Coastal Command - A "forgotten" force

Discussion in 'The War In The Air' started by spidge, Mar 17, 2006.

  1. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Was Coastal Command the "Forgotten" Force of brave men?

    TWO SERVICES - A TRIPLE TASK
    Find the enemy;
    Strike the enemy ;
    Protect our ships;
    That is the triple task of Coastal Command, in which the Royal Navy
    co-operates with the Royal Air Force.

    Read about it here in detail.

    http://www.diggerhistory3.info/coastal/page/01-contents.htm
     
  2. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    RAF Coastal command was indeed the forgotten force, and still is partly forgotten to this day, Fighter and Bomber Commands taking the glory, not that they should be denied their rightful place in history. Coastal, being given the title "The Cinderella Service" The aircraft and equipment they started the war with were hand me downs, in most cases discarded by other commands and yet, the U-boat war, and in particular The Battle of the Atlantic which started on the first day of war and ended on the last was as Churchill stated, the only battle that really worried him during WWII.

    As you will probably realise from the above statment I am a supporter of Coastal Command and research the subject. I specialise in No.120 Squadron RAF Coastal Command from the date they were reformed in June 1941 to the the last day of WWII. I also research Coastal Command and the RAF in general and have an interest in the Liberator aircraft.

    Spidge, thanks for the link.

    Regards
    Peter Clare
     
  3. maxs75

    maxs75 Member

    Was the Mediterranean Allied Coastal Air Force somehow subordinated to Coastal Command, or simply a specular organization for Med. duties?

    Max
     
  4. adrian roberts

    adrian roberts Senior Member

    Coastal Command did an unglamorous but vital job. Some would say more vital than Bomber Command, depending on their view of the usefulness of the attacks on German cities. The experience of Coastal Command crews was repeated, uneventful and boring trips in cold and noisy aircraft, interspersed with a few minutes of lethal terror. I expect you know of the four VCs they were awarded - Campbell, Trigg, Hornell, Cruikshank (Ken Cruikshank is the only living Air VC).
    I believe that Coastal Command sank 196 U-boats. Do any of you have a breakdown of how many were sunk by each type of aircraft? [Spidge - sorry if its in your link above; haven't had time to read it yet!]

    Adrian
     
  5. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    Coastal Command did an outstanding job, and I don't know if the definitive history of it has been written. It should.
     
  6. morse1001

    morse1001 Very Senior Member

    Coastal Command did an outstanding job, and I don't know if the definitive history of it has been written. It should.

    I do not think that one has been published but the Air Historical branch have written various papers on the subject of Coastal Command.
     
  7. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Yes indeed. A much ignored branch of the services whose heroic work went unnoticed. :(
     
  8. Gnomey

    Gnomey World Travelling Doctor

    Very true Gottard. Especially their work in fighting the U-boats in the Atlantic and all the patrols that it envolved.
     
  9. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Fighting the U-Boats? A Battle that went on right to the very end ,Gnomey. Those guys did some work keeping Donitz's "wolf Packs" from victory
     
  10. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    Hi All.
    To answer the question posed by Adrian concening the number of U-boats sunk by each type of aircraft. I can offer the following which is taken from an unpublished paper written by the late Flt/Lt. E.S. Cheek, AFC, DFM, RAF entitled "Anti-Submarine Operations Coastal Command 1939-45"

    Liberator. 74
    Catalina. 39
    Sunderland. 30
    Wellington. 30
    Hudson. 26
    Fortress. 12
    Halifax. 8
    Whitley. 5

    Regards
    Peter
     
  11. plant-pilot

    plant-pilot Senior Member

    Any reason that the Liberator had so many? Was there more Libs tahn any other type or were they just better at it?
     
  12. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    I really liked the Sunderland and the Catalina's. The Sunderlands with the extra tanks actually carried 3037 US gallons or 11,602 litres.

    Trivia:

    As British antisubmarine measures improved, the Sunderland began to show its claws as well. A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Sunderland performed the type's first unassisted kill of a U-boat on 17 July 1940.

    On 3 April 1940, a Sunderland operating off Norway was attacked by six German Junkers Ju-88 fighters, and managed to shoot one down, damage another enough to send it off to a forced landing, and drive off the rest. The Germans were supposed to have nicknamed the Sunderland the "Fliegende Stachelsweine (Flying Porcupine)".
     
