Documenting the WWII Fallen of Toronto's Elementary Schools
Harold Hogarth Sealy
(brother of Albert Edward Sealy)
Harold Sealy was the first son born to Leonard Henry Thomas Sealy and Mabel Hogarth, on June 28, 1920. The couple were both English emigrants, Leonard from Bridgwater in southwest England and Mabel from Barrow-in-Furness in the northwest. Mabel's family moved to Toronto in 1905 when she was about 6 years old. Leonard arrived in 1913, possibly with his family, when he was in his late teens. When the couple married on May 5, 1919, Leonard was sewing suits for Eaton's Department Store, living with his parents and siblings at 159 Jones Avenue and Mabel was a packer, whose family lived at 158 Kingston Road. Harold was born when they were living in a flat on Dingwall Avenue near Pape. Mabel bore two more sons, Jack and Albert, who was born in April 1923. By that time the family were the first owners of 857 Sammon Avenue and belonged to Woodbine Heights Baptist Church.
Harold and his brothers became involved in their father's hobby of pigeon racing. Leonard and a friend co-owned a pigeon which held the Canadian speed record in the early 1930s. Most weekends from September to May, the Sealys would send their pigeons to be released hundreds of miles away and they would wait in their backyard for the pigeons to return, taking a ring which had been placed on the pigeon's leg and putting it into a machine which would record the arrival time. Leonard eventually became president of the Racing Pigeon Union. He changed careers and became a painter and decorator, which was also his brother Reginald's occupation.
Danforth Park's Class of 1935. Harold should be one of the boys in the photo. The camera is pointing south, with the store that was at Gledhill and Lumsden in the background. Photo: Toronto District School Board Archives.
Harold and his brothers went to school at Danforth Park and Harold graduated in the Class of 1935. He continued to East York High School (which became a collegiate while he was there), completing three years and taking a fourth at night school in the Commercial department, learning shorthand and typing, leaving school in 1939. He collected stamps. He was athletic and played softball, rugby, basketball at his church, hockey on the Woodbine A.C. Team, baseball for Waller's Meats – St. Clair and cricket in Dentonia Park. Fellow Danforth Park Honour Roll member Lorne Knowles may have been a team mate.
The Toronto Star, June 3, 1937.
In August 1938 Harold got a job in the card room at Joseph Simpson and Sons Knitting Mills at Berkeley Street and The Esplanade. He was laid off in February 1940 but he immediately found a job as a surveyor's assistant until July when he landed a job as a clerk in Eaton's employment office.
Harold began his paperwork to join the RCAF in August 1940. At the time the air force was only taking licenced pilots and university graduates. He had his medical in November and when the RCAF changed their enlistment requirements early in 1941, Harold joined on February 10. Like the majority of recruits, he wanted to be a pilot.
He remained in Toronto at the manning depot on the CNE grounds, learning the basics of military life until April 3 when he was sent to the manning depot in Quebec City. There he did squad drills in the mornings and route marches through the city in the afternoons. At the end of April, he was posted to the air base at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia for guard duty.
On May 28 he joined the Initial Flying Training School at Victoriaville, Quebec. The town is 160 kilometres southeast of Montreal and the school was housed in a former boys' Catholic school. When it was a school, it had room for 500 boys. When Harold was there, it housed 900 airmen and there was always a line up for the lavatories. It was a five week course in Math, Signals, Sanitation, Administration and Map Reading. He also had four half-hour sessions in a Link trainer, a flight simulator where an instructor told him what to do over his headset. Harold had an 80% average in the course and was posted to the Elementary Flying Training School in Oshawa. He had leave from July 11 until the 16th and spent it at home in Toronto.
Link trainer. From www.starksravings.com.
In Oshawa it was quickly determined that Harold didn't have the right stuff to be a pilot. He clashed with his instructor and he wasn't learning quickly enough. It was felt that he would be well fitted for another part of an aircrew and on July 30 he was posted to the Composite Training School in Trenton while the air force decided where he would be most useful.
On October 12 he took the train to the Air Observers School in Winnipeg. The train must have been delayed as he was almost eleven hours late arriving. He took classes in air navigation, aerial photography, reconnaissance, observation, mapping and target description. The students undertook bombing practice in Avro Anson aircraft, dropping 5 kilogram smoke bombs from a height of 6,000 feet onto wooden targets. His instructors felt Harold was a “much improved navigator.” He had a Christmas leave, probably spending the holiday with his family in Toronto.
Fairey Battle airplane. United Kingdom Government photo.
Almost three weeks into 1942, Harold headed to No. 7 Bombing and Gunnery School in Paulson, Manitoba, training in Battle airplanes. He graduated as an observer on February 28 with an average of 70% and was promoted to Sergeant. The next day he reported to Rivers, Manitoba's Air Navigation School to hone his skills as a navigator. When he finished the four week course at the end of March, he was given leave from April 5 to 19 and then had to report to Halifax in preparation for embarkation. He came home to Toronto for his leave, visiting his family and friends.
