Frank Farrell was born in Arthur into a family of 10. Frank attended St. John Separate School and Arthur High School. As his obituary stated, “No one could know Frank without knowing he hailed from Arthur.”
Farrell joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, and in 1942 was stationed in St. Hubert, Québec. One of his schoolmates, Ray Hillier, would be killed overseas with the Highland Light Infantry.
At that time, James Essex was a Canadian naval officer stationed in Gaspé Village on the East Coast. Offshore he witnessed Allied ships being sunk by German U-boats, many of which were Canadian naval ships.
By 1944, more than forty Canadian vessels had been torpedoed, some within 150 miles downstream from Québec City. The U-boat crews referred to this period of the war as their “Happy Days”.
Due to military censorship, these sinkings weren’t reported in Canadian Newspapers or on the radio.
After the war, Essex decided to tell the true story of this slaughter in a book entitled Victory in the St. Lawrence. The victory was that of the German U-boats. One chapter in the book refers to the Canadian Air Force personnel who flew out of St. Hubert, near Montréal, down the St. Lawrence trying to detect the U-boats. He especially mentions Frank Farrell of Arthur, who had made many reconnaissance flights.
On March 22, 1942, Farrell and his pilot, Wallace Armour, were on one of these flights when they encountered a terrific snow storm near the Maine border. Unable to determine whether they were over land or water, and almost out of fuel, they decided to bail out. Armour’s parachute failed to open and he plunged to his death.
Farrell landed in a tree 20 feet from the ground in a heavily wooded area. Unhurt, he was able to climb down, and was soon rescued. The area was so isolated that it was some days before the wreckage of the plane was found.
No mention was made of the tragedy in the Canadian papers, but the following day’s issue of the Bangor Maine Daily News carried the story as the headline on the front page. “Two Canadian Pilots Bail Out of Plane Near Springfield. One killed as parachute fails to open: plane wreckage not yet found.”
Farrell remained in the air force after the war, retiring in 1966, after a 25-year career.
This story is published in the Arthur and Area World War One and Two Veterans’ Book.
