According to a plausible though unverified account, so-called friendly fire proved the lethal undoing of Pilot Officer Observer Stephen (Steve) Goatley. While conducting an operational sweep over the North Sea in April 1942 his Lockheed Hudson AM 542 was supposedly disabled by fire from apprehensive gunners on a Royal Navy vessel who mistook it for the enemy, a not uncommon occurrence if formal air force combat reports are any guide. As best he could, the pilot is said to have immediately reversed course and made for the nearby coast. He managed to reach it apparently only to have his stricken aircraft trigger a defensive mine when he tried to crash land on a beach. In the ensuing explosion the entire four-man crew reportedly perished, Steve Goatley included. An official report, on the other hand, merely stated that Steve's aircraft, before it went missing, was last seen entering a cloud bank. No trace of him or the rest of the crew was ever found and they were consequently presumed dead.

Much more recently, however, the circumstances surrounding the Hudson's fate were explored in a comprehensive history of 53 Squadron, the unit in which Steve was serving at the time of his disappearance. According to this account, after his Hudson's encounter with the cloud bank, it had continued on its sweep over the North Sea. Then it would appear disaster struck. While approaching the North Friesian Islands off the Dutch coast, the AM542 is believed to have been intercepted and shot down by a German fighter. This fresh account, based on information provided by a Dutch source, offers a possible closure to Steve's last sortie. In any case, a life that had showed every peacetime promise had abruptly ended, one that had begun on Huxley Avenue in Hamilton, Ontario twenty-three years before.

Steve Goatley was born on 8 March 1919 to John Goatley, a building contractor, and Lucie (Roberts) Goatley, both natives of England who had immigrated to Canada shortly before the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. Steve was the youngest of nine children in the family, six Canada shortly before the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. Steve was the youngest of nine children in the family, six of whom had been born in what was then habitually called the Old Country - Dorothy, Edna, Ethel, John, Walter, and Alice. Steve and two of his slightly older siblings, Alfred and Ruby, were subsequently born in Hamilton. They were all raised in their parents' faith and worshipped regularly at St. Andrew's Anglican Church-by-the-Lake on Hamilton Beach, the picturesque locale that sometimes played host to Steve's growing up years.

When it came time for his formal education, Steve was enrolled first, in a local Beach school and then transferred as one of its first pupils to the brand-new A.M. Cunningham School, opened in 1929 to meet the educational needs of the rapidly growing East end section of Hamilton. Almost from the very start Steve, invariably studious, curious, and imaginative, exhibited all the attributes of a scholar in the making. These qualities he took with him to the next stage of his education, which unfolded at nearby Delta Collegiate Institute (DCI) where his brother, Alfred, had preceded him and played on the school's football teams. Like Cunningham School the red brick collegiate was a recent and welcome arrival on the local scene, joining dozens of sister institutions built across Ontario to accommodate its growing post-Great War adolescent population.

At Delta, Steve followed in brother Alfred's footsteps and eventually went out for rugby (as football was then commonly called). But in his early years at DCI Steve seems to have lived in his older brother's shadow. Alfred, besides showing a scholarly bent himself and doing well on the football field, had also gone out for drama, performing in a number of plays put on at the school. In a spoof "obituary" in the Lampadion yearbook - usually a left-handed tribute to the victim - an editor described him as "football player, actor, scholar, player of women, speech-writer etc." For one reason or another, however, the promising Alfred left the collegiate before matriculating.

Meanwhile his brother, Steve, was coming into his own. In 1935 he made it to Delta's Junior Rugby Team and is shown proudly but grimly seated with his mates in a Lampadion photograph, his grim visage probably reflecting the recent death of his fifty-four year old mother. In 1936 he was urged to come out for the team again and he helped it win the City League Championship when it downed the vaunted junior squad from Cathedral High School, whose teams were often deemed unbeatable. For his efforts at his outside wing position, Steve received, like Alfred before him, favourable reviews and was described in the yearbook as "a standout on the line".

