John O’Hare was born in Prestwich in Lancashire on 16 September 1912, the son of John and Isabella Bailey O’Hare (née Wilkinson). At the time of the 1921 Census John was at home with his widowed mother (a cloth repairer in the Barrow Jute Works) and his 12 year old sister Winifred at 12, Lord Street, Barrow in Furness, Lancashire. Also at home was his uncle John Wilkinson – a brass finisher in the Vickers Shipyard. John O’Hare was married to twenty one year old Sylvia Lilian Bolam from Dalton in Furness, Lancashire in Ulverston, Lancashire in the 3rd Quarter of 1938.

He joined the Royal Navy and trained as an Engine Room Artificer.  By April 1943 he was serving in submarines as an Engine Room Artificer 2nd Class and had been drafted to the Barrow built submarine HMS P615. On 18 April 1943 HMS P615 was on patrol off the West Coast of Africa some one hundred miles South West of Freetown in Sierra Leone when she was detected and attacked by the German submarine U-123. HMS P615 was hit by a torpedo and was sunk with all hands.

John O’Hare  is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial on Panel 77, Column 2 and on the Cenotaph in Dalton in Furness, Lancashire (now Cumbria). Sylvia O’Hare was married for a 2nd time to William G S Varcoe in Ulverston in October 1950.