[jaynos]

>Bateman was always fascinated with airplane crashes. As an 8-year-old school boy in 1940 in Saskatoon, Canada, he and a friend sneaked out of class after two military planes collided and crashed nearby. As punishment, his teacher made him write a report on what happened.

A much more appropriate punishment than detention.

[tonyarkles]

As is the custom, I have to get excited when our small town gets mentioned in either the news or HN. I'm also now going to be doing some research about this accident; we don't have a military airfield in town, but my understanding is that there once was.

We additionally had a pile of small airstrips all over the province commissioned during the war which have now been abandoned. It still surprises me that we had these at all, given that uhhh Saskatchewan was quite a ways away from the front lines.

[wcarss]

My grandfather was an RAF pilot during WWII, who lived in Saskatoon and Kamsack from 1920ish until the 1990s -- I'm not sure if he was stationed there during WWII (I think he might have been put on the east coast) but if he was, he'd likely have known the people in the planes involved.

He passed away early this year, so I unfortunately can't ask him.

[mast]

The airfields were part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and they were all over Canada. Pilots were trained for WWII. I believe my grandfather was training in Gimli Manitoba when the war ended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Commonwealth_A...

[Scramblejams]

If you come across any information on the accident, please post it as a reply here, I'd like to see it. Thanks.

[john_reel]

Yeah, that’s really cool.