One of the engines looks like a Hercules…

Not the one bottom-right in the first photo…..it seems to have cut-outs for valves in the piston tops! 😉

RAF07.JPG This one is a mystery all round!

(Badly burnt) Bristol Blenheim Mk I

RAF13.JPG and RAF14.JPG Are these all the same type of aircraft – Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle of HGCU?

Yes, both these are AW Albemarles.

Does anyone know if there is a list of u-boats sunk by Coastal command which would include details on the aircraft and crew involved?

As suggested the book by Norman Franks is the excellent ‘Search, Find and Kill’ which list every U-boat sunk by aircraft under RAF command together with aircraft, squadron and crew details.

I have a copy if there is any particular incident that you are interested in.

Likewise what data did the British gain from papers (I presume) carried by shot-down Luftwaffe crews?

According to Dr R V Jones in his book ’Most Secret War’ some co-ordinates found in the notebook of a Luftwaffe ‘Bordfunker’ (1) were partially responsible for revealing the operating principal of one the German radio blind-bombing systems; a system that was successfully countered by the British.

(1) Always liked that title better than Wireless-Operator! 😀

I think I saw carburettor icing mentioned but no more than two or three times…

‘Engine-failure’ is an interesting cover-all phrase and I’ve no doubt that, as you suggest, engine-mishandling by the crew was responsible for a fair proportion of these ‘failures’. I don’t suppose the crew had much chance (or inclination) to try to analyse the failure if their aircraft started to lose height, in bad weather, over a blacked-out Britain.

An engine loses power, the RPM starts to drop, it overheats or the oil-pressure drops, obviously it is ‘engine failure’, nothing to be done so bale-out or crash-land. Interestingly all the aircraft that you posted figures for are single or twin-engined, and I’ve read that the Whitley couldn’t maintain height on one engine.

Also these statistics are probably made up from what the pilots or other survivors reported; people who may not have known what the problem was or who had an interest in not being found responsible. 😉

Amongst those I’ve put down to engine failure are several instances of runaway propellers and more of engine fires. There’s a lot to consider.

Agreed. I know from reading about the carrier HMS Vindex that several Swordfish (and their crews) were lost due to ‘engine-failure’ in Arctic conditions…

…the eventual cause was traced to fuel contaminated with water (condensation in the ship’s bunkers caused by low temperature plus an ineffective method of dealing with that problem) but these would undoubtedly have been classed as engine-failures had the pattern not been spotted by the flightdeck-crew.