Australians and RAF Coastal Command in World War II

Role of Coastal Command

With Fighter Command and Bomber Command, Coastal Command was founded in 1936. Initially, maritime aviation suffered due to a disagreement between the Royal Navy (RN) and the RAF over whose responsibility it was.

As a result, Coastal Command had fewer resources than the other RAF commands or the RN's Fleet Air Arm. In 1940, the First Lord of the Admiralty (the political head of the RN) Albert Victor (AV) Alexander, referred to Coastal Command as the ‘Cinderella of the RAF’ when he tried to get more resources from the Air Ministry for fighting German U-boats.

Coastal Command's main role was to protect Allied shipping convoys in the Atlantic from attacks by German U-boats. It focused on defending supply lines across the:

• Atlantic
• Mediterranean
• Middle East
• and North African theatres of war.

Coastal Command aircraft also conducted maritime reconnaissance flights, including monitoring German invasion preparations during the Battle of Britain.

Other roles included:

• anti-shipping patrols
• transporting important passengers
• search and rescue
• minelaying
• photographic reconnaissance
• meteorological monitoring.

Some Australians served in Coastal Command as part of RAF squadrons, and 3 Australian squadrons were attached to it:

• No 10 Squadron RAAF
• No 455 Squadron RAAF
• No 461 Squadron RAAF.

No 10 Squadron RAAF

When war broke out on 3 September 1939, a party of Australian personnel were already in England to take delivery of new Short Sunderland flying boats. They formed No 10 Squadron RAAF, attached to Coastal Command. They were the sole RAAF presence in the European theatre until 1940. This was when the first Australians trained under the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) began arriving in England.

No 10 Squadron RAAF was based mainly at Mount Batten in Plymouth. It flew throughout the war and was the only RAAF squadron to remain on continuous active service during World War II. In June 1945, the squadron ceased operations and formally withdrew from RAF Coastal Command. It was officially disbanded on 26 October 1945.

Over 6 years, No 10 Squadron RAAF had flown 4,553,860 nautical miles (around 8.4 million km), undertaken 3,177 operational flights and sunk 5 submarines.

After training as an aircrew gunner in Australia in 1943, Peter Munro was sent to Britain and joined No 10 Squadron at Mount Batten, near Plymouth. Listen to Munro's account of the Battle of the Atlantic.

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Difficult and tiring work

The Australian and Allied airmen of RAF Coastal Command flew long and tiring patrols from bases in Britain, such as Pembroke Dock in Wales and Mount Batten in Plymouth, England. They flew over miles of ocean to hunt and destroy German U-boats, which were taking a heavy toll on merchant ships in the convoys bringing vital supplies to Britain.

The design and construction of the flying boats meant that their crews had to remain vigilant, even when not on flying operations:

… when we weren't flying very often we were manning the aircraft to prevent from being swept ashore by severe gales. And we would sometimes just get into bed at night, and we had these Nissan huts, and the guards would come around and say, 'Gale crew, gale warning, all out'. So a skeleton crew would have to be taken out in a dinghy, clamber aboard the aircraft, an engineer and a pilot, the engineer to start the engines and a pilot just as control the weight of the aircraft against the anchor cable because the winds were so severe that if the anchor cable broke you were washed up on the rocks and that was the end of the aircraft. So sometimes we flew on the water with the engines running for hours and hours on end. We weren't out on any training flight; all we were doing was trying to save the aircraft.

[Flying Officer Allen Cover RAAF, Archive No 1185, Australians at War Film Archive]

Flying Officer Allen Cover RAAF was one of the 600 Australians who trained with the EATS in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

After training in Africa, Cover was posted to Coastal Command at Inverness in Scotland to train on Catalina flying boats. In September 1942, No 262 Squadron RAF was formed, and Cover returned to South Africa with the squadron to patrol the Indian Ocean in Catalinas.

Essential work of groundcrew

As with all air force operations, the ground staff were as crucial to success as the aircrew.

Flight Sergeant Oswald 'Ossie' Ferguson, of No 10 Squadron RAAF, arrived in England from Australia in December 1939. He was responsible for maintaining the Short Sunderland flying boats flown by the squadron from RAF Mount Batten on Plymouth Sound.

Ferguson's dedicated work was recognised by the award of a British Empire Medal in the King's Birthday Honours list in 1944. According to the official citation, he had 'worked night and day under very bad conditions, forgoing all privileges in order to meet a high standard of serviceability'.

On 30 June 1944, Ferguson was on sick leave in London when he was killed by a German V-1 flying bomb (a 'doodlebug') near Australia House. He was buried in the World War II RAF plot in Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England.

Aircraft and air bases

Coastal Command flew a variety of aircraft, including:

• the Lockheed Hudson bomber
• the A26 Short Sunderland flying boat.

It had air bases in:

• the United Kingdom (UK)
• the Soviet Union
• Iceland
• West and North Africa. 

Some units, such as No 53 Squadron RAF, which had Australians serving in it, were based in the United States (US) and the Caribbean.

In 1942, No 53 Squadron was transferred to the US state of Rhode Island, before moving to Trinidad.

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Attack on U-505

One of the most famous German U-boats, U-505, was badly damaged in an attack by a Hudson bomber from No 53 Squadron on 10 November 1942.

In a surprise attack with the sun behind it, the Hudson dropped a 110 kg bomb on the U-boat's deck. The explosion tore the anti-aircraft gun off its mounting and severely damaged the U-boat's pressure hull, killing one crew member and wounding another.

The Hudson aircraft was hit by fragments from the blast and crashed behind the submarine. The entire crew, including its Australian pilot, Flight Sergeant Ronald Sillcock RAAF, were killed.

Although badly damaged, the U-boat managed to return to France for repairs. In June 1944, U-505 was captured by the US Navy and is now a permanent exhibit in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

The cost of war

During the war, Coastal Command:

• destroyed more than 200 U-boats
• sank or damaged more than 1 million tonnes of Axis shipping
• rescued more than 10,000 people from the sea.

The command lost around 2,000 aircraft, and nearly 6,000 personnel were killed in action during the war.

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