Topic: RCN
Click for larger image. Image published in Jane's Fighting Ships 1967-68.
Royal Canadian Navy Report Busy and Eventful Year (1962)
The Shawanigan Standard, 19 Dec 1962
The Navy's Year — International exercises, training, cruises, operational patrols --- and a sprinkling of those unscheduled activities that befall ships at sea — made 1962 a busy and eventful year for ships of the Royal Canadian Navy. It was a year, too, in which there was tangible evidence of progress, both in the building of new ships and re-equipping of those already in service.
One of 1962's dramatic events was the search for and rescue of survivors from an airliner that ditched in the North Atlantic. HMCS Bonaventure, en route to Rotterdam, backtracked 350 miles to join in the operation. By helicopter, medical aid was given to survivors picked up by a Swiss freighter, and the more seriously injured were transferred to the Bonaventure for treatment in the carrier's hospital.
All told ships of the RCN spent more than 7,000 days at sea and logged more than 1,200,000 nautical miles. Their travels took them to the Great lakes, and to Southeast Asia, to the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, to Hawaii and Hudson Bay.
Of the nine international exercises in which Canadian warships too part, three stood out: Dawn Breeze Seven, a NATO exercise off Gibraltar involving units of four countries; Sharp Squall Six, a five-country NATO exercise in the eastern Atlantic, and Jet 62, a Commonwealth exercise in the Indian Ocean. In Jet 62, destroyer escorts from Canada worked with naval units from Australia, Britain, India, Malaya and New Zealand; and en route they had the benefit of practice with ships, aircraft and submarines of the Unites States Navy.
Informally and formally, the navy served Canada also in an ambassadorial capacity. Ships of the RCN were conspicuously present at the opening of Canadian trade fairs in the capitals of Nigeria and Ghana, and at Independence Day celebrations in Jamaica and Trinidad.
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