Ceremony held for RCAF pilot killed in Cape Breton crash while training in 1944

On Saturday, more than 80 years after the crash, a non-profit group held a public ceremony to unveil two commemorative panels at a campsite in the shadow of the mountain.

According to his Royal Canadian Air Force service records, 21-year-old Pilot Officer Bill Bennet was a fine airman.

Described as tall and wiry, his commanding officer noted in March 1944 that the Montreal man was also “enthusiastic and intelligent.” And as the Second World War in Europe entered its final phase that summer, Bennet was made a staff pilot at the RCAF station in Summerside, P.E.I., where he started training to fly reconnaissance aircraft or bombers.

On Aug. 6, 1944, Bennet was tasked with flying a twin-engine Avro Anson V training aircraft carrying two navigators and one radio operator. Their routine mission that Sunday was to fly east from Summerside to a point over the Gulf of St. Lawrence north of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and then return.

But something went wrong over the water. The aircraft was well south of where it should have been. And as it entered a thick bank of fog, Bennett began a descent that he hoped would bring the plane below the haze.

Instead of emerging above the vast gulf, the aircraft suddenly plowed through a stand of small trees. Its wings, tail and one engine were torn off as it slammed into the side of Jerome Mountain on the western edge of Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

Bennet was badly injured, having suffered a fractured skull. Incredibly, the other three men had only minor wounds.

Given the steep, rough terrain, it wasn’t until the next afternoon that a search party reached the remote crash site northeast of the Acadian village of Cheticamp, N.S. The searchers were told Bennet had died during the night.

The three survivors — 20-year-old navigator John Robert Ogilvie and 22-year-old navigator William John Astle, both of Edmonton, and 22-year-old communications officer Jack Roy Burke of Wallaceburg, Ont. — managed to hike down the mountain by late Monday. But it would take another day before Bennet’s body could be recovered.