The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Bridge: Encore Presentation - RCAF WWII Disaster

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

We're looking back at The Bridge in 2021.  Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on November 8th.  The Story of an RCAF WW2 Disaster.

You're tuned in to a special Encore presentation of The Bridge. This episode is the story of the Royal Canadian Air Force disaster during World War II. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here once again in Dornick, Scotland. On week, well I guess we can call it Remembrance Week. We're leading up to Thursday and Remembrance Day. So there are going to be a lot of programs, television specials, newspaper articles that will be trying to remind you of the past of Canada's military history, especially in the last century, the First World War, the World War, the Second World War, Korea, Bosnia, Afghanistan.

There's lots to remember, including the service of so many Canadians, more than 100,000 of whom lost their lives during conflicts in the past with Canada on their shoulder patches. Well, those of you who know anything about me know that I love telling stories. That was the basis of the whole idea of me as I sort of moved into journalism. I love storytelling. I'd learned that from my parents. And if you've read my most recent book, Off the Record, which is out there now.

It is a collection of stories and anecdotes from my past, mainly my broadcasting past, the stories behind the stories, if you will, the stories that never got told on air. But in doing so, in reading those stories, if you've had a chance so far, you know that I love telling stories. So, well, that's what I'm going to do today. And I'm going to try and relate it to this important week that we have in front of us. Now, if you've been listening over these last few weeks while I've been in Scotland, this is one of my last broadcasts from here before I head back to Canada.

Well, if you've been listening, you have a rough idea of where I'm at. Dornick, Scotland. So if you look at a map of Scotland and you find Inverness in the north of Scotland, and then you imagine about a one-hour drive up the long east coast of Scotland, you'll find Dornick. Well, technically, we're not right in Dornick. We're a little north of Dornick. Not by much.

A few miles, as they refer to them here, those distances that one travels. So a few miles north of Dornick. But it's right on, perched on the edge of the North Sea. So looking out at this huge expanse of water. That if you look straight across from here, and if you were able to see the other side. You can't, of course, because of the horizon. But if you were able to see that, you'd see Norway. That's how far north up

we are in the United Kingdom. But in the immediate view standing on this coast of the North Sea, you're actually looking at the Dornick Firth. It's kind of like a big, huge basin of water. The east end is this point that ends up at Port Mahomac, a beautiful little kind of resort community

at the end of this long stretch of land where the Port Mahomac Lighthouse is. And it's, I think, I believe it's the third largest lighthouse in the United Kingdom. And we were out there the other day, and it's a huge structure. Built in 1830, after there had been a considerable number of shipwrecks out in that

dornick firth where it meets the north sea and there are lots of shallow patches of shallow water so all these shipwrecks led to, in 1830, the construction of this lighthouse. Now the lighthouse is, I don't know, 15 to 20 miles from our location, but you can see it blinking out its warning. As soon as it's dark on it comes. Every 15 seconds, four flashes. And it's a huge impact. You can see it a long way away through almost any kind of weather. But the history of Port Mahomac at the east end of this basin,

I talk about it in front of us, that goes back far beyond that. The Romans are said to have had a fort at Port Mahomac. Now, they don't have the, they've not found the remains of this yet. Some feel they have found bits and pieces of it, but there's no structure there or anything like that. So it had been a strategic location for years. Now, the basin, if you stretch all the way to the west,

you come up with communities that are north of Dornick, like Goulsby and Brora. So you've got this huge basin. Archie, the postman, told me the other day, they still have house-to-house delivery here, even out in the sticks like we are. Drives his little Royal Mail van around. And we were standing there talking the other day and he said, you know, we were looking

out at that basin, the Dornick Firth, out towards the North Sea. He says, you know, legend has it that during the Second World War, U-boats used to pop up there. And we have guys who swear they saw it. Saw those U-boats. No evidence that anybody ever came ashore. The area was used on the beaches around Port Mahomac. It was used as one of the many places in the UK that was used for training for the D-Day landings. Maybe the U-Boats were around watching that. Anyway, it was a great story and Archie tells it well.

He's a storyteller too. He has all the secrets of the Dornick area from his daily run around with the mail. Anyway, that kind of sets the scene for you. Scotland was a huge area for training and for all kinds of different reasons. The army, the Air Force, you know, training we have talked about, I think, in the past, and we will talk later in this special program.

