Flying from, and landing on, HMS BATTLER

A number of years ago, I was provided with photos from the collection of Warren Walker, by his son Wayne. Mr. Walker served in a number of ships, including HMS BATTLER. BATTLER was an ATTACKER class escort carrier (I will provide a number of Wikipedia links here), which was the Royal Navy's class name for ships of the US Navy's BOGUE class that were provided under Lend-Lease. These ships were converted into small aircraft carriers from the hulls of merchant vessels to alleviate a shortage of aircraft carriers, and bridge the Atlantic air gap, during the Battle of the Atlantic. BATTLER was commissioned into the Royal Navy in November 1942 and served the Royal Navy for the remainder of the war. She was broken up in 1946.

The Historic Naval Ships Association (HNSA) has put a set of layout plans online for BATTLER here.

Not all of the photos shown here are clearly labelled as being taken onboard BATTLER, but I have assumed that they were - they certainly appear to have been taken aboard an escort carrier, and I haven't seen any indication that Mr. Walker served in another ship of that class.

Unfortunately, the only external photo of BATTLER in Mr. Walker's collection was this one on the front of a Christmas card. Although a Fairey Barracuda is pictured on the card, and there is a photo below of this type of aircraft having "landed" onboard (the quotation marks will be understood when the photo is viewed), I'm not aware that BATTLER actually operated the Barracuda.

BATTLER operated a number of different aircraft over her short service life, starting with the Fairey Swordfish. As will become apparent, Mr. Walker liked taking photos of aircraft prangs - in some cases, there are no photos of a particular aircraft type in one piece.

A crashed Fairey Swordfish. Caption on back reads "Swordfish on its nose on the (unreadable). Caught in barrier."

A crashed Fairey Swordfish. Caption indicates "Pilot shook up." The undercarriage appears to have suffered greatly, and I assume the black object with the white centre is one of the wheels.

The Swordfish was followed by the Supermarine Seafire, which was a not entirely successfully navalized version of the more famous Spitfire. Where the Swordfish was a torpedo bomber, and the Seafire a fighter, this would suggest that BATTLER transitioned into a new role (though it appears that both aircraft types may have been carried simultaneously during the transition period). 

A Supermarine Seafire landing on the deck of a carrier. Caption reads "Seafire coming in for a landing. Misses all arrestor wires and crashes into barrier." I believe I can see at least two arrestor wires running across the deck here.

The following photo purports to feature a German U-boat in the background, which would make this quite the action shot. The photo above displays an "R" on the fuselage forward of the roundel, which is missing on the lower aircraft, which would indicate that the two photos (above and below) are not of the same aircraft.

A crashed Royal Navy Supermarine Seafire on the deck of a carrier. Caption reads "Seafire crashed into barrier. Pilot OK. In background German submarine." From the running crewman, I'm assuming this was taken right after the aircraft came to a stop. These types of landings were presumably rather hard on the deck and aircraft propeller. The anti-aircraft gun mounting in the background, under the plane's tail, appears to be a twin 20mm Oerlikon. The mountings were later converted with a single 40mm Bofors to become the "Boffin" mounting, variations of which the RCN used until after 2000.

After the Seafire, or possibly in conjunction with the earlier aircraft, BATTLER took on the well-regarded Grumman Wildcat (which were known in the Royal Navy as the "Martlet"). Despite this latter, I will refer to the aircraft as the "Wildcat", because that is how the photo captions read.

Caption reads "Wildcats ranged and waiting for orders to take off." The small craft to the right of the photo appears to be a Fairmile motor launch.

Grumman F4F Wildcat. Caption reads "Wildcat awaiting take off orders." The canopy was left open presumably so that the pilot could more easily egress from the aircraft if there was a problem during takeoff.

Wildcat taking off. No caption was on this photo, and it does not appear to be the same aircraft as the photo above. The canopy is also open on this plane. BATTLER's "B" is visible in this photo at the forward end of the flight deck (under the tail of the aircraft).

BATTLER apparently also played host to some other aircraft types during her service life, even if only for a short time.

Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber taking off from BATTLER. Caption reads "Avenger taking off. Just leaving the flight deck." BATTLER's flight-deck "B" also makes an appearance in this photo.

The Grumman F6F Hellcat was a development of the earlier Wildcat.

Caption reads "Hellcat being signalled in for a landing."

The Fairey Barracuda was a British torpedo bomber.

A crashed Royal Navy Farey Barracuda. Caption reads "Barracuda in the cat walk. No one hurt."

Finally, another aircraft that doesn't appear to have actually operated from BATTLER, but apparently landed on board at least once, is the Vought F4U Corsair.

Fire fighting operations on a Vought Corsair, presumably on HMS BATTLER. Caption on back of photo reads "Corsair into barrier. On fire. No one hurt. June 8th 1800". Note the bent propeller. The pilot obviously had some incentive to exit the aircraft quickly.

I have a number of other photos from the Warren Walker collection, mostly of ships, that I will present in a separate blog post at some point in the future. Many thanks to Wayne Walker for making the photos available to me for scanning purposes.