Praa Sands

The following series of photographs were taken on June 3rd 1943 at the small coastal village of Praa Sands in South Cornwall, England. The camera used belonged to the aircraft's Captain, Flight Lieutenant Colin Walker DSO of the R.A.A.F's 461 Squadron, based at Pembroke Dock, South Wales. Walker was forced to ditch his Sunderland flying boat the previous evening (June 2nd) after sustaining heavy damage in an aerial combat with eight Junkers JU88's of the Luftwaffe's 13/KG40. Walker and his crew had been on a routine anti-submarine patrol over the Bay of Biscay. During the patrol they had been ordered to keep a lookout for survivors of a KLM civil airliner (Flight 777) which had been shot down by 14/KG40 on June 1st whilst enroute from Lisbon, Portugal to Britain. Amongst the passengers aboard was the British film star, Leslie Howard.

As Sunderland N/461 entered the search area, the aircraft came under fire in what was to be the first of twenty seperate attacks that would last a total of three quarters of an hour. The first attack destroyed the aircraft's port outer engine. Subsequent attacks caused a fire in the cockpit, burning Walker and his first pilot, knocked out the radio transmitter and intercom system, damaged the rudder, trimming controls and rear turret hydraulics, wounded the navigator, tail gunner and killed the starboard galley gunner.

Three of the eight JU88's were shot down with two more seriously damaged. What may have caught the attacking German aircrews by suprise was the fact that N/461 was the first Sunderland in Coastal Command to be fitted with two additional Vickers machine guns, one in each galley hatch. This was the first time they had been used in combat. The Sunderland's gunners had fired over seven thousand rounds before their ordeal was finished... as was most of their ammunition. With no radio communication, compass, airspeed indicator and few instruments, the injured navigator plotted a course reading and Walker turned the dying aircraft for home. With the starboard tank fuel guages all reading empty the crew nursed the twenty six ton aircraft the three hundred miles back to Britain where they ditched just off the beach of Praa Sands at 10:48PM double-summer-time. During the flight home to safety, the port outer engine's propeller sheared off and flew into the sea. The aircraft, which was holed in more than five hundred places, was broken up overnight as the high incoming tide pounded it against rocks at the base of Praa Sand's cliffs.

This incident resulted in a D.S.O., a D.F.C., two D.F.M.'s, a posthumous commission and mentions in dispatches.

© Copyright 2003 Rowan Matthews
All Rights Reserved