Richard Archibald Killham

Richard Killham was the second son of Henry George Killham and Annie Mechie Strang. Henry, known as Harry, was born in 1884 in Dover, England and came to Toronto in 1913 with his sister Charlotte (“Lottie”). He was working as a grocer's assistant when in August 1915 he enlisted in the 3rd Canadian Pioneers of the army to fight in World War One. A pioneer unit constructed military camps, bridges, roads, military railways and field fortifications, among other infrastructure. Harry sailed for Britain at the end of March 1916 and was sent to France in the middle of June 1916, most likely in anticipation of the Battle of the Somme which began on July 1. In August, during the Battle of Passchendaele, Harry was digging a trench when a mortar bomb loaded with shrapnel burst over him, wounding his right hand and left arm. His right thumb and index finger had to be amputated and he was sent home to Canada in February 1917 to convalesce. He was able to find a job with the Ontario Board of Health at Queen's Park as an assistant chemist in the laboratory.

Richard's mother Annie, nicknamed Nancy, was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1896. Her father was a stoker on railroad engines. The family may have spent some time in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) just after the turn of the century. It appears that her father died prior to 1911 because Nancy, her mother and siblings were living in a village west of London, England. Nancy, with her mother, sister and two of her brothers, arrived in Canada in August 1914, just when World War One was beginning. They settled in Toronto and Nancy worked for a manufacturing company as an operator.

Nancy and Harry met and fell in love, marrying on December 24, 1919. The couple and Lottie initially lived on Wyatt Avenue near River Street and Dundas. Their first son, Henry Jr (“Hank”) arrived in 1921 and Richard followed on October 21, 1922. The growing family needed more space and they bought 328 Cedarvale Avenue the next year. Harry's best man, Henry Wheeler, lived two doors away so the friendship probably influenced their choice of neighbourhood. Their neighbours to the south were the Walters family whose son Clare is also on the Danforth Park Honour Roll. Two more boys were born in the next decade, Donald and Gerald. The family attended the Anglican Church of the Resurrection on Woodbine Avenue.

Richard started at Danforth Park in 1928. His love of sports was nurtured at the school and he also had a nascent talent for Art. When he was in Grade 8, he took a correspondence Drawing course. He graduated from Danforth Park in 1936 and moved on to East York High School which in the next year was going to be declared a collegiate. Like his older brother and his younger brothers later, he was a notable member of the school's sports teams, especially the senior basketball team. Richard also liked to play rugby, cricket, baseball and softball. He was a member of the Danforth YMCA.

Richard found a part-time job in 1939 as a clerk. He also enrolled in Danforth Tech's night school, taking life drawing classes and he continued painting in his spare time. In Grade 11, he moved from East York's academic stream into the Commercial program. In March 1940 he juggled his classes with a new job as a shipping clerk at the Herbert Hosiery factory on Coxwell Avenue and graduated from East York in June 1941.

Their father's military history weighed on the older Killham boys and when the Second World War began, they knew they would join up. In 1940 Hank joined the army and Richard enlisted in the air force on October 8, 1941, reporting for duty on November 12.

He went to the Service Flying Training School in Aylmer, Ontario on December 7, likely as a guard. Then in February 1942 he was back in Toronto at the Initial Training School which was located near Avenue Road and Eglinton. Here the recruits took ground lessons in navigation, meteorology, algebra and trigonometry. Each had an interview with a psychiatrist, a four hour long physical exam and a test in a decompression chamber.

Tiger Moth trainer plane. Canadian Forces photo.

In April, Richard was sent to the Elementary Flying Training School in St Catharines to be given basic flying instruction in a Tiger Moth plane. He really wanted to be a pilot but his test results indicated that Richard was better suited to being in some other position. On June 3 he was sent to the Composite Training School in Trenton, Ontario to be remustered as an air bomber and in August he started classes at the Bombing and Gunnery School in Dafoe, Saskatchewan to train in bomb aiming and aerial machine gunnery. In September he trained in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba at the Air Observers School. He received his air observer's wing on October 23.

From October 25 to November 7, 1942, Richard was granted two weeks' leave to return home before embarking for Britain on November 23. He sailed from Halifax and arrived in Britain on November 30. He waited in Bournemouth, England for the Personnel Reception Centre there to determine how he was to be deployed. Richard had plenty of time to tour the town as he remained in Bournemouth through the holiday season. He saw the sights and acquired three books about the German language. Finally on January 19, 1943 he was sent to No. 23 Operational Training Unit (OTU) to train on Wellington night bombers.

Welliington bomber. Bomb aimer Richard would have flown in the nose. United Kingdom Government photo.

The OTU was at RAF Pershore, about 13 kilometres southeast of Worcester and it would be home for the next three months. The two-engine Wellington was the primary long range night bomber of the Allied forces, eventually replaced by the four-engine Lancaster bomber. It usually carried a crew of six: two pilots; a radio operator; a navigator and two gunners, one in the nose, who was also the bomber, and one in the tail. Richard would have spent more time with ground lessons, but would have been taken out over the ocean for air to sea firing. Once the pilots in his group were trained on the Wellingtons, crews were assembled and began flying a series of training flights around England and Wales.

On April 11, 1943, Richard was the air bomber on one of five Wellingtons sent on exercises from the airfield that night. The base had been using Stratford's airfield and Richard's plane took off at 2115 hrs to practice navigation. The pilot was Frank Rogers, a 19 year old from Port Colborne, Ontario who only had eleven hours' flying experience on the Wellington, but he'd soloed 126 hours total over his career. Richard was in the nose of the plane. The wireless operator was Sergeant Donald Smith, a 20 year old from Saskatchewan. The rear gunner was Flight Sergeant Anthony Dorzek, 27, from Renfew, Ontario. There were two navigators on the trip – Flight Sergeant Joseph Toupin, 27, from Montreal and Flight Sergeant Alexander MacLellan, 27, born in Nova Scotia but he moved to the United States as a child and was living in New York City when he joined up.

The journey was expected to take five hours and the route was to find Newbury and Shaftesbury to the south, then Peterborough in the east, Pocklington in Yorkshire in the north, then Hexham east of Newcastle and finally back south again. Light rain was falling and visibility could be reduced to four miles as a result. They made radio contact at 0004 hrs, having reached Peterborough. At 0130 hrs the plane was eight miles off course when it crashed into a field east of Dishforth, Yorkshire. A witness said that the engines sounded normal, but for some unknown reason the aircraft went into a steep dive from which it never recovered. The Wellington had needed a major repair in January, but when it returned to the OTU in February, no further issues were noted.

Richard's grave, Dishforth Cemetery, England. From The Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

Richard is buried in Dishforth Cemetery with most of his crewmates and he is also commemorated on the Bomber Command Wall in Nanton, Alberta. Hank returned safely from the war. His father passed away in 1958 and Nancy lived at 328 Cedarvale until the early 1960s. She passed away in 1968.