RAF Coastal Command

RAF Coastal Command was a formation within the Royal Air Force (RAF). Founded in 1936, it was the RAF's only maritime arm, as the Fleet Air Arm was transferred to the Royal Navy in 1937. Naval aviation had been neglected in the inter-war period, due to the RAF having control of the aircraft flying from Royal Navy carriers. As a consequence Coastal Command did not receive the resources it needed to develop properly or efficiently. This continued until the outbreak of the Second World War, during which it came to prominence. But owing to the Air Ministry's concentration on RAF Fighter Command and RAF Bomber Command, Coastal Command was often referred to as the "Cinderella Service", a phrase first used by the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time A V Alexander.

Coastal Commands's primary task became the protection of Allied convoys from attacks by the German Kriegsmarine's U-boats, groups of which were known as "wolfpacks". It also protected Allied shipping from aerial attacks by the Luftwaffe. The main operations of Coastal Command were defensive, defending supply lines in the various theatres of war, most notably the [Mediterranean, Middle East and African, and the battle of the Atlantic. It also had an offensive capacity. In the Mediterranean theatre and the Baltic sea it attacked German shipping carrying war materials from Italy to North Africa and from Scandinavia to Germany. By 1943 Coastal Command finally received sufficient Very Long Range [VLR] aircraft it needed and its operations proved decisive in the victory over the U-boats. These aircraft were Consolidated B-24 Liberators and, from early 1943, these, and other Coastal Command aircraft, were fitted with Mark III ASV [air-to-surface vessel] centimetric radar, the latest depth charges, including homing torpedoes, officially classed as Mark 24 mines [nicknamed 'Wandering Annie' or 'Wandering Willie'] and even rockets.

Coastal Command (film)

Coastal Command is a 1943 British film made by the Crown Film Unit for the Ministry of Information. The film, distributed by RKO, dramatised the work of RAF Coastal Command.

Coastal Command is a documentary-style account of the Short Sunderland and Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. The film includes real footage of attacks on a major enemy ship by Hudson and Halifax bombers based in Iceland.

Plot

In 1942, a Sunderland flying boat with Pilot Roger Hunter and Flight Sergeant Charles Norman Lewis as crew, set out on a patrol, flying out of their Scotland air base.

During the routine sea patrol, in which a convoy is spotted, the crew encounters and bombs a German U-boat.

The Sunderland's crew returns to England, mission accomplished, but with a wounded crew member aboard, who is in stable condition. After a visit to the hospital, the Sunderland crew is informed they will be re-deployed to West Africa, to begin a new mission.

Cast