According to a Lampadion obituary, Steve, again reminiscent of his brother, also ventured on to the stage and ended up playing the leading role in the popular "Charley's Aunt", one of the annual school plays. He rounded out his extracurricular activities by serving as well on the yearbook's staff. He also came to the attention of his classmates in other ways. Ordinarily only the popular were the subject of "roasts" in a Lampadionfeature called "Room News". And that proved to be Steve's fate. The sophomoric entry in his case, however, reflected the mind set of that less politically correct generation when it stated that "Steve Goatley ... confessed that he thought a palmetto was a light coloured negro". How he might have responded to this treatment can only be guessed at.

Clearly Steve must have reserved much of his time for his studies and the part-time clerking work he did to help pay his way in the large Goatley household. He worked mainly for a local firm, Denco Ltd., which provided him with vital pocket money. Fortunately for Steve, his employer and not least his father's business continued to operate in spite of the Depression that had been ravaging the country since 1929.

When it came to matters academic, Steve also received, as he had on the gridiron, uniformly favourable reviews of his work. On his Middle School standings he gained an overall first while in Upper School he achieved firsts right across the board, and this included his results in the so-called Moderns, French and German, languages in which he hoped to specialize at university. And there was no question that university should be in the cards after he matriculated with honours in 1937 armed to boot with the R.L. Smith Medal in Moderns and English. But funding might have been a problem for the Goatleys since Steve did not immediately embark on his higher education. In order to help gather the necessary resources he presumably went to work, as he had for several summers, as a carpenter for the family's contracting business.

In any case, in the early fall of 1938 a determined Steve, with money in the bank, showed up on the doorstep of McMaster University, the Baptist institution which just eight years before had conveniently transplanted itself in Hamilton's fashionable Westdale district. The move made possible a comparatively affordable higher education for area hopefuls like Steve who lacked the means, particularly in those Depression times, to live away from home while attending university.

Although Steve could have ventured with confidence into virtually any academic specialty - be it in arts or the sciences - he predictably opted for his favourites, the moderns he had excelled in at DCI. Accordingly he registered in Course 24, Honour French and German, and indicated his intention to become a high school language teacher. It followed that he would shortly join the Modern Languages Club where he met and befriended kindred academic souls, among them quite possibly the young woman who would ultimately become his fiancée in everything but name. Joan Corbett, whose parents, like Steve's, were English immigrants, is pictured near him in a Club photograph taken for the 1940 Marmor, the student yearbook. She soon became an important part of his life as they both progressed with high grades through their respective courses.

At the end of the 1939-40 academic session, however, after spending but two years on campus, Steve cut his studies short. He had resolved to enlist for active service in the conflict - already styled World War II -- that had started just as he was about to enter his second year. It appears that he had no qualms about the decision, one that he soon disclosed to his family and an equally supportive though naturally concerned Joan Corbett. The events of the harrowing summer of 1940 may well have helped to shape Steve's resolve to join up. England, the native land of his parents and most of his siblings, was seen to be in mortal danger following the swift and shocking German conquest of the Low Countries and France. Indeed, it was while the battered British Expeditionary Force was being evacuated at Dunkirk and Canada was announcing plans to mobilize its resources that he must have expressed his enlistment intentions to the RCAF. In any event, on 14 June the McMaster Registrar, Elven Bengough, responded to the air force's inquiry about Steve and confirmed his reputable standing at the University.

On 22 September, just as the new academic session was beginning, Steve wrote Bengough, conveying his regrets that he would not be returning for his third year, having been accepted as an RCAF recruit. All the same, he "was looking forward to a personal interview when the registration rush subsides". In all likelihood a friendly and reassuring interview took place because as Steve had already discovered in his own case a cordial relationship existed between the Registrar and students generally. Bengough, it would appear, was always willing to offer a friendly ear or an emotional shoulder to lean on, and more than one McMaster serviceman availed himself of his counsel and support.

Steve formally enlisted in the RCAF on 28 October 1940 at No. 1 Manning Depot in Toronto, the starting point for a good many area recruits. Less than a year before, the organization that would change the lives of him and thousands of other trainees had formally become airborne. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) had set in motion, in the relative safety of Canada, the "remarkable" Anglo-Canadian scheme to raise up a force of fully fledged crews for the air battles about to rage overseas. And it all started at manning depots like the one in Toronto where Steve Goatley underwent his initiation in the ways of the BCATP. It unfolded, however, in highly rustic surroundings that seemed far removed from the "wild blue yonder", namely the yawning "Cow Palace" of the Canadian National Exhibition, which had been speedily requisitioned for the purpose.

