On 10 November 1940, the first ferry operation was conducted. A flight of seven Lockheed Hudsons took off from Gander Airfield in Newfoundland. An Australian pilot, D.C.T. Bennett, commanded the formation. The flight encountered a severe winter storm over the North Atlantic, and the crews experienced serious problems with the wings icing over.
Ten hours and seventeen minutes after leaving Gander, all seven Hudsons landed at the British airbase at Aldergrove, near Belfast, Northern Ireland. The CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) Air Services would be reorganized as the Atlantic Ferry Organization (AFTERO) in the summer of 1941 and integrated with the Royal Air Force Ferry Command and the British Civilian Air Transport Auxiliary the following year. By the end of the war, over 10,000 military aircraft would cross the Atlantic from Canada to Britain.
