Catalina Flying Boat Captain: A Pilot's War from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean

Aged 21, Bruce Daymond enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1941. He had joined to serve the British Empire, as it then was, knowing he would serve thousands of miles from Australia. Sixteen days into my flying training, Bruce went solo for the first time. Having trained as pilot and navigator under the Empire Air Training Scheme, in both Australia and Canada, he went on to serve in the RAF throughout the Second World War. As a pilot of a Consolidated Catalina flying boat, he flew with a number of Coastal Command units, namely Nos. 209, 357, 628, and 240 squadrons. Throughout his service, Bruce maintained a huge, detailed, candid, and personal daily diary; it is that which forms the basis of this insightful account of one flying boat captain's service. The result is a revealing account of one man's dedication to service and leadership, endurance of hundreds of hours of monotonous flying interspersed with periods of terror and courage in the face of great danger. Bruce describes what must be an extraordinary record of hours in the air over a short time, inserting and rescuing Allied coast watchers off the Japanese-occupied Burmese coast, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Flying Cross. The former was rarely awarded to junior officers, as he was. His operational experience included flights, many of longer than twenty hours, almost entirely over the sea, often at night, on operations such as convoy anti-submarine escort, clandestine operations in Japanese controlled waters, and frequent meteorological flights in tropical cyclonic weather over the Bay of Bengal, that in one incident in a violent down draft caused a nearly unrecoverable descent into an angry sea. This is an extraordinary account of wartime service and living life to the full under an uncertain future. AUTHOR: Dr Denis Saunders AM is an animal ecologist and conservation biologist; however, he has a strong interest in military aviation as a result of his family history. His maternal grandfather was a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, who transferred to the newly-formed Royal Air Force. He served in both world wars. His maternal grandmother served in the WAAF in both wars and was Mentioned in Despatches in WW2. His mother was a member of the WAAF in WW2. She was a plotter with the RAF's 11 Group at Uxbridge during the Battle of Britain and subsequently a cypher officer in the Middle East and East Africa. His father was a flying boat pilot in the RAAF who served during WW2 on operations with RAF Coastal Command in UK, East and South Africa, and then as an instructor at an Operational Training Unit.