Sunken wreck may have preserved airmen's remains
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
Underwater archaelolgists from Parks Canada announced August 6 that they discovered a similar plane that crashed in waters off the Quebec coast in November 1942 with five crewmen trapped inside. The amphibious PBY Catalina was part of a key Allied squadron of planes linking North America to the battlefields of Europe.
Parks Canada archeologists at the site of a submerged Second World War aircraft in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have found a sand-filled fuselage that may have preserved the remains of five U.S. airmen lost in a 1942 crash.
Experts using a remotely operated submersible, and divers probing the waters off the eastern Quebec village of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, have confirmed the sunken plane is the U.S. Army Air Force PBY 5A, a Catalina "flying boat" that foundered during an attempted takeoff in high waves in November 1942.
But the key question being explored by the Canadian scientists - in collaboration with officials from the U.S. government's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) - is whether the remains of the five crew members who died in the sinking can be recovered and repatriated, said Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada's chief of underwater archeology.
"At this point, the main preoccupation is the repatriation of human remains, if there are any," he told Canwest News Service, adding that archeologists are also treating the historic Catalina aircraft as "an important artifact."
Visibility problems and a swift current at the site made examination of the plane difficult, noted Bernier. But, pending discussions with JPAC representatives in the coming months, the Parks Canada archeological team will attempt to recover the remains of the drowned airmen next summer.
"We will continue working with the United States to determine the following steps to hopefully be able to repatriate the lost soldiers," Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who oversees Parks Canada, said in a statement.
"In the meantime, we will work closely with all the relevant authorities to ensure the site is protected."
The official identification of the aircraft should help "bring closure to the many people who have been so personally touched by this event that happened 67 years ago," said Public Works Minister Christian Paradis. "This is particularly true for the families of the deceased and the village of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, which helped rescue the four survivors."
The 20-metre-long seaplane was located in May by Parks Canada divers involved in a three-year survey of shipwrecks near the Mingan peninsula lighthouse, including two transatlantic steamships that sank in the mid-1800s.
Records from the time of the crash indicate the nine U.S. airmen aboard the Catalina were visiting Mingan from their base in Maine to inspect an airfield being constructed as part of the Crimson Route supply corridor between Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
The Catalina slammed into high waves after trying to take off on Nov. 2, 1942.
Local residents pulled four of the airmen into fishing boats, but five others crew members were unable to escape the flooded fuselage before the plane sank.
© Canwest News Service