IVAN STEEN SOLLOWS - Steen Sollows graduated as a member of Course 63 on January 15, 1943. The Yarmouth, Nova Scotia native was training at No. 9 Operational Training Unit on November 15, 1943, when Beaufighter aircraft EL 285 which he was piloting, crashed at Wolf Crag at approximately 2010 hours.
F/Sgt. Sollows and his observer, were returning to the aerodrome from an Operational Flight Exercise when the Beaufighter flew into high ground near Matterdale. The aircraft had successfully completed two circuits of its exercise and Sollows asked permission to proceed on the third circuit by VHF to the ground station. The permission was granted and acknowledged. Sgt. Marc Jean Lahausse observer a resident of Mauritius was killed as well.
K.G. Sollows recalls his brother’s RCAF service. “Steen during his primary education years aspired to be an aeronautical engineer. He constructed countless flying models – many of his own design. He completed high school at the age of fifteen years. On finishing high school he demonstrated that he was entrepreneurially minded by subcontracting with the builder of the RCAF airport at Yarmouth, N.S., to pull nails out of used lumber so that the wood could be reused. During school years he delivered papers for pocket money. His friends recollect that he was so polite to others that his personality bordered on humility.
“Steen, one of three brothers in the RCAF, enlisted at the age of seventeen. On completion of his training at Patricia Bay, B.C., on torpedo bombing, he and his radio navigator Sgt. Marc Lahausse (RAF) were seperated on arrival at Bournemouth England. They finally succeeded in being recrewed on Beaufighters after months of representation at Carlisle. Shortly after that they were both killed. Steen was 20 years old when he died.
“You are to be commended for your efforts to help preserve the memory of those who died that we who survived might have a reasonable life.”