In the company of hundreds of other aspiring airmen Steve - to quote the words of the air training plan's historian - was "uniformed, inoculated, and vaccinated, checked and double checked as all assembly-line products are supposed to be", and otherwise made ready for the next stage in their "airmanship" training. But while waiting for that to happen their superiors made certain that the raw recruits would not be idle, thus treating Steve and his comrades to constant route marching, musketry drill, and lectures from veteran air force personnel.

Even after being released from the Manning Depot trainees would have to undergo another period of ground service, usually guard duty at one of the many air stations springing up across the country. Essentially this was a mark time exercise until the next instructional stage was cleared to make room for a fresh intake. This happened in Steve's case when on 16 November 1940 he was dispatched to "RCAF Station Trenton", the peacetime pioneer facility and the flagship of the training program. He was engaged in guard duty there as well as at Belleville, the site of No. 5 Initial Training School (ITS) for over two months before the door opened to the first genuine stage of his formal training at No. 1 ITS in Toronto. He arrived back in the city, where he had enlisted, on 28 January 1941.

If he could make the grade in Toronto and survive a rigorous selection process he could then proceed further along the road that led to aircrew status. As it turned out, he thankfully did make the grade and was excited to learn that he had been picked for flight instruction. This was one of the coveted categories into which trainees were slotted after undergoing aptitude and various skills tests and what passed for a psychological examination. That hurdle conquered, Steve moved on in early March to No. 4 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS), located at Windsor Mills, Quebec. This was a make or break time - indeed a frequently nerve-wracking and nail-biting time -- for those who had their hearts set on flying an aircraft. The experience may have affected Steve as much as any other flight trainee brought up on, say, the aerial exploits of Billy Bishop and other Canadian aces in the Great War.

If Steve had in fact harboured such lofty expectations, he was in for a rude disappointment. Though he did undertake his first solo flight on 12 March his service record indicates that he eventually "washed out" as a pilot trainee. He was struck off strength at the EFTS, and on 18 April returned to the Manning Depot in Toronto for re-posting. He had to bide his time there for well over a month - likely in a state of considerable agitation - before he was finally given the go-ahead in late May to proceed for navigational training.

Steve may have been comforted by the thought that a navigator's role was perceived to be the next best thing to occupying the pilot's seat. His proficiency in mathematics and science ensured success in his new training phase, one that took him through an intricate maze of meteorological, geographical, and cartographical phenomena. The instruction, undertaken on the twin-engined Avro Anson at Malton's No. 1 Air Observer School, was successfully completed by 17 August.

The next and penultimate step in the process took Steve to No. 1 Bombing and Gunnery School at Jarvis where he would be instructed in other important dimensions of the navigator's trade on both the Anson and the Fairey Battle, a single-engined aircraft retired from combat service. Jarvis, situated in south-central Ontario on the Hamilton and Port Dover road, was one of many small towns that reaped economic benefits from the BCATP's expansion. Steve may not have known this but it also became a site for a Hollywood propaganda film on the training plan.

In late September, after learning the essentials of bomb-aiming, Steve was awarded his Observer wing, pronounced aircrew worthy, and, as was the custom, promoted Temporary Sergeant at a ceremony on the Jarvis station. It was proudly attended by his father, three sisters, a niece, and not least by Joan Corbett. But before Steve could proceed overseas he was required to take a course in advanced navigation. Consequently, upon leaving Jarvis on 27 September, he boarded a train for Pennfield Ridge, New Brunswick, the site of No. 2 Air Navigation School. There he may have met up with another former McMaster student, Sergeant Robert Edgar [HR], who had arrived at the station only two weeks before, accompanied by his wife. The "high standard of training" the two airmen received, as Jack Watts, a Delta graduate and a veteran navigator, observed, guaranteed that they would be "in popular demand among ... RAF crews". And indeed they would be, as events proved.

