REVEAL HOW BANTING DIED

Death Came to Scientist While Pilot Left Wreck
To Reconnoitre for Aid
Mackey in Montreal Hospital Reveals He and Scientist Aided Each Other, But Banting in More Serious Condition than Flyer Knew – Died of Exposure.

By Percy T. Cole and L.M. McKenchnie
Telegram Staff Writers
(Copyright 1941, by the Evening Telegram.)
Montreal, March 3 – The one man pilot Joe Mackey who can tell how Sir Frederick Banting died on a desolate shore in Newfoundland on February 21, is in a Montreal hospital to-day, and more details are given of he scientist’s tragic death. Revelation of the full facts of how the world was robbed of a life-giver extraordinary must, however, await his recovery. Head wounds which became infected during his three-day vigil in zero weather beside the bodies of Sir Frederick and tow other members of the rock-smashed bomber’s crew leave him in no condition to be quizzed here.
Pale and weak, his head swathed in bandages,. Pilot Mackey hobbled from a warplane of the same type as the ill-fated craft which he has been ferrying to Britain. He was assisted into a waiting ambulance on the arms of a doctor and an interne. He paused only to motion a cheerful “thumbs up” to a group of his fellow ferry pilots gathered at the airport. They had come, these pilots, to welcome him back from an experience which might have been or still may be their own.
At the hospital he told Dr. Fred J. Tees that Sir Frederick has survived the crash only to die form his injuries and exposure to the bitter cold some time within the 20 minutes Mackey was away from the wreck scene looking for help.
He only other visitor was his comely wife. She had not been at St. Hubert airport, but the moment the plane landed she was informed by telephone and was waiting for him at Montreal General Hospital.
AIDED EACH OTHER
The two survivors aided each other as best they could, but it now becomes clear that Dr. Banting was in a far more serious condition than he knew.
(That Sir Frederick lived some time after the crash and, while death was near, used his ebbing strength to give aid to Pilot Mackey, was reported exclusively in The Telegram five days ago. Radio and other newspapers spread the false report that he had jumped from the plane and died instantly.)
After doing what he could for the scientists, Pilot Mackey fashioned a pair of makeshift snowshoes from the wreckage and left Dr. Banting in a fir bough bed while he plodded off in search of aid. He clambered, stumbling, over ten foot drifts to a rise of land from which he could see nothing but bleak wilderness. Undoubtedly weakened by his effort he retraced his steps to regain the comfort of human contact but found that during his 20 minute absence death had come to his only surviving companion.
AFTER TWO-MINUTE START
It is almost two weeks ago that Mackey, with Bird and Snailham as his crew, and Sir Frederick as his passenger, were air-borne from St. Hubert on the first stage of their bomber to Britain flight. Two nights later, as one of a formation of warplanes bound for the embattled isles, their big, powerful, ugly, paint splotched raft headed east on the Great Circle route. Two minutes over the ocean one engine sputtered and died. Pilot Mackey fought the controls as he headed back tot he comparative safety of bleak Newfoundland shores. Flying blind, with nothing to guide him but hose precious pulsations through the ether emanating from the radio towers Pilot Mackey sent a request for a return course. Again and once again he asked.
Each time the response was instant. The only possible conclusion is that the plane’s receiving apparatus failed. The doomed plane received no homing guide.

