Moose Jaw is a city in the Canadian prairies, and was a market center a half-century ago when the events related here took place. On April 8,1954, 4,000ft above the town, a Royal Canadian Air Force North American Harvard trainer crashed into a Trans-Canada Air Lines Canadair DC-4M North Star. The total of 37 fatalities included all on board both airplanes and the occupant of a house onto which wreckage fell. It was then Canada's worst single air disaster and remains Saskatchewan's worst aviation tragedy. Shaak—a private pilot who has worked in aviation ground instruction—places the reader back in the midst of the event, as we become to know the people involved as well as the mechanics of what happened and why. He pieces together a host of eyewitness accounts to assemble a picture of what took place. Among other sources, the author draws on three official boards of inquiry reports.
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