Madam, - Mr Karl Kjarsgaard believes the contribution of the Royal Canadian Air Force during the second World War has not been properly recognised (The Irish Times, January 3rd). Let me give evidence of some lively recognition that does exist - here in Ireland.
Before Christmas, a Canadian e-mailed me about a cousin who had died in a wartime Catalina flying-boat crash. No one left alive remembers him, he said. I was able to send him a photograph of a roll of honour displayed in Lough Erne Yacht Club. It lists that cousin, Flying Officer Robert Mercer Adams, RCAF, killed on December 30th 1942, when Catalina FP239 of 131 OTU crashed on Reaghan Hill near Omagh, Co Tyrone.
There is a long-standing and lively interest in Fermanagh in the contribution made by RCAF and other airmen and women during the Battle of the Atlantic. Mercer Adams flew from RAF Kiladeas, the site of today's Lough Erne Yacht Club. His crew trained as a team for wartime operations at 131 OTU (Operational Training Unit) based at Kiladeas.
Today, those wartime facilities are used for sailing sport and training. A dozen J/24 keelboats lie to moorings made for flying boats, and GP14 and youth training dinghies are stored in a second World War hangar. Peace where once was war.
Over 300 young airmen, from Canada and elsewhere, were killed flying from Lough Erne. Some are buried in local Catholic and Church of Ireland graveyards. Irvinestown historian Breege McCusker built a trans-Atlantic network. Over the past 25 years families visited graves and old men came back to the places of their youth and wartime flying.
Old boys of RCAF 402 Squadron, nicknamed "The Flying Yachtsmen", returned to unveil an OTU 131 memorial stone at the yacht club, where they had trained in Belfast-built Sunderland flying boats.
Another local historian, Beleek's Joe O'Loughlin, recently researched and printed that roll of honour.
From social history to the serious history, the best account is in Marc Milner's Battle of The Atlantic (Tempus 2005). In context, it credits well the Canadian contribution. Should Karl Kjarsgaard care to visit Fermanagh, he is assured of a warm welcome. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CLARKE, Historian, Lough Erne Yacht Club, Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh.