Greatwestcam
Senior Member
Where did this small disaster happen? I went from logging to fixing float planes on the west Coast of Vancouver Island back in the early '80s. By looking at the rear window of the Beaver, I can tell this is an old pic because most companies modified their aircraft to the bigger side windows. Care to name the airline?
It never failed to amaze me that pilots sometimes would hole their floats and would watch helplessly as their A/C slowly turned over and sank. It happened to more than a few machines I was involved with. The smarter guys would try to tie up to something and keep her from going over or take off quickly and get back to base or even beach the bloody thing. I put lots of temporary patches on floats to get them home. The Beaver shown seems to have taken a bit of damage to the float struts by looking at the angle of the float to the wing - something came loose. However, when they finally had it out of the water and heading home, the thing appears to be hanging normally. These mishaps were probably one of the reasons that I got out of fixing float planes.
The Beaver was out of Campbell River spit, believe it was Coval Air? They had a diver in the water hooking it up, put a roll on it to sit right then lifted it out, then sat it down on the road to secure every thing so it wouldn't spin on the way home. This was in Security Bay which is in Boswell Inlet, close to Rivers inlet. Was July 1989. The bay was deadly for planes after the log barge finsihed loading, debrie every where!