[HAHalliday]

I am sorry, but I fail to see how an incident of low and reckless flying, followed by a crash, involving an aircraft at a training base in far-off British Columbia would be of the least value to either Germans or Japanese in terms of either military intelligence or propaganda.

There seems to be a presumption that the Seattle papers did not report the incident. At this moment, I do not know (and am trying to find out) if they reported or not. All I can say with certainty at this moment is that (a) Vancouver papers reported the incident in great detail but without mentioning Scratch going to Seattle and (b) the official investigation by the RCAF (which would be an internal document and thus not subject to censorship) made no mention of his starting out with a Seattle excursion - although it was made clear that pursuing RCAF fighters had orders to shoot down the Mitchell IF THE PILOT ATTEMPTED TO CROSS THE BORDER.

So there might be an account of him going to Seattle - but so far nobody has offered to check a Seattle newspaper.

On the other hand, there might be no account. If so, the silence would be explainable by one of three equally plausible reasons (a) the papers were ordered to keep it quiet (censorship) or (b) the papers did not know enough or care enough to consider it a story worth reporting or (c) it did not happen - "it" in this case being the Seattle portion of accounts appearing 50 to 60 years after the event.