WORK BY AIRCRAFT

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 85, 7 October 1940, Page 8

WORK BY AIRCRAFT

NOTABLE INSTANCES

FETCHING OF HELP

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received October 7, 12.45 p.m.)

RUGBY, October 6

Nearly 500 survivors of ships lost in the Atlantic have been saved in the last few months through the good work of Coastal Command aircraft, states an Air Ministry bulletin.

Sundeiiand flying-boats both of the R.A.F. and the Royal Australian Air Force and other aircraft patrol far out in the Atlantic every day, escoring convoys. Searching for many miles around the convoys, they sometimes find lifeboats and rafts drifting helplessly out of sight of passing ships. The most famous of these rescues was that on September 25. when 46 survivors of the City' of Benares were picked up after she was torpedoed 600 miles from land. There have been similar cases. One Sunderland found two boatloads of people who were suffering, severely from thirst. They signalled that they had food but no water. The flyingboat dropped its owri fresh water supply and all its cigarettes in a carefully sealed package which was kept afloat by a life-jacket. Then it brought up a rescue ship. "here were two persons on a ratt which was sighted a few days later. They too were rescued. Boats are mere dots on the grey water when they are first seen from an aircraft. Binoculars come into play, and the pilot goes down to 20 or 30 feet to investigate a dot. If it is a lifeboat or a raft then a package of supplies plumps into the sea nearby and the aircraft flashes a cheerful message that help is coming. A smoke float is dropped to mark the position, and then the aircraft goes off in search of a ship to be guided to the spot.