  13. adrian roberts

    adrian roberts Senior Member

    Peter - Thanks for your answer. The total comes to 224 not 196, but there could be all sorts of reasons for that.

    Plant
    Any reason that the Liberator had so many? Was there more Libs tahn any other type or were they just better at it?


    I was also surprised the Liberator came out on top. It may have been about numbers. My figures are that 733 Sunderlands were built but the RAF had 1567 Liberators - I'm not sure how many of the latter were with Coastal Command and how many with Bomber Command but I think a considerable proportion were with Coastal. And the Lib came along later and may have had the most advanced equipment. Also, the Liberator and the Catalina had even longer range than the Sunderland and were used from Spring 43 to "plug the gap" in the middle of the Atlantic which the Sunderlands couldn't, and it was this that helped to turn the Battle of the Atlantic in our favour. Much of the action was in that area after that, so the Lib and Cat had the most opportunities.

    Adrian
     
  14. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Peter -
    Also, the Liberator and the Catalina had even longer range than the Sunderland and were used from Spring 43 to "plug the gap" in the middle of the Atlantic which the Sunderlands couldn't, and it was this that helped to turn the Battle of the Atlantic in our favour. Much of the action was in that area after that, so the Lib and Cat had the most opportunities.

    Adrian

    The Liberator yes.......but the Catalina?

    INFORMATION:

    DIMENSIONS:
    Designation: PBY Catalina
    Type: Long-Range Maritime Patrol Flying Boat
    Contractor: Consolidated
    Origin: United States
    Service Date: 1936
    Accommodation: 9

    Length: 63.88 feet
    Wingspan: 104 feet
    Height:

    Weight (Empty): 17,200 lbs
    MTOW: 34,000 lbs



    PERFORMANCE:

    ARMAMENT:
    Powerplant: 2 x 1,200 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp air-cooled radial engines.

    Max Speed: 113 mph
    Max Range: 2,990 miles
    Service Ceiling: 18,100 feet
    Rate of Climb:

    2 x .50 caliber machine guns
    2 x .30 caliber machine guns
    4,000 lbs of torpedoes, depth charges or bombs carried externally.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    INFORMATION:

    DIMENSIONS:
    Designation: Sunderland
    Type: Anti-Submarine / Maritime Patrol
    Contractor: Short
    Origin: Britain
    Service Date: 1937
    Accommodation: 7

    Length: 85.33 feet
    Wingspan: 112.77 feet
    Height:

    Weight (Empty): 37,000 lbs
    MTOW: 60,000 lbs



    PERFORMANCE:

    ARMAMENT:
    Powerplant: 4 x 1,200 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830-90B Twin Wasp air-cooled radial engines.

    Max Speed: 213 mph
    Max Range: 2,960 miles
    Service Ceiling: 17,900 feet
    Rate of Climb:

    6 x .50 caliber machine guns
    8 x .30 caliber machine guns
    2,000 lbs of bombs and depth charges

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
  15. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    As Adrian says, the Liberator and Catalina had the most opportunities. One of the reasons is that they could penetrate deeper into the Atlantic and as far as the Liberater was concerned it could stay over and around a convoy for a longer period of time therfore offering greater protection. An aircraft did not have to destroy or even sight a U-boat to protect a convoy, all it had to do was to be seen, a U-boat which had made contact with a convoy would stay on the surface and shadow it from astern, being able to keep up a good rate on knots, reporting its position to base which in turn directed other U-boats to the area, but air cover would force the U-boat to submerge where it was much slower, the U-boat would then be outpaced by the convoy and it would lose contact.
    The Liberator I was the RAF's first VLR aircraft.

    Regards
    Peter.
     
  16. adrian roberts

    adrian roberts Senior Member

    Spidge
    RE: your figures on the apparently similar ranges of the Catalina and Sunderland.
    The Sunderland variant in your quote must be the late-war Mark V as it has P&W Twin Wasps. The Marks I, II & III that bore the brunt of the fighting had the Bristol Pegasus. The range figure I have for the mk I is a Maximum Load Range of 1780 miles. Maximum Range figures are for zero load [payload]. On Atlantic patrol, bombed up, they would have been near to max load, and a range of 1780 gives a radius of 890 miles - not enough to get to mid-Atlantic and patrol for very long. I do not have equivalent figures for the Cat but I do know they had a better radius than the Sunderland - the Americans intended them for patrolling the Pacific.
     
