In the years before 1939 there was hardly ever a plane flew over our part of the country, the sound or the sighting of one was enough to send us scrambling for a look. but in the war years, with the establishment of a training centre at Saskatoon, planes became commonplace, especially the yellow ships that passed over almost daily. Our farm was almost 40 miles traight west of the Saskatoon base, and often planes returning from exercises farther west would fly directly over us like homing pigeons.
Some of them flew pretty low, too, practically skimming the ground. I remember a winter day when one came out of the sunset on a line between house and barn. It looked as if it was going to go through, rather than over our farmyard and I was sure it would snap the radio aerial we had strung between the buildings. But no, it wasn't quite that low and was gone eastward in a moment. This happened not once but many times while I was doing chores and I wasn't exactly happy about it.
On another occasion, this time in summer, a plane homeward bound flew past our neighbour, Dolphin Jackson, who was on his tractor cultivating fallow in a field next to us. The plane was so close that Dolphin could see the pilot, and Dolphin had a fiendish whim. Instead of returning the pilot's friendly wave, Dolphin double-thumbed his nose at him, using both hands. The pilot saw the rude gesture and right away he circled about and dove at Doplphin, making him duck. Not satisfied, the pilot on his reverse circle came at Dolphin again. This time it looked as if he really meant busines and Dolphin hurriedly stopped his tractor and crouched beside it. He declared afterward that he could have reached up and touched the plane's wheels as it zoomed over him, too close for comfort for sure. In a moment the plane was out of sight, the pilot probably chuckling to himself.
No doubt the idea behind all these low flying tactics, whether condoned by commanding officers or not, was practice, looking forward to strafing the enemy when graduate airmen were posted overseas. But "practising" would scarcely justify scaring the living daylights out of animals and humans, etc, even "just for fun." Unless they had rather asked for it, as Dolphin certainly had.