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.

USS DWIGHT D EISENHOWER departure

USS DWIGHT D EISENHOWER (CVN 69), aka "Ike", departed Halifax this morning, and was off Chebucto Head by 0900 or so. Although the harbour pilot was requested for 0645 or so, she didn't turn around to head out until after the cruise ship Grandeur of the Seas arrived a little after 0800.

Ike beginning her turn with the help of tugs.

Head-on view.

These ships don't turn on a dime, even with the help of tugs.

A close-up of the bow. The crew were busy hosing harbour muck off the starboard anchor, and large splashes could be seen for quite some time after she left her anchorage. If you look near the top right of the image, you can see that the .50 cal machine guns at the bow are manned during her transit out of the harbour.

An E-2 Hawkeye early warning aircraft sits just forward of the island structure.

Close-up of the island superstructure, which houses the ship's bridge and FLYCO (flying control) centre, as well as multiple sensors and other equipment.

Still washing the anchor. That Halifax Harbour muck is tenacious!

Looks like they finally stowed the anchor, just shy of the McNab's Island lighthouse.

My last view of Ike before I had to leave.

Vimy Flight

The four replica Nieport XI biplanes of the Vimy Flight visited Halifax over the weekend. Originally due to arrive on Friday, weather kept them at Greenwood until Saturday, arriving in time for a flypast over Citadel Hill around 11:30 am. 

When we first spotted them, the middle two were popping some smoke.

After their flypast, all four headed over to CFB Shearwater to land, and two of the aircraft were walked backwards down the hill to the Shearwater Aviation Museum (they apparently weigh in the range of 550 lbs each). To move the aircraft, one pilot lifts the tail while another pushes from the front.

The pilot of this plane is Allan Snowie, author of "The Bonnie - HMCS BONAVENTURE". 

Here is one of the aircraft with two re-enactors from the Citadel in period uniform.

The aircraft are apparently built at 7/8 scale as compared to the original planes. I don't know the reason behind the size discrepancy, although it may have something to do with the requirement to fit four of these into a CC-177 Globemaster III for the trip to France and back so that they could fly over the memorial at Vimy for the centennial.

Lots of bright colours!

The engines were originally rotary engines, apparently - I'm not sure what they are using here. I suspect the red battery inside isn't accurate either.

The arrow actually serves a purpose, though you don't have to use an arrow. The original aircraft were fitted with splitters to prevent the cables from rubbing together, and someone started using an arrow for this purpose and it caught on.I'm guessing the plastic wire ties holding them on are not historically accurate.

The planes are all built of wood, reinforced with wire cable, and are covered with fabric, as were the originals. There are a few modern touches, however, especially when on looks into the cockpit.

I generally don't take selfies, but apparently I did here - can you spot me?

There are a few modern touches in the cockpit, including radios and instrumentation that would not have been available during the First World War. I'm assuming they also carry GPS.

One of the two aircraft is fitted with a Lewis gun mounted on the top wing, just over the cockpit.

The Lewis gun was an automatic machine gun perfected during the First World War. On aircraft, it was fitted without the cooling shroud seen on land-based weapons, presumably to save weight.

I strongly suspect the original aircraft didn't have an iPhone charging cable.

A close-up of the Lewis gun mounted on the upper wing.

This aircraft carries multiple dedications.

All four aircraft took off again on Saturday afternoon, and headed north to a small airfield outside Windsor, NS. They have a schedule on their website, which they do not seem to be following all that closely.

The cross-Canada tour began in Nova Scotia around May 6, and will continue west from here, apparently skipping Newfoundland & Labrador.

For lack of anywhere else to mention them, and also aircraft related, I will also show an interesting sight that flew overhead while I was cutting some wood outside just before sunset last night.

A flight of what I assume are three airliners headed from New York to London, all flying in a line. I had to choose between having trees or power lines in my shot. I chose the trees.

I liked how the contrail was petering out behind the last aircraft.

I'm assuming the third and final aircraft was a Boeing 747, but I am only going by the four engines and rough shape of the fuselage.

Buran, the Soviet's Space Shuttle

Passing through Sydney, Australia, in 2001, the last thing I expected to see on the list of potential tourist attractions was a space shuttle - let alone a Russian one. The Buran spaceplane program started in the 1970's in response to the American space shuttle program, and produced several shuttles. Only one of the Burans ever flew in space (unmanned) before the collapse of the USSR and the abandonment of the project. One atmospheric test article, model OK-2M, was sold and ended up in Sydney to be displayed during the 2000 Olympics, and she was still on display when I visited in early 2001.

Buran test article OK-2M on display in Sydney, Australia, in 2001.

Unlike NASA's Enterprise, which was used for basically the same purpose, OK-2M was fitted with four AL-31 jet engines for her role as a flight test prototype, with a large fuel tank installed in the cargo bay. These engines are also used in the SU-27 family of jet fighters. Enterprise had to be lifted into the air on the back of a modified Boeing 747, and released at altitude to test her gliding capabilities. The space-capable Buran's did not have jet engines.

Two AL-31 jet engines mounted on the starboard side.

Access covers removed on one of the port AL-31 jet engines. 

The two upper AL-31 nacelles were mounted directly to the fuselage on either side of the vertical stabilizer, and appear to have had covers. The lower two engine nacelles were mounted on short struts.

A view of the orientation of the four AL-31 jet engines. One set of cargo bay doors was open, and I suspect the object in the cargo bay is the fuel tank for the jet engines.

Unlike the US Space Shuttle, the Buran orbiter lacked main rocket engines, and only had smaller engines for maneuvering in, and breaking from, orbit.

The Buran's maneuvering engines in the tail, with one of the jet engines outboard and above.

Another view of the Buran's engines.

A view down the starboard cargo bay door and wing.

While on display in Sydney, OK-2M was protected from the elements under a rigid frame tent structure, and was fitted with aluminum walkways to allow visitors to climb up and over the spaceplane and down into the cargo hold. Unfortunately, one could not actually enter the crew compartment or flight deck.

An access walkway runs along the port side of the cargo bay and down over the port wing. The port cargo door was removed, and can be seen hanging from the tent's rigid frame in the top right of the photo. 

Looking down over the nose.

OK-2M had black heat shield tiles around the flight deck windows, unlike OK-1K1 (the only airframe to fly in space). There were windows wrapping around the front, as well as looking out the top of the flight deck.

The starboard window over the flight deck.

Looking into the flight deck at the flight controls on the centre console. The Buran apparently didn't come with cupholders.

There were also two windows looking into the cargo bay.

Another view into the flight deck, this time through a window from the cargo bay.

The walkway dropped right down into the cargo bay.

Looking forward in the cargo bay. Instead of a pressure door, there is a grate over the opening into the crew compartment at the forward end of the cargo bay.

A closer look at the grate blocking access into the crew compartment. As a test platform, I'm guessing OK-2M's crew compartment was probably never finished inside, but I couldn't get close enough to the door to find out.

Details of construction in the cargo bay.

The cargo bay was home to a large fuel tank for the four jet engines. 

This is the aft end of the cargo bay, behind the fuel tank. I'm guessing the yellow piping is the plumbing between the jet engines and the fuel tank.

You could also walk underneath the shutte and view the landing gear up close.

After I visited OK-2M in Sydney, the company putting her on display went bankrupt, and she was stored out in the open for a year before moving to Bahrain. She was found there in 2004, and eventually made her way to Germany where she is now on display at the Technik Museum Speyer, near Heidelberg in Germany. She hasn't flown since 1988, and all her subsequent moves appear to have been either via sea or land.