The story about Hudsons Bay Company's Fort Ross being abandoned in 1943 due to a failure of the resupply ship arriving, in 1942 and 1943 is correct. The part about about Stanwell Fletcher parachuting in to prepare an ice runway to allow an aircraft to land is also correct, in fact Fletcher Lake up there is named after him. However the aircraft, apparently an American Airforce DC-3, did successfully land and evacuate Fletcher and the HBC people.
The next summer the supply ship did make it in and Fort Ross was reopened. In 1948 Fort Ross again did not get a resupply and the HBC decided to abandon the Post for good and establish a new one in Spence Bay.
During the winter of 48/49 word got out that some of the Inuit people near Fort Ross took sick and a DC-3 sent up with supplies and to evacuate the sick. Ernie Lyall, who was living there, marked out a 3500' x 150' strip on the sea ice and the aircraft safely landed. Later in Feb of 1949 two additional DC-3's were sent up together with additonal supplies; the first one dragged a wing on landing and crashed; there were 9 people aboard and a few had only minor injuries. The second Dak safely landed on the strip 15 minutes later and evacuated the first crew. The first aircraft was abandoned, dragged up on shore and used by the Inuit people as a storage shed.
This is your aircraft; I have no information whose aircraft it was or who the pilots were. It may have been the RCAF or could have been a Canadian Pacific aircraft as I believe they were flying into YZF and YCB in those days. |
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