Having survived the First World War in the trenches, Shorty Hatton started his aviation career in a near-fatal crash of an Avro 504K and ended it with another Avro aircraft, the Arrow.

In the intervening years he was a military pilot, bush pilot and test pilot. He taught fledgling aviators at Camp Borden. He survived forced landings on frozen lakes. He was the first to fly new air mail routes in an open cockpit plane. He tested newly-built Hawker Hurricanes before they joined the Battle of Britain and an early version of the "flying wing".

He may well have been the only person to work on all three of the only fighter aircraft ever developed in Canada: the FDB-1 Gregor, the CF-100 Canuck and the CF-105 Avro Arrow.

Six of the aircraft he flew are in the National Aviation Museum in Ottawa. Others are in museums in Canada, the United States and Great Britain.