The Hemisphere: Sabotage Again

Canada’s armed services are faced with an alarming problem they have yet to lick: sabotage. Last year, the main bearings of the nation’s only aircraft carrier, the Magnificent, were filled with sand and brass filings; last April, a bomber pilot found a Greenwood choking wad of cleansing tissue in the tube of his oxygen mask. Last week the hand of the saboteur struck again, this time at the Royal Canadian Air Force’s big Greenwood base in Nova Scotia. Soon after taking off, the pilot of a Lancaster bomber ran into trouble. As he sought altitude over the imposing Annapolis Valley, one of his four engines suddenly failed him; as he turned back to his base, a second one sputtered. At Greenwood, mechanics found that someone had plugged the engines’ air intakes with chunks of rags and waste metal. A quick check of other planes brought a shocking disclosure: eight more Lancasters scheduled for flights that day had been similarly sabotaged. Canadian defense officials have a remarkable gift of complacency about things like this, but they admitted that this was “the most spectacular piece of sabotage in Canada since World War II.” However, they gave out that it probably was only the spiteful work of a disgruntled flunky—and had nothing whatever to do with the world crisis.