While at Pennfield Ridge a gratified Steve, presumably because of the high grades awarded throughout his training, was appointed to a commission and on 26 October formally given the rank of Pilot Officer. Within a month his stay in New Brunswick came to an end and he was ordered to the No. 1 Y Depot in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was the long awaited signal that his days in Canada would soon be over. The depot was the jumping off point for an overseas departure.

Steve sent his last Canadian letters to his family and Joan Corbett with whom, according to the Goatleys, he came to an "understanding" that they would marry when he came back from the war. He set sail for Britain on 8 December 1941, which happened to be the day after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Nonetheless this ultimately tide-turning event for the Allies brought the United States into the war as a major partner for hitherto isolated Britain and the hard pressed Soviet Union, invaded by massive German armies the previous summer. On the trip across the Atlantic Steve celebrated America's welcome entry with his fellow passengers, one of whom would have been yet another former McMaster student, Captain Douglas Young [HR], an artillery staff officer also bound for Britain in the same convoy. In a letter home Steve described his ship as an ocean liner turned "armed raider", which apparently outran lurking U-boats on its sometimes turbulent passage through heavy seas.

On 19 December, following his safe arrival overseas, news of which he cabled to his family, Steve joined other newly landed Canadian airmen at the Personnel Reception Centre in Bournemouth, the resort city transformed into a front line military station on the English Channel. En route to the centre his train had rolled through what he excitedly called an "artist's paradise", the English countryside that had inspired the likes of Constable and enthralled hosts of North American newcomers. Similarly Steve's first glimpse of London, still the Imperial metropolis, almost overwhelmed him as he took in its modernity, reflected in its architecture, particularly the multi-purpose buildings, and its captivating urban landscape, so far removed from his cramped and unpretentious home town in Canada. Later he would wax equally eloquent over London's celebrated monuments, which he visited whenever his military duties permitted. He would, however, once he had encountered the phenomenon, waste no eloquent words - indeed quite the contrary - on what he deemed the country's outdated and inadequate indoor plumbing and heating, the bane of most new arrivals from overseas.

At Bournemouth, after undergoing medical checks and passing, among others, a high altitude test, Steve received his flying kit and battle dress and awaited further orders. These were not long in coming. Before December and the year were out he was posted to No. 53 Squadron, shortly after celebrating his first (and what proved to be his last) overseas Christmas. It was eventually sweetened by special gifts from the Goatley and Corbett families as well as from church friends, Cunningham School, and other well wishers. The gifts' failure to arrive on time, owing to the vagaries of wartime mail delivery, was probably more than offset by Steve's chance to share the holiday season not only with his own English relatives but with Joan Corbett's as well. In the time remaining he paid post-Christmas visits to Bournemouth and the scenic county of Surrey.

After his busy leave Steve's new destination was Limavady, Londonderry County, in Northern Ireland, the temporary home of the RAF's 53 Squadron, a unit assigned to Coastal Command and equipped with twin-engined Lockheed Hudson patrol bombers. Shortly after he and other Canadians arrived at Limavady on 8 January 1942 Steve was pleased to be appointed Acting Station Navigation Officer. He served in the post until a replacement could be found for the recently retired officer in charge. Steve's brightness and the quality of his training had obviously made an impression.

Subsequently he and other air crew members took part in the squadron's operational training flights, on one of which they helped to escort an incoming convoy bringing the first American troops to Britain. In all Steve had some six practice "ops" out of Limavady, and on at least two occasions his Hudson flew alongside that of Sergeant Observer Keith Nevills, his friend from training days. They conducted sweeps in search of convoys and enemy U-boats but for the most part had little or nothing to report for their efforts. Throughout Steve constantly assured Joan and family members -- he was a prodigious and faithful letter writer -- that his activities were not dangerous to life and limb and that he was not involved say, in hazardous bombing raids over enemy territory. He was well aware, of course, that strict military censorship would have scissored out any specific reference to what he was actually doing on behalf of King and Country.

