It was a happy day in the beer canteen
Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
Hay River (Nov 13/00) - Born and raised on a farm in Brooks, Alta., Hay River's Steve Kovatch spent his war years serving the effort in Canada.
He said he grew tired of farming as a young man and went to work feeding the firebox on trains out of Calgary, but enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942.
"I volunteered to help the war effort -- I didn't enlist to get killed or anything like that," he recalled with a laugh. "None of us did, but some of my schoolmates disappeared over there."
The RCAF sent him to the War Emergency Training Program in Medicine Hat, Alta.
"We learned the basics of mechanics and woodworking," he said. "Working with aluminum and aircraft structure, but some of the aircraft in those days were wood."
"The Mosquito was totally wood," he added. "It was mostly made out of Sitka Spruce."
He said the biggest problem associated with the wooden structure was that the de Havilland fighter was vulnerable to termites in the wings and tail section.
From Medicine Hat, Kovatch was sent to Toronto for five weeks of basic training and then put to work at an airbase in St. Thomas, Ont.
"We were known as 'Rigger Mortis,'" he laughed. "We rigged all the cable and all the controls of the aircraft."
Got to drop bombs
From there he was transferred to the bomber and gunnery training school in Jarvis, Ont. where they serviced 98 aircraft.
"They'd pull the aircraft up and fire into this concrete wall," he said. "They had to test them someplace and they didn't want to shoot farmers."
On a test flight over Lake Ontario, Kovatch once took the bombardier's seat to see if he could hit a target barge from a Lancaster.
"They showed me exactly what to do," he said. "When you see that you're coming up to the barge you push this button. Well I did, and I hit the barge.
"The guy said, 'You're in the wrong field.'"
Raised on the farm, Kovatch had a good knowledge of diesel engines so the RCAF sent him to school in the diesel fitter's course at a tractor plant in Burlington and then a six-week electrical course.
When his training was complete he was transferred to a navy base in Halifax and from there, sent to run the power plant at an aircraft refueling base in Goose Bay, Labrador.
The runway was the last stop for the de Havilland Lancasters, Mosquitos, and American B-17s before flying overseas.
Thousands of miles from the front the boys in Labrador even managed to see some action one morning, when a German U-Boat was torpedoed about 70 miles from Goose Bay.
"We had Cansos patrolling and before the guy could get under, they nailed him," he said. "This U-Boat had been lurking around that area through Gardiner Inlet and Tarrington Bay."
He finished the war with the rank of sergeant and remembers it was a happy day in the beer canteen when victory was declared.
"When the Flying Fortresses started coming in, I knew the war was over," he smiled. "Five-hundred and eighty-five of them landed in one day. We celebrated and hung Hitler."
After the war, Kovatch bought 50 acres to farm, but sold it two years later and came North, to Coppermine (Kugluktuk) and then Hay River where he has lived for 36 years.