During his time waiting in Halifax, he was sent to the personnel depot in Moncton as Halifax's facilities were probably over capacity. On April 30, he walked up a ship's gang plank and sailed to Britain, reporting to the Personnel Reception Centre at Bournemouth, England on May 13 to await his posting. He left Bournemouth on June 19 to transfer to the No. 3 Advanced Flying Unit for navigators who were then in heavy demand for bomber crews. He remained there for a month, then on July 21, he joined Course 25 at No. 22 Operational Training Unit (OTU) in Wellesbourne Mountford, near Stratford-upon-Avon to train on Wellington night bombers. He no longer was a navigator, but a bomb aimer. His crew was assembled there. The pilot was Delmer Sanderson. Known as Sandy, he was a 22 year old from Calgary. Charles Downton, who had come to England on the same ship as Harold, was the 20 year old navigator from British Columbia. One air gunner, John Bittner, was a 25 year old American from Minnesota who had come to Canada to join up before the Americans had entered the war. PGE Beauchamp rounded out the crew as the wireless operator/air gunner in the nose of the Wellington.
In 1942, the two-engine Wellington was the primary long range night bomber of the Allied forces, eventually supplanted by the four-engine Lancaster bomber. Once crews at Wellesbourne Mountford graduated, they were usually deployed on one benign mission to drop propaganda leaflets over Germany. While Harold was at the OTU, he returned from a flight to discover his brother Jack in his bunk. They had a joyous reunion, the first time they'd seen each other since arriving in Britain.
Wellington bomber. United Kingdom Government photo.
The crew finally joined an RCAF squadron on October 1 – No. 420, the Snowy Owl squadron. It was located in Skipton on Swale, but two weeks after their arrival the squadron moved to Middleton St. George airfield, 55 kilometres south of Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England. The squadron flew Wellingtons. Harold's crew trained to be operational and had their first mission on December 11. Their Wellington took off at 2321 hrs to lay mines over the North Sea. They dropped their two mines at 0122 hrs from 800 feet but due to bad weather they and several other Wellingtons had to land just after 5 in the morning at Acklington airfield 25 kilometres north of Newcastle. On the 14th the crew was sent out again to drop mines, but they were unable to identify any land features due to the weather and returned with the mines.
The weather in December 1942 and January 1943 was very bad in Britain and northern Europe. There were many nights when the squadron's crews were ready, but the missions were cancelled at the last minute due to the weather.
On December 20, the crew had its first bombing mission to Duisburg, Germany. They took off at 1755 hrs and attacked from 14,500 feet at 1957 hrs. They experienced some flak, but returned safely. The next day they celebrated John Bittner's 26th birthday and the crew didn't fly again until after the New Year. Harold's first Christmas away from home was spent at dinner in the squadron canteen with his crew mates. On the 30th, Charles Downton married a member of the Women's Auxilliary Air Force who was from Barrow-in-Furness, the town where Harold's mother was born. The vicar of the 420 Squadron officiated.
The weather was still poor into January 1943 and the crew didn't fly again until January 9. They had an unsuccessful minelaying mission, as they were unable to identify their target off of the Netherlands. On January 12 they celebrated Charles Downton's 21st birthday.
They were next in the air on January 15, on a bombing run to Norden, Germany but were recalled to base. On January 21, they were laying mines and when they returned, the crew learned the sobering news that one of the aircraft was missing. Their bombing mission on January 26 was eventful. They dropped their bombs on a German submarine base at Lorient, France from 11,000 feet but the Wellington was hit by flak behind the bomb bay and on the starboard wing. They landed safely, but when they next flew, on January 29, they had a different Wellington.
Eight squadron planes took off late that afternoon to bomb Lorient again. On a couple of flights that month the crew had had an extra gunner and on this night 21 year old Hank Ernst of Nova Scotia joined them. The weather wasn't good. There was heavy rain, electrical storms, wind and icy conditions. The Wellington, as was usual on a bombing mission, was carrying an 1800 kilogram bomb which was armed as they approached the target. Once the bomb was armed, it couldn't be defused. Over the target, Harold pressed the button to release it, but nothing happened. The release mechanism had been activated so they had to get rid of the bomb. Pilot Sandy Sanderson put the Wellington into a deep dive to try to shake the bomb, to no avail. He decided to take the plane down low so that the bomb would thaw loose, but it didn't. There were concerns about their fuel, so the Wellington turned back to England, with the intention of parachuting out and letting the plane crash off the coast. Unfortunately they flew over the naval base at Plymouth, a no-fly zone and were shot at by British guns. The plane wasn't hit, but suddenly it lurched upward because the bomb had dropped on the countryside not far below them. They decided to try to land at nearby Exeter airport, but none of the crew were familiar with the airfield. The heavy cloud made it even more difficult, but at about 2300 hrs, through a break in the clouds, gunner Ernst spotted what he thought was a landing cone for the airport. It was a decoy to confuse enemy planes and the Wellington ploughed into a wood on the side of a hill. Three Royal Marines who were close by pulled Ernst from under the starboard engine and also rescued Beauchamp from the wreckage. The four other crew members, including Harold, were killed in the crash. Along with Harold's plane, the squadron lost another Wellington that night.
Harold's parents requested and paid for Harold to be buried in the Sealy family plot in St. John's Bridgwater Cemetery. His funeral was on February 5, 1943 with his brother Jack and Uncle Reginald in attendance. Both were stationed in Britain. One year later, less a day, Harold's brother Albert was killed when his air force bomber crashed on the coast of the Danish island of Romo. Leonard, who was a supplier of homing pigeons to the RCAF during the war, died in 1961. Mabel was still living in the house on Sammon Avenue in 1969. Jack, the only surviving Sealy child, returned safely from the war. He married and named one of his sons Harold.
(The details of the January 29, 1943 mission were found in the 2004 CBC documentary about Hank Ernst, one of the survivors of the accident: “Final Flight: The Search for DF626.")