Other comments and observations, which made their way past the censor, sometimes bore a trace of bitterness. In a mid-February letter to his father, in whom he often confided, he put his own spin on a story that appeared in a recently received McMaster Alumni New. "More and more McMaster man", he wrote, "are coming out of cover and joining up. It's about time". The "cover" presumably was the military exemption accorded undergraduates who succeeded in keeping up their grades. Later he would complain that Canada itself would be relegated to the war's "sidelines" so long as she ruled out conscription for active service overseas. Another irritant sprang from the English scene, namely, the prevalence in some quarters, even in the otherwise leveling circumstances of wartime, of the country's traditional class system that for the sensitive Steve negated the whole concept of democracy. One gathers that the parental recipient of this comment felt much the same way.

On 18 February, following his enjoyment of a short leave in Belfast, Steve and his squadron were transferred to North Coates, near Grimsby, in Lincolnshire. The village hosted an important base that later served as the home of the so-called Strike Wing that harassed the German-held coasts of Europe. Lincolnshire, Steve's newest home away from home, was often dubbed "Bomber County" because so many of its RAF fields were used by Bomber Command in its highly acclaimed forays against the enemy occupied Continent. Indeed Coastal Command, to which 53 Squadron belonged, had often lost out to its powerful and highly visible sister command when the allocation of space, resources, and suitable aircraft had come under discussion in high places.

Even so, Coastal Command and its 53 Squadron were allotted their own space at North Coates and the satellite field at Donna Nook so that its aircraft might carry out vital anti-submarine and anti-shipping sweeps over the North Sea and beyond. Moreover, despite the limitations imposed on it Coastal Command was on the point of savouring

It was to this mission that Steve's squadron was soon assigned.

In those early days at North Coates non-commissioned crew members like Keith Nevills had to contend with comparatively primitive living quarters, namely a Nissen Hut feebly heated in the cold Lincolnshire winter by a solitary coke stove. It was a far cry from the central heating so often taken for granted in Canada. All the same, there were compensations. Airmen often wrote home to say that they were eating reasonably well, in some cases apparently even better than they ever had. They were also seizing the opportunity, when leaves permitted, to re-connect with welcoming English friends or relatives. Steve shared these advantages but not, happily for him, the rough-and-ready living quarters of the non-commissioned personnel. He and his fellow officers were billeted in houses that enjoyed amenities unknown in a Nissen Hut. On his own leaves Steve took, among others, a sentimental journey to Tilehurst, close by Reading, the one time home of his parents and so many of his siblings.

There was also, of course, the grim round of perilous operations that intruded on the all too infrequent diversions of recreation and family reunions. Every operation was mounted -- to quote Keith' Nevills' description, from a

Steve, like Keith, had begun following this regimen shortly after his arrival at North Coates.

Steve, for his part, wrote home on 22^nd February that he was engaged in "plenty of action". Some of it likely resulted from attacks on enemy troop transports bound for conquered Norway or on assorted shipping plying dangerous "German Only" waters off the coast of neutral Sweden. After one such hair-raising sweep Steve began to wonder "what trip [would] be his last". He was obviously troubled by such thoughts, confessing that he had deliberately held back letters that conveyed no cheer for the home front, an admission which ironically would also have had a dampening effect on his correspondents.

Nonetheless Steve, always the committed church-goer, still hoped that "Providence would be kind" and somehow ensure his survival in the sustained action that he knew was coming. He wrote his sister Alice on 22 February, assuring her as convincingly as he could that he was "not a pessimist". All the same he ended with these words: "But when you come face to face with reality, well ...." Then in early March he told his father that he also sought to reinforce his notions about immortality, and to that end had spent part of a leave at a London church service dominated by an inspired sermon on the subject, "just what I needed", he comfortingly wrote.

Perhaps it was just as well that such reflections were periodically crowded out by compelling distractions, professional and otherwise. The otherwise included the leaves that mercifully brought him relief from his concerns and the welcome arrival of the Canadian newspapers and magazines that re-connected him with home, hearth, and alma mater. Thus the McMaster Alumni News faithfully reported the latest campus developments and helped to jog Steve's pleasant memories of two of his language professors, Ernest F. Haden and Albert P Martin, who taught French and German respectively.

On the professional side, Steve had soon discovered that his Canadian training had not prepared him fully for all the challenging demands imposed on a front line navigator. Quite frequently, in whatever leisure moments at his disposal, he was obliged to wade through a mass of literature on the latest techniques and procedures for navigating a sweep over the North Sea. Never a stranger to hard work, he had little trouble dealing with the task.