  17. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Another conflicting version on specs.

    The Short Sunderland was one of the finest flying-boats ever built and it served with Royal Air Force Coastal Command for 21 years. A development of the Short Empire flying-boats, the Sunderland was designed to a 1933 Air Ministry specification for a long-range general reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrol flying-boat to replace the biplanes then in service. The prototype first flew in 1937 and production Sunderlands entered service in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War three squadrons of Sunderlands were operational with Coastal Command. The type showed its worth on September 18th 1939, when two aircraft from 204 and 228 Squadrons rescued the entire crew of 34 from the sinking freighter "Kensington Court" off the Scilly Isles, the rescued men all being back on land within an hour of being torpedoed. As the war continued, Sunderlands were used increasingly against U-boats. The 2,000lb bomb-load was carried internally, the bombs, mines or depth charges being run out through the side of the hull on rails for dropping. No fewer than ten machine guns in three power-operated turrets were carried (seven being fitted to the MkIII) and the formidable firepower presented by these weapons earned for the type the nickname "Flying Porcupine" from the Germans. On one occasion a single Sunderland was attacked by eight JU 88s and shot down three of them, damaged a fourth and drove off the remainder. Sunderland production ceased in 1945 - 739 aircraft being completed - although the type continued in regular service with the RAF being used on the Berlin Airlift and during the Korean War. On anti-terrorist operations in Malaya, Sunderlands normally carried 200 fragmentation bombs. The Sunderland III, for which 456 were built, was powered by four 1,065 h.p. Bristol Pegasus XVIII engines giving a maximum speed of 210 mph and a cruising duration of 12 hours. A crew of 13 was carried. Wing span 112ft 9 1/2 in, length 85ft 4in, height 32ft 10 1/2in. Markings are provided for an aircraft of 423 Sqn Royal Canadian Air Force based at Castle Archdale, Northern Ireland, in 1943-44, for North Atlantic patrol duties
     
  18. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    Are there any books written about the coastal command squadrons?
     
  19. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    A selection of comparisons relating to types in Coastal Command service.

    Anson I.
    PLE.....5.5hrs
    Cruising Speed....103 knots
    Range.....565 n.mls
    Load....200lbs

    Hudson II
    PLE....6.0 hrs
    Cruising Speed....140 knots
    Range....840 n.mls
    Load....750 lbs

    Hudson VI
    PLE....6.9 hrs
    Cruising Speed....140 knots
    Range....996 n.mls
    Load....1,600 lbs

    Whitley V
    PLE....9.0 hrs
    Cruising Speed....110 knots
    Range....990 n.mls
    Load....2,000 lbs

    Whitley VII
    PLE....10.3 hrs
    Cruising Speed....105 knots
    Range....1,082 n.mls
    Load....2,000 lbs

    Catalina I
    PLE....17.6 hrs
    Cruising Speed....100 knots
    Range....1,762 n.mls
    Load....2,000 lbs

    Catalina IV
    PLE....15.5 hrs
    Cruising Speed....106 knots
    Range....1,643 n.mls
    Load....1,500 lbs

    Sunderland I
    PLE....12.0 hrs
    Cruising Speed....110 knots
    Range....1,276 n.mls
    Load....2,000 lbs

    Sunderland II
    PLE....11.6 hrs
    Cruising Speed....110 knots
    Range....1,276 n.mls
    Load....2,000 lbs

    Liberator I
    PLE....16.1 hrs
    Cruising Speed....150 Knots
    Range....2,415 n.mls
    Load....2,000 lbs

    Some books about Coastal Command.

    RAF Coastal Command 1936 - 1969. Chris Ashworth
    Search Find and Kill. Norman Franks
    Aircraft Versus Submarine. Alfred Price
    RAF Coastal Command Losses 1939-41. Ross McNeill
    Business In Great Waters The U-boat Wars 1916-1945. John Terraine
    Naught Escapes Us The History of No.206 Squadron. Peter B. Gunn

    Just a few.

    Regards
    Peter.
     
  20. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    Cheers mate!
    Kitty
    :D
     

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