Sunderland at St Mawgan

It’s a new one on me, that’s for sure.
What sort of fighter attack would it have encountered in home (or near) airspace in the 1950s?

Must relate to a wartime incident pagey old bean, I’d imagine the sort of fighter that a Sunderland would encounter would be something along the lines of a long range JU88 maybe?

New one on me also:confused:

Yes, ruddy long way from Korea, eh!
I’ve never heard of it wartime either, I have a pretty good list of wartime incidents at Mawgan, but would kinda like to be proved wrong on this one.
I have heard of a Sunderland landing on the grass at one of the West Wales airfields, Angle I think

A quick google found this story about Gordon Singleton, a RAAF pilot who landed a Sunderland at Angle in 1943. http://services.mypembrokeshire.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2008/06/18/48595921e4315

Picture copywrite, Pembroke Dock Sunderland Trust.

Quite right Pagen – I think this might be a merge of two stories.

Gordon Singleton’s Sunderland T9114 landed at Angle Airfield on 29th May 1943 after being damaged on take off in the open sea, carrying rescued passengers from a downed Whitley and Sunderland.

Then there is the well recorded battle involving a Sunderland EJ134 piloted by Ft/Lt C Walker of 461 squadron on 2 June 1943 which fought off eight Ju88s over the Bay of Biscay and was beached at Praa Sands near Penzance.

HTH

AllanK

A quick google found this story about Gordon Singleton, a RAAF pilot who landed a Sunderland at Angle in 1943. .

The big question is – how did they get it out again?

The big question is – how did they get it out again?

Don’t know but apparently they did:

29 May 1943
On this day a Sunderland from T9114 had suffered extensive hull damage whilst taking off in heavy sea. This needed a touch-down on dry land; this was successfully performed at Angle. When the salvage party arrived from 78 MU they considered it a write off because any attempt to move it would cause more damage. But even though it would be a risk, they decided to move it. It took nearly seven days to move it. After the repairs it was put back into service but only as a maintenance training airframe.

I had heard that they simply re-attached the port float, mounted the Sunderland on a dolly and took off from Angles’ runway with a fair wind and a light fuel load.

I was of course joking, I did wonder if the Salvage team broke it down into sections and moved it, I thought Angle was too high to ‘easily’ get down to a beach.

RAF Museum has it: http://navigator.rafmuseum.org/results.do?view=detail&db=object&pageSize=1&id=89818

Sorry about that:)
As you point out though, it was remarkably undamaged in the landing.
There is a sentance in the link that elludes to the actual landing being filmed by the CO, now that I would like to see.

🙂 bypassed me – sorry.

Actually it wasn’t that far off. Singleton pulled off such a gentle landing that even the eggs in the galley were reported to be not cracked. Apart from the original hull damage forcing the landing, only the port float was lost in the touch down. I know damaged Sunderland hulls were repaired with concrete to get them back to the factory for permanent repairs. But taking off on a trolley, yeah OK, that was the clue :p

According to John Evan’s book “The Sunderland Flying Boat Queen” T9114 never flew again. They removed six hedges to drag her down to the water, but she was scrapped on the beach. She was allocated instructional serial 4446M and officially Struck off Charge on 31 April 44.

The story of the landing is told by Gordon Singleton in his book “Singleton’s War” from Paterchurch Publications. Quite hard to find but good little book.

AllanK

Ruddy heck thanks for that Allen, I didn’t think it would have survived, how do you go about viewing it?

Don’t know – I haven’t seen it. I would start with a phone call to Doris (Dept of Research and Information Services). It might be good enough condition to let people simply view it at the Hendon reading rooms. I sometimes, wistfully, wonder what putting it on a DVD would cost. And then I wake up.

AllanK

I had heard that they simply re-attached the port float, mounted the Sunderland on a dolly and took off from Angles’ runway with a fair wind and a light fuel load.

A fine example of the “We can do it no problem” attitude and quick thinking that we were good at then but have sadly lost now. It may have been a bodge solution but it lasted long enough to do the job. As I always say if it’s stupid but it works it isn’t stupid.

The story of the landing is told by Gordon Singleton in his book “Singleton’s War” from Paterchurch Publications. Quite hard to find but good little book.
AllanK

A****n offers four copies between 42.80 und 112.79 Euro 🙁

Here’s another way of moving a Sunderland around in Belfast.

Cheers
Richard

Many thanks for the information. I guess that after all these years my memory is vague and it sounds as though it was the Angle Sunderland I read about!
Incidentally, pagen1, it was the magazine I read in the 1950’s – not the assumed date of the incident!
Anyone able to help me with the name John Seagrave?
Thanks again
Bergisman

In the R/C model world there are large Sunderlands and Catalinas that do use a take off dolly and land back on the grass.