By Col Tom Dunne | January 11, 2017 Estimated reading time 2 minutes, 44 seconds.
Maj Maxime Renaud, a Royal Canadian Air Force CF-188 Hornet pilot from 3 Wing Bagotville, Que., has been chosen from among an elite group of his peers to receive a distinguished award.
A member of Class 150 of the United States Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., Renaud is the recipient of the Commander Willie McCool Outstanding Student Award, given to the top student in each graduating class in recognition of his or her academic and flying achievements.
Thirty-one students graduated from the year-long course on Dec. 16, 2016: the candidates came from the United States Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard. The course roster also included international candidates from Australia, Canada, Italy and the U.K..
The course is one of only three in which Canadian test pilots are trained. The others are offered by the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and the Empire Test Pilots’ School in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England.
Renaud graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in 2006, in mechanical engineering, and has completed three combat deployments, to Libya and twice to Iraq. He is now posted to the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment (AETE) at 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alta.
The United States Navy’s Cdr William McCool was a test pilot, aeronautical engineer and astronaut, and one of seven crew members on board Space Shuttle Columbia, all of whom died Feb. 1, 2003, when Columbia broke up over the southern United States during re-entry after a successful mission servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.
Col Tom Dunne is the Air Attaché, Canadian Defence Liaison Staff (Washington).
