Sunday August 21, 2016 from Green Bay to Gander, NL

Today featured mild temperatures (60-70's), though it was quite cloudy most of the day. We set out from Kona Beach around 9am, with our first destination the North Atlantic Aviation Museum in Gander. We again drove thru beautiful, sparsely populated countryside featuring mountains, lakes, and millions of evergreens. We arrived at the Museum and were rather disappointed, as it's small, only has one plane inside and limited exhibits.

North Atlantic Aviation Museum in Gander

 We expected to see a lot more, as Gander was once the busiest airport in the world in the 1940's.  It was the stopping point for almost all air traffic to Europe until the advent of the jets. It's also where 39 widebody jets with 6600 passengers diverted to on 9/11/2001.   The story of how the local folks of Gander (population 10,000) handled their unexpected guests over a period of several days until U.S. airspace opened again is a remarkable and wonderful story. Sadly, the museum only has one poster with a small TV embedded relating the story what happened those few extraordinary days. 

9/11 display exhibit in the Museum

Outside the Museum there are 4 Canadian aircraft, including a Canso (called Catalina in the US) and a Lockheed Hudson bomber from WWII. That plane had a plaque by it explaining how, on 11/10/1940, a similar Hudson completed the first non-stop flight from Gander to Europe-presaging the flights of thousands of aircraft throughout WWII.

Canso water bomber

WW II Hudson bomber

We drove to the passenger terminal, which is practically deserted these days with very few flights and all within Newfoundland.  Spoting a yellow aircraft on the opposite side of the airport, we drove over and found it was the Canadian Search and Rescue operations area. The plane, however, belonged to an airline called Exploits Valley Air Service, a small commercial airline. The aircraft is another Canso water bomber!
      

  After lunch in the RV, we returned to TCH 1 (Trans Canada Highway 1) and saw a sign with the 101st Airborne Eagle on it pointing down a gravel road. Our curiosity up, we drove down the road for several hundred meters to a beautiful but very sobering site.

Entrance to Arrow Air crash site

On December 11, 1985 an Arrow Air stretch DC-8 with 8 crew members and 248 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division took off from Gander heading for Fort Campbell, KY. The troops were returning from a United Nations Peacekeeping mission in Egypt, and had flown to Gander via Cologne, Germany. The plane never rose above 900 feet, crashed at this site and exploded killing all on board. Though the cause of the crash was officially listed as ice on the wings, 4 of the 9 NTSB members dissented as to the findings, and the records have been sealed. Terrorism was one of the suspected causes. 

Memorial to the 101st Airborne soldiers who died there

Sculpture honoring the Peacekeeping mission

Memorial Cross made from the metal of the aircraft

  The memorial site was dedicated in a 1990 ceremony. Visiting the crash site and memorial is a very emotional experience.  The tragedy of what happened to all those soldiers and crew heading home for Christmas after a long deployment is a story not many Americans have heard about. We had no idea what had occurred there, and would highly recommend anyone visiting Gander make a point of stopping at this solemn site.