FlyPast – August 2018

(John Hannent) #1

82 FLYPAST August 2018


Spotlight


Short


Sunderland


A


fter years of rationing in
Britain, I was living a life
of luxury for three weeks
on a troopship taking
me to Singapore. My only task was
to be ‘duty officer of the day’ and
visit the troops on the lower decks,
asking: “Any complaints”?
I had been posted out to the Far
East Air Force and 88 Squadron, part
of the Far East Flying Boat Wing
equipped with Short Sunderland
GR.5s. The flying-boats were based
in Seletar on the Johore Straits on the
north side of Singapore.

Flag-waving
Our role in Malaya was to support
the British Army in an operation
called ‘Firedog’. Army intelligence
would determine an area of, perhaps,
several square miles in which they
believed the bandits were operating.
We would be called in to strafe the
area with machine gun fire and drop
20lb fragmentation bombs. This was
to frighten the Communist troops
into moving out, and would lead to
them hopefully being intercepted
by the army units waiting on
the perimeter.

Around 20 young navigators were
posted at the same time; the purpose
was to be trained on the job – to
double up navigators to two per
aircraft, as the workload on the
Sunderlands had increased with the
Cold War. Normally training would
have taken up to a year on the
type in the UK.
There were two conflicts – the
Korean War and the less publicised,
so-called Malayan ‘Emergency’.
Chinese-backed Communists were
infiltrating down the Malayan
peninsular, threatening Singapore.

Cold War


Sunderlands


Sqn Ldr Alan Coles remembers his time in action with 88 Squadron in the 1950s


Far right
The author (left)
in 1951 with an
Avro Anson of 2 Air
Navigational School
at Thorney Island,
Hampshire.
ALL VIA AUTHOR

Below
Sunderland PP148
‘F-for-Fox’ moored at
Kai Tak, Hong Kong.
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