A small plane left a big mark on a tiny outport town and the memories of its residences
Reprinted from Downhome Magazine, September 2020
by Lester Green
St. Jones Without (Photo courtesy of the Gordon Banton)
During my many boating trips to visit my dad William Green’s abandon hometown of St. Jones Without in the early 1970s, I always looked forward to stories of his childhood in this Newfoundland and Labrador outport. We would walk along the pathways reclaimed by nature, as grown over as the memories of those who walked from the Beach to Herring Cove in days gone by.
Dad would usually launch into one of his favourite memories when we’d stop underneath a steep hillside near Herring Cove. The story would always start with the words “now this is where the plane crashed…”
For a young teenager, these words conjured up images of adventure. I imagined a single engine, WWII-era plane bouncing between the tightly woven picket fences. Was it a spy plane? Did the pilot spot a German submarine? My mind contrived a scene where people scrambled from their houses, cautiously approaching this yellow plane that roared downward from the sky and made a hard landing almost in their backyards.
Piper Cub plane that made emergency landing at St. Jones Without. (Photo courtesy of Gordon Banton)
For many years I actually wondered if this story was true, or was it a yarn meant to entertain Dad’s teenage son? Then in 2003, I got my answer while visiting Gordon Banton of Winterton.
Gordon was a great story teller who also hailed from St. Jones Without. When I asked about the plane crash, he replied in an almost conspiratorial whisper, “Would you like to see pictures of the plane?”
My jaw dropped and I fought to control my youthful excitement as Gordon reached toward a top shelf and retieved a brown paper bag filled with black-and-white photos of St. Jones Without. This would be my firest time even seeing the community as it looked when my father was a boy there.
Gordon spread out the photos on the table and picked out photos of the plane during its unexpected landing. Thenhe proceeded to tell me what he remembered of that day, circa 1948. He was in a small motorboat in the harbour when the plane suddenly appeared.
Piper Cub plane that made emergency landing at St. Jones Without. (Photo courtesy of Gordon Banton)
“… I was bailing the water out of the punt when I heard this loud noise that made me nearly jump out of the boat. It was the sound of a roaring yellow plane that flew about 100 feet above my head. It came from the direction of Herring Cove and continued in the arm. Suddenly it banked to the right and headed towards Ferry’s Cove, then completed its turn and headed back towards the Beach. I couldn’t believe that he was going to land that plane on the road between the picket fences. Then I heard the roar of the engines as the pilot reversed the engines to slow down the plane. It touched the ground and immediately bumped up and down along the path towards Herring Cove. I jumped out of the punt and ran towards the crowd that were screaming with excitement as they scurried towards Herring Cove. We all wanted to see what was going on,” he said.
“The plane broke several tops of the picket fences that lined the cart road. It stopped near the edge of the bank at Herring Cove when the pilot reversed the engine and applied the brakes, which caused it to dig in, damaging its propeller.”
People were running from their houses, yelling at others to go to Herring Cove (Back Beach). Some women still had their aprons on when they got to the plane. The pilot and a student climbed out. The pilot scanned the crowd and declared, “We got her landed but she’s not going to fly out of here.”
Stewart LeDrew and his sisters standing in front of Piper Cub in 1955. (Photo courtesy of Stewart LeDrew)
Clarence Green was 12 years old when the plane was forced to land. He recalls the incident in a family video recorded by Amy King White, entitled “St. Jones Without – Now Lives in Me.”
“We had a garden there, just had spuds in, and a plane come in and made a forced landing. The wing took the garden and one side took every picket off. He was level coming into the Beach and there was a big rock right in our garden and he stopped ten feet away. If he had hit that one, he’d have never lived. All the grass was flattened, that’s what saved him. He never had a scratch… Fellow Baird, I think, owned the plane,” he recalled.
The local men gathered around and assured the men that they would help get the plane back to St. John’s. The next day they helped push the plane from Herring Cove towards the wharves at the Beach. They helped disassemble the Piper plane by removing its four-piston engine. Next the welded frame fuselage was taken apart and all the pieces placed on the deck of the schooner, Jessie Beatrice, skippered by Mark Green. The schooner set sail from St. Jones Without to Heart’s Content, where the plane was removed and placed onboard a train. The Piper Cub was delivered back to St. John’s where it was reassembled.
Piper Cub owned by Frank LeDrew at airstrip at Pasedena in 1957. (Photo courtesy of Stewart LeDrew)
I’ve since found out even more about the crash at St. Jones Without. Recent discussions with Stewart LeDrew, son of the well-known Newfoundland aviator Frank LeDew, confirmed that an emergency landing had occurred in August 1949 in Trinity Bay. The plane was owned by the Avalon Flying Service of St. John’s and was registered as VO-ABD in January 1948, but because Newfoundland was part of Canada at the time of its landing, the call letters had been changed to CF-GPD.
Based on aviation registration and other records, the story emerged of how this small Piper Cub plane, model J3C-65, nicknamed the Grasshopper, was forced to make an emergency landing at St. Jones Without. This plane was produced in the United States and flown to Newfoundland in 1942, where it was used in reconnaissance as a spotter plane. It surveilled the waters near St. John’s for potential submarine activity. After the war, some of the planes were sold at public auction.
The term Grasshopper seemed appropriate for this small plane because of its continuous bouncing as its wheels touched the ground in the fields to deliver military messages to commanding officers during the war. Between 1937-1947, Piper’s Aircraft produced about 20,000 of these planes. It distinctive chrome yellow with its black stripe must have been an incredible sight as it made its emergency landing in St. Jones Without. The community had witnessed seaplanes landing in the harbour before, but they were never spectators to a plane taxing down their narrow road.
Piper Cub landing on a beach in Alaska. This is the same plane that made the emergency landed at St. Jones Without in 1949.
At the time of the incident, the Piper Cub was owned by Avalon Flying Service in St. John’s. It was on a training mission with a student pilot when they ran into trouble and ran low on fuel. They were forced to make the emergency landing or risk the possibility of a water crash landing in Trinity Bay.
However, the story of this Piper Grasshopper did not end here. The plane was sold in 1952 to Frank LeDrew, who scrapped the Piper in early1960s after it sustained damage during a crash. The plane was sold in Ontario and registered in 1963 to James Baker, a farmer from Holland Center, according to Canadian Aviation registration. It remained in his possession, using it for dust cropping, until its registration was cancelled in 1998.
Incredibly, this plane was then purchased by a collector who restored the aircraft as an example of a vintage WWII Piper Cub. As of 2013, this small plane that made an emergency landing in 1949 by bouncing between the twisted pickets of St. Jones Without was still flying over the skies of Wasilla, Alaska.
Author’s note: Thanks to Roy Dishlevoy and R.W. (Bill) Walker, two aviation experts on early planes, who helped me in my research.
Crash Landing at St. Jones Without – PDF – Downhome Article
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Transcribed by Wanda Garrett, January 2022.
These transcriptions may contain human errors. As always, confirm these as you would any other source material