Kenneth C.R. Seal U.S. Naval Aviation Collection

Collection — Folder: 1

Identifier: 2022-02-17

Content Description

The Kenneth C.R. Seal U.S. Naval Aviation Collection is a small collection of textual and visual materials related to Seal's service in the U.S. Navy from about 1946-1959.

The collection inlcludes one pilot's logbook dated 1949. However, the log only has one entry. The bulk of the collection conists of 48 photographs related to Seal's military service. While Seal served in Pensacola, Florida; Corpus Christi, Texas; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Okinawa, Japan, the majority of photographs are not labeled or identified and it is undetermined if all these locations are represented in the imagery. Several photos depict buildings at NAS Pensacola. A few photos depict servicemen in uniform. The majority of the photos depict aircraft in flight, predominantly the North American T-6 Texan but also the Grumman F6-F Hellcat, the Vought F4U Corsair as well as the Sikorsky H-5 helicopter. All photos are smaller than 4x5 inches; most are black-and-white but one is in color.

Dates

Creation: circa 1949-1959

Creator

Seal, Kenneth Charles Rowton, 1928-2020 (Person)

Language of Materials

All materials are in English.

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research and is accessible in the Dahlberg Research Center by appointment. For more information contact us.

Conditions Governing Use

The Museum of Flight (TMOF) Archives is the owner of the physical materials in the archives and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. Written permission must be obtained from TMOF archives before any publication use. TMOF does not necessarily hold copyright to all of the materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners. Consult repository for more details.

Biographical Note: Kenneth C.R. Seal

Kenneth C.R. Seal served with the U.S. Navy during the Korean War.

Kenneth Charles Rowton Seal was born in San Francisco, California on June 28, 1928 to Harold F. and Margaret R. (McDowell) Seal. He studied engineering at the University of Portland in Oregon. He joined the military in 1946, entereing the Officer Candidate Program through the University of Portland. He entered the U.S. Navy as a Midshipman on March 26, 1948 at Pensacola, Florida, doing his basic aviation training there until September 9, 1949. He then entered advanced aviation training at Corpus Christi, Texas. He specialized in privateer type aircraft. As of January 1950, he began a six-week course in flight electronics and anti-submarine warfare at Alameda, California. By June of that year he was directed to Temporary Additional Duty with a transport order to Naval Air Station Barbers Point in Hawai'i, serving with the Seventh Fleet, Air Wing One, Squadron 22. After that, his movements were secret and he could not tell his family where he was going, but he did spend nine months in Naha, Okinawa, Japan and was able to take a trip to Hong Kong. During that time he, with the 22 squadron, participated in the Formosan Straits Patrol and later received a China Service Medal for this work.

Seal applied to leave active service in 1951 and returned to Oregon. He was assigned to the Naval Air Facility in Salem, Oregon for monthly reserves duty and continued working on his degree in engineering at the University of Portland. After obtaining his degree, he accepted a job at the Boeing Company, transferring to Sand Point Naval Air Station for his reserve duty. He left the Naval reserves in 1959, citing the difficulty of working, attending graduate school at the University of Washington, and having a growing family as requiring too much energy to be able to continue in the reserves.

Seal married Ida Marie Severns on February 11, 1956 in Portland. He died on November 20, 2020 and is buried at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington.

Biographical note derived from donor information and records on Ancestry.com.