Plane crashes

Heroes Remember

Plane crashes

Transcript

I can remember a couple of crashes of planes other than our own. I saw two Lightning aircraft, now that's an American fighter, quite a sophisticated aircraft for its time. It had two booms and a wing and a fuselage section. Two of them landed close together on our strip. It didn't appear, I was a couple hundred metres away, three hundred metres away, when they, the second one crashed into the first one. It didn't appear to do too much damage or hit too hard, but the pilot in the first aircraft must've been knocked unconscious, because the aircraft caught on fire he didn't get out. On another occasion I saw a, a Bolingbroke aircraft coming in on one engine and as he was about to land he cut the power on his one engine and lost control at that point. We had two Dakotas sitting at the end of the strip facing the strip and he crashed into them, killed him. He was killed the pilot, or the fighter, and also one of our people was sitting in the shade underneath the wing of one of our aircraft, he was killed. And the fire crash truck came out of course, we did have crash trucks, and we did have foam, because the fire department started to spray foam, the crash crew onto the mess that was happening and the ammunition started going off including a hole in the hose behind the firefighter. So anyhow, those are things you see but when you are young as I say it's exciting and not really, it's tragic, but that's the way it is.

Description

Mr. Duffley tells the stories of two different plane crashes at his base.

Louis Duffley

Louis Duffley was born in Quispamsis, New Brunswick on 14 February, 1920. He and some friends joined the Air Force and in 1941 travelled to Toronto for kitting and elementary discipline. From there, he went to Technical school in Belleville. He finished up in 1942 and was posted in Moncton, New Brunswick. He stayed there for a year and a half before being sent off to Dorval, Quebec for another course. After two months, Mr Duffley joined the 165 Squadron on the West Coast. Eventually, in 1944 he and two Air Force friends were sent overseas.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 02:00
Person Interviewed:: Louis Duffley
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Burma
Branch:: Air Force
Units/Ship:: 436 Squadron
Occupation:: Aircraft Instrument Engineer

Language selection

Plane crashes

Heroes Remember

Plane crashes

Louis Duffley

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Plane crashes

Heroes Remember

Plane crashes

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