Miss Piggy: The Story Behind Churchill's Famous Plane Wreck

Okay, what's up guys? So here we are at the plane crash site, they call Miss Piggy, and we're gonna learn a little bit about this airplane here, how it crashed, why it's here, why it's still here, why it crashed, and who knows what else we'll learn about this thing, guys. All right, so we're gonna walk around. I got no idea about nothing, so I'm just gonna check it out, and then when I go home and I do some more history and some research, I'll do my fancy narration voiceover voice, and we'll learn all about Miss Piggy. Before we get started, I wanna give a huge thank you to Bearskin Tactical Supply Company for sponsoring my Manitoba adventure. Throughout this trip, I wore a variety of Bearskin gear, including the Bearskin Hoodie 4.0, Heavy Storm Rain Jacket, Sunbeater Hoodie, Rancher Shirt, and the Bearskin Serona T-shirt. If you're looking for tactical or outdoor gear for your own adventures, you'll find a link in the video description where you can shop Bearskin Tactical and check out their gear for yourself. So here is my rental car truck. There's Hudson Bay and all the ice. No polar bears yet. All right, so let's go around, I guess, and we'll just go all the way around. All right, check it out. It's pretty cool. It's like right here on all the rocks, just sitting here. It's not every day that you get to just walk up to a giant plane crash that's still here. Okay, let's go up the rocks here. Here's a look at the tail. Pretty neat, guys. Got a lot of graffiti on it from the locals. Maybe even some gunshots. Yeah, it's got some shotgun pellets gone through it, some bullet holes. Looks like some people have had a real good time with this thing here over the years. Just take the stand off. Yeah, okay. Crazy. All right, here we go. Got a whole wing going on here. And yeah, we can go inside. We'll go inside in a minute. All right, gonna put this here, and then we'll go over here and we'll take a walk inside, and then we'll finish off the tour of the outside. So here we go. You hear a airplane coming in somewhere? Sounds like from the airport over there. All right, so I think I just gotta put a hand on here, foot here, and in we go. Okay, guys, we're in, in the airplane. It's my first time being in a crashed airplane. This is definitely a local party spot for sure for the young kids in town here. I use a cockpit, not much left of it. This is really wobbly, so I won't be standing inside the cockpit, unfortunately. It's pretty weak. It probably won't hold my weight. All right, so there's a look at the cockpit. And look back here, the cargo bay. Pretty cool, right? Pretty cold here, guys. I was saying earlier, right now at home in Burlington, it's 48 degrees. It is a stifling, disgustingly hot day. And here I am, and it's nice and cool on the bay here. Okay, see if I can get myself out of here with some grace. Yeah, okay. On the wing, there's the engine right there. There's a pretty good dramatic look here from the wing. Looks like the plane would have been coming in from this way, coming in for a landing. Didn't quite make the airport, which is right over there. Go back this way, a little bit of water in here. Bet you during polar bear migration season in the fall, this place is just crawling with polar bears, hanging out, sitting in the airplane, underneath it, all around it. Not today though. I probably won't see any polar bears on this trip. Might have to come back in the fall. All right, let's throw up some drone footage here, guys, and I'll tell you a little bit about this plane crash, why it's here, how it happened, and then we'll come back and we'll say goodbye. Just north of the Churchill Airport, along a lonely gravel road hugging the shore of Hudson Bay sits one of Manitoba's strangest tourist attractions. Not a monument built for visitors, but the broken hull of an airplane that never meant to stay. Her name is Miss Piggy. She was a Curtiss C-46 Commando, a twin-engine cargo plane built in the 1940s, originally designed to haul supplies for the US military during the Second World War. By the 1970s, she'd found a second life flying freight for Lamb Air, a Bush airline serving northern Manitoba's remote communities. Her nickname came honestly. She was famous for the sheer size of the loads she could carry, and rumor has it she once hauled a shipment of actual pigs. On the morning of November 13th, 1979, Miss Piggy took off from Churchill loaded with a snowmobile and cases of soft drinks bound for Chesterfield Inlet. She hadn't been airborne long when her crew noticed trouble. Oil temperature climbing, oil pressure dropping in the number one engine. The pilot banked back toward Churchill, but the aircraft couldn't hold its altitude. Clipping hydro poles with one wing on the way down, she came down hard on a rocky outcrop just short of the runway, close enough that the crash even knocked out power in town for a while. Remarkably, everyone survived. Two of the three crew members were seriously hurt, but they walked away, deplaning and making their way back to the airport before help even arrived. Miss Piggy never flew again. Instead, she stayed exactly where she landed, slowly settling into the landscape. Her left wing broken in half, doors and windows long gone, her cargo hold stripped bare, while decades of Arctic wind and curious visitors passed through her frame. Today, she's become something the crash never intended, a landmark. Photographers, polar bear watchers, and curious travelers detour down that gravel road just to see her, a rusting reminder, resting on the rocks above Hudson Bay, that sometimes the things we remember best are the ones that never made it home. All right, guys, that's been Miss Piggy plane crash, Churchill, Manitoba. Now we know why it's here, how it crashed, why it crashed, and a little bit of history about this little landmark here, Churchill, Manitoba. It's getting pretty cold, guys, but I'm okay. I'm nice and comfy. I got my bearskin hoodie on, keeping me nice and warm on this trip, which is good, thanks to my good friends at Bearskin. And that's it, guys. I'm gonna go move on now. This has been Miss Piggy. We got much more of Manitoba to explore and to see. So thanks for watching, guys. I'll see you next time. Peace.