CF-ZYB / Hicks & Lawrence #19 / Bu# 53256

Early History

United States Navy. TBM-3. Construction #: 3318
Aerial Applicators, Salt Lake City, UT, #D19, N9592C, 1963-1970.

Aerial Applicators TBM#19 N9592C_4Aug1966_SaltLakeCityNV_NA3T-AG02844 — TBM #D19, with short canopy, at Salt Lake City, Utah, 4 August 1966. [NA3T Archive of Transport Travel and Trade]

Hicks & Lawrence Ltd., St. Thomas, ON
#19 CF-ZYB 1971

1971 – Crash. FZYB was scheduled to come to NB but crashed 1 June 1971 during a practice flight northwest of Dryden, Ontario. [Don Henry] The pilot was Clarence “Clare” Syme of Abbotsford, B.C. See the article about this crash in the Ottawa Citizen. The Department of Transport accident card reveals that the aircraft “crashed into trees during a fire bombing run” and that the pilot “was trapped in the cockpit for approx. 6 hrs before being sighted by a copter pilot flying over the area.”

Screen Shot 2018-10-24 at 11.19.32 AM — The article describing the crash of CF-ZYB in *The Ottawa Citizen* 4 June 1971.

A 2011 post by Bill Brisson to a geocaching site (RCCanada.ca) turned up four images of the crash site and wreck and on the second page, an aerial photo of the precise location of the wreck/geocache site. The accident card shows the general location: Niddrie, located on Walsh Lake, about 10 km west of Amesdale, but the geocaching site precisely locates the site on Google Maps below, some distance north at N 50° 02.383 W 093° 06.530. A second geocaching site has another posting.

FZYB Crash site-Niddrie ON — Annotated image of Google Maps showing location of CF-ZYB crash site, from RCCanada.ca.

H&L #19 crash site nw of Dryden, Ontario. Images posted by Bill Brisson 12 June 2011 to RC Canada: http://www.rccanada.ca/rccforum/showthread.php?t=124001