www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk has much to interest old salts. When looking back to the ghastly ex-RN transit camp at Croft near Warrington, our home for six months on return from Aden in 1953, I found the wartime memories of Aircraft Artificer 4th Class (Electrical) Laurence Russell, who was posted from Croft to Australia in December 1944. His job at Bankstown was to unpack aircraft from crates or remove their protective coatings and assemble them.
His first story will interest Danny. “The aircraft were Grumman Hellcats and Avengers, Supermarine Seafires, Fairey Fireflies and Vought Corsairs;
also a few Vultee Vengeance which we modified for aerial insecticide spraying. After inspection and fixing faults, they were test flown and any further problems were corrected. They were then delivered to aircraft carriers or transport ships at Garden Island.
“When the announcement of the Japanese surrender was broadcast over the PA there was a Hellcat suspended from the crane. The crane driver said 'They won’t be needing this now' and let it down with a run. There were about 700 American Lend Lease aircraft there at the end of the war. The U.S. provided them without charge, or sometimes in exchange for other goods or services. These aircraft evidently had not been exchanged in this manner so they still belonged to the U.S. To prevent them finding their way onto the second hand arms market the U.S. required them to be dumped at sea. This meant the use of aircraft carriers that could otherwise be sent home and paid off.
“Therefore there was some urgency in all this; working round the clock the aircraft were loaded onto semi trailers, taken to Garden Island Dockyard, transferred to aircraft carriers and taken several kilometres offshore. The fuselage was split open with axes to ensure that they sank rapidly, and then they were pushed off the flight deck. You would think that they would never be seen or heard of again. However, many years later newspapers were reporting bits being caught in trawl nets.”