Moose Jaw Air Plane - Disasters of the Century

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[Music] the fabulous snowbirds for three decades Canada's death-defying aerobatic team has performed in air shows across North America and around the world in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan there's a certain pride attached to the fact that the snowbirds were born here on the Canadian Forces Base six kilometres south of the city while the history of the snowbirds has its share of tragedy moose jaw's greatest air disaster involves not a death-defying stunt gone wrong a simple terrible twist of fate Moose Jaw has had a long association with the air force because of its near-perfect flying weather in 1952 the airfield south of the city is selected as the site of a new military training school for NATO pilots from all over the world by 1954 training planes are a common sight in Moose Jaw and not always a welcome one twice in the last year City Council has complained about aircraft flying over Moose Jaw and the noise they create the Air Force tells them that while pilots have been instructed to avoid flying over the city it is often unavoidable during takeoff Thursday April 8 1954 TransCanada Airlines flight 9 is cleared for takeoff from Winnipeg Airport enroute to Calgary and Vancouver on board are 31 passengers and 4 crew member of parliament Rodney Adamson and his wife are looking forward to a ski holiday they're on their way to the rocky mountain lodge where they met seven years earlier maritime boxer Harry MacLean is heading to Calgary for a bout with a Canadian light heavyweight champ and he's confident he can win Margery Quinney is one of two flight attendants working flight 9 her twin sister Marion is also a stewardess with TCA captain Ian Bell is the pilot his passengers would be happy to know that his wife calls him the most careful man in the world within minutes after takeoff TCA flight 9 is right on schedule cruising at 6,000 feet enroute to Calgary [Music] on the Saskatchewan prairies the city of Moose Jaw is waking up to a bright clear warm April morning at the headland residence eleven-year-old Larry hadwin is enjoying a touch of spring fever I guess most have a memory of that day it was so nice and at the feeling of spring again hockey's over baseball starting life is starting again Larry's father Steve is unemployed but works part-time when he can his wife Martha makes ends meet by cleaning houses in the city she has a job that morning at the home of Gordon and Betty Hugh she was a very hardworking person very oriented toward looking after her family I remember a bit of conversation that we had a breakfast just small talk to small chatter that normally took place in her kitchen table it was just a very normal sort of a day it was BYE MOM see you later and that was it do across the street went into the school yard my mom got on the bus to take her downtown which would take her to her work at the hume household on Third Avenue West Gordon Hume is just leaving for work his wife Betty has a dentist appointment that morning she isn't sure if she should leave daughters Christina and Kathleen with her cleaning lady Martha hadwin we would usually stay with her when she was there and for whatever reason mom decided that day and I've asked her about it since and she said she just thought she would take us out of Martha's way that day when she went to the dentist and so we went off to a woman's house her husband worked for my dad in his service station and so this woman took us for the day up the street Mary Anne Tolley and some of her neighbors are enjoying the warm April temperatures my one boy six year old was it was in grade one every school and he'd gone to school it was so nice at the UH nearly all the other little children awareness school there were all we had them all outside in sandboxes or just playing with some toys or blocks or something in the yard I wasn't watching that David some of the ladies for washing and putting clothes on the coastlines you know at 9:52 a.m. TCA flight 9 radios the control tower at Regina Airport to confirm that it is currently passing regina at 6,000 feet it would not have to be in contact with the the well Canadian Air Force stationed at Moose Jaw since it was already on an assigned flight route it would not talk to the military station unless it veered into military airspace at which time a military radar controller would contact aircraft telling it that it was offered at the Moose Jaw airbase twenty-two-year-old NATO trainee Andrew Thorat climbs into his Harvard mark ii trainer a native of Scotland he is setting off on a cross-country navigation exercise flying solo without radio contact or ground navigation aids he has gone through a phase of training where he's had his instructors flying with them and now he's at the point in his training worries a solo student he's going after learned maneuvers on his own to basically fine-tune his technique towards graduating he is a not a totally experienced pilot but he is a competent pilot in his own right at 9:57 a.m. Thorat receives clearance for takeoff once in the air he executes a right-hand turn and begins a staining cloth he had been cleared to an altitude of 7500 feet at which time he was to carry out a series of maneuvers as part of the solo routine the area that he was heading for was basically northeast in the city of Moose Jaw which was north of an airway known as airway green one which is a direct flight route between Regina and 22 kilometers away TCA flight 9 is following that flight