Created: 5/11/2011 12:49:49 PM, Updated: 5/12/2011 10:47:08 AM
70 years ago, in May 1941 a Catalina flying boat flying from RAF Killadeas, today's LEYC site, located the German battleship Bismarck.
Bismarck had sunk Hood on 24 May 1941 but the Royal Navy had later lost contact with her and her location by that lucky Catalina became a famous incident that led on to Bismarck’s final sinking on 27 May 1941.
We know today that it was more than just luck, for Bismarck’s Morse code messages were used to plot her position by direction finding radio stations including one on the Gilnahirk hills above Belfast. To keep all this secret, the luck story was spread. A wartime RAF photograph shows how the 1941 Catalinas were hauled up for servicing and repairs on the shore of Gublusk Bay, where our club is today. Two squadrons had transferred here from RAF Stranraer. Outside the east door of today’s club house is a big ring in the concrete to which was tied down the tail of a Catalina, and there are many other WW2 remains and artefacts around our club site. Ted Jones, an instructor pilot at Killadeas visited LEYC in November 2005 when we unveiled Joe O’Loughlin’s Catalina Roll of Honour on the clubhouse wall. Ted talked about a pilot’s life at RAF Killadeas. After breakfast in the Officer’s Mess, today’s Manor House Hotel, he cycled the concrete path down to the shore – via the gate that is obstructed by a wall today – to a hut set on a concrete slab that today holds a caravan. After briefing, then over to the boat docks, where is today’s crane jetty, and into a pinnace – Ted insists on the correct word, not boat – and out to the moored aircraft, which by Ted’s time here included Sunderlands and Catalinas. The concrete clumps that moored those WW2 aircraft moor J/24s and other craft today. We plan a season starter LEYC dinner in May 2011. It will be a good party but cannot compare with the party at RAF Killadeas Officers Mess in May 1941 when those aircrew celebrated 70 years ago. The Bismarck victory they took part in raised moral at a time of great difficulty - not least the bombings of Belfast that month and previous.
Michael Clarke, LEYC Historian, May 2011
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