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Daily Flickr Pickr Day 488

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!). I was thoroughly blown away by a photograph that was submitted to the pool recently.

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!).

I was thoroughly blown away by a photograph that was submitted to the pool recently. In fact, I almost emailed Thomas Powell to ask if what I was looking at was real or part of a movie production - the concept seemed so foreign to me. What was stranger: that a Royal Canadian Air Force plane crashed near Tofino in 1945 - with no loss of life - and the wreckage is still pretty much there today, or that I had never even heard of this before now?

As you can imagine, this photograph inspired me to spend a fair amount of time on the internets today trying to find out more about this. It turns out that on February 8th 1945 this aircraft left the Tofino Airfield at 2300 hours (11pm for those following along at home). Shortly after takeoff, RCAF 11007 experienced a complete loss of its port engine and crashed ("forced landing") three miles from the end of the airstrip. All 12 men aboard survived the crash were able to make it down to the road but the plane, which had originated from Coal Harbour earlier in the day, proved too remote to remove.

So thank you for providing me with a vehicle with which to indulge my curiousity, Thomas. I love little discoveries like this, and while many of you reading may have heard about this before, I'm hoping that at least some of you are like myself and never had. Here is Bomber Tail.

If you are interested, Thomas has more photos of this and other Tofino goodies on his blog - a link you which you can find if you click-through to Flickr on the photo above.

Gary