Kenneth Willard Rosevear

Ken Rosevear was born in Toronto on November 4, 1919. His parents John Willard Rosevear and Ethel Florence Prater were both born a few miles north of Cobourg, Ontario, in 1881 and 1883 respectively. John was the son of a farmer and Ethel was the daughter of a labourer. By 1901 Ethel's family were living in Colborne, 20 kilometres east of Cobourg. John moved to Toronto in 1905 to work as a brakeman for the Canadian Pacific railway. He had a room at 115 Annette Street near Keele. By June 1907 he was living at 223 Pacific Avenue and married Ethel in Colborne on the 26th. The next May the couple welcomed their first son, Harvey Douglas. The family moved to 251 Pacific and ultimately were the first owners of 159 St. John's Road in 1911. They needed more space to accommodate their growing family as son John Mervin (Jack) arrived in 1912, followed by a daughters, Doris Maude in 1915 and Wilma Louise in 1918. Ken was the youngest in the family. His mother Ethel was an exceptional woman. In the 1911 census, although married with a small child, she stated that she worked as a civil servant.

Ken began school at Strathcona in 1924 and lost two months when he was 9 as he had pneumonia which relapsed. He graduated in the Class of 1933 and continued to Humberside Collegiate, achieving his junior matriculation in 1938. He played baseball and hockey in playground groups and also liked tennis and swimming.

The family celebrated Doris' wedding to Albert Stringer on September 10, 1938. Jack and Ken were ushers, leading guests to their seats in High Park United church. The reception was held at the Old Mill.

In 1939, Ken found a job for a C. L. Wright as a service salesman. This may have been at a gas station. The next year he found a better job as a stock clerk at Photo Engravers and Electrotypers Limited at 91 Gould Street downtown. In early 1941 Ken was called up and he took his basic army training from March 20 to May 19, in Brantford, Ontario. When filling out the papers, he indicated an interest in joining the RCAF. Two days before completing his basic training, he signed his RCAF enlistment papers in Hamilton. The recruiting officer noted: “Should make good pilot with training.”

On May 28 he began his air force basic training at the Exhibition grounds in Toronto and on June 21 was sent to the Bombing and Gunnery School in Picton, in Prince Edward County. Ken didn't begin the course, but was probably on guard duty until an Initial Training course was to about begin. This course finally took place in Belleville in what is now the Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf, encompassing academic subjects like mathematics and signals. It was here that a recruit's future would be determined. Most of the men aspired to be pilots. Ken graduated with good marks on September 24 and was sent back to Toronto to learn to fly at Malton airport (today's Pearson International).

Ken, like all potential pilots, was given 50 hours of basic flying instruction in a Tiger Moth aircraft. Early on October 26, he was caught for being AWOL for nine hours as he had broken out of and back into barracks. This was his only disciplinary transgression. Ken struggled with nervousness during his instruction. His ability wasn't seen to be improving and he came out of the course on November 10 with a failure. The officer signing the papers recommended him to be a wireless operator or an air gunner.

Ken was given leave prior to his next posting at the demoralizing destination of KTS Trenton, where all the men who didn't pass their courses were sent while the RCAF tried to figure out what to do with them. Fortunately he didn't spend long there, as he was funnelled into the observer program on December 19. His course began in Prince Albert, Saskachewan on December 22 and he graduated on March 29, 1942 with good marks and the note “reliable bomb aimer.” On March 30 he started the bombing and gunnery course in Dafoe, Saskatchewan, training on Battle aircraft where his work in the air was considered good.

Fairey Battle. United Kingdom Government photo.

On May 9 Ken was awarded his air observer's badge and attended the Advanced Navigation School in Rivers, Manitoba from May 11 to June 8. There he took an altitude tolerance test and passed to fly up to 25,000 feet. When Ken left Rivers, he had his embarkation leave which he spent in Toronto, before arriving in Halifax on June 24. He embarked for the United Kingdom on July 20 and reported to the Personnel Reception Centre in Bournemouth, England on July 30 to await his posting. On August 7 he was sent to Dumfries in south-east Scotland for advanced observer's training and then joined No. 22 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Wellesbourne Mountford, 6 kilometres east of Stratford-upon-Avon on September 1.

