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.
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.
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).
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.
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. |
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.
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.
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