path the speed of approach for both aircraft is about 430 or kilometers per hour [Music] 6,000 feet below at the local technical vocational school Ray Bowen and his classmates are crossing the open courtyard to their next class when they hear the familiar sound of a Harvard trainer up above and then we heard the sound of the aircraft the passenger plane now generally you see passenger planes a twenty thirty thousand feet they're very small blips way up in the sky but this one was low and we thought at the time that's kind of strange at this pasture playing solo and then as the fella says all hell broke loose Thursday April 8 1954 at Empire School in Moose Jaw eleven-year-old Larry hadwin is already dreaming about recess his mother Martha is working at the home of Gordon and Betty whom in downtown Moose Jaw it's business as usual on a bright Saskatchewan morning 6,000 feet above TCA flight 9 out of Winnipeg and a Harvard trainer from the Moose Jaw Air Base have been on a collision course for six minutes it is 10:03 a.m. on board flight 9 all that copilot Doug Guthrie can see is bright blue Prairie sky he and his wife just celebrated their first wedding anniversary two weeks earlier even if the TransCanada Airways pilots have been looking out the window they would have had a hard time to pick up the aircraft unless they had spotted it from a distance on the ground Kayla and her five-year-old daughter Darla are hanging laundry in their backyard we looked up a nervous tic tac a plane flying straight West and then I heard them the hardwood coming from this Southwest and I realized it was at the same altitude as the TCA plane so I said oh dear God please let them see one another the Harvard hit the passengers plane just behind the wing broke it into the Harvard burst into flame it kind of limped off toward the north and disintegrated the airliner spewed people out of the back of the fuselage and the front end kind of caught fire and started to fall apart I remember looking up and thinking that they were ants dropping out because there were little black dogs but I soon was aware by my mom's reaction that they weren't ants that there was people near 3rd Street West Mary Anne Tolley and several neighbors watch in horror as the larger aircraft Falls towards them I gravely for you or two-year old professor their face against my thighs and said my prayers I said this is if were gone and then I heard the crash oh boy I thought we're safe and this plane have just dropped down in on the back over the big house four year old Christina Hume hears the explosion - and watches as her sitter rushes to the window I remember her saying that there was a big fire and that she could see the fire from where she was because she would have been about a mile from the house and I remember her saying I wonder what that is it's exactly where your house is not far from Christina's house pieces of aircraft and debris rained down on the local golf course and the city's exhibition grounds one engine lands on Main Street another near the highway North End of the city the Harvard cockpit falls a half mile northeast of the main wreckage of the passenger I went over by the C n tracks if there was a hardware airplane it was pretty well apart the product was still sick in the first place we had a flying jacket on those days he had those leather flying tack and he would just slump there needed to be there are those who arrive at 3rd Street West discover an inferno where the Hume house once stood the passenger planes flaming fuselage has made a direct hit you would love to fire a house one big house where the plane landed nose first read into it was a completely going the one on the south side the health to the north of the house of the plane landed without building in the house next door the dining room window blows in in an instant a wall of flame envelops the room Jane young grabs her two children and runs into the street on the other side of the Hume house five Brown has gone back to bed after sending her daughter off to school she heard a big thump thing and she thought some limited is knocking at her back doors so she got up and put on your dress and down and down the stairs and open the back door and there was a body here it is the first of many police and volunteers find bodies scattered over a wide area on the golf course when city streets in the exhibition grounds I finally caught up the grounds there and I looked around I thought maybe one or two bodies around and then I counted three four or five and all of us a terrible mess Karen the first body we approached brother Sylvia person just like if you were tired and you put your head on your arm this way and I thought God may be still alive [Music] as we walked around and we've got a different story as he foul he was split from him to him and you could see the flash and everything else that's what we're running into mature yards away here's another body his coach was partially over the front part so as I pulled back to sees unfortunately there was no hit [Music] thousands of the concerned and the curious arrived at the scene within ten minutes you could get it got a firetruck in there it just seemed to attract everybody and they wouldn't even leave a fiery and open some of the trucks on the second alarm they had a heck of a time getting up one of the arrivals is no curious bystander Gordon Hume is almost out of his mind with grief my dad didn't know that my mom and Kathleen and I were not at home he thought we were there and when he went out to the house he tried to go into the house even