Thousands of airmen died on Canada's soil

Thousands of airmen from Commonwealth countries died on Canada's soil during the British Commonwealth Air Training Program, before they completed their training and went overseas. Read more about it on today's Wartime Wednesdays by clicking on this link: http://elinorflorence.com/blog/118474.

 

Elinor Florence, thank you for pointing this out as there were so many fliers that lost their lives in the training of our allied aviators over the the war years and even after. I always respect those efforts that document these rarely mentioned losses in the stories of contributions we honor. A writer from Arizona, Trey Brandt, has documented 150 crashes that occurred there in training flights in the state of Arizona alone. He visited the crash sites and talked with participants if they were survivors. He estimates over 850 actually occurred from the years 1942 to 1977(in Arizona). The book is called "Faded Contrails: Last Flights Over Arizona" and has provided only this one state's account of the training crashes that took such a heavy toll on training fliers in this special period. I would hope someday, someone continues this kind of work to cover the contributions that have been made by fliers across the globe that were involved in just the training when they may have been lost to accidents in training. For our country, it would be so interesting if the losses for the U.S. were likewise documented......see there is still room for someone who is interested to complete documentation of this subject area relating to WWII.

 

Lost a 2nd cousin in 12-45 to an accident in Ohio.USN TBM pilot. Went down in an SNJ. Lt(JG) George"Ted" Brown USNR. :S!