Oct. 30, 1942 was likely a bad day for flying, given the West Coast’s fickle fall weather.
And those risks were amplified without a working radio inside a canvas-and-wood military Avro Anson being used for training flights above southern Vancouver Island.
British RAF volunteer-reserve pilots Anthony William Lawrence, 21, and Charles George Fox, 31, British RAF volunteer-reserve Sgt. Robert Ernest Luckock and Canadian RCAF Sgt. William Baird were on that plane when it left the Patricia Bay airport outside Victoria.
Their fate has been unknown for 71 years. But now their families may finally have answers.
In October, loggers working for Teal-Jones out of the Mesachie Lake area found wreckage tossed across 100 metres of heavy bush near Mesachie Lake, southwest of Lake Cowichan.
Federal investigators believe that grim spot is where the plane went down.
Laurel Clegg, Department of National Defence’s forensic anthropologist, visited the snowy site in December. She aims to return “weather pending” to sift metal, wood and fabric for human remains and the crew’s personal effects that could confirm it is, in fact, the answer to a mystery seven decades old.
“We’re already notifying next of kin; we’re working with the British to notify them,” she said.
Finding needles in that forested haystack won’t be easy. But work by Clegg’s team — including bomb-disposal agents — will be easier as the remote location was undisturbed by artifact hunters, war buffs, and others who could have desecrated the site.
“There’s wide dispersal of metal and wreckage, seats and fuselage. With 70 years, there’s lots of forest growth over things,” she said. “We want to protect the site; the whole area is logging.”
The DND has a record of the Avro’s engine-plate serial numbers, which it has used to pinpoint the flight.
“The serial numbers match our records,” Clegg said of the light aircraft used for navigational training during the Second World War. “We also have crash records of all airplane crashes in Canada.”
Those accidents claimed some 26,000 Canucks still missing in action from the First and Second world wars, plus the Korean conflict.
With most West Coast mishaps, investigators assume the plane probably crashed in the ocean, meaning it is unlikely they will ever pinpoint the final resting place of the deceased.
Oct. 30, 1942 was likely a bad day for flying, given the West Coast’s fickle fall weather.
And those risks were amplified without a working radio inside a canvas-and-wood military Avro Anson being used for training flights above southern Vancouver Island.
British RAF volunteer-reserve pilots Anthony William Lawrence, 21, and Charles George Fox, 31, British RAF volunteer-reserve Sgt. Robert Ernest Luckock and Canadian RCAF Sgt. William Baird were on that plane when it left the Patricia Bay airport outside Victoria.
Their fate has been unknown for 71 years. But now their families may finally have answers.
In October, loggers working for Teal-Jones out of the Mesachie Lake area found wreckage tossed across 100 metres of heavy bush near Mesachie Lake, southwest of Lake Cowichan.
Federal investigators believe that grim spot is where the plane went down.
Laurel Clegg, Department of National Defence’s forensic anthropologist, visited the snowy site in December. She aims to return “weather pending” to sift metal, wood and fabric for human remains and the crew’s personal effects that could confirm it is, in fact, the answer to a mystery seven decades old.
