Monument to honour Hudson crew lost in Canada

Antipodean Andy · Jul 14, 2008

Geoff, the pilot was an Aussie. I've included an email address at the bottom if you want to make contact for a photo of the monument.

Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca

DALHOUSIE MOUNTAIN — Air Force officials removed every bit of debris soon after a Second World War training flight slammed into a Pictou County hilltop, killing all five crew members.

Over the past 66 years, the memory of the crash and the airmen who lost their lives remained strong among the people who witnessed the crash and its aftermath.

Now those who remember are making sure it will never be forgotten.

A local group of historians, veterans, military reservists and area residents will visit the remote location atop Dalhousie Mountain on the anniversary of the Aug. 10, 1942, crash to unveil a monument to the memory of the Royal Air Force plane’s crew.

"It will be 500 to 600 yards from the actual crash site, next to the Willis Cemetery," said Doug Stallard, one of the people organizing the memorial event.

Airfield Engineering Flight Pictou County, a Canadian air force reserve unit, has placed the stone, which will have a plaque on it, Mr. Stallard said.

A local quarry donated the stone.

Legion and Air Force Club members are also involved in the project, Mr. Stallard said.

Some of the family members of the crew will attend, including the family of Australian John Bursall, Mr. Stallard said.

Mr. Bursall, a Royal Australian Air Force pilot officer airman, was at the controls of the Lockheed Hudson Mk. III that evening, flying out of the Royal Air Force’s No. 31 Operational Training Unit in Debert.

Just after midnight, in the dark and fog, the plane struck the south side of Dalhousie Mountain and disintegrated.

People who saw the crash the next morning recall twisted metal spread over a large area and remember that one engine ploughed soil into a mound as it skidded to a rest in the trees.

For decades, no vegetation would grow where the plane’s fuel had spilled.

Also killed in the crash were pilot officers John Kenneth Hobson, 21, of Saskatoon and Paul Amos Rogers, 22, of Edmonton and wireless operators/air gunners Sgt. Arnold William Cooke, 25, of Saint-Lambert, Que., and Sgt. Howard James Vincent, 26, of Canora, Sask.

The Canadians were laid to rest in their hometowns, but Mr. Bursall’s remains were buried in Terrace Hill Cemetery in Truro.

The Debert school trained British and Commonwealth pilots for coastal patrols around the world and to search for German U-boats in Canadian waters.

Crews from the school flew more than a thousand operation missions before it closed in 1945. Two aircraft were lost in that time, with eight fatalities, including the five in the Dalhousie Mountain crash.

Anyone interested in attending the Aug. 10 dedication ceremony can contact Gordon McLeod at gemcl@ns.sympatico.ca for directions to the site.
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spidge · Jul 14, 2008

Thanks for that Andy. I was just advised of another memorial being planned in Northern Ireland to victims of a crash there. It is really wonderful that 66 years on in both cases July/August, they still remember the young lives that were extinguished so horribly in defence of freedom.

We lost three other lads in that area (all 31 OTU) and all are buried in the same cemetery. I will contact the gentleman and see if he would be prepared to take some photos for me.

BURNS, PHILIP MAXWELL
Sergeant
421242
31 O T U RCAF
19/04/1943
19
Royal Australian Air Force Australian
Plot 381. Grave 1. TRURO (TERRACE HILL) CEMETERY

BURSILL, JOHN ALAN
Pilot Officer
411119
31 O T U RCAF
10/08/1942
25
Royal Australian Air Force
Australian Plot 379. Grave 3. TRURO (TERRACE HILL) CEMETERY

ELLIOTT, PERCY WILLIAM
Sergeant
425289
31 O T U RCAF
8/04/1943
23
Royal Australian Air Force
Australian Plot 380. Grave 4. TRURO (TERRACE HILL) CEMETERY

KING, NEIL DANSKINE
Sergeant
411147
31 O T U RCAF
7/06/1942
21
Royal Australian Air Force
Australian Plot 379. Grave 1. TRURO (TERRACE HILL) CEMETERY

This is the one planned for next Sunday in Ireland:

View attachment 1917

Antipodean Andy · Jul 15, 2008

In Bushmills too so they'll be able to toast the lost men in fine fashion.

It is good to see these memorials being erected.

Kyt · Aug 10, 2008

Nova Scotia News - TheChronicleHerald.ca

SIXTY-SIX years have flashed by since that early morning when a Hudson bomber crashed on Dalhousie Mountain in August 1942. Within minutes of touching down, after hitting the mountain with its starboard wing tip, the lives of four young Canadians and their Australian pilot were snuffed out.

For most of those years little has been known in Pictou County about this crew and the aircraft that was destroyed. Mystery and rumour were followed by years of virtual silence. But while local residents got on with their lives, the grieving families buried the dead in their local community and mourned for their loved ones.

