Victory Aircraft

Victory Aircraft Limited was a Canadian manufacturing company that, during the Second World War, built mainly British-designed aircraft under licence. It acted as a shadow factory, safe from the reach of German bombers.

Initially the major wartime contract to manufacture Avro Lancaster heavy bombers was to go to the National Steel Car Ltd. headquartered in Hamilton, utilizing the Malton, Ontario factory (near today's Toronto Pearson International Airport). National Steel Car was already producing Westland Lysander aircraft and involved as a subcontractor in the manufacture of Hawker Hurricane fighters, Avro Anson trainers and Handley Page Hampden bombers. Questions arising as to the company's abililty to manage the project led to the Government's expropriation of the plant on 4 November 1942 and the setting up of the Crown Corporation, Victory Aircraft Limited, incorporated under the Department of Munitions and Supply Act, 1940 c.31. J.P. Bickell, one of C.D. Howe's "dollar-a-year men" headed Victory Aircraft Ltd. as president and chairman of the board.

Although originally designated to produce the Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber, the Malton plant received a contract on 18 September 1941 to build the Avro Lancaster Mk X heavy bomber. When the first drawings arrived in January 1942, the complexity of the project seemed daunting. Some 500,000 manufacturing operations were involved in manufacturing over 55,000 separate components that went into a Lancaster (excluding engines and turrets and small items such as rivets, nuts and bolts).

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