Following the defeat of the Norwegian forces, the King, key members of the government and military left Norway in June 1940 aboard HMS Devonshire.

[3] The greatest need revolved around the requirement for more combat pilots, necessitating placing orders in summer 1940 for 36 Fairchild PT-19s as a basic training aircraft.

The "Little Norway" camp was officially opened on 10 November 1940, located in the bay area of Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

A decision to standardize on British types that would be used in operations led to arrangements being made later in 1941 for the flight training of Norwegian pilots to be carried out in RAF and RCAF schools.

The training continued at Muskoka until February 1945, when the camp was moved to the air base at Winkleigh in Devon, England.

On 20 June 1941, while taking off, a Northrop N-3PB collided with the ferry Sam McBride in Port Race, Toronto Harbour, killing both the student pilot, Tron Harsvik, and instructor, Lt. Finn Strand Kjos.

This fear, along with it being impractical to have flight training in the same place as the current civil aviation operations, precipitated a move to a new camp in Muskoka.

[11] The first fatal accident in Muskoka, and the last one recorded by the FTL in Canada, took place August 1944 when a Fairchild PT-19 Cornell trainer with pilot and student aboard lost its wing and crashed into the ground, south of Gravenhurst; both on board died.

[12] The FTL lost three N-3PBs in Canada in fatal crashes, two near Vancouver (Jericho Beach and Patricia Bay), when the harbour in Toronto was frozen, along with the aircraft involved in the ferry boat accident.

Other training accidents included fatal crashes in the Curtiss P-36s, one near Toronto in April 1941, another near Port Credit in July 1941 and a final loss into Lake Ontario in January 1942.

[13] In total during the war, over 2,500 Norwegian airmen of all categories (pilots, navigators and mechanics) were trained in the various bases of "Little Norway".