#14 HOW SAD A COINCIDENCE

 

                                                     A FATHER AND SON

They say that “once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

It was the day after Christmas 1947 when Vern Woodcock and his friend, Frank Nokes, went up for an afternoon pleasure flight. Vern was the owner and manager of Vern’s Auto Specialties in Oshawa. Both men belonged to the Ontario Flying Club. Vern was a full-flight pilot with about 100 hours of flying time and Nokes was taking instruction.

The two men were flying in a Fleet Canuck plane which had an 85-horsepower engine and side-by-side seating, (better for instruction than tandem seating).  The fuselage was constructed of welded steel and fabric-covered; the plane’s wings were also fabric-covered. Dual controls with conventional sticks were considered a necessity for the Canuck, and the instrument panel was simple and spartan. Hydraulic brakes and full-swivelling steerable tail-wheel gave the Canuck good ground-handling qualities. Skis and floats could be attached directly to the normal landing gear. The Canucks were capable of aerobic performance. Standard Canucks were finished in RCAF yellow and Consolidated blue. After the war, between 1945 and 1948, Fleet built 198 Canuck aircraft. They proved popular and initially sold well to flying clubs, charter companies and private owners in Canada. Thousands of Canadian pilots learned to fly on the Canuck during the 50s and 60s and into the 1970s.

                                                                    a Fleet Canuck

Vern and Nokes flew over Nokes’ house in Glen Major, (just north of Oshawa, south of Uxbridge) and circled once as Nokes’ family waved. The second time they circled, the engine backfired, the plane plummeted, crashed into a cluster of trees and nose -dived into the ground.  Investigators figured that when the engine started to give trouble, they must have a struck a downdraft, hit a tree and the left wing sliced off before hitting ground. Two of Nokes’ sons rushed to the wreckage, but Nokes was dead on impact and Vern died a few minutes later.

Vern Woodcock, 40, was the father of nine children from age 6 months to 17 years. Flying was in the family genes. In the 1960s, his oldest son, Ivan got his pilot’s license and bought a Beechcraft Bonanza-- a six-seater, single engine aircraft, relatively fast, low wing and all aluminum design, cruising speed 175 mph.

On Saturday February 11, 1967, Ivan and three of his friends took off from Oshawa Airport en route to Boston to a hockey game. Ivan, 36, was foreman in the material handling department of GM. One of his passengers, 39, was supervisor of purchasing for GM, another was a foreman, 34, in GM’s paint and trim department; the fourth man, 34, co-pilot and part owner of the plane, owned a trucking company. The four men frequently flew together to hockey games and other events; this time they were going to watch Bobby Orr, a former Oshawa General’s Star, play against Montreal. Although Ivan had recently sold this plane to one of the other passengers, he had over 1000 hours of flying time (considered experienced) mostly on this plane so he was piloting. 

The flight path from Oshawa to Boston was over Watertown and Glen Falls, NY, southern Vermont and western Massachusetts; they were flying at an altitude of 9,500 to 10,000 feet.  A friend in another aircraft accompanied them for part of the route, but then got separated over Glen Falls. At 1 p.m., the weather was clear, cold and windy. There were, however, reports of local squalls and violent local snowstorms in the area. Suddenly the plane ripped apart high in the sky—there was no mid-air collision or explosion-- and crashed in an open field. Witnesses heard a loud noise and saw the plane spinning around and around and then it nosed over; they said the wing and tail were missing when the plane spiralled.  Debris was found over a wide area. The surrounding hills were searched by air and motorized snow sleds for the missing tail and wing. A map of Canada was found 4 mile away; a briefcase, tape measure and camera were found at the scene; the wrist watch on one of the victims was still ticking.

Three bodies fell out of the plane before the crash; they were likely thrown by the spinning craft and did not jump. One body was found 300 feet from the wreck, the other two men a few feet. Ivan was pinned in the wreckage.  In a (ludicrous)  understatement, the state pathologist said deaths were caused by extensive smashing and brain injuries and “all 4 died of injuries resulting from rapid collision with an unmoveable object—in this case the earth.”

It is sadly ironic that a father and son would both die, twenty years apart, in small plane crashes. Vernon and Ivan are buried in the Mount Lawn Memorial Gardens in Whitby.

 

 

John Wilber Vernon Woodcock

b. Oct 4 1912 in Sheffield Twp., Lennox & Addington Co.

m. Marie Elizabeth McGlade on Sept 19, 1930 in Toronto

d. Dec 26, 1947 in Glen Major, Durham Co.

my 3^rd cousin 1x removed (Homuth-Netterfield-Pierson line)

 

Charles Ivan Woodcock

b. Oct 5 1930 in Oshawa

m. Wilma Doreen Ives

d. Feb. 11, 1967 in Arlington, Vermont

my 4^th cousin (Homuth-Netterfield-Pierson line)

 

 

of note:

--Statistics drawn from the National Safety Council “Lifetime Odds of Death for Selected Causes, United States, 2007” indicate that over a lifetime, Americans have a 1 in 88 chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident; a 1 in 770 chance as a motorcycle rider; a 1 in 649 chance as a pedestrian; a 1 in 7,032 chance in air and space accidents; a 1 in 148,756 chance as a casualty of an earthquake; a 1 in 3,580,052 chance as a trolley car rider.

--The US National Travel and Safety Board has found that the fatality rate for private aircraft is significantly higher per 100,000 flight hours than commercial aircraft.

--The data on the risk of driving versus flying commercial is unequivocal. Plane crashes get a lot of attention, but they’re extremely rare, and claim a much lower number of lives on a per-mile basis.