This year marks the 70th anniversary of an air accident which resulted in a Catalina aircraft crashing into the sea off Cumbrae.
It is a popular wreck near Cumbrae slip for divers down the years, with complete aircraft wrecks being few and far between, and stories about the dramatic crash have gone down in local folklore.
During 1943 in wartime, such accidents and crashes were covered up to keep the propaganda campaign positive, so little was known at the time about the crash until long afterwards.
The consolidated Catalina FP321 swung on landing after a training flight and sank on 22 April 1943.
The accident on Cumbrae involved Captain Ernest Cook, Flight Captain Jose Carreras from Spain, and flying officer Gibbs, who all survived the accident, but sadly, the body of Flight Engineer Harold Frank Peter Waldron was never found.
Flight captain Jose Maria Carreras, who was a former Spanish Civil War pilot, was instructing on the seaplane when through no fault of his own, the aircraft crashed.
Full story in this week's Largs News.
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