On April 25, 1944, a Royal Air Force Liberator B Mark VI en route to Britain via Gander, Newfoundland crashed into the Griffintown neighborhood in downtown Montreal, Quebec minutes after taking off from Dorval Airport. The five-member crew and ten civilians on the ground were killed, and a large fire destroyed at least 10 homes.
Between 1941 and 1945, Montreal's Dorval airport was where 9,000 aircraft were gathered from manufacturers all over North America prior to being transferred by RAF Ferry Command overseas. This Liberator B Mark VI, designated EW-148, had come from its factory in Michigan.
Just after take off at 10:24 AM, the crew reported problems. The plane cleared Mount Royal but started to lose altitude over downtown Montreal. It passed in front of the Sun Life Building and narrowly missed the tower of Windsor Station and the chimney of the Dow Brewery. At 10:30, it struck residential buildings near the corner of Shannon Street and Ottawa Street. There was an explosion, and fire immediately broke out, spread by the 9,000 litres of fuel. Firefighters took hours to contain the blaze. In all, 10 to 15 homes were destroyed in the crash and subsequent fire.
The flight crew all perished in the crash:
Pilot Flight Lieutenant Kazimierz Burzynski, 41, was a Polish Air Force veteran of both World Wars, and was a flying instructor.
Navigator Flight Lieutenant Adolf-Jan Nowicki, 31, had been the PAF for five years and was a veteran of 40 bombing missions over Germany.
Officer-Pilot Andrej Kuzniacki, 31, had been flying in the Polish Air Force since 1936, but had recently joined Ferry Command.
Flight Engineer Sergeant Islwyn Jones, 23, born in Swansea, Wales, had served in the Royal Air Force since 1942, and was a veteran of Ferry Command.
Radio Operator Officer-Pilot James Smith-Wilson, 21, born in Glasgow, Scotland, living in Trenton, N.J., had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force since 1942. This was his first trans-Atlantic flight.
Ten civilians on the ground were killed.
The Ministry of Defense report cited structural failure of the tail section as the cause of the crash. Witnesses in the Sun Life Building described seeing part of the tail detached as it flew at low altitude apparently trying to reach the river to ditch.
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From the Gazette, Wednesday, April 26, 1944:
The Wells brothers, Jimmy and Walter, came in. Jimmy’s pretty 20-year-old wife and his three-year-old son were in the house when the bomber crashed. Now their bodies were in a temporary morgue. … Hatless, his coat drenched by the drizzling rain, grief-stricken Jim Wells refused to leave the environs of his wrecked home. ”I’ve got to stay,” he insistently told would-be comforters. ”They may find her and little Jimmy any minute.”
Even from more than half a century away, Jimmy Wells’s despair is almost unbearably poignant. He knew his wife and son were dead – he had seen their charred and mangled bodies himself – yet he still could not accept how final was the cataclysm that had struck.
A newly built, four-engine Liberator bomber, heavily laden with fuel, had taken off from Dorval. It was to cross the Atlantic for service with the RAF, but immediately found itself in difficulty. It swerved south over Mount Royal and roared toward the big buildings of downtown. Barely missing the main post office at Peel and St. Antoine Sts., clipping the top of the Dow brewery two blocks farther on, parts breaking off and falling every which way, the stricken aircraft slashed into the heart of Griffintown.
Houses in the block of Ottawa St. between Shannon and Colborne burst into furious flame. One of them was Jimmy Wells’s.
Contacted at work, he rushed to the scene. The fire, miraculously, was brought under control in an hour or so. As the rescue workers went about their grim business, Wells showed them where they might find his young family. For three hours, he waited, ”dry-eyed and shock-dazed.” Finally, he watched as they brought out the blackened body of his wife.
”Watching stretcher-bearers make their way precariously over the steaming rubble that was his home,” we reported, ”Wells remarked, to himself it seemed, ‘It’ll take them a little longer to find Jimmy, I guess. He’ll be harder to find.’ … A tough fireman, well acquainted with scenes of death and tragedy, turned away and wiped an eye.”
There would be many other reasons for tears. In addition to the Liberator’s five crew members, eight other people lost their lives, and several more were seriously injured. It was the worst air disaster that Montreal had ever seen.
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