Ken with his parents John and Ethel, June 1942. From The Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

Wellington bomber. United Kingdom government photo.

The OTU trained crews on the Wellington, the main long range Allied night bomber at the time. Each course lasted approximately ten weeks and about 80 men were in each course. Most of the students in this class were RCAF men, including Torontonian Kenneth Tutton (see his biography for Norway Public School). The Wellington bomber usually had a crew of five: a pilot, a bomb aimer, a navigator, a wireless operator and a gunner, with an extra seat for a second pilot. The crews usually formed up at a social event in the first few days of the course. Ken joined pilot Robert Tighe's crew as the bomb aimer. Tighe was a 25 year old from Edmonton. Their navigator was Howard Irwin from Ilderton, north of London, Ontario. William Heslip from Cochrane, Ontario was the wireless operator and Lawrence Ryan of Luseland, Saskatchewan manned the guns.

Ken's crew. L-R: Howard Irwin, Lawrence Ryan, Ken, William Heslip, Robert Tighe. From The Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

On November 19 the crew joined RCAF No. 428 Squadron. It was just being formed at RAF Dalton in North Yorkshire and later was nicknamed the Ghost Squadron for the success of its bombing missions. It was to fly Wellingtons. Over the next two months aircraft and personnel arrived at the airfield and training took place. The Christmas Eve dance had to be cancelled as there weren't enough Women's Auxiliary Air Force members who could attend. The Christmas dinner was a success and many WAAFs were able to join the men.

By January 26, 1943 the squadron had a sufficient number of trained crews. The highest ranking pilot of the squadron was William Suggitt, from Toronto's east end and an alumnus of Danforth Park Public School and East York Collegiate. (His biography is listed on this site under Danforth Park.) He was serving his second tour of duty and had probably flown more operational sorties than most Canadian bomber pilots at that time. Ken and his crew mates were not called upon for the squadron's maiden sortie on the 26th, but they had their first mission on January 29, to bomb the submarine base at Lorient, France. When they took off at 1636 hrs they had a second pilot in training with them. The flight was a success and they returned to base at 2300 hrs.

The crew had no specific Wellington and flew with a different 2nd pilot on almost every sortie. Even though Ken and the crew had a week's leave from February 18 to 24, they flew six bombing missions over military targets in France and Cologne, Germany that month. All but one were uneventful. The sortie on February 7 underlined the realities of a bomber crew. The squadron record noted: “Enemy aircraft 500 ft above on port quarter 1000 yards away. Approached to 700 and rear gunner fired burst and enemy aircraft lost to view. No further attack.” The bomber crews knew that death was a looming possibility. Of the men in Ken's OTU course at least 46 were killed in action. By 1943, it was determined that only 25% of Allied bomber crews completed a tour of duty.

The crew flew five missions in March, mostly over German targets. On April 4, the squadron sent 16 Wellingtons to bomb the port of Kiel, Germany on the Baltic Sea coast. Ken's crew had only been five for the last three missions and so it was the same this night. Tighe put the Wellington in the air at 2030 hrs. The squadron record states: “Nothing more was heard from this aircraft after time of take off.”

The Wellington had presumably bombed Kiel and was on its return flight when it was shot down by ace night fighter pilot Oberleutnant Walter Borchers at 0046 hrs on April 5. The Wellington crashed into the ocean approximately 70 kilometres off the Dutch coast and all were killed. Robert Tighe's and Lawrence Ryan's bodies washed up on the Dutch coast and the German coast respectively. Ken, Heslip and Irwin are listed on the Runnymede Memorial.

John Rosevear passed away in 1955, predeceased by his sons Ken and Jack, who died in 1953. Ethel continued to live at 159 St. John's Road until 1966. She died in 1973.