David Ernest Hornell

David Ernest Hornell was born on 26 January 1910 on Toronto Island, Ontario, and grew up in the Toronto suburb of Mimico, where he went to the local high school. He was an older man by the standards of aircrew when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in January 1941, earning his pilot’s wings that September and a commission the following year. By the summer of 1944 he was a flight lieutenant with No. 162 (Bomber Reconnaissance) Squadron RCAF, an experienced captain who had flown some sixty operational patrols, detached from Canada to fly anti-submarine sweeps over the North Atlantic from Iceland and the Shetlands.

On 24 June 1944, flying a Consolidated Canso amphibian on patrol near the Faroe Islands, Hornell’s crew sighted the surfaced German submarine U-1225. As he turned to attack, the U-boat opened fire and hit the flying boat hard; the starboard engine caught fire and the wing began to burn. Hornell held the blazing aircraft on its run and released his depth charges in an accurate straddle that sank the submarine. With his aircraft now on fire and barely controllable, he brought it down onto the heavy Atlantic swell.

The crew got clear of the sinking Canso but had only one usable dinghy, too small for them all, so they took turns clinging to its sides in the freezing water. They drifted for some twenty-one hours in heavy seas before rescue arrived. By the time help reached them Hornell had gone blind and was utterly exhausted, and he died shortly after being picked up. He was 34.

For pressing home his attack and for his leadership through the long ordeal that followed, Hornell was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, gazetted on 25 July 1944. He is buried in Lerwick New Cemetery in the Shetland Islands, and his name is commemorated by a school in Mimico and an air cadet squadron in Canada.