The training that took place for air was very limited that they could do here in the UK. I mean, they were fighting an air war, Battle of Britain. So what training did take place usually took place in the north, in Scotland, by both Fighter Command and Bomber Command and those working in conjunction with the Royal Navy on anti-submarine warfare, anti-U-boats.

So a lot of that happened over these areas, especially along the northeast coast of Scotland. So keep all of that in mind for a moment, because I'm going to tell you, and that's what this story is all about. I'm going to tell you a story about one particular flight on a night in August of 1944. Okay, so this is after D-Day.

The Allies are making their way through parts of Europe, moving up through France. Eventually, they'll get to Belgium, and then the Netherlands, and then into Germany. They're already fighting in Italy, obviously, and in the Far East. And Canadians are on the front lines of many of those battles. So this story is about one particular flight. It was an RAF flight, Royal Air Force flight,

but it was filled with Canadians. The plane was what's called a Short Sunderland. To be specific, a Short S.25 Sunderland. It was a British flying boat, a patrol bomber. And it was used for training, surveillance, and anti-submarine warfare. In fact, it was a Sunderland that first took out a U-boat, and it was 1940. In fact, specifically, it was 17th of July, 1940.

Performed the Sunderland's first what they called an unassisted U-boat kill. Now, to knock out a sub from the air in one of these planes was no easy feat, but nevertheless, that's what they did. And if you look at a picture, if you look it up on Google Images or anywhere, any search engine, it looks kind of familiar. It looks like some of those big flying boats they used in British Columbia to extinguish forest fires, you know, with the big drops of water. Now, there were about 750 Sunderlands made.

They first got the attention of the world in 1942 when a Sunderland carrying, amongst others, Prince George, who was the fourth son of King George VI, was the Duke of Kent, the brother of both George VI and the brother of Edward VIII. But kind of little known, kind of in the background but he made the headlines on this day in 1942 when the sunderland in which he was flying on some kind of secret mission it's always been clouded in mystery and there are all kinds of conspiracy theories around it

but the sunderland in which he was flying, supposedly on its way to Iceland, crashed in the north of Scotland. 15 people on board, 14 of them killed, including the Duke of Kent. And as I said, all kinds of conspiracy theories about what was really going on on that flight, but it cost for the UK and for the Commonwealth one of the leading members of the Royal Family.

I believe the last person to die in an air crash, last member of the Royal Family to die in an air crash, last member of the Royal family to die in an air crash. So that was 1942. And it was a Sunderland. It was being used basically as a transport flight with a dedicated crew and one of the most experienced pilots in the RAF flying. But they went into the side of a hill in Northern Scotland,

in the Highlands, and it cost 14 of the 15 lives, including the Duke of Kent. So let's move this story up to the night of August the 15th, 1944. It's actually the night on August 14th, off from Invergordon, south of Dornick, about halfway down the coast towards Inverness. So this flight takes off. There were, like the Duke of Kent's flight, 15 people on board that flight. Two Australians from the Royal Australian Air Force and one from the RAF. There were 12 that we consider today Canadians.

11 of them were with the RCAF, and one was from Newfoundland. Remember, Newfoundland was not yet in Canada. But for our purposes in telling this story, there were 12 Canadians on board that flight. But it was an RAF flight, and it was described as a training mission. They were working on new and better forms of radar, and they were training their crews,

because these were the same crews that would eventually be bombing Berlin and other places inside Nazi Germany. So they were working on the radar training. We're a fair number of pilots and various different members of the crew, you know, air gunners and engineers, all on board that flight. So it takes off at basically quarter after 11 at night. At eight minutes after midnight, so not quite an hour later, air traffic control contacts the crew to inform them that the weather conditions were deteriorating and quickly

and suggested that it was better to fly back to Invergordon. So at this point they were out over this beautiful stretch of water that I can see from my little place here in Scotland, out over where the Dornick Firth meets the North Sea. Flying in a northwesterly direction. So they get that advisory from air traffic control saying, you know, it's starting to sock in. You're best to get back to Invergordon. You don't want to have problems on this flight.

