Stars, Stripes, and Sacrifice: Remembering America’s War Dead at Gander
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway several kilometers east of Gander, Newfoundland, is the resting place of one hundred military personnel. Ninety-four are airmen, representing the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Royal Air Force (RAF), Royal Air Force Ferry Command, Royal Australian Air Force, and British Overseas Airways Corporation. In 1945, however, that number was significantly higher. A walk around the well-kept grounds reveals several large and conspicuous gaps between grave markers. Sixtyseven years ago these now empty plots contained the remains of some 50 American servicemen, the majority also airmen, lost in aircraft mishaps around the airfield.
Newfoundland became Canada’s 10th province in 1949, but during WWII, and indeed since 1907, it was a British Dominion. Development of the airfield at Gander, initially called Newfoundland Airport, originated at the 1935 Ottawa Conference where Canada, the United Kingdom, the Irish Free State, and Newfoundland agreed to cooperate to establish a regular North Atlantic mail and passenger air service. In Newfoundland, the seaport town of Botwood was selected as a principal seaplane terminal and a large, heavily wooded plateau on the north shore of Gander Lake for a proposed landplane airport. Flying boats of Imperial Airways and Pan American
Airlines soon thereafter completed a series of successful experimental overseas flights via Botwood and by the end of 1939 scheduled mail and passenger flights were spanning the Atlantic. Construction of Newfoundland Airport began in 1936 and when war broke out in Europe three years later the airfield boasted four hard-surfaced runways, one large hangar, and complete wireless telegraphy, direction finding, and
meteorological equipment. In mid-1940, with Britain focused on its own survival and Newfoundland voicing concerns over its defenseless condition, the RCAF sent a detachment of Douglas Digby patrol bombers, called B-18 Bolo in the USAAC.
The need for a military cemetery at Gander became apparent following the fatal crash of a Canadian Digby in July 1941. The few casualties prior to then, most notably those from a Hudson bomber mishap that claimed Sir Frederick Banting, co-discoverer of insulin, were flown to mainland Canada for burial. It happened that the Digby accident coincided with a visit by Sydney L. de Carteret, Canadian Deputy Minister of
National Defense (Air), so he, together with the Newfoundland government’s air representative, Squadron Leader Harold A.L. Pattison, RAF (retired), selected the present cemetery site.
The American presence at Gander, neutrality notwithstanding, dated to May 1941 with the arrival of the . . .
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Funeral service crash victims at Gander
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