Warbird Information Exchange

RENTON -
An abandoned quarry sits on the north side of Highway 3 between Jarvis and Renton on the Norfolk-Haldimand county line.

The pit doesn’t look like much. Blink and you will miss it as you drive by.

But the pit is of great interest to the people at the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association (CHAA). An old diver has told CHAA that three Harvard fuselages were deposited there 45 years ago as an attraction for the diving community. If true, they would be quite a find.

CHAA’s dive recovery team has conducted studies at the site numerous times in recent years. They come in winter, cut a hole in the ice and send remote cameras 20 metres to the bottom.

“We’ve found a truck, a car and a metal culvert that has been crushed,” Walt Irie of Ingersoll, chair of CHAA’s dive recovery team, said Wednesday. “To date, we have not found any fuselages. They could be in the muck. The muck is quite deep in places. The feasibility of recovery at this point looks very slim.”

Siltation is a real barrier to determining what lies at the bottom. The slightest movement of water from a diver or remote camera kicks up silt and envelops everything in darkness.

The fuselages were reportedly purchased at auction in 1970 from the estate of Ernie Simmons of Oxford County. Simmons, an eccentric, purchased vast amounts of military surplus at the end of the Second World War and stored it on his farm at RR 6 Tillsonburg.

Simmons' holdings were dispersed after his death at age 57. At the time, vintage Second World War aircraft could still be purchased at a relatively low price.

Conflicting information is in circulation about the quarry and what lies at the bottom of it. A posting on the CHAA website Feb. 22 says “The team has surveyed this particular site numerous times within the last three years and – while they have yet to identify the aircraft located beneath these waters they have confirmed fixes on at least three aircraft hidden beneath the surface.”

An associate member of the team is Bil Thurma of Toronto, a geophysicist and president of the company GeoTech. Thurma is assisting with the technical survey of the quarry and evaluation of the data. He too is confident something of interest lies at the bottom.

“We think the evidence is pretty sure that there are World War Two trainers down there,” Thurma said Wednesday.

“Whatever is in there is very well covered,” he added. “Because it’s covered with silt, if you come even close to it, the water gets cloudy. It’s quite a challenge to identify what is sticking above the muck.”

CHAA conducts its probes during the winter. Ice cover gives the silt a chance to settle. It will take a concerted effort and a fair amount of money to determine once and for all what the quarry is hiding.

“What CHAA needs is a sugar daddy,” Thurma said. “It’s doable. For $40,000 you could do it very nicely.”

CHAA has also told Dianne Jackson, who lives next door to the site, that old airplanes lie beneath the water. She said CHAA researchers have been visiting the quarry now for three years.

“I have the belief they are on the up and up,” Jackson said Tuesday. “It’s really quite an operation that they have going on there.”

Harvards were used to train fighter pilots during the Second World War. There was a Harvard training facility in the Hagersville-Jarvis area during the conflict.

CHAA is based in Tillsonburg. The group owns nine Harvards, a Yale trainer and a de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane. CHAA is also conducting search-and-recovery operations on Wolfe Island near Kingston and Crystal Beach on the north shore of Lake Erie.

I wonder if they're Yales? I get the feeling the CHAA is using the term "Harvards" loosely here.

As to them being Yales, I've accounted for pretty much every Yale from Ernie's farm, so I don't see it being NA-64's in the quarry. I could be wrong though...