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Ralph Edward Hawken
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Born at Darlingford on 21 July 1913, one of three sons of William Franklin Hawken and Caroline Elizabeth Dodge, he graduated grade 11 from the Darlingford Consolidated School in 1934. Before he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in Vancouver on 20 November 1940, he worked as a store clerk for BR Meats at Brexton, British Columbia.
He was promoted to the rank of Sergeant on 18 August 1941, when he qualified as a Wireless Air Gunner. He departed for England on 15 September 1941 and was promoted to the rank of Flight Sergeant on 1 May 1942 and to the rank of Warrant Officer Class II on 1 November 1942. On 9 February he was assigned to 148 (Special Duties) Squadron Derna, on the coast of Libya, and, on 1 May 1943, he promoted to the rank of Warrant Officer Class I.
On 4 November 1943, he was aboard Liberator aircraft AL509 when it departed an airfield near Tocra, Libya, on a secret mission to drop supplies for a three-man British mission in Yugoslavia that included two Yugoslav-Canadians trained at Camp X. Liberator AL509 was observed on fire over the village of Kosinjski Zamost, about 20 miles from its designated drop zone. The aircraft “circled the village before crashing into a hilltop with such violence that the wreckage was spread over half a mile.” It is assumed that the aircraft was shot down by ground fire in an area previously determined to be free of German threats. Why the crew did not bail out of their burning aircraft will never be known. The crew were buried in the nearby village of Kosinj.
He was buried in the Belgrade War Cemetery, in Serbia. In 1995, the Province of Manitoba named Hawken Island in Chicken Lake in his honour.
This page was prepared by Robert Nash.
Page revised: 24 May 2024
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