Canadian WWI fighter pilot dies

Last Updated: Tuesday, January 7, 2003 | 10:21 PM ET

CBC News

Henry John Lawrence Botterell, perhaps the last remaining First World War fighter pilot, has died at the age of 106.

Botterell died last Friday at a nursing home in Toronto.

As a 20-year-old bank clerk, Botterell joined the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) in 1916. When he died, the Department of Veterans' Affairs believed he was the last surviving pilot in the world to have seen action in the Great War.

Henry John Lawrence Botterell

Botterell hardly had a graceful takeoff as a pilot, crashing at Dunkirk on his second flight when his engine failed in September 1917.

After six months in hospital, he was discharged and sent back to Canada.

He re-enlisted and joined the 208th Squadron of the RNAS, where he served from May 11 to Nov. 27, 1918.

Botterell never flew again after he returned to Canada.

He brought home a fence post that was caught in the wing of a Sopwith Camel he flew on a low-level sortie. The souvenir how rests at the National War Museum in Ottawa.