Warbird Information Exchange

As you will see below, I was acquainted with the late Captain Harry Bray, and I do have a copy of his book "Lap of the Gods". I believe the version of his story in the book of how the accident happened.

To summarize.....

* CF-CII was not a floatplane, it was on skis.
* It was not taxiing on the lake or taking off, but was landing on the ice when it unfortunately ran across a hidden hole in the ice beneath the snow cover.
* The airplane didn't just up and sink on them....it probably didn't sink for at least 2 or 3 months, when the ice melted.
* If it had been a floatplane it would possibly have remained floating, upside down, when the ice melted in Spring.
* The logs weren't to keep it afloat, but to try to raise it up onto firmer ice. This happened many times with the old Fokker Universals and Super Universals, Norsemen, etc.and what the smart "bush engineers" would do was return to the site with a block and tackle and some rope, sink some logs into the ice to make a tripod and raise the aircraft out of the water, dry it out and fly it away.
* Harry was flying in to take Henry Hogue to hospital, not his brother John Hogue.
* John Hogue was in the aircraft, but would have been left at the cabin when his ill brother was flown out.
* Harry Bray never flew for Canadian Pacific Airlines....he had his own little air service at Kamloops and after the owner of Central B. C. Airways drove him out of business, he went on to fly for CBCA, later renamed Pacific Western Airlines.
* I'm not aware of there ever being an airline called "Canadian Pacific Airways". There was Canadian Pacific Air Lines, aka Canadian Pacific Airlines, CPAL, CPAir, etc. There was no consistency between what was painted on the aircraft, what was on their letterhead, their timetables, hangars, etc. Sometimes "Air Lines" was two words, sometimes one.
* Very few, if any, of the wartime RCAF Tiger Moths had open cockpits....the canopy was the norm.
* It was not sent to the U. S.....having a USAAF s/n was part of the Lend Lease game, since the U. S. paid for it.
* It was not sent to Great Britain....sometimes you wonder where these people come from that make up this stuff and publish it!!
* I doubt if anything useful was left in the cockpit, as they had 3 or 4 days before they were rescued to clean out anything they wanted, while they tried to secure the aircraft onto firmer ice.
* I'm not sure if they need to go through a lot of malarkey with the Receiver of Wrecks, etc. This is not a crash site, but the recovery of a private aircraft that sank intact due to misadventure. I would expect that ownership rests with either Harry Bray's family or the insurance company, although he was running such a tight operation that I doubt if he was able to afford insurance!! The main complication may be if it is in a park.