71-year-old crash site found in Lake Muskoka
Lost plane.
A group of local men discovered the Northop Nomad #3521 airplane wreck that claimed the life of Ted Bates (above) and Peter Campbell on Dec. 13, 1940.
LAKE MUSKOKA — It’s been more than seven decades since a mid-air collision claimed the lives of four pilots over Lake Muskoka, but for the families of two of those pilots the final chapter in their story was never written. That is until a group of determined local men found what could be the final resting place of Peter Campbell and Ted Bates.
“This is our honour and our duty,” said Al Bacon, a member of the Lost Airmen of Muskoka Project (LAMP). “These were our servicemen and they’re heroes as far as I’m concerned.”
Since 2004, LAMP has been investigating more than a dozen known Second World War-era plane crash sites in Muskoka, but their focus has been on one crash in particular.
On Dec. 12, 1940, a training flight out of Borden went missing in a blizzard, touching off a massive aerial search the following day.
“They put 50 aircraft in the air the next day from Borden and they searched from Georgian Bay to Sudbury to Trenton looking for that one plane,” said Bacon. “Two planes came over Lake Muskoka and they were making a turn to go into the airport to refuel when they collided. They both went down.”
One plane was recovered in early 1941 and the bodies of the two pilots, L. Francis of Glamorgan, Wales and W.P. Gosling of Edmonton, were recovered.
The second plane, an RCAF Nomad 3521, and its passengers became the subject of a massive search in the weeks that followed.
According to several articles that appeared in late 1940 and early 1941 editions of the Toronto Star, the only sign of the accident was an oil slick on top of Lake Muskoka, but that didn’t stop extensive recovery efforts that included more aerial searching, dragging the lake, and sending in a diver who called his seven dives at 120 feet in Lake Muskoka the closest to death he had ever come.
But with the war raging in Europe, the crash had largely been forgotten within a few months by everyone except the families of pilots Peter Campbell, 24, of Sussex, England and Ted Bates, 27, of Guelph. When the team of Al Bacon, Matt Fairbrass and Don Ruud began LAMP, the search was renewed.
“It would give closure to their families, and that’s what it’s all about,” said Bacon. “If they don’t find the bodies then those families have no closure, even though their names are down on Green Island (the Commonwealth Air Force Memorial) in Ottawa marked as grave unknown.”
The group tracked down archival records and eyewitness accounts of the crash until slowly they were able to narrow down the possible locations of the missing plane.
“We made a discovery of a site of interest,” said Bacon. “We had what they call a Hummingbird, which is actually a fish finder, but it showed a plane, or what we thought was a plane at least.”
That was when LAMP decided to call in the experts at OPP search and rescue.
“I wrote a letter to Julian Fantino, who was the commissioner of the OPP at the time, and asked if they would help us. It went down the chain of command to the underwater search and rescue team,” said Bacon. “Believe me, they’ve done a marvellous job. They’re the ones who actually discovered it.”
OPP said the discovery was initially located by members of the OPP Underwater Search and Recovery Unit (USRU) utilizing side-scan sonar technology. A dive was conducted at the site on July 27, 2010.
Police said evidence clearly identifies that the aircraft is the Northrop Industries A-17 Nomad that was involved in a mid-air collision over the lake in 1940.
Bracebridge OPP confirmed the find on Tuesday, July 26.
Police won’t reveal the exact site of the crash to protect it from being disturbed or scavenged. But Bacon and other news reports say it is located somewhere near Browning Island.
OPP said divers have not located any human remains, but have located artifacts and personal effects. Police said OPP and the Coroner’s Office believe the remains may not be recoverable.
The items found were turned over to the Department of National Defence, police said.
Police said the families of both men have now been contacted: Campbell’s nephew in Montreal and Bates’ brother in Guelph.
Tom Bates was 14 when his brother crashed into Lake Muskoka.
The matter is now in the hands of the Department of National Defence, and Bacon said he expects it will be conducting a dive of its own in the near future.
“We’re not sure whether the plane will come up or not,” said Bacon.
Nonetheless, the group from LAMP feels that they have finally cracked a mystery 71 years in the making.