And weather is now a problem. So turn back. What does the crew do? They don't turn back. They stay in a northwesterly direction. So they're out over the water, and they're flying, as it turns out, on a line that's going to take them right over the coast,

just north of Brora. Remember I mentioned to you that we're just around Dornick. Next significant community up is Goldsby, a little up the coast. And then Aurora, which is maybe a 25-minute drive from here. 25-30 minutes. And it's right on the coastline and it is at the edge of the highlands. Right? Land gradually slopes up, and then pretty rapidly slopes up,

and you're into the highlands. You're into the mountains, the Scottish mountains. So our 15 chaps in the Sunderland are flying directly towards that area, and the weather has got bad. I'm assuming they're flying instrument. Visually, they can't see anything because of the low clouds and the rain, rain. And sadly, the plane smashes into those mountains at a place called Lothbeg, which is just outside Brora, a little tiny village. But they smash into that hillside, that mountainside, with such force that everybody on board is killed. Now, fast forward to today.

I didn't know anything about this accident. Never heard of it. But the other day we were on our way into Inverness. I saw this big church near the side of the highway, the A9. And, you know, sometimes I, you know, it was an old church, and sometimes both Cynthia and I like to, you know, stop and walk through some cemeteries of older churches, because it tells you something about the history obviously of that area

anyway we turn in there but there was no access to what looked like a cemetery area but we'd already made the turn so we kept driving because it was towards invergordon which is a huge port serves everything from cruise ships to the Navy's, Royal Navy's latest aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth. We saw the Queen Elizabeth hidden in there in Invergordon a few years ago while it was still doing sea trials, and there was a kind of mystery attached to it because it's state-of-the-art. We saw it was there.

We tried to get towards it, but we couldn't get anywhere near it. Anyway, not far from there was a second church. It was all closed up too. It had been for years. But in the back of it was what's called the Roskine Parish Churchyard extension and it was a cemetery and a tiny little sign

near one of the front gates said War Graves Cemetery and so I immediately wanted to go in and see it because I'm always moved by the various Commonwealth

war graves cemeteries in not only in the UK but different parts of Europe, the Far East, I've been to

the one in Hong Kong. So we parked the car, we get out, there's nobody around. It's sort of in the middle of nowhere. We get out and we start walking the rows of gravestones with the little stories that are on each one. Basically somebody's name, their regiment number, sometimes their birth date and their date of death.

You figure out ages. Anyway, walking along, row upon row, and then suddenly I see one. It says RCAF, Royal Canadian Air Force. I read the name, the number, and I move to the next one. And it's RCAF, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and it keeps going. A whole row, all of whom died on the same day, August 15th, 1944.

These were the guys, the Canadians, on that Sunderland, who smashed into the mountain north of Brora, not far from where I am. So I thought, I want to know who these guys were, a little bit about them. So in today's world, it's not hard to get some basic information. And so I did, and I'm going to do a roll call of these names. The fellow from Newfoundland, by the way, his name was Donald Roy Trask. All right?

So he was a Newfoundlander, and that's what it says on his gravestone. Here are the 11 Canadians of that day. No particular order. Warrant Officer Leroy Hart Luddington, 29 years old. He's from Vancouver. Survived by his wife, Catherine. Sergeant Walter Comer from Hamilton, Ontario. Flight Sergeant

Arthur DePesa, 29 years old, from Montreal. Survived by his wife, Caroline. Flying Officer Ronald Shaw Rawlson, 27, from Edmonton. Vernon Cleveland, 23 years old, from Vancouver. Percy Alexander White, 26 years old, from New Westminster, B.C., survived by his wife, Penny. Roderick William Fulton, 24, from Winnipeg. You notice these are all in the 20s. I think there's one who's 30. Anton Nicholas Unser.

No age, no place of, no home place in Canada that I could find. Flying Officer Thomas Benedict Wood, 21, from Douglasstown, New Brunswick. Flight Lieutenant William Benedict Sargent. He was 30. The oldest guy on the crew, 30. He's from Belleville, Ontario. A graduate of Queen's University.

Bachelor of Science. And finally, the senior ranking officer on that flight, Flight Lieutenant Robert Lyle Mercer, 27 years old, survived by his wife, Thelma. And I looked him up in this order, right? So I get to the last name, Robert Lyle Mercer, 27 years old, survived by his wife, Thelma. And where's he from?

He's from Palmerston, Ontario, which is just north of Stratford, where I live. Now, I look at this list, and I look at it as we approach Thursday's Remembrance Day, where we're remembering Canada's war dead from battlefields all around the world. And what do I see when I look at that list, aside from the fact all these guys were in their 20s or had just turned 30? That there were so many of them on that flight. What do I see? I see Canada. You heard me read off those names.

