VALUABLE PART

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1941, Page 5

VALUABLE PART

IN PURSUIT OF BISMARCK I PLAYED BY BRITISH AIRCRAFT. DOOMED VESSEL CLOSELY SHADOWED. 1 (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. May 27. The part played by the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm in sinking the Bismarck was of the greatest importance. Day and night from the moment the Bismarck was sighted leaving the Norwegian fiords, till she was sunk by ships of the Royal Navy, aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm shadowed the Bismarck. The American-built Catalina and Sunderland flying-boats were employed. The Catalinas quartered the sea. so that there was the scantiest possibility of the Bismarck avoiding detection for any length of time. Cloud cover was used with very great effect so that shadowing and reporting could be done without the aircraft themselves being detected. As the captain of one of the flying-boats said: “We swept the seas in gigantic patterns, hopping from cloud to cloud." But the Catalinas had to break from the cloud now and then. Their crews paid a high testimony to the anti-air-craft armament and skill of the German gunners. A flying-boat might leave the cloud for only a few seconds, but that was sufficient for the enemy guns to come into action and surround the aircraft with bursting shells. One Catalina came out of the cloud 400 yards from the Bismarck. So intense were the salvos from the Bismarck's guns that the captain , of the plane had to take the most violent, avoiding action. Even then, in the few seconds he had been out of the cloud, the hull of the flying-boat was holed in several places. The Catalina’s crew plugged the holes and the flyingboat kept on with its mission over the Bismarck for nearly 10 hours longer—a 20-hour flight in all.