I have a long running gripe – computers should serve people not the other way around. We ran out of disk space at work recently and decided on the more efficient of two options: 1. Have everybody in the company spend two or three hours deleting old e-mails with attachments and searching for large files and duplicates or 2. Have the IT manager spend a day and a couple of hundred quid on an additional drive for the server.

We should support attempts to optimise the forum but isn’t the site run as a business (it carries advertising).

If we need an urgent temporary solution I’d prefer to see Key archive old threads than for us to delete swathes of the forum. I’m new here and haven’t read all the threads that first caught my eye. How many have now gone?

Chris,

It was in about May 43 (coincidentally about the time 333 sqdn was formed) that the U-boats started to fight on the surface, particularly in the Bay of Biscay but there was a Liberator brought down near Iceland that summer as well after it had sunk its target. The crew spent three days in rafts before being rescued.

By October 43 Doenitz had changed tactics and ordered the fleet back to dock to have schnorkels fitted so they could travel underwater by day and only risk surfacing at night.

I suppose you could depict the submarine with its decks awash about to dive but during ’43 the crews would still have been alert to the threat of U-boats fighting back.

The ordnance would be standard 250lb depth charges.

It is an interesting topic and might be worth splitting into a thread of its own to see what information others have – maybe the mods can help?

VP-BPS and N423RS are both amphibians with retractable gear. Mark’s search is for the removable beaching gear used to launch a pure flying boat. But that said, they must have some contacts for people with Catalina spares.
The flying boats are the difficulty here. The Amphibians cheaper to operate – you can have fun in the water but bring them home to places such as Duxford as easily as any other land plane. So it follows that the Flying Boat’s – and their equipment – will be rare.

Chris, your illustration depending on the date of the action. At one point the U-boats were kitted out with flak batteries and stayed ont he surface to fight aircraft. In which case the crew would be fighting back – cold or not. From memory I think it was mid 1943 but I’ll need to check and will get back to you.
That, by the way, was why Sunderlands started to be fitted with four nose guns.

Sorry I’ve no info on beaching gear Mark. I assume you’ve been in touch with the Catalina Society?

Nimrod MR2 – getting on a bit but still working hard. Bulges in the belly and, lets be honest, a complete rebuild has been on the cards for quite some time.

This reminds me that the Shetland prototype – DX166 – had Centaurus engines originally with wooden propellers.

One of the foremen at Short Brother’s Rochester works told me how they were running up the engine when the hub disintegrated and the four blades flew off in different directions. Apparently one hit the ‘boat’s chine, one hit the apron and another went into the river while the fourth flew high enough to land in a nearby playing field. 😮 Fortunately nobody was hurt and after that they refitted her with metal Hamilton blades.

The Shetland was burnt out in a fire at Felixstowe and the wreckage recovered soon afterwards – presumably with its metal propellers.

So that’s the Shetland positively ruled out then. :rolleyes:

Any further ideas anybody?

It would be remarkable – but I’ve spent far too many years chasing down stories of sunken aircraft and have got cynical!
If you do search look for info in squadron/unit record books, aircraft accident reports rather than believing rumour. We’re all human – we’d love to believe a good tale rather than dull facts.
Good luck