After attending the national remembrance day ceremony. I wound up visiting the Ottawa memorial for lost aircrew. It commemmorates nearly 800 pilots, aircrew, and related ground staff who have been lost and who have never been found and buried properly. There are usually grave markers for pilots and aircrew lost in training, they are spread all around the towns where the BCATP flight training schools were. At times painting a plane yellow was not enough to keep pilots out of trouble.
If I were time-warped as an aviator to the same level of experience in a different time. By WW2 standards at this point in my aviation career I would have completed Service flight training school and flying Harvards or Ansons in preparation to qualify and ship out. I visited that site because in a different time that could easily have been me or someone I knew whose name was on the rounded walls.
It bothers me greatly that the memorial in Ottawa to the aircrew who never made it home and who never were found is truly lost and ignored. Canada is too big and wide to find every plane crash site especially over trackless wilderness.
Most of those dead were likely student pilots, Some were in ferry command but in no way should they NOT be commemorated by any of the Ottawa aviation organizations.
The four regional fight schools, Vintage wings of Canada, The Canadian Air and Space Museum; None. That upset me greatly, I'm a member of two of the organizations I mentioned and I will NOT remain silent about this next year. I will press the full list I mentioned about that and will lay a wreath personally if my suggestion gains no traction.
Lest we forget
I am listening.......and hear more than the words Brent.....
ReplyDeleteYour point is eloquent and those that have come and gine before us rise to the Honour you so rightly grant them.
We'll talk...and we will take action.