Where are they from? They're from all over Canada. You got a fellow from Newfoundland. You got a fellow from New Brunswick. You got a couple of people from British Columbia. You got a couple of people from Ontario Columbia. You've got a couple of people from Ontario. You've got one from Alberta. You've got one from Winnipeg.

You've got one from Quebec. There was Canada on that plane that night, the 14th slash 15th of August, 1944. When it went into that hillside and lies were snuffed out in an instant, they came from all across Canada. Representative of, well, the fact that there were Canadians from all across the country who served in the Second World War, as they did in the First World War, as they had done initially in the Boer War, as they did in Bosnia and Korea and Afghanistan.

Canadians from all across the country. So when we remember on Thursday, we remember all of them. And we remember all kinds of missions, active battle missions and training missions like this one. I tell you, when you stand in that cemetery and you look down a row of RCAF markers, you think Canada. So what does this story tell us? We're going to take a quick break. When we come back,

we'll talk to, I'm lucky, I've met and worked with a number of great war historians like Jack Granatstein and one of his one-time students, Tim Cook, who's now recognized as Canada's most dominant war historian of this day. Tim will join us right after this. All right, as promised, let's listen to Tim Cook

and try and get a sense of what that story I just told you really means. Here's Tim. So, Tim, what does hearing a story like that say to you? Well, Peter, it reminds me of the thousands of Canadians who have served our country in times of war, conflict, and the search for peace, who've lost their lives and who lie buried around the world. And I think we can sometimes forget this. On Remembrance Day, we stand at memorials, we think of our grandfathers or great grandmothers or those who we knew who came home from wars. But of course, more than 100,000 Canadians never came home. They are buried, for the most part, overseas, most of them in England and Scotland, but in France, in Belgium,

around the world, in fact. And if we think of the Second World War, the airmen, which my grandfather flew in bomber command, and he was lucky enough to come home, although he'd crashed into a mountain in Italy. They are scattered across the world. And I think when we travel, we can be surprised, we can be shocked, and we can be saddened. I think when we come across a cemetery where there are Canadians buried, Canadians who died from 1939 to 1945 or from 1914 to 1918 or in South Africa from 1899 to 1902 or in Korea. And it really wasn't until the 1970s when we began to bring our fallen soldiers home. But I think as you have found these cemeteries, these headstones, they bear witness, I think, to service and sacrifice, to grief and loss, to a time in the past that still very much resonates today. You know, the other thing that struck me as well is that

we tend to focus on those you know who died at the front lines you know in battle or from the air or from the sea um but there were also as in this particular case where many who died in training you know never got to the the front so to speak um that's right it was you know these were young kids and, uh, you know, especially the, the flyers who were suddenly, you know, in a big bomber or a jet fighter, not a jet fighter, but a fighter. Um, and, uh, you know, at 18, 19, 20 years old and it wasn't easy training and, and, and it took its toll. Took its toll and it was dangerous i mean we sometimes forget that i've i've studied the world wars as you know for many years now and there were

thousands of canadians not hundreds but thousands of canadians in the two world wars if we just take them as an example who died in training accidents or from other accidents. And the airmen, those who served in the fighters or the bombers, those were dangerous machines. And in the First World War, those airplanes, they were dropping out of the sky all the time. The airmen became very adept at flying and having their engine just give out. In the Second World War, in Lancaster, Halifax, they were more sturdy machines. And yet, flying over enemy terrain, losing an engine, or closer training, for instance, in England or Scotland or in Canada. Of course, we had the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, astonishing training plan that trained 131,000 airmen for the Second World War, and yet thousands

were injured in accidents and many hundreds killed. That too is a cost of war. And it isn't, as you rightly know, just those soldiers fighting at Ortona or fighting at Juneau Beach or in the Battle of the Atlantic. It is all the Canadians who served, and all the Canadians who were away from their loved ones, and who died in service, or who were injured and maimed as well. And I think these headstones, these Canadians, these Canadians who you've alerted us to, others know of them, of course, but we in Canada can forget these stories. And as I have said, as I know you have said, if we don't tell these stories, no one else will. It's up to us. It's our history. And I think it can be done through an old photograph or a letter

