Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m flying the DHC-2 Beaver, the closest thing Canada has to a national airplane.
DHC stands for de Havilland Canada. Starting in 1928, the British-owned de Havilland Aircraft Co. established a Canadian subsidiary to manufacture the Tiger Moth biplane for the overseas training of British airmen who fought in World War II. The company’s first homegrown airplane design, immediately after the war, was the DHC-1 Chipmunk, a more modern military trainer to replace the storied Tiger Moth. But de Havilland Canada realized that post-war, it could not rely on military demand to support the company, so it decided it needed to crack into the civilian aviation market.
