Sunday July 4, 2004
This front page headline and lead-in from yesterday's Kingston Whig-Standard caught my eye:
Starting at the bottom: Avro search set to begin Local News - A search 50 years in the making gets underway tomorrow as two Canadian warships leave Kingston to plumb the depths of Lake Ontario for lost aviation history.
Sounds serious, huh? What kind of aviation history would be worth this kind of effort 50 years after the fact? Why is half the Canadian Navy involved?
Okay, I exaggerated a bit about "half". Just a bit, though. It appears our naval fleet is 34 ships strong. In the Coastal Defense Vessel class, there are 12 ships total, two of which are on this mission.
"Baby Arrows" - Tiny models of airplanes that were part of an(other) ill fated government project canned almost 50 years ago. They were intentionally "lost" in Lake Ontario during testing. Of interest to Canadian aviation history buffs, but not likely many others.
The question "why search now?" wasn't really answered, at least not to my satisfaction. "Why the Navy?" was finally addressed by the last line:
Navy officials have told The Whig-Standard that their search is part of the training for navy reservists who are learning navigation and operations aboard both the Kingston and Glace Bay.
Front page. This is a military town, I'll give them that. But there must be something more important going on locally or somewhere else in the country or the world.
0) { ?>