UL-PWK, Lon and with Navigator and Flight Engineer names showing up as part of the crew.
Many routine flights now appear and long ones at that, with one showing 14hrs and 25 mins. air time from VIE-DUS-BR-SA-YR-UL with F/O Foulkes & Gray, navigator Bridgeford and flight engineer Mathers. One flight Joe remembers is a take-off at Prestwick when a cylinder parted company. The Connie was approaching V1, but he managed to stop although by this time there was a merry blaze around the defunct engine, which was quickly put out. The next morning a KLM DC8 blew its tyres on the cylinder remnants and White was blamed for the incident. It was pointed out that it was the responsibility of the airfield to check its runway - doesn’t this sound familiar.
Joe White appeared one Monday morning in December 1960 in the DC8 groundshool room where Joe Held and myself gave out all that pertinent information such as how a fuel control unit worked, how the ZNSR worked. Will never forget one time that a question on the exam required a Yes or No answer but when the steno typed it, she left two full length spaces for the answer. I saw Fearless Leek scratching his head over this one and when we corrected the exams and Ralp saw the correct one word answer, he never failed to call me “Two space Pawsey” for ever after.
The company was always after Joe to join the supervisory ranks but Joe did not want to be Joed for that. However he did aid in the development of Air Jamaica from 1971 until 1974, in a very big way. Joe converted to his final TCA/AC aircraft, the B747 in late 1973. I was very honoured when he asked me to be part of the crew on his retirement from Frankfurt to Toronto, in I think 1979.
I apologize for not giving any information regarding Norah and their great family, but I was afraid I may make some mistakes without the aid of a log book.
I do know though that I express all the First Officers, Flight Engineers, Navigators, and subsequently Second Officers feelings, when I say that it was always a great pleasure to fly with Joe, you were truly regarded as a highly professional pilot among all your peers.