On December 21st, 1962, as our family was returning to Canada from my father’s RCAF posting in Metz France, the cabin of our plane suddenly lost pressure over the Atlantic. When I spoke of this with my brother Brian, he added that we had been in a four engine turbo prop Yukon – guys tend to recall that kind of detail - and that we had immediately dropped from 20,000 feet to 10,000, supposedly because of a shattered windscreen. At the time, I had recorded that we had lowered to 1,000 feet, but it turns out that Brian was most likely to be right.
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In the event of a cabin depressurization, pilots will initiate an emergency descent to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) or lower. This altitude is considered safe for passengers and crew to breathe without needing supplemental oxygen, as it provides sufficient oxygen levels for normal, unpressurized breathing. SOURCE: AI. |
After our emergency landing, the pilot parked our plane well away from the hanger. Obvious reasons. We hurried across the tarmac as best we could in the bitter mid-night cold, me holding the hand of my youngest brother. I remember being thankful for my sealskin topped winter boots, the ones that I had worn a couple of months earlier in this class photo beneath. The plane was more than a city block distant from the waiting room. I wished that we had gloves.
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Our
school was on the base in a one-storey H-hut. |
Weeks later, after starting in Grade 10 at my new school Lemoyne D’Iberville High School in Longueuil Quebec I wrote my account of our Gander emergency landing for a class assignment; What did you do in the holidays. The version published that spring in our yearbook included fourteen exclamation marks. I had yet to learn that when it comes to punctuation, less is more. The piece - my very first publication -could have benefited from an edit. (NOTE: I was in Grace 11 in France and subsequently Grade 10 in Quebec. Quebec’s version of Grade 10 was equivalent to Ontario’s Grade 11, the system used at Canadian military bases.).
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Flight of Fear The engines of the Yukon droned on monotonously. I rub my eyes drowsily; my mind was still fogged with sleep. Gradually I became aware of the insistent tapping on my stiff shoulder. What was the matter now? I had been sleeping on the floor under my chair. As I settled into my chair I noticed my younger brother anxiously pointing at me as he whispered “Seatbelts, Sharon. The sign says do ‘em up. Will you do mine up, please?” Simultaneously the intercom squawked, “Attention all personnel! You will have noticed it's getting cold here. That is because the windshield has shattered and we are losing pressure. We must lower to one thousand [sic] feet. We must fly slowly since a minor flaw in our landing gear makes it necessary to fly with it down to avoid major difficulties. We must reroute to Goose Bay and will arrive there in 15 minutes. Please keep your belts fastened. Thank you!” Twenty minutes later over the announcement system the voice droned expressionlessly, “We are now circling over Goose Bay to burn off excess fuel. We should land in twenty minutes. Do not worry. Everything is under control.” Now I was not too dense to realize our situation! I knew that we were burning fuel so that we wouldn’t explode when we crashed! I took out a little white book that tells you what to do in case of an emergency. I put the book back. I had read it before not realizing the time that I would have to use its advice! I looked at my four younger brothers who were happily playing the game, “I spy with my little eye.” Telling myself that I was worked up over nothing I suppressed a shiver and glanced out of the window. Nearly screaming I gazed petrified at the scene below! We were very near the ground now, and I could make out the shapes below. I could count the number of clearly-defined vehicles. There were seventeen fire engines and ambulances! Did the stewardesses really say not to worry? I recounted the shapes on the ground. The ominous total of seventeen echoed hollowly in my mind. Seventeen was my unlucky number! The plane started to land. I shut my eyes and felt myself stiffen. That was the wrong thing to do. The white book is said to relax. Impossible! I took a deep breath and relaxed slightly. I remembered Browning’s poem about hating that Death bandaged his eyes, and I resolved to see my death scene. I looked out of the window. We had stopped! We hadn't crashed! I was alive! Seventeen wasn't an unlucky number after all! Or was it still? The plane made the number eighteen on the ground! |
Once we had landed in the dark, albeit without incident, we waited in a cavernous waiting room with something like 120 men, women, and children. There were only two toilets, and the lineups were long. It would take time for the the arrival of the crew which had been called in to weld the undercarriage in place, a not-unusual MacGyver kind of move, and probably not the last or first time it had been used on such planes. As we waited, my brother Brian watched a toddler carefully stepping from arm rest to arm rest overtop the seated passengers. Then he misjudged, stumbled, and landed with one foot planted firmly in the crouch of an unprepared officer. Oops.
Brian also added other details to the bits that I had recalled: The plane didn’t leave from Metz, as Metz was the RCAF Command Centre and had no airfield. We actually left from Marville (#1 Fighter Base)*. We left late (3-4 hours) as the plane was delayed for unknown reasons. (Hmmm …) I remember flying over London and seeing all the lights so it would have been dark. We arrived at Gander at around 3 AM. I too recall the lights over London. As it was our first time to take such a flight, the sight of the lights snaking outwards from the heart of London was particularly striking.
It was daylight in Gander when the undercarriage of our plane was finally secured, we were refueled, and our plane was finally deemed good-to go. Because of the cracked windscreen, there was still no way to pressurize the cabin, so we flew much lower than normal. Beneath us, outlined by the winter snow, we could see granular details of people’s backyards and of cars driving on roads.