One of the "reality" sweeps Steve had anticipated, undertaken on the evening of 10 March 1942, turned out to be, in the words of a letter home, "exciting" and "thrilling". He could easily have used more unsettling words but he obviously wished to spare the letter's recipient. He wrote that his Hudson was attacked repeatedly by "three night fighters" and only the skills of his pilot, who took highly successful evasive measures, saved the day. The North Coates station log, which, of course, matched his account, added that his aircraft had also been fired on by an enemy surface vessel. Though Steve and the Hudson crew survived the harrowing experience and others that shortly followed during what he called a "pretty hot" period, they were nonetheless an augury of worse things to come. Even so, in the midst of all this he sent a message home that struck a positive and comforting note reminiscent of his earliest overseas correspondence. It was a cablegram dated 8 April. 1942 and read simply: LETTERS AND PARCELS RECEIVED MANY THANKS ALL WELL AND SAFE FONDEST REGARDS It proved to be his last message.

On an operation flown just two weeks later, Steve's Hudson, to quote his service record, again took off "carrying bombs" and "flying battle operational". Besides Steve, there were three RAF personnel aboard the Hudson when it left North Coates on 22 April 1942. Pilot Officer George Gordon Shore, who was at the controls, was flying with the crew for the first time. Serving as wireless operator/air gunners were Flight Sergeant Reginald Cram and Sergeant James Jenkinson. On this fateful occasion, however, their luck ran out and their North Sea sweep ended in disaster.

An official though inconclusive explanation was sent after the event to a sorrowing Joan Corbett, listed on Steve's service record as "next of kin". It stated that at 8:00 o'clock on the morning of 22 April 1942 his Hudson -- AM 542 - in the company of another, took off from the North Coates field ostensibly in search of a sister aircraft reported missing the previous day. The official letter went on to say that his aircraft flew into a cloud or fog bank and was separated from the other Hudson, and then added, "that is the last that has been seen of it". The writer of the letter tried to soften the blow by pointing out that the aircraft carried a survival dinghy and that "we have not yet given up hope that he may turn up". There is evidence that Steve had "turned up" once before after being reported missing - a week before in fact - so the official might be excused if he thought he would do the same this time around.

As the reader knows, a graver scenario was depicted in the already cited unofficial and unverified account. It was provided by Steve's friend and squadron comrade, Keith Nevills, who had also shared with the person he called "Stevie" most of his training experience in Canada. It was Keith's "understanding" that his friend's aircraft had happened upon a convoy and that the escorting Royal Navy vessels, mistaking it for the enemy, had opened fire, disabling it. There then had followed, according to his account, the fatal crash landing on the mined beach. "I don't think the phrase ‘friendly fire' had been coined ... yet", Keith recently wrote. "However, having been fired upon by the British Navy on several occasions, I can ... [state] that it did happen frequently!" It certainly happened to another former McMaster student, Barney Rawson [HR], whose Wellington bomber was once "shot up" by a British convoy, forcing him to return early to base. Again, a month before Steve went missing, another Delta Collegiate graduate flying out of a Scottish base, confided to his wartime diary that he "came out of clouds over 2 [British] destroyers - got back in clouds as navy shoots and asks later". Obviously friendly fire became for some a fact of life - and possibly death.

As already recorded, however, all this was ruled out in the case of Hudson AM 542 and its four-man crew headed up by P/O Shore. Years later the latter's younger brother, John, tapped the German archival sources that revealed the actual circumstances of the Hudson's fate. After venturing over the North Sea, it fell victim not to friendly Navy fire but rather to the unfriendly variety delivered by an intercepting German fighter aircraft off the Netherlands' North Friesian Islands. It turned out to be a JU-88, perhaps the same aircraft spotted in the vicinity by AM542's accompanying Hudson while on its way safely back to base. The unlucky AM542's nemesis was Oberleutnant Lothar Linke, the Ju-88's pilot, who went on to become one of the Luftwaffe's leading aces before he in turn was eventually shot down and killed.