A few days after the crash, four flag-draped coffins left Truro’s CNR Station on a sombre journey to Saint-Lambert, Que., Saskatoon and Canora, Sask., and Edmonton, Alta.

A fifth coffin, adorned with the Australian flag, remained in Truro’s Terrace Hill Cemetery. An air force trumpeter sounded the Last Post as the pilot, Pilot Officer John (Jack) Alan Bursill, was laid to rest. The service was with full military honours but none of his family were present. Wartime regulations did not allow for the body to be returned to Australia.

Bursill’s older brother, Bill, says he and Jack were always together and, "his loss hurt beyond description and still brings tears when I think of our time together."

His younger brother, Keith, recalled: "Jack’s passing was a very sad occasion for me because he and I shared similar interests. He was a virtual icon for the rest of the family as well."

A street in Campbelltown, New South Wales, is named in Bursill’s memory.

Today, Pictou County residents will join with relatives of the crew, other dignitaries and invited guests, to unveil a memorial stone near the crash site on Dalhousie Mountain.

At the time of the crash, military authorities removed most of the wreckage almost immediately, creating somewhat of an aura of mystery. Newspaper reports never identified the serial number of the Hudson bomber and no historical marker has ever been erected until today.

We now know that the aircraft was a Lockheed Hudson from a training unit based at RAF Debert. The crew had been together for only a few weeks.

In early June 1942, a new group of well-trained aircrew, including some recent graduates, arrived in Debert.

They’d been sent there to undergo additional training and to become part of a Hudson bomber crew.

If successful, they would soon be ferrying Lockheed aircraft across the Atlantic to England.

One of the first to arrive was Sgt. Howard J. "Jim" Vincent, a wireless air gunner from Canora, Sask. Jim was 26 and a former farm worker. He was married to Phyllis Drake and had just spent his embarkation leave at home with her and their two young children.

A few weeks later, in a letter to Phyllis dated July 14, 1942, Sgt. Vincent shared with the family a brief glimpse of his training program.

"We are supposed to be getting acquainted with our pilot and navigator but I haven’t seen them yet. I’m waiting around till he (the pilot) comes over and breaks the ice."

Jim also refers to the garden he planted before leaving Canora for the East Coast.

Jim’s daughter, Bonnie Vincent, and her mother, Phyllis, live in Ottawa now and Bonnie recalled how important Jim’s garden was to her grieving mother.

"That garden was a great comfort to my mother after Dad died and she continued to tend the potatoes, carrots, and cabbages, which grew to be an enormous size. At least, it was something living she was left with."

Bonnie has been reviewing her father’s personnel service file at the National Archives in Ottawa. She was surprised to learn that Jim had initi

ally trained as a pilot before remustering as a wireless air gunner. Bonnie told me that Sgt. Vincent wrote two more letters. He was now crewed-up with Pilot Officer John Bursill, from Campbelltown, New South Wales. Their navigator (actually he was an observer) was Pilot Officer John Hobson, from Saskatoon.

Bursill was suave and debonair, a sort of "down-under Clark Gable" type. A rural bank clerk before joining the Royal Australian Air Force, he’d posted in from Charlottetown, where he was attached to the RCAF. Jack Hobson received his observer’s wings at Rivers, Man., where he was among the top students. Hobson, too, had come to Debert via Charlottetown, where he and Bursill learned the latest techniques of ocean patrol.

Shortly after his arrival in Nova Scotia, Jack Hobson wrote to his brother, Warrant Officer Doug Hobson. Dated July 22, 1942, the letter makes mention of his brief posting with Coastal Command in Charlottetown.

"We are preparing for our trip across the Atlantic in a Hudson. I’m in a good crew, an Aussie pilot and two Canuck WAGs and I think we shall be OK.

"This Coastal Command is a great layout, a lot of work and a great headache, too. Much water but a lot of fun and a good experience. It gets pretty foggy, hard for flying sometimes, but I expect to be here until the end of August.

In another letter to his family Jim wrote: "This won’t be a very long letter as I’m dead tired. Just came down from another six-hour trip looking for submarines. My eyes are sore from the ocean as it was just like glass today. I’d sooner do the night trips.The subs sure hang around the convoys. I saw my first big one today, it seemed to fill the whole horizon."

Jim went on to make a few guarded comments about their sub-chasing training. "I’m getting to like the old rear turret and have lots of fun. The ocean is full of porpoises, so the pilot says, and we often sight schools of them. I didn’t do anything else but fly and sleep the last week."

He speculated that they would soon be shipping out. "It won’t be long before we finish here, three more weeks and then I guess it’s overseas but I’m still hoping to get some leave. I sure would like to see you and the kids once more. Better go to bed as I have a 5 hr. trip again at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning."

