RCAF Canso found off the coast of Van Island, Canada

By: walshlee - 31st July 2005 at 05:00

Interesting story sent to me from a friend out west (Enjoy):
The day the sea burned

Sandra McCulloch - Times Colonist

July 17, 2005

Freddy Boalch died the day he turned 21, when the Second World War Canso bomber he was in with seven other young men crashed into Saanich Inlet on approach to landing in Patricia Bay.

The body of the Calgary radio operator-air gunner sank with the wreckage into the depths of the inlet Feb. 12, 1945, just three months before victory in Europe was declared. Until a few weeks ago, Boalch's watery grave remained undetected and the wreckage uncharted.

It was the coast guard vessel John P. Tully, towing a remotely operated submersible equipped with a camera, that discovered the historic wreckage in 167 metres of water. It was a fluke; nobody was looking for the old plane, which remained where it came to rest on the sea bottom, four kilometres northwest of Victoria International Airport. Two pilots, a navigator and five wireless air-gunners were on the aircraft that day, returning to Patricia Bay from a training run at about lunchtime. The crash was later blamed on the glassy surface of the sun playing tricks on the pilot's eyes.

Pilot Rupert Brook Fraser of Victoria wasn't at the controls at the time. Records show a student pilot, Allan Bruce Crawford of Flint, Mich., was flying when the amphibious aircraft plunged into the sea, broke apart and sank. Fraser, Crawford, Boalch and navigator Gordon Thomas Kingswood of
Brantford, Ont., all died that day or shortly afterward.

Four others survived. Two are alive today, including Hank Golis, who was 19 at the time of the crash, and was shocked Thursday to hear the old plane wreckage had been found.

"Freddy Boalch was sitting right in front of me and Kingswood was on my right-hand side -- that's how close we were, and to this day it haunts me how I survived and they didn't," said Golis, 79, who lives in a suburb of Winnipeg.

The other survivor, Albert Maclean, now 91, still remembers the crash well 60 years later.

"We were coming in for a landing and we were laughing about it," said the former radio operator-air gunner, who now lives in Cornwall, Ont.
"The second pilot had taken over and we were laughing and saying, 'Oh, here we go, and there we went.'"

Maclean remembers chatting with Kingswood, who was leaning on the back of his chair. "I was sitting in the wireless operator's seat and watching the pilots, who were directly ahead of me. Just before we crashed, I saw them look up at the controls above their heads. Just as they did that, I heard a crash."

Golis, the youngest of the crew members, remembers the men were planning to have a party to celebrate Freddy's birthday that evening.

Without warning, Golis said, everyone hit the deck. The impact, he said, "took us all by surprise."

The eight had been a crew for only three months but had grown close through hours of training in Pat Bay. "Freddy Boalch, now that's his grave," said Golis. "He was the only child in the family, the only child and it was his 21st birthday."

Those who got out of the plane alive had to fight through fire and the icy February sea to survive. Golis pushed upward and broke through the surface, where the water appeared to be on fire. "I was right smack dead centre of the fire -- it was all over me.

"I kept splashing my way out until I got into the open water."
Golis said he was "mad as the dickens" that he wasn't unconscious because he figured he'd never survive. "I was conscious all the way through and scared, of course, thinking what mother and father were going to think of when they got the word.

Maclean was knocked out momentarily when he went head first into the radio equipment. When he surfaced, he noticed a life belt floating at the end of a wing. "I didn't know Kingswood was in it. The poor guy was dead."

The sea was burning as far as he could see, and he could hear Golis yelling for help. "But I knew they couldn't come out for us because the flames were too high and they were burning for a 100-foot circle around the plane."

Air force rescuers who arrived in boats about a half-hour later were met by a grisly scene.

"They pulled Crawford into the same crash boat as me and I noticed his arm was ripped off," said Golis, adding the pilot lived until the middle of the following night."

Also pulled from the water were wireless air-gunners William Bertram(Shorty) Harris of Sydney, N.S., and Lloyd Desjardine of Edmonton. Harris died a hero in the mid-1980s after he tried to save three people from drowning near his home, said Golis.

Desjardine is also believed to be dead. "He had head injuries from the crash," said Golis. "I escorted him home to Edmonton because he couldn't do his laces up or anything."

Golis was in hospital for five or six months with a broken leg and burns. He returned to Winnipeg and worked for the railroad. He has five children and five grandchildren with wife Elsie, whom he married in 1950.

Maclean suffered two broken legs, burns and lacerations on his face that required 90 stitches. He returned to Ontario, where he worked as a medical therapist and then a federal civil servant before returning to the family farm on the St. Lawrence River. The last of seven brothers, he never married, and says he's never dwelled much on the crash. "It never bothered me at all. I considered it part of life. Those things happen."

It's too early to say whether the government plans to raise the wreckage or if the site will be left as is, an underwater memorial to the dead men.

As for Maclean, he doesn't care about the downed plane's fate. "The only thing that bothered me was the first pilot -- he was getting married three or four months after the crash. It must have been awful for his family."

Golis has had a harder time reconciling his survival with his buddies' deaths, and calls the plane's discovery the "final chapter" in his life. Hungry for information on the Canso, he's curious to see the wreckage. Golis has returned to Victoria only once since the war, in 1982. He stood at the old ramp overlooking Saanich Inlet and cried.

"I'm not heavily spiritual but I believe in God. Was I lucky? Was it fate? Maybe God was with me. Whatever it was, I'm here today talking to you."

THE WRECKAGE
The wreckage of a Second World War bomber in Saanich Inlet was located by accident June 23 by a privately owned submersible vehicle being towed by the coast guard ship John P. Tully.

The remotely operated vehicle was operated by the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility.

The Tully and submersible had been conducting operations for clients over the last few weeks in Saanich Inlet, the Fraser Ridge and off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

At the time the Canso was spotted, they were working on a job for the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, which is administered through UVic. The discovery of the old bomber followed a major system overhaul and upgrade of the submersible. Its usual role is to help marine biologists from B.C. and Alberta with underwater research.

THE CANSO
The Canso bomber 9701, similar to the one shown above, was acquired by the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941 and served on the east coast until January 1944. The plane was then moved to No. 4 Squadron in Ucluelet. On Jan. 5, 1945, she was loaned to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan to serve with No. 3 Operational Training Unit in Patricia Bay. The plane crashed at Patricia Bay on Feb. 12, 1945, with eight air men aboard.

THE CREW
Canso 9701 servicemen:

Pilot officer Rupert Brook Fraser
(co-pilot on this flight)
Victoria

Pilot officer Allan Bruce Crawford
(student pilot flying the plane)
Flint, Mich.

Pilot officer Gordon Thomas Kingswood
Navigator
Brantford, Ont.

Sgt. Lloyd Desjardine
Calgary, Alberta
Wireless air gunner

Sgt. Albert Lorne Maclean
Cornwall, Ont.
Wireless air gunner

Sgt. Henry Edward Golis
Transcona, Man.
Wireless air gunner

Sgt. Fred Boalch
Calgary, Alberta
Wireless air gunner

Sgt. William Bertram (Shorty) Harris
Sydney, N.S.
Wireless air gunner

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2005 Copyright © 2005 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.