The Flying Boat Forum from www.seawings.co.uk

Welcome to the first ever Forum dedicated to the history and operations of the world's Flying Boats and their crews brought to you by SEAWINGS. Enjoy your stay and come back often! You are more than welcome to contribute, however small or large. Enjoy!

This is the place to seek - or to post information about - Flying Boat Squadron crew personnel, Civilian crew personnel or Ground personnel, from any era. Use it to seek out contacts or to record and describe their (or your) exploits for posterity and any crew photographs you may find to post.

I am seeking any and all personal and official accounts of No. 205's operations at Seletar, briefly at Oosthaven, Sumatra, then from Tjilatjap, Java, part of the time at Tjilatjap basing on USS CHILDS (AVD 1). FV-N and FV-W flew out of the Indies to Broome and were destroyed there 3 March 1942.

I have fragments, including Lucky Alex, the story of Squadron Leader Alex Jardine, a Canadian, but I think there must be more materials out there somewhere. Ideas, anyone?

Certainly in the literature in the UK there might be some veterans' accounts.

205 Squadron as you may be aware, flew Short Singapore Mk III'sfrom Seletar up until replaced with PBY 5's.

Four of the Singapores were refurbished and handed overto the Royal New Zealand Air Force for use at Laucala Bay,Fiji.One person who served albiet breifly with 205at Seletar, that was one Geoffrey Fisken RNZAF(serving as part of the Article XV squadrons of the RAF)He however re-rostered into fighters

I have some info on 205 Sqn. My dad was on board Catalina F V-Z on Christmas Eve 1941 when it left Seletar on a convoy search mission with F V-X . F V-X returned to base; F V-Z was attacked at 0715 on Christmas morning. Another Catalina ( F V-W ) made a search of the approximate area where the attack had taken place, located the crew in the water and dropped supplies - including a dinghy and food. The survivors were rescued that evening by a Dutch sub and returned to the Staites of Johore, and then on to Seletar. I have details of the crews of all three aircraft and my father's personal account of the experience.

There's a good account of the Catalinas at Broome in the following (review from my site which includes a link to the author's website) -http://aircrewbookreview.blogspot.com/2011/07/zero-hour-in-broome-dr-tom-lewis-peter_10.html - although it probably only amounts to a couple of pages directly referring to the RAF aircraft. Otherwise, a good analysis of the attack itself and what the No. 205 Sqn chaps would have experienced.

Andy WrightAircrew Book ReviewI have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library - Jorge Luis Borges