home. It can be done at a memorial or in the church. And sometimes it can be done through the headstone or a series of headstones of a number of Canadians who never came home to their loved ones. You know, I'm glad you mentioned your Commonwealth Air Training Plan because, you know, many Canadians forget what was happening in our country during the war, because there were, as you said, tens of thousands of people who needed to be trained to fly. And it was a little hard to be doing that in England or Scotland. They did some of it, but hard to do it on a massive scale because they were fighting a war, an air war all around them. So they turned Canada or parts of Canada into this like giant

runway and, you know, across different parts of southwestern Ontario and then especially the prairies, there were these little stations, Air Force stations that popped up all across the prairies. And, you know, I can remember living there in the 60s and they were still there. You know, they were abandoned, but the buildings were still there. The runways were still there, but they were abandoned but the buildings were still there the runways were still there but they were a slice of canadian history those boys uh learned to fly in those areas they grew up in in small prairie towns or not grew up but they were training in small prairie towns and and uh you know it became a part of the landscape of those communities. Yeah. I love that phrase you used there, turning Canada into a runway, but you're exactly right. We emerged from the Second World War as an air-minded country because we had, I think at the numbers, 231 new air bases and runways that were built during the course of

the war. And of course, if the 19th century was about railways connecting us as a country, and the early to mid part of the 20th century was also about the car and highway building. Well, the Second World War saw this massive stimulation, I guess, in these airfields. And this helped us as a country. It's one of those hidden legacies of war that we don't often think about. And as you alluded to, 1.1 million Canadians served during the Second War. That's an astonishing figure. We were only about 11 million Canadians.

So one in 10 Canadians served, one in three adult males. They too, those veterans coming back, men and women, a legacy of the war. Think of the urbanization. You would have seen this, of course. I mean, Canada was largely rural, and the war sees this incredible movement into the cities, as well as industrialization. And I guess it's sort of part of a larger discussion about how the Second World War was really one of those events that transforms Canada. We are never the same after that and you can see it in many ways but maybe one of the most poignant is the millions, the million veterans who come back after the war who helped to build up this country. And as we are thinking about Remembrance Day,

it is worth reflecting upon that generation, perhaps, that generation of which there are now fewer than 20,000. So fewer than 20,000 from the 1 million. They're all 95 years of age or older. And I wonder what we as Canadians, what will happen over the next five, seven, eight years as we lose almost all of those veterans, as we lose those eyewitnesses to history? What will it mean for us as Canadians? And I think that's something for us perhaps to reflect upon this week, this week when we often turn to a service and sacrifice and remembrance and commemoration, what will it mean to lose that generation? Tim, it's always good to talk to you. I know

you'll be busy on Remembrance Day with the CBC and its coverage of the services of the National War Memorial. Thanks for taking time on this. It's, as I said, always good to hear from you, always learn from listening to you and reading all of those books that you have. So thanks again, Tim. Thanks, Peter. Tim Cook. And, you know, when I talk about Tim's books, he's a prolific author,

but unbelievably well-researched. from student age to adult age, who is trying to understand what happened during those times, the impact it had on Canadians in general, and the impact it had on the country. So Tim Cook is one of my faves. I've got books of his stacked up in my library. And so, you know, if you're inclined, you should grab a copy yourself. He's always on a bestseller list, even for books that were written more than a few years ago. You won't have any trouble finding a Tim Cook book.

Tim is one of the main historians at the Canadian War Museum and as I said a prolific author alright that's our look back at Canada's past as we look ahead to this week of remembrance Thursday is Remembrance Day this was in a sense a tease to get you into that mode as you get ready for Thursday

you're wearing a poppy think about more than just wearing the poppy in a sense, a tease to get you into that mode as you get ready for Thursday. You're wearing a poppy. Think about more than just wearing the poppy over these next few days. On Thursday of this week, because we come on with the bridge after the ceremonies take place in Ottawa, we're not doing a Remembrance Day show on Thursday. We're doing a special show actually on libraries.

Talk about remembering. That's where so many of us got some of our formative thoughts on all kinds of different issues. New book looking at the role of libraries in our world, written here in the UK. We're going to talk to the two authors, two profs from St. Andrews University in Scotland. That'll be on Thursday.

That's it for this special program. I hope it moved you in any number of different ways. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.