Late last year, I did a digital search to check out how accurate my memories of the incident had been, and perhaps to learn more. Surely, I thought, there must be a record online by now. There were lots of details when I searched “Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Canadair CC-106 Yukon crashes”, but nothing was a perfect fit with our event. There was no AI summary at the start of this initial query. Fair enough. Perhaps there was nothing on line. So, I tried a couple of Facebook queries. My first was to the “Ottawa’s Aviation History Since 1858” group:
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“On Dec 21, 1962, our family flew from Metz France and were headed for Trenton when the cabin on our Yukon lost pressure (cracked windscreen?), and we had to detour to Gander. We arrived in the middle of the night, after circling to burn off fuel. Later, we flew to Trenton from Gander on the same plane, but with the undercarriage welded down. Any record of that? There were about 120 people on board - mostly families.” |
My second Facebook query was to the Aviation History Gander Airport group. A posted photo of an emergency evacuation fit some of our known facts, but it was in daytime, and in warmer weather. Still, I asked: “What date was this?”, and also added: “I was on a plane that landed in Gander on Dec 21, 1962. We had been told that there had been a windshield problem. We then flew from Gander to Trenton with the landing gear welded on. I was 16 years old, and traveling with my family. We were returning from Metz, France.” Kent Peyton, admin of this site, replied to the query about this photo: “Nose wheel did not extend”.
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Kent Peyton. Nose wheel did not extend. |
That nose-wheel detail was a definite fit with our experience.
The fact that this was clearly not a one-off made me even more curious. Had all
of us - 120 men women and children – had an closer meeting with a possible
death than we had been led to believe?
Two weeks later, in a follow-up search, an AI summary topped the response. Interestingly,
this search response included all of my details – ones that I had only recently
uploaded to the two Facebook pages. This was info which was mostly not to be
found anywhere else online:
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AI Overview A specific Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Canadair Yukon aircraft made an emergency landing at Gander International Airport on December 21, 1962, after experiencing a pressurization failure due to a cracked windscreen. Details of the Incident
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The fact of this confirmed what I had already been suspecting about AI. The way that it scrapes and uploads data with no indication of source or of accuracy. Perhaps I should have added something outrageous to my queries, such as ‘The interior of the plane was pink”. Would that “fact” then get included in an updated AI summary?
In one of the links in this subsequent search, the Canadian Warplane Museum linked me to more details about the Yukon planes.
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CASPIR Warplane Serial # Search · Yukon serial 15501 Crashed and destroyed at Alto de Toledo, 24 km west of Medellin, Colombia, on 22 February 1975. · Yukon serial 15927 Disappeared on flight from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile, over Andes Mountains, on 20 June 1972. Wreckage has never been found. · Yukon serial 15928 Scrapped after leaving runway on landing with gear partially extended on 10 October 1979. Hulk burned, apparently before any official investigation of the accident. · Yukon serial 15931 Disappeared on flight from Lima, Peru to Maiquetia, (near Caracas) Venezuela on 27/28 August 1976, never found. Presumed crashed, written off. · Yukon (Serial No. 15501, renumbered to 15921, later renumbered to 106921). Harold A. Skaarup Photo Military History). No. 437 (T) Squadron, RCAF Station Trenton, Ontario, shown beneath on the tarmac at 1 (F) Wing, RCAF Station Marville, France, 20 June 1963. This Yukon was later renumbered (Serial No. 106922). Sold 18 November 1971 to aircraft broker Beaver Enterprises. No Canadian civil registration known. Sold to Societe Generale d'Alimentation (SGA), registered as 9Q-CWN. First flight with these markings, in Canada, on 12 November 1973. Named "Hoto Mbio". Delivered, Montreal to Toulouse, on 18 November 1973. First commercial flight, Toulouse to Kinshasa, Zaire on 23 November 1973. Later stored in Luxembourg. Operator name changed to TRAMACO, Transports et Manutentions Commerciaux, by 1 February 1977, when commercial flights resumed. Stored at Kinshara from 1978. Scrapped there, 1 April 1983. (RWR Walker) |
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The fact that so many Yukon planes crashed, also made me reconsider my adolescent use of exclamation marks. Were they warranted? Perhaps? Unfortunately, I do not know the serial number of our plane, so I don’t know whether it met its end in a blaze of unglory. Perhaps some plane aficionado who stumbles across this post could winkle this fact out for me.
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MISC: Some history of the 106 Yukon. Firstly, the RCAF required a replacement for its C-54GM North Star. In 1954, a licence was issued to Canadair to build a derivative of the Britannia, which became the Canadair CC-106 Yukon/CL44. Canadair built 39 of these Yukon turboprop Rolls-Royce Tyne-powered aircraft, comprising 12 CC-106 Yukon for the RCAF and 27 CL-44D4 passenger/cargo variants for the civil market. SOURCE: Bob’s Gander History |
POSTSCRIPT: I embarked on writing this post mostly for my family, my brothers, and their children, but also in case there might be any others from that flight, who might stumble across this post. Perhaps they will be able to add more. If I have misremembered or misrepresented any details, please let me know. Corrections will follow ASAP.