though it had exploded and there was nothing after that he tried to go into the house and a policeman and a fireman had to restrain and he was just hysterical and somehow my mom found him there and assured him that she was all right and that Kathleen and I were all right three hours later firefighters are still battling the stubborn blaze they find the tail wheel of the Harvard trainer in the wreckage of the passenger plane and bodies inside the house there was others right in the yurt it's often it was hard to distinguish just what they were you knew they were people but that's about as far as you could go you couldn't vote female male of what we were trying to cool the building down the more water we poured on the freighter the flames cut we knew there was a woman in there but we didn't get heard clapper that afternoon Steve had one tells the local newspaper that he hasn't heard from his wife Martha since she left for the Hume residence earlier that morning we were out on the schoolyard I can remember very clearly standing out in left field all of a sudden it occurred to me I wonder where my mother is I wonder if she's okay I just had this sort of seemed like a premonition that something wasn't right there was a knock at the classroom door it was our school principal come to get her class I mean I just knew without anybody telling me anything at all that my mother had been killed in this accident and to think of life without her that I would get up the next morning and mom wouldn't be there was just something I couldn't take in at that particular time your whole world has just turned upside down nothing will be the same again the body of Martha hadwin is found in the ruins of the whom house her husband can only identify her by a set of false teeth she received a month before Christmas she is the only casualty on the ground the bodies of Martha Hadwin and the 36 passengers and crew of TCA flight 9 are taken by ambulance and panel truck to a temporary morgue in the armory building on the exhibition grounds by Monday April 12th all but four of the dead have been identified ironically one of the victims Martha hadwin should not have been at the home residence that Thursday morning Wednesday was her day to go to that house always Wednesday and on this particular day dad had managed to find a day's labor somewhere so my mother had rearranged her schedule because someone had to stay home look after my sister marine for had it not been for that little quirk of fate my mother would have gone to work on a Wednesday the air crash would have taken place on the Thursday and I still am a mother perhaps today things we've been entirely different Sunday April eleventh 1954 a special memorial service pays tribute to the passengers and crew killed in the Moose Jaw disaster the politician and his wife who never made it to their ski holiday the boxer who never had the chance to prove he was a champion the copilot who would never celebrate another anniversary the following Tuesday more than 500 people attend the funeral of Martha hadwin I've never seen so many people in one place in my life I remember the mayor being there and I guess I remember for a few moments sitting up near the front on the right hand side during one of the hams I started to cry again three separate investigations look into the cause of the tragedy in Moose Jaw one by the federal Department of Transport one by the RCAF and one by TransCanada Airlines it was determined that a series of corrective measures had to be put into place ere Ruth green one was relocated it was moved further five miles north the military deemed that all training for our CAF station Moose Jaw would subsequently be conducted south of the base in the less populated area there would be no more training north of the city or of the city itself at that time and it was the number one clear disaster in history it's also even to the present day of the worst air disaster involving a Royal Canadian Air Force or a Canadian Air Force aircraft for those touched personally by the tragedy the air disaster over Moose Jaw is more than a moment in history for many it marks a change of life and the way they choose to live it you have to be same forward but you haven't appreciated to see what you have it's traumatic but you do usually you do most people do come through stronger than and they wear before I think you also developed a sense of of the fragile part of life that you know you may well be here one minute then not here the next simply because of circumstances that you're unable to control in life you have to take things as they come you have to take things at the end of time and I I think it was that experience the experience of losing my mother that made me I think I'm probably a more sensitive person I'm able to relate better now to people who who are hurt and who are hurting [Music] you

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Channel: Bad Day HQ

Views: 321,880

Rating: 4.6386294 out of 5

Keywords: natural disaster documentary, disaster history channel, disaster discovery, 1954 plane disaster, moojaw disaster, canadian plane crash, worst crash canadian history, what's the worst airplane crash, canadian air plane documentary, canadian war plane documentary, royal canadian air force, saskatchewan plane crash, saskatchewan natural disasters, saskatchewan documentary, canadian aviation military, worst military plane crash, plane explosion in mid air

Id: Xlik9CnGMIY

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2016

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