On 18th September 1943 this 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit aircraft was being flown on a training flight when the starboard outer engine and the mountings broke away from the wing and it fell from the aircraft. The engine landed on Redhouse School and the pilot force landed the aircraft near Moor Monkton at around 15.05hrs. This was just one of a number of accidents caused by the detachment of either engines or propellers during September 1943. Thankfully in this case there were no deaths resulting.

Pilot - F/Lt John Muir Candlish RCAF (J/4894).

John Candlish was born on 4th July 1918 at Huntingdon, Quebec, Canada and was the son of Robert Fairlie and Eva Ethel (nee Higgins) Candlish. His father died in 1935 and after attending school he trained as a teacher at the MacDonald University, Quebec and at Queen's University, Ontario. He initially started teaching at a school in Hull, Quebec but was teaching in Montreal when he enlisted for RCAF service on 20th September 1940. After training in Canada he was awarded his Pilot's Wings on 20th March 1941. He must have been selected to then train as a flying instructor probably partly down to his ability in the air but also because he was a teacher in civilian life and after receiving his Wings and a commission in March 1941 trained as and then served as a flying instructor. I have not located his service details between March 1941 and September 1943 and his time at 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit, by which stage he was probably going down the route of training for piloting Bomber Command aircraft rather than instructing (though I cannot prove this at the time of creating this webpage). He was later posted to 35 Squadron PFF and was killed on 12th November 1943 while flying Halifax HR985 on Ops to Cannes when the aircraft was shot down by a night-fighter. He was twenty five years old and is buried in St.Desir War Cemetery, France. His brother Fairlie Candlish served in the RCAF (C/10838) but sadly drowned in a boating accident at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1948.