Little Norway - Accidents and Incidents

Accidents and Incidents

During flight training, there were several accidents with the loss of students and instructors.

On 20 June 1941, while in taking off, a Northrop N-3PB collided with the ferry Sam McBride in Port Race, Toronto Harbour, killing both the student pilot and instructor. The Toronto Star newspaper wrote that it was "a matter of time before one of the Norwegian aircraft crashes in the city itself." 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. At the new location, both ab-initio and advanced level training could take place, while advanced flight training continued at Island Airport.

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. The bodies were recovered from the dense undergrowth and a wing section was found, but no wreckage was recovered. Not long after, another Fairchild crashed for the same reason, but both occupants escaped by parachute. Fairchild aircraft were temporarily grounded, but after the cause of the accidents were determined and other aircraft repaired, Fairchilds were again in service.

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 in Toronto April 1941, another near Port Credit in July 1941 and a final loss into Lake Ontario in January 1942. In all, 23 people at the Air Force training camp died in flying accidents, in addition to the seven who died of disease, car accidents or by drowning.