Joseph Francis Kawucha

This story is shared by the Trust with kind permission from Pete Colley, Curator, Wickenby Museum. Additional information and photo from the WWII Records and Service Files of War Dead, Libraries and Archives, Canada

Remembering Joseph Francis Kawucha, Pilot Officer, Air Bomber, Royal Canadian Air Force, (RCAF), aged 26, son of Stanley and Mary Kawucha. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario on the 16th March 1918, his parents having emigrated there from Poland. He had one brother and three sisters. He also had one half brother, after his father had died in 1924 and his mother remarried and had a son with her second husband. He married  Stella Kawucha (née Manel), of Troy, Ontario, Canada and they had one child, Randolph Joseph Kawucha, who was born on the 1st November 1940.

Joseph went to Holy Rosary and St Anne's primary school from 1925 to 1931 and Hamilton Technical Institute from 1931 to 1934. He was unemployed for a couple of years after leaving school but then found work as a sheet metal worker for the Collins Never-Fail Products Limited, Hamilton, makers of sheet metal products. He could also do tinsmithing, electric spot welding and soldering. He was employed by them from 1936 until he left in 1941 to join the RCAF.

In his spare time he enjoyed playing baseball, hockey and football and he was a member of the Polish Choral Society, for which he was President,  and attended St Stanislaus Church in Hamilton, Ontario.

He enlisted on the 10th June 1941 in Hamilton, Ontario and trained at 7 Air Observer School. He was sent to No 1 Y Depot., Halifax, Nova Scotia in June 1943, ahead of being sent to the UK. He embarked for the UK on the 30th June 1943 arriving at 3PRC on 8th July. From there he went to 4 (0) AFU on 27 July 1943, 30 OTU on the 31 August 1943, 1662 CU on the 30 November and then 12 Squadron on the 15th March 1944.

He was killed on his 25th mission attacking Vierzon when he was shot down by a night-fighter and fell at Magny, south west of Chartres. At first he was recorded as missing in action but then the certificate of presumption of death was issued on the 28th June 1945. His wife remarried to Mr Swerjeski shortly after the war ended.