Accidents

Accidents – It was always a sad sight to see a mangled blob of metal being trucked to the aircraft graveyard at Borden. I, especially, remembered watching the hamburged wreck of Ogilvie’s aeroplane as it solemnly passed. I liked Ogilvie very much and I could not understand his crashing as he was a reliable person and pilot.

D---- K-----, on the other hand, landed a Yale while a freak snowfall on the runway was being carted away by tractors pulling boxed bobsleds. Every pilot was warned to watch for these, but someway or another K-----, with a determined attitude, went through the bobsled which was full to the brim with snow. You never saw such an explosion of snow and wood chips in all your life. The poor driver of the tractor was in a state of rigidity when they finally found him, still on the tractor which had pulled the pieces of the bobsled across the aerodrome and through a fence into the woods where it, evidently, gave up the ghost. K----- walked away from his Yale which had a badly bent airscrew and a badly buckled undercart.

B---- B---- landed a Harvard and he had trouble with the brakes. The aeroplane moved off the runway and went nose-over-kettle onto its back. There was a great rush to get to B---- because the tail of the aeroplane had crumpled and B----’s head was in a pond of water. A few fellows arrived quickly to the site and tried to lift the tail from the pond so that B---- could breathe. They had to keep from dunking B---- because the upside-down Harvard was bloody heavy. Finally after a few dunkings and sputterings, they were able to put the tail of the aeroplane on a stand. A ratty-looking B---- emerged.