What Caused the “Banting” plane crash on Feb 20 1941?
In this bit of history that follows we show the proof that the “Banting plane”` was sabotaged as recorded by the Gander Beacon newspaper. It records articles covering Joe Mackey and his wife during their return to Gander to thank the rabbit hunters from Musgrave Harbour for saving him. Two of them are shown in a captioned photo. Some 30 years later Mackey still shows the huge gash in his forehead from the injury suffered in the crash.
THE BEACON, GANDER, NEWFOUNDLAND WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1971
Colonel Mackey’s to visit Gander.
Colonel Joseph Creighton Mackey, President of Mackey International Airlines Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, will visit Gander on Gander Day Weekend, as a guest of Lieutenant Commander Harry R. Steele and Eastern Provincial Airways.
Colonel Mackey was one of the original ferry pilots who flew Lockheed Hudson bombers to Europe via Gander and he was flying the aircraft which crashed shortly after take-off killing Sir Frederick Banting. Mackey was the only survivor.
Colonel and Mrs.Mackey will arrive in Gander on Friday June 30 (Wednesday) by E.P.A from Montreal. On Saturday. He and his wife will visit Musgrave Harbour, NFL where he will meet the surviving three of four men who hauled him out of the woods after the crash; on Sunday he will go by helicopter to the crash site where the wreckage can still be seen; on Monday he will ride as honorurary Marshal in the annual Gander Day Parade.
Lieutenant Commander Steele invited Colonel Mackey to visit us in Gander after the famous pilot appeared on National Television as as a “Front Page Challenge” guest last March.
THE BEACON, GANDER NEWFOUNDLAND, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4 1971
Lone survivor recalls 1941 crash
Colonel Joseph C. Mackey of Miami Florida this weekend revisited the site of an airplane crash which killed three men and nearly finished him as well.
A man who has a varied career in the aviation business, Colonel Mackey was one of eleven pilots who worked on an undercover basis ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic for use in the Second World War. The Lockheed Hudson Bombers were pushed across the American-Canadian border because at that time -1941- the United States was not officially at war and could not legally fly them across.
Acting as employees of the Canadian Pacific Railways, the Colonel and his counter parts ferried numerous aircraft from the American continent to Europe. It was in one of these airplanes that Sir Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of Insulin was killed. He along with others – a radio operator (William Snailham) and a navigator (William Bird) – were on the warplane being being transported to Europe to join the war.
Colonel Mackey recalls that it was during February of 1941 in near zero-zero visibility the four planes left Gander on their fateful trip which ended with the airplane down in the bush, about fifty miles from the Gander airport and three of four men dead.
Colonel Mackey says he considers sabotage as the likely reason his engines quit functioning. Sand was discovered in the aircrafts oil.
As as result of this the Colonel found himself in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter with two men dead and a third (Banting) only partly alive and himself with a huge gash from the front of his forehead to the hair line. (Still visible in pictures 30 years later). He spent four days in ten below temperatures before he was finally rescued by four Musgrave Harbour men who were rabbit catching in the area.
The Colonel had the opportunity, during his visit to meet and chat with three of the four men. As well, he took part in the Musgrave Harbour Day activities.
Colonel Mackey also took part in Gander Day activities on Monday and yesterday returned home to Miami Florida.
Musgrave Harbour Newfoundland, July 1971 By Historian Rolland Abbott
We can hardly believe it was thirty-one years ago come February 21, 1972, that the late Dr. F.G. Banting was killed in a plane crash, while enroute to England on a military mission during World War II. The accident occurred around 9.30 pm, February 20, on our local Seven Mile Pond, (now called Banting Lake) approximately eight or nine miles from Musgrave Harbour. The residents of the Harbour were pleased to welcome the pilot, Colonel Joe Mackey and his wife on Musgrave Harbour Day celebration July 1971. After thirty years he came back to thank the people who rescued him after three days and four nights in the woods. He presented his rescuers with custom made hunting knives.