Sgt. Vincent’s next letter, his last, was received after the crash. In it he expressed some personal concerns and made passing reference to the numerous crashes in the training program. His concerns turned out to be eerily prophetic.

During their last flight, Jim Vincent and the Bursill crew were on a navigational exercise. The skies were cloudy but probably not overly distracting to skipper Bursill.

Debert ground control ordered Bursill to fly to Charlottetown. Jack acknowledged and his "over and out" was the last that was heard from the airplane. They never made it. For most of that day the aircraft was reported missing and the families of the crew were notified. Several hours later, after receiving numerous reports of sightings, a recovery party from Debert was sent to Dalhousie Mountain, where they found the wreckage. Five bodies were removed from what remained of Hudson BW401.

Witnesses told the inquiry into the crash that the trees were shorn off but not badly burned. The court of inquiry determined that the crew had all died instantly. A great variety of stories about the final flight of BW401 continue to be told. It’s been reported that twisted metal was spread over a large area and that one engine ploughed soil into a mound as it cut through the trees. Apparently it was many years before new vegetation would grow on the spot where the plane burned or where its fuel had spilled.

In a RCMP report into the crash, witness and Scotsburn resident Arthur S. MacKay, 18, said, "On August 10, 1942, approximately between 1.00 a.m. and 1.30 a.m., I was at my house at which time I was half-asleep in bed. I heard the roar of an aircraft which awoke me. I went to the window and first observed a red glow against the sky outlining the foothills which are about a mile away. Accompanied by this glow were puffs of white light which seemed to explode and then die out. Following this was a red flare which lit the sky right up with a sort of heat wave effect. In a few minutes I heard two explosions which jarred our house. In about five minutes the light went out — this being followed by a light rain."

In his late 80s now, Jack Adamson still lives on his farm just outside Scotsburn with sister Ina. He remembers going to the crash site a day or so after the aircraft was located. Dalhousie Mountain was well populated at the time but is virtually barren of people now. Jack is sure there were parts of the plane scattered around but is equally positive that there was no large-scale bush fire.

Second World War veteran Bill Ross from Black Point, near New Glasgow, was in the RCAF. He recalls that his father was born on Dalhousie Mountain. Bill visited the crash site while home on leave in November 1942 but doesn’t remember seeing any wreckage.

That was 66 years ago. Through all these years local residents and other interested individuals have talked about erecting a memorial to the young men who died that night. Now, on the initiative of Gordon McLeod from Rockfield Road, in Lyons Brook, and several others from Pictou County, the memorial is a reality.

McLeod was nine years old the day he and a neighbour checked out the crash, a short distance from the Willis property and the Pioneer (Willis) Cemetery. Gordon later served in the postwar RCAF for 35 years.

Ralph Heighton, community liaison officer with the 144 Airfield Engineering Flight (RCAF), is involved with the memorial project as is Doug Stallard, a well-known, longtime Pictou County pharmacist and wartime member of the RCAF/RAF.

The dedication service will take place at 2 p.m. today in Durham Presbyterian Church on the 66th anniversary of the crash. Following the church service, family of the crew and other dignitaries will be transported to the memorial site where a military-style ceremony will take place. The program will include the unveiling and consecration of the memorial stone and plaque.

Of the surviving families, Jim Vincent’s daughter, Bonnie (Vincent) Nguyen, now 67, is expected to attend the service. She’ll read a message from her mother, Phyllis, and will be joined by Doug Hobson, nephew of Pilot Officer Jack Hobson. Doug’s father, Doug Sr., a wartime RCAF pilot, is unable to make the trip. However, he recalled this prophetic story: On one occasion in 1942, Doug and Jack were home on leave at the same time. As they were leaving to return to their respective air stations, Jack turned to their mother and said something that would stick with Doug for the rest of his life.

"Doug will come back when this war is over but I won’t."

Jack is buried in Saskatoon and Hobson Lake is named in his memory. Sgt. Jim Vincent did get home again. He is buried in Canora Cemetery and Vincent Lake in Saskatchewan is named in his memory.

Floyd Williston, formerly of Cape Breton, is the author of Through Footless Halls of Air. He lives in Winnipeg.
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spidge · Aug 10, 2008

I was trying to get some photos of the memorial so emailed the people concerned and they sent me "directions" to the memorial. I will try again this week to explain myself a little better.

Kyt · Aug 10, 2008

Have you got Bursill's grave?

RAAFcasualities

spidge · Aug 10, 2008

Kyt said: ↑

Have you got Bursill's grave?

RAAFcasualities
Click to expand...

Thanks Kyt, you are a gem!

I didn't have any of those!

Cheers

Geoff

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Monument to honour Hudson crew lost in Canada

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Monument to honour Hudson crew lost in Canada

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