Canadair CT-114 Tutor CL-41A / CT-114 Tutor

The CL-41A is the production version of the jet trainer Canadair developed as a private venture in the late 1950s, and the one the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) adopted as the CT-114 Tutor. It was the first aircraft Canadair designed from scratch rather than adapting another type, and it was conceived in the hope that the RCAF would buy it to replace its piston-powered trainers.

The basic configuration — a single turbojet, low wing, tricycle undercarriage and a side-by-side cockpit — was settled by August 1957. Although the project initially lacked official backing, the Jet Trainer Liaison Committee of the RCAF Directorate of Training worked closely with Canadair and reportedly had a significant impact on the final design. After the prototype's maiden flight on 13 January 1960, an RCAF survey team flew it for a week in March 1960, having already evaluated trainers from France, the United States and the United Kingdom. On 11 September 1961 the Minister of National Defence, D. S. Harkness, announced an initial order for 190 CL-41As: the government had been impressed by the prototype and was keen to support local industry. According to the National Air Force Museum of Canada, each aircraft cost $425,000 CDN.

Unlike the prototypes, which flew with a Pratt & Whitney JT12A-5, the production aircraft used the General Electric J85 in its J85-CAN-40 form, built under licence by Orenda. The change required no redesign, because the fuselage had been designed to take a range of engines without structural modification. The most widely quoted data credit the J85-CAN-40 with 11.8 kN of thrust and give the CL-41A a length of 9.75 m, a span of 11.07 m, an empty weight of 2195 kg, a maximum take-off weight of 4990 kg, a maximum speed of 782 km/h, a range of 1519 km and a climb rate of 21.4 m/s. The Tutor has manual flight controls with spring tabs and is intentionally stable, a quality meant to help inexperienced students; it reaches 795 km/h at altitude and 885 km/h in a dive, against a stalling speed of just 71 knots (about 131 km/h). The instructor sat on the right and the student on the left, and normally only the left-hand seat had full flight controls. The cockpit, under a rear-hinged canopy, is pressurised to a differential of 20 kPa, equivalent to an altitude of about 2000 m. Two hardpoints under the fuselage carry stores or tanks.

The CT-114 officially entered RCAF service on 29 October 1963, with deliveries running into the middle of the decade. The aircraft carried serials 26001 to 26190, later renumbered 114001 to 114190. Flight training on the Tutor began in late 1964. Most of the fleet was concentrated at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, with 2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School, while the Central Flying School at Winnipeg, Manitoba, also made heavy use of the type. Preserved examples illustrate the pattern: 26003 was taken on strength in 1964 at Moose Jaw, and 26038 entered service in 1965 and spent most of its career there until the fleet was retired in 2000.

In 1967 ten Tutors were modified for the Golden Centennaires aerobatic team, formed to mark Canada's centennial; at the end of the season the aircraft returned to training. From 1971 the type also equipped the Snowbirds, whose aircraft have their own page; airframes were regularly swapped between display and school duties.

In 1976 the Canadian Armed Forces decided to fit 113 of the remaining aircraft with upgraded avionics and provision for two belly-mounted 155-litre fuel tanks. By 1998 around 120 were still in regular service. In 2000 the Tutor was retired from the training role, replaced by a combination of the British-built CT-155 Hawk and the American-built CT-156 Harvard II; by then the fleet had flown more than a million hours in nearly 40 years. Afterwards it remained only in small numbers, for trials with the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment at Cold Lake, Alberta, and for display flying; 24 were listed in service in 2019. In 2005, 14 ex-RCAF Tutors were offered at auction to preservation organisations, and at least 20 survive in museums or on pedestals across Canada; the Canada Aviation and Space Museum holds 114108, built in 1963 and donated in 1999.