After dawn broke, weary and crippled, Pilot Mackey trudged out in the snow of an inland pond the message that he alone survived. At approximately the same moment, 2,000 miles away, his companions of the previous night landed safely in Britain with more tools for democracy.
SAFE IN HOSPITAL
Followed, for Mackey, two days of hopeful watching of the skies, of rescue by two trappers, of semi-convalescing in a Newfoundland outpost, and, finally, the reward of the comforting haven of a Montreal hospital and his wife’s arms yesterday. Fogbound skies over the 1,000 mile route between Newfoundland and Montreal for the past few day held the rescue plane from its far-away take-off, but yesterday, with brilliant sunlight streaming from the heavens all along the course, a camouflaged bomber streaked to Montreal. It landed at 2.35 p.m. Flat on his back in the cabin section lay Pilot Joseph Creighton Mackey.
As the big bomber, mate of the one which started off so proudly for Britain less than two weeks ago, and which fell, a broken thing in the Newfoundland wilderness, rolled up to the hangar at St. Hubert, watchers could see Mackey raising himself on one elbow and peering from a cabin window. There was a smile on his wan face. Dr. Fred J. Tees was first aboard. A few minutes elapsed and an ambulance pulled up close to the big plane. Officials who had followed the doctor aboard slowly clambered out. Then Mackey appeared at the plane door.
ASSISTED FROM PLANE
He was weak and pale, that was obvious. The doctor and an air company official steadied him as he eased his way down the two-foot drop from the plane to the tarmac. Then, with one holding each arm, he slowly made his way across the 20-foot space between the plane and the ambulance.
The upper part of his head was swathed in bandages. His face was free but the nose and cheekbones were scratched and cut. He was wearing an old leather windbreaker and his feet were encased in big fleeced leather boots – Arctic mukluks, that look like a flapper’s goloshes.
Mackey managed a feeble grin. Nobody said a word. Then, just as he was settling comfortable in the ambulance some of his ferry pilot friends moved to the side of the vehicle.
Hello, you lucky old so-and-so, said one through the thick glass. Mackey couldn’t hear him, but he knew just about what was said. His answer came in the form of a cheerful thumbs up motion. The ambulance hurried away, hospital-bound.

NATION TO PAY
BANTING HONOR
AT RITES HERE
Brought to Toronto by Plane,
Savants Body to Line in State at U of T
Tomorrow – Autopsy Held

Canadians to-morrow will unit in paying final tribute to one of the Dominion’s most famous sons. Sir Frederick Banting, who was dilled February 21 in an airplane crash on the bleak coast of Newfoundland.
At the request of Lady Banting, n autopsy was performed on the body of her husband after its arrival in Toronto last night. The Telegram learned. It was indicated from a reliable source that Dr. Banting was alive for some time after the plane crashed and that death was directly due to injuries and in part to exposure.
Representatives of the Federal, Provincial and municipal governments, many public bodies, the University of Toronto, and all branches of Canadian armed services will attend the funeral from Convocation Hall at 2.30pm.
The body of the discoverer of insulin, and the man who, at the time of his death, was on his way to England on a war medical mission of high importance, reached Toronto last night by military plane. The body was taken directly from Malton Airport to the funeral parlors of Bates and Dodds, Queen street west, where it will remain until to-morrow morning, when, from 10 am to 12.30 it will lie in state in Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto. It has not been decided yet I the casket will be open.
The funeral sermon will be preached by Dr. H. J. Cody, president of the University of Toronto. Dr. Cody has revealed that only recently Sir Frederick said that should anything happen to him in the course of his military duties he wanted Dr. Cody to conduct the funeral service. The president, who had long been associated with Sir Frederick, has intimated that his address will be brief.

Mourning Flags
For Dr. Banting
Fly Above City
Flags on all public, University and municipal buildings are flying at half-mast for the late Sir Frederick Banting and will be so flown until after the funeral to-morrow afternoon.
Last week Mayor Conboy issued instructions that flags on all municipal buildings should be flown at half-mast.
Many private business concerns have followed suit.

Telegram photos, Copyright 1941
Captain Joseph C. Mackey, of Kansas City, pilot of the military plane which crashed near Musgrave Bay, Newfoundland, carrying Sir Frederick Banting and two members of the crew to their deaths, is pictured above as he arrived at St. Hubert Airport, Montreal, yesterday. With his head swathed in bandages, he is shown in the lower picture clad in the heavy winter flying suit he was wearing when the plane crashed and which undoubtedly saved him from dying of exposure in the sub-zero temperature. Bundled into an ambulance, which carried him to a Montreal hospital, Mackey propped himself up and smiled for the photographer (top).