It was Nov. 10, 1942 when Dave Dale joined the Air Force in Vancouver.
He remembers with a sharp clarity of training in various locations in Canada.
“You get moved around quite a bit and everyone trying to be a pilot gets washed out,” said Dale. “I ended up in bombing which took off and on from 1942 to December of 1943.”
It was during Christmas of 1943 when Dale took his vacation leave to Montreal with the last class he had trained with. From there he would head to England by boat.
“We waited to get shipped by boat to England, but it took longer than usual so we finally left Montreal on March of 1944,” explained Dale.
Once he arrived, there was more training before he was transferred to the south of Scotland, then the north where they were taught how to fly a different aircraft.
Dale was in Scotland on D-day, still training before his first raid.
“They threw a bunch of us guys into a room and we were there listening to Churchill talk at that time on D-Day.”
From there, Dale met his crew that consisted of a pilot, a wireless operator, a navigator and two gunners. Training included two-engine and four-engine aircraft, either with a Lancashire or Halifax bomber.
Stationed at a foggy location with planes unable to take off properly 10 kilometres outside of York, Dale’s first bombing flight on Jan. 2 proceeded smoothly.
“We got back and nobody lost any planes that night in our bunch,” remembered Dale. “It was a good raid. We were flying over France about 3,048 metres (10,000 feet) and then it climbed to 6,096 (20,000) and you see all the stuff down on the ground and we sort of fooled them.”
It wasn’t until Jan. 5 that Dale’s crew was summoned for a bombing raid over Hanover, Germany.
The night was cold, the land barren and frozen but no snow littered the fields. Of the 250 planes that flew over Hanover, 33 were taken down. Dale and his crew were one of the unlucky planes to be struck.
“We got hit by aircraft fire; we were about 7,010 metres (23, 000 feet) and one of the engines was hit and caught on fire,” he said.
“You have to wait for the propeller to stop and then the pilot will press the fire extinguisher which would put it out, hopefully.”
In the crossfire of flying bullets and swerving planes, Dale’s plane suddenly went into a dive before a large bang was heard and the aircraft exploded.
“I got blown out, so did the pilot and the rest of the crew,” Dale recollected. “I had my parachute half on and ready to jump but I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything.”
The last thing Dale remembered was being blown from the aircraft and getting knocked out. When he came too, he was falling with his parachute still half on.
“I snapped the rest of the buckles in place, floated down and got captured,” he said. “My pilot got blown out of the plane too, he didn’t get knocked out so he floated down somewhere else.”
The two landed miles apart but were both captured and placed in a jail in Hanover until the end of the war. The rest of Dale’s crew went down with the plane.
“Nobody expects to get shot down,” Dale stated.
“You figure you’re going to be one of the lucky ones.”
A tour consisted of 30 bombing raids. Dale was captured in his second. As a prisoner of war, what Dale recalled most was being hungry and cold.
“We were hungry constantly … the worst part (was) the cold that time of the year,” pointed out Dale.
“Even in the prison it wasn’t very warm. Nobody had a change of clothing. When we were liberated in May, I still had the same clothes on that I was shot down in January.
“I found out years and years later that I landed near a plane that was on fire. There was nothing left of it, only the remains and the fire. I finally pieced it altogether that it was probably our plane because I dropped down so far that I must have followed the plane down.”
To Dale, Remembrance Day brings back memories of what happened.
“I think about (the rest of the crew) quite often anyway, but that’s the main remembrance; that they weren’t there to celebrate the end of the war with us.”
“Remembrance Days is something that reminds you about various countries, like Canada or the United States, that tried to help the people (involved with the) wars. Nobody’s really happy to go to war, but it’s necessary once in a while.”
Now 85, Dale still keeps in touch with the pilot, who lives in Niagara Falls, Ont.