Kitchener flier’s Great War fighting ends early
When last heard of in Flash from the Past, Flight Cadet Owen Thamer of the Royal Flying Corps Canada was about to leave Kitchener.
The 21-year-old had created a stir on May 10, 1917, landing his Curtis JN-4 Canuck trainer in the city’s east ward. Taking off from Camp Borden that morning and heading for Owen Sound, he had mischievously ended up in Kitchener where his parents lived.
Thamer was ordered to return to camp by road and it seemed he might face discipline. However, a week later, the slipshod navigator was promoted to Flight Commander, responsible for six cadets and their machines. By September 1917, the further-promoted Flight Lieutenant Thamer was near London, England, finetuning his flying skills in a new SE5a, the Allies’ finest fighter of the war. Come October, Owen was seeing combat duty over the Flanders trenches with the RFC’s famous No. 60 squadron. He joined just after No. 60’s legendary Billy Bishop departed for home leave. Below Owen’s aerial war, the five-month-long Battle of Passchendaele (or Third Ypres) was in the home stretch and the Canadian Corps under General Sir Arthur Currie had just been ordered in to deliver victory where other Empire troops had failed.
There is no record of Thamer downing any German airplanes; he did write to tell his family about several enemy bullets that penetrated his aircraft’s seat but stopped just short of his own flesh. Thamer was often on patrol over Belgium and the North Sea coast; on other occasions he dropped 25-pound bombs on German troop concentrations. Then came January 6, 1918.
“I left the aerodrome to join other machines on patrol. On the coast near Ypres I was attacked by three German machines. They were above me so I turned back to our lines. I saw six more German machines above me on the homeward side. My only way back was to turn north. I wished to avoid a fight as my Vickers gun had a very bad cross feed.”
Following several skirmishes using his still-firing Lewis gun, anti-aircraft fire opened up on his aircraft, “... forcing me to fly out to sea and climb into the clouds.” When the SE5a emerged, it was immediately attacked by six more Germans, again forcing him into the clouds. “Having been in the air for two hours with a strong westerly wind blowing, I knew I had not enough petrol to get home so decided to land at once before the engine failed. I made a good landing in a field near Brielle.”
Unfortunately — or fortunately — Brielle was located in neutral Netherlands. Owen Thamer’s war was over. As an interned combatant in a neutral country, he had considerable freedom to travel about and even seek work but could not return to France or England. In letters home, Thamer had little good to say about the Dutch: “... there are only two speeds here, ‘Dead Slow’ and ‘Dead Still’ ... the country is still in the age of the grandfather clock.” Three dozen other Allied flyers had been interned in the Netherlands and apart from food shortages, they had received good treatment — although Thamer claimed 90 per cent of the population was pro-German.
Following the November 11 armistice, it was another six months before Owen was welcomed home by his family.
That same day — May 20, 1919 — the Kitchener Daily Telegraph asked if there would be any more flying in Owen’s future.
“No, I have had enough.” He took up his old trade as an electrician at Kitchener Public Utilities’ gas-producing plant on Gaukel Street. Within a year he married Stella Worden and a year later, son Burton arrived. In April 1924, all three were on their way to a new life in California.
Both Owen and Stella signed a Declaration of Intention renouncing forever all loyalty to any foreign state “... and particularly to (King) George V.”
Four years later, both swore allegiance to the United States Constitution and became American citizens.
The Thamers ended up in San Diego, where Owen died in 1953 and Stella in 1981. Burton J. Thamer became a nuclear physicist and worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, developing several patents and writing a number of papers on fuels and systems. He died in Las Vegas in 1999.
All three are buried in Greenwood Park, San Diego.
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The previous Flash from the Past featuring Owen Thamer is at: www.therecord.com/newsstory/8881658-flash-from-thepast-rfcflyer-in-trainingvisits-hometown-by-mistake-/.
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Correction to the Oct. 13 Flash from the Past: I was alerted by Wayne Stevens that the middle person in the photo of John C. Timm, c. 1947, was not Stanley Shupe but rather Wayne’s grandfather, Bert Stevens, who worked for Proudfoot Motors at the time. Information on the back of the original photo was incorrect.
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This afternoon, Nov. 3, Waterloo Historical Society’s annual general meeting begins at 1:30 p.m. at Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum. All welcome.