Harry DeWolf

Harry DeWolf

Commander Harry G. DeWolf, Commanding Officer, on the bridge of the destroyer HMCS Haida, 5 May 1944
Birth name Henry George DeWolf
Nickname(s) Hard-Over-Harry
Born (1903-06-26)26 June 1903
Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada
Died 18 December 2000(2000-12-18) (aged 97)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Allegiance  Canada
Service/branch  Royal Canadian Navy
Years of service 1918–1960
Rank Vice Admiral
Commands held HMCS Festubert
HMCS St. Laurent
HMCS Haida
HMCS Warrior
HMCS Magnificent
Battles/wars

Spanish Civil War
World War II

Awards Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Distinguished Service Order
Distinguished Service Cross
Mentioned in Despatches
Canadian Forces Decoration
Legion of Merit (United States)
Légion d'honneur (France)

Vice Admiral Henry George "Harry" DeWolf CBE, DSO, DSC, CD (26 June 1903 – 18 December 2000) was a Canadian naval officer who was famous as the first commander of HMCS Haida during the Second World War.

Early years

DeWolf was born in Bedford, Nova Scotia. His father owned and operated DeWolf & Sons, a ship brokerage business.

DeWolf entered the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in 1918 at age 15 when he attended the Royal Naval College of Canada at Esquimalt, British Columbia.[1] The original RNCC had been destroyed in the Halifax Explosion the previous winter.

DeWolf graduated from RNCC in 1921 and was sent on an exchange with the Royal Navy to serve on board the battleship HMS Resolution. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant in 1924 and took a six-month course in gunnery, torpedoes and navigation at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Returning to Canada in the summer of 1925, he was posted to one of the RCN's two destroyers, HMCS Patriot.[1]

In early 1930, Lieutenant (Navy) DeWolf received his first command, the Battle-class trawler HMCS Festubert at Halifax. In May 1931, he married Gwendolen Gilbert of Somerset, Bermuda, whom he had met while serving aboard HMCS Patriot, which had spent a winter training there several years earlier. In 1932, DeWolf was posted to the destroyer HMCS Vancouver and then in 1933 to the destroyer HMCS Skeena.[1]

In July 1935, he was promoted to lieutenant commander and posted to National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ) in Ottawa. He was made Assistant Director of Intelligence and Plans[1] and was part of the RCN's negotiation team for acquiring four used destroyers from the Royal Navy.

In 1937, DeWolf studied at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and then served on an exchange with a Royal Navy cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean Sea during the Spanish Civil War.

Second World War

HMCS St. Laurent

For more details on this topic, see HMCS St. Laurent (H83).

DeWolf returned to Canada in 1939 and was appointed commanding officer of the destroyer HMCS St. Laurent.[1] St. Laurent was posted to convoy duty out of Halifax. St. Laurent under DeWolf reportedly fired the RCN's first shots of the war as they helped rescue British and French troops escaping from continental Europe during Operation Dynamo after the Fall of France in late May and early June 1940. St. Laurent returned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic, and the following month, in July 1940, DeWolf's ship rescued 859 German and Italian prisoners of war, survivors of Arandora, which had been torpedoed by a U-boat, U-47.[1] DeWolf was promoted to commander in 1940. He and his ship were mentioned in despatches twice during his service on St. Laurent.

Years later, he recalled the following incident, which took place while in command of St. Laurent:

The mechanism of a live, armed torpedo was being painted by a sailor, who first lifted the safety catch to paint underneath it, and then lifted the firing handle to paint under that. The torpedo fired, naturally, and ran wild on deck," he said. "It slammed into the deck house, bounced off and kept changing around. Everybody, including me, was scared. The decks cleared pretty rapidly. Since we thought we were all going up any second, Petty Officer Ridge and myself decided to try and tame the torpedo. We got astride it. It was as slippery as a greased pig and we thought its propeller might cut our feet off. We rode and guided it over the rail and stuck one leg over the rail to hold it steady. The propeller was making a tremendous racket on the iron deck. We finally managed to release the air cock (the torpedo was driven by compressed air). We still had a live torpedo. When we got to port (in the United Kingdom) we hoisted it on the wall and left it there. I reported to headquarters, but I don't know what became of the torpedo.[1] (The warhead was eventually placed in a North Sea naval mine field.)

HMCS Haida

For more details on this topic, see HMCS Haida (G63).

DeWolf took command of HMCS Haida in August 1943.[1] Under DeWolf, Haida earned a reputation as "the Fightingest Ship in the Canadian Navy", and was responsible for sinking 14 enemy ships in just over a year, earning numerous accolades. Haida and DeWolf saw service with convoys to Murmansk as well as operations to secure the English Channel in preparation for Operation Overlord. Most of his more famous battles took place at night in the English Channel, when DeWolf secured his reputation as a fearless and skillful tactician and became known to his crew as "Hard-Over-Harry" for bold manoeuvres off the coast of France. DeWolf earned the Distinguished Service Order for rescuing survivors of HMCS Athabaskan within range of enemy coastal guns on the French coast.[2]

DeWolf left Haida and was recalled to Ottawa, where he was promoted to captain in September 1944, becoming Assistant Chief of Naval Staff.[1]

Cold War

During the postwar years, DeWolf commanded the aircraft carriers HMCS Warrior and HMCS Magnificent between January 1947 and September 1948, before being promoted to rear admiral.[1]

He served as Flag Officer Pacific Coast at Esquimalt from 1948 to 1950, then was recalled to NDHQ where he served as Vice Chief of Naval Staff from 1950 to 1952, then was posted to Washington, D.C. as principal military advisor to the Canadian ambassador from 1952 to 1956.[1]

DeWolf was promoted to vice admiral in January 1956 and served as Chief of the Naval Staff before retiring from the RCN on 31 July 1960.[1]

Retirement

DeWolf and his wife retired to her home in Bermuda, although they spent their summers in Ottawa, his last RCN posting. DeWolf was an active golfer and fisherman and he was active in the Royal Canadian Navy Benevolent Fund, which raises money for retired sailors down on their luck.

He died in Ottawa on 18 December 2000 at the age of 97 and was buried at sea from HMCS Ville de Québec.

On 23 September 1992, the Town of Bedford named a 1.4 hectare waterfront park on the Bedford Basin after DeWolf. The minutes of the 28 November 2000 meeting of the Halifax Regional Council reveal that DeWolf had contributed $100,000 CDN to the municipality, presumably as thanks for naming the prominent Admiral Harry DeWolf Park after him.[3]

On 18 September 2014, it was announced that the planned new class of Canadian warships built specifically for the Arctic, and the lead ship of the class, the Harry DeWolf-class offshore patrol vessel, would be named after him.[4]

References

Military offices
Preceded by
Rollo Mainguy		 Chief of the Naval Staff
1956–1960 		Succeeded by
Herbert Rayner
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