Documenting the WWII Fallen of Toronto's Elementary Schools
John Frederick Parker
Both of Jack Parker's parents came to Toronto from England before World War I. Frederick Parker had been born in Yorkshire in 1887 and Margaret (“Maggie”) Makin came from Liverpool, born there in 1886. They met in Toronto and married on November 19, 1913 at St. Matthew's Church in Riverdale. Fred worked as a porter for Canadian National Railways. Jack was born in a house on Logan Avenue on November 11, 1914. He had a younger brother, Donald.
By 1921, the family was living at 245 Lumsden Avenue (it was originally numbered 179, but like many neighbourhood streets, it was renumbered in the mid-1920s). Young Jack would have started school at Secord, but when Danforth Park opened in 1922, he would have been part of the cohort that populated the new school. Jack was in the Class of 1929 and continued at Danforth Tech as a scholarship student. He was a boy who liked to read and he enjoyed swimming, bowling, baseball and hockey. In the Chemistry program at Danforth Tech, he graduated first in his class in 1933 and returned for an extra year for a special Chemistry course. When he graduated, he couldn't find a job that was associated with chemistry, but he soon found a job in a bedding factory on Wellington Street West where he worked as a material cutter.
Jack had flat feet, so when the war started, he knew that he would be rejected by the army. Instead, he enlisted in the air force on January 18, 1940 as a fabric worker. The RCAF at the time was accepting tradesmen, but otherwise a man had to be a licenced pilot or a university graduate. On April 19 he entered the RCAF's Technical Training School in St. Thomas, Ontario. It trained 2000 students at a time teaching courses for ground crews, and specialized fabric and sheet metal training. Jack attended the fabric course and parachute packing and repair.
In July, Jack took the train to Vancouver, where he was stationed at No. 3 Repair Depot, which was housed in RCAF Jericho Beach. The station mainly trained aircrew on flying boats. In October, Jack was moved to No. 3 Service Flying Training School in Calgary. It was a new facility, taking its first students at the end of the month. It was a pilot training school and Jack would have been busy as part of the team making sure the parachutes were functioning.
By the end of 1941, Jack decided to train to be a navigator. In December, he started his initial aircrew training in Edmonton and when he graduated in February 1942, he progressed to Edmonton's Air Observer School where he took an eight week course in Navigation. As with all prospective navigators, he attended Bombing and Gunnery School in Lethbridge for a month. After his annual two week leave in July, he did his final month of training at the Navigation school in Rivers, Manitoba, earning his wing. He was given special leave from August 27 until September 11, spending it in Toronto with his family before reporting on August 29 at No. 34 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Pennfield Ridge near the south coast of New Brunswick. Normally an RCAF airman was sent to Britain to train at an OTU, where he would learn the aircraft he would be fighting in. Canada trained many Commonwealth airmen, especially Australians and New Zealanders and had seven OTUs.
Lockheed Ventura. From www.airteamimages.com.
RCAF Pennfield Ridge trained crews on Lockheed Venturas. The Ventura was a medium daylight bomber and the RCAF was using them for training and for home defence, patrolling the coast for enemy ships and submarines. These Venturas had a crew of four and Jack joined the crew of 20 year old pilot Hugh Baird of The Royal New Zealand Air Force. Baird was born in Northern Ireland, but his family immigrated to New Zealand when he was a pre-schooler. On finishing the course in mid-November, Jack's chief instructor wrote: “Above average air navigator who can reason things out for himself, a good type of person to have in a crew in event of an emergency. Above average bomb aimer who produced good results.” Jack had a two week embarkation leave to visit his family one last time before sailing to Britain and the war.
He and his crew mates crossed the Atlantic to Britain in December, arriving on the 18th. They celebrated Christmas in Bournemouth, England at the Personnel Reception Centre as they awaited word of their assignment. They were sent to RAF St. Feltwell in Norfolk on January 26, 1943 and a week later they formally joined RNZAF Squadron 487 which was based at the same airfield. It was a new squadron, formed the previous August, and it flew Venturas. It appears that Jack's crew spent February in training because in March, their first official squadron flights were practices over British targets. They flew twice on the 7th and three times on the 8th. Rainy weather tended to hamper operations and the crew trained when it could. The squadron relocated to RAF Methwold, about three kilometres north, at the beginning of April.
