PACIFIC CONTROL

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 March 1942, Page 6

PACIFIC CONTROL

GIANT FLYING-BOATS.

SYDNEY, January 16

From Australian air bases giant Catalina flying-boats, manned by Australian crews, maintain a constant watch over the air and sea approaches to Australia. Their joo, fraught at times with great danger, is to reconnoitre Japanese activities on the outer fringe of the Commonwealth’s defence' lines, search for enemy aeroplanes and submarines, and gather the long-distance information which may forewarn the Army, Navy,, and Air Force of an impending invasion, writes a Staff Correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.” Somewhere on the Australian coast I watched one of these famous Ame-rican-built flying-boats set out m darkness on a long-distance patrol far out into the Pacific. The machine was identical with the type of aircraft which first spotted the German battleship Bismarck, and kept her under surveillance until she was finally crippled and sunk by torpedoes. It was identical with the aircraft which are now shadowing the convoys and contributing to the defeat of Germany’s submarine campaign in the Atlantic. An hour before dawn the eight men who comprised .the crew, having finished a hasty breakfast, walked nonchalantly down the landing stage and boarded a motor launch. They waited for last-minute instructions, exchanged a ribald jest with the sentry at the landing steps, and' pushed oil into the still, dark waters of the bay. It was too dark to see the outlines of the Catalina as she swayed gently at her mooring cable. You could only guess her position by the muffled chug-chug of the motor-boat’s engines. We walked up and clown the. landing stage and waited. In 10 minutes there was a stuttering report far out over the waters. The starboard engine had been started up. A few seconds later the port engine added its quota to the rapid succession of reverberations. For five minutes the engines warmed up to their task. Then with throttle full out they roared into a deafening crescendo. .Even through the blackness of the night I could clearly discern the phosphorescent gleam of the backwash as tne great flying-boat skimmed along tne bay, churning up the water behind her.

ft was impossible to see in ihe darkness when the aircraft left the water and soared into the sky.. The. grey shape of her hull merged completely into the murky darkness. You could only tell by trie diminishing purr ol the engines that the long patrol had bc° LID. The Catalina was checked out at 4 a.m. It did not return until midnight, an absence of 20 hours.

Only the crew and the cunirnanctaig officer of the base, to whom the nren reported on their return, knew wnere she had been or what she had seen. That she'had flown over several thousands of miles of ocean was obvious. That .she had something to report was also evident. Rolls of camera film, taken by the observer, were being developed in the darkroom early nexc morning. AT WAR STATIONS. All the Catalinas now at war stations in Australian _ territory, '.'.v-re fiown across the Pacific before being delivered to the Royal Australian Air Force. They are manned by some of Australia’s most famous pilots—men who made their name in the field oi civil aviation, men whose- names are fiouseiiolci words wherever the story m urn aerial pioneers is known, men -..T'.' have flown Sunderland flving-bo.. is over the North Sea and the Atlantic. And to this honoured company _ mis been added a quota of younger Australian pilots now experiencing the hazards of active service for the first time, and revelling in it. The Pacific air patrol is the goal oi hundreds of specially-trained young airmen. It is a service that calls fur skill, resource, intelligence, and endurance, and it is carried out with a type of aircraft which it is the ambition of every young airman to fly. The Catalina is one of the world s longest ranged ocean-going aircraft, the'very last word in aeronautical science and engineering. The crew of a Catalina employed on duties like those now undertaken daily off the coasts of Auslrulia could literally see the world. A long cruise, based on a series of widely spaced flying stations, might cover tens of thousands of miles, involving calls at some of the most fampus and romantic places in the world. They may include a remote Pacific atoll or a teeming, turbulent Oriental city. Unlike commercial flights . over wide stretches of ocean, the Pacific air patrol requires from its crew constant vigilance, in which every nerve is strained. The Catalina’s duty.is to spot enemyships and aircraft, to identify friendly shipping, search for prowling submarines, and generally observe every form of activity over, or under the sea. Special equipment is provided to facilitate these operations. Once the craft is out of sight of kmd, every member of the crew becomes an official spotter. Anxious eyes peer above and below and to every point of the compass. Submarine detection is particularly onerous. In a choppy sea a submarine may be invisible unless the aircraft flies low and directly, oyer ris objective. In such cases it is impossible for the pilot to avoid dirty weather by flying high. The Catalina is fitted with four comfortable bunks, in which members o f ' the crew take it in turns to sleep during a long and onerous flight. It has, too. a well-fitted galley, with an electric stove on which hot meals can be cooked. A cup of tea and a slice ol fried steak, taken to a height of 10.000 feet or 15,000 feet, allay the. pangs of hunger and keep the crew fit to deal with any emergency.

§AILOR AIRMEN. At an Australian flying-boat base, hundreds of young airmen undergo a conversion course to equip themselves for manning Catalinas. Most of them have come from schools where they have been trained to fly land machines, but before they can undertake long flights in water-borne aircraft, .special knowledge and aptitude are required. They will tell you that before a man can fly a flying-boat lie must learn to be a sailor.’ lie must learn the art of knotting and splicing rope?:, he must be able to row a boat and sail a cutter, he must know the international code of Hags, the rules of the sea, and. a dozen other things, such as anchor

drill, before he can qualify for hi.- new calling. That is why every man who joins the service spends much of the time sailing about the bay in the station’s cutter. Yet even a landlubber can be turned into a flying-boat pilot with a little trouble. There are men in the Catalian patrols who six months ago had never seen the sea. They came from Alice Springs and Daly Waters. Today they are as much at home 1000 miles from land as they were mustering sheep in the hinterland. They are helping to keep the sealanes open. On their vigilance in the air the successful defence of Australia depends.