A High Casualty Rate Inquiry

Heroes Remember

A High Casualty Rate Inquiry

Transcript

We did have high casualty rates, very high in the Boston's. But there was such tremendous losses that politically, Mackenzie King was having troubles. And so he sent a high-level group of, of officers over to see what happening to these fine Canadian citizens. Who were laying down their life for their king or whatever. And they, this, on this particular day when they were here it was absolutely no visibility, you could hardly drive on the road. And it was raining most of the time, but that didn't influence these generals or equivalents that were there. They'd been sent to, to find out all there was there. They wanted to see the squadron in action. Well it was crazy you know in that weather. Normally everyday we did a, a night flying test. You run up the engines and do a flight and check that everything is going to operate pretty well at night and, so eventually we took off to ostensibly look for a place, a target that they had mentioned. And I don't know what these guys really thought they could see, but we found, we circled around a place where I calculated we were. Nobody was shooting at us or anything like that and we eventually headed for home.

Description

Mr. Reynolds talks about how high the casualty rates were with the Boston's, and the fact that an inquiry was sent out by Mackenzie King to determine what the problem was. On a day with particularly dreadful weather, he and his crew were sent up to demonstrate the problems with the plane.

Keith Reynolds

Mr. Reynolds was in the Air Force and served in Europe. He flew in a Boston and crashed in the North Sea in late November. He was rescued by some local fishermen and although he had broken his back he returned to flying six months later.

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