The squadron had been attacking specific targets in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, like railroads, tank installations and power stations. At the beginning of May, another “Ramrod” operation was planned to the Kininklijke Hoogovens steelworks in the Netherlands. A Ramrod was the RAF term for bombing operations that would lure the German fighter planes into action with the British fighter escorts. Squadron 487 sent twelve Venturas with experienced crews on the afternoon of May 3. Jack's crew wasn't summoned for the mission as it was not yet operational. One plane turned back immediately due to a broken hatch. At 1855 hrs one of the Venturas returned to the airfield badly damaged. The pilot and navigator were uninjured but the two air gunners were wounded and whisked off to hospital. None of the other Venturas returned.
The pilot and navigator on the damaged Ventura reported that the squadron encountered more than 80 German fighter planes which shot down the ten missing Venturas. The Squadron didn't know it at the time, but 30 men had been killed and 10 were prisoners of war. The Squadron had been shaken to the core and there wasn't a man at the base who wasn't affected. The squadron was left with only six operational crews and eight Venturas.
Jack's crew took part in the first operation after the disaster, on May 23, to bomb the iron and steel ovens at Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast. They took off at 1150 hrs and returned at 1323 hrs. Fortunately the mission was an uneventful success. The Squadron's loss had been felt by many and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the airfield on May 26.
The squadron had to be rebuilt with new planes and restored morale. The weather wasn't very co-operative in June. Jack's crew flew three missions: on June 12 they bombed the Caen airfield which a year later would be a major objective in the Normandy offensive and on June 22, they were detailed to air sea rescue work. Two unidentified aircraft near the European coast headed straight for their plane. The Ventura's rear gunner opened fire and the enemy turned away. On June 24, they helped to bomb the Maupertus aerodrome in Normandy.
With the loss in May of the Venturas, the RAF's Bomber Command finally realized that the Ventura was an inadequate aircraft against enemy attack and the squadron was given word in July that it would switch to the more effective Mosquito bomber. The squadron stood down and was no longer operational but night flying practice continued on the Venturas. In late July the squadron and Squadron 464 of the Australian air force moved to yet another airfield, RAF Sculthorpe, 40 kilometres north of Methwold. The squadrons found Sculthorpe a dreary airfield, with little in nearby entertainment, but the first Mosquitos arrived at the base on August 21 and the airmen were like kids with new toys.
Mosquito bomber. United Kingdom government photo.
As more Mosquitos arrived, the base began saying good-bye to the air gunners who were being redeployed. The Mosquito was a two crew plane, only needing a pilot and a navigator who sat side by side in the cockpit. It was one of the fastest airplanes the Allies had. Jack and Hugh Baird trained for six weeks on the Mosquito. The squadron had its first mission on October 3 and on the 9th, Jack and Baird took off as part of a sortie to bomb Antwerp, but all the planes returned to base due to poor visibility. The weather hampered operations in November but in December, the weather cleared somewhat for Jack and Baird to take part in a mission over northwestern Germany. The stormy weather returned and they didn't fly again until December 21, bombing military installations in northern France and the next day dropping bombs over more installations in Dieppe.
The squadron was given notice on December 28 that it was moving again to RAF Hunsdon, 100 kilometres south and on the northern outskirts of London. They settled in just after New Year's 1944. On the morning of January 4, Jack and Baird joined four other Mosquitoes from the squadron to bomb a launching site for the V1 rocket in northern France. V1s were unmanned flying torpedoes which the Germans had aimed at London and other parts of England. It was known as the “Doodlebug” and struck terror in the English as its buzzing engine would stop just before it fell to the ground to explode. The Mosquitoes took off at 0920 hrs and at about 1015 hrs they reached the target. Jack's Mosquito peeled away from the other planes and under control, Baird flew it down over the target. When the four other Mosquitoes returned to base, Jack and Baird's plane was not with them. Jack's body washed up on the beach at the Pas de Calais on January 7th and he was buried the next day in the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery in France. Hugh Baird was never found and it was concluded that the Mosquito had crashed into the ocean.
In a letter to Jack's parents, the Wing Commander of the squadron wrote: “In addition to his work his pleasing personality made him a very popular member of the mess and his comrades will miss his quiet helpfulness. He was indeed very happy with us here.” Jack's mother Margaret, a diabetic, passed away in 1945. Fred lived at 245 Lumsden until the 1960s and he passed away in 1981.