Remembering and Honouring the Estevan 1946 Crash

Report by Will Chabun,
CAHS Regina
posted July 2022
Two of the large banners bearing the names and images of airmen killed in the 1946 disaster that were placed above streets in the city of Estevan.    (Will Chabun photo)
A reunion weekend honouring those 21 men killed in the1946 RCAF Dakota crash near Estevan was held the second weekend of July 2022. The event honoured the lives lost with a cairn that was unveiled that same weekend. Almost a week later, Lois Wilson was still marvelling at a certain text message she’d received.

“I feel as if I have a new family,” wrote a man who’d been one of the 66 special people who found their way from July7-9 to the southeast corner of Saskatchewan.

From all over Canada, and from the United Kingdom, Crete, Mallorca, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and California they gathered in Estevan to commemorate a tragedy almost 76 years earlier.

It was the September 15, 1946, crash of an RCAF Dakota near the wartime No. 38 Service Flying Training School (SFTS), on the southwest edge of the Estevan area. All 21 airmen aboard died in the crash. The RCAF investigation concluded that gust locks had been left on the aircraft’s elevator, making it impossible to control the aircraft.
What those airmen were doing more than a year after the Second World War ended had to do with the Lend Lease, the US Congress’s legislation that permitted Uncle Sam to loan military equipment to allies with the proviso it be returned after the war. When the original legislation was passed in early 1941 that clause had been inserted to satisfy legislators concerned about being pulled into a European land war.

Canada had received some of those aircraft, so 1946 saw a group of Canadian airmen put to work flying Fairchild Cornell trainers to a collection site at Fargo, North Dakota. The Dakota, assigned to No. 124 (Ferry) Squadron, RCAF, was assigned to carry them back to Canada after each batch of Cornells was delivered. On 14 September 1946, the Dakota stopped for the night at the civilian airport in Minot North Dakota. The transport left Minot around 9 am CST the next day; the accident occurred around 10:15 am.

This crash was front-page news as the airmen were buried, but the loss of life eventually was forgotten by most Canadians outside the aviation history community. One theory is that the Canadian public had become hardened by far longer casualty lists during six years of war, and simply wanted to move on.

One of those resolved to change this is Estevan author Marie Donais Calder. The daughter of a Canadian Army veteran of the Second World War, she has written a long string of creative nonfiction books on the war and the strain it put on service members and their families. She set to work writing a book on the crash, with personal profiles of the 21 airmen. Twenty were military pilots, most with combat experience many  decorated for bravery. The 21st victim was a young RCAF mechanic.
A tired but happy Marie Donais Calder speaks at the July 9 dedication of the new memorial saluting the 21 airmen killed in the crash of their Dakota transport on September 15, 1946. The memorial can be found by taking Highway 47 south from downtown Estevan, then turning west onto Grid Road 14 and heading toward Woodlawn Regional Park. The memorial is on the south side of this road about two kilometres along this road.    (Photo via Marie Donais Calder)
This soon put her in touch with a group of Estevan residents dedicated to constructing memorials and statues to Canada’s fallen warriors. Eventually, this led to construction of a cairn that was unveiled during a combined memorial and reunion weekend for the families of the airmen.

A radio interview in which Marie explained her project brought forth Lois Wilson, raised on a farm near Davidson, SK, near the wartime 23 Elementary Flying Training School. A visitor to the farm was a young student pilot named Max Thomas – who survived the war but perished in the 1946 crash. She volunteered to track down the last few pilots’ kin, displaying a skill that earned her the nickname “Sherlock Hemlock” for her Holmesian talent in using online phone directories, Facebook,  ancestry.com and findagrave.com.

Lois Wilson, who earned kudos for her remarkable ability to find family members of those killed in the 1946 crash.   (Photo via Marie Donais Calder)
The large plaque mounted on a piece of granite near the site of the 1946 crash bears the names and pictures of airmen lost in the crash. The Saskatchewan Power Corp. covered the cost of this monument and donated the site.    (Will Chabun photo)



That’s because people move, change their names, pass on. Their children don’t reply to emails. Marie’s research team grew to include Lynn Kindopp, Angela Clements, and Jack Borno. Said Marie: “I would never have found all 21 families without their dedicated assistance.”
Hobbled, but not stopped, by recent knee surgery, CAHS National President Gary Williams greets visitors at society’s display at the Estevan airport after the dedication of the memorial.    (Will Chabun photo)

To anybody undertaking a similar research project, she has some advice:   “Don’t give up. “I’ll tell you, in trying to find these families I got to know the brick wall ... You run into it sometimes. No way out – or under or around it. You just keep finding different options – and persevere”.
 
The reunion weekend was originally planned for September 2021, the 75th anniversary of the crash. But COVID intervened and it was changed to the second weekend in July 2022, with families, memorial committee members and invited guests assembling 7 July for a reception with the province’s lieutenant governor.
The next day, the scene changed to Estevan and a visit to the carved wood statues at the acreage of volunteer Lester Hinzman. Craig Bird, president and curator of the Southeast Military Museum gave a presentation on the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. At the evening banquet for families and invited guests, CAHS National President Gary Williams found himself fascinated by the mood that had emerged, unbidden. “It felt to me like a huge family reunion,” he recalled. “They were talking to each other as if they’d known each other forever and just hadn’t seen each other for a while.”

One man learned that his father had not died in a mountain crash, as he’d thought. Another found he had several relatives he’d never known about.

The next day brought the unveiling of the memorial cairn near the site of the 1946 accident a few miles southeast of Estevan on land donated by the Saskatchewan Power Corp., which also paid for the four-foot square plaque that bears the likenesses of all 21 fallen airmen. The City of Estevan and the Rural Municipality of Estevan added their help. Bird arranged for a piper and chairs for the 100 people in attendance. The RCAF’s 15 Wing at Moose Jaw sent a Harvard II trainer to do a flyover, as did Second World War vintage training aircraft sent from the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum at Brandon.

From the memorial site, families, friends, and guests then moved to the new Estevan airport, which was hosting a special fly-in, with rides in CATP Museum aircraft. A nondenominational evening service completed this poignant weekend.

“I see the wonder in their faces and their gratitude and expressions of closure,” said Donais Calder. “It was pure -- and simply beautiful. “
Two exuberant members of the family of the late F/L Bob MacRoberts of Calgary pose for the inevitable selfie at the monument. MacRoberts flew with the RCAF’s No. 421 (Fighter) Squadron during the Second World War and received a Distinguished Flying Cross for an action in July 1944. No fewer than 11 of the 21 fallen airmen had been decorated for bravery during the war.    (Will Chabun photo)

A close-up (click to enlarge) of the plaque saluting the 21 young men killed in the crash of their Dakota transport at Estevan on September 15, 1946.    (Will Chabun photo)
To purchase a copy of Together Forever in The Clouds, Marie Donais Calder’s book on this tragedy, contact her at mdcalder@sasktel.net.
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