PRU Blue Walruses

[Seahawk]

I thought lovers of the esoteric might appreciate the following, extracted from a letter printed in the Nov 1986 "Aircraft Modelworld" (the one edited by Chris Ellis). It's from ex-LAC E H Bowden, who served with 276 ASR Squadron 1943-1945.

After the Normandy capaign the Walruses [of 276 Squadron] were split up into 3 flights, 1 each at Stavanger, Kristiansund and Stordal, north of Trondheim. Bowden, an airframe mechanic, was with the Stordal flight, which was providing rescue backup to a squadron mapping the coastline. The flight commander (name forgotten) "decided it would be nice if our Shagbats were different from the rest of the squadron so he decided to paint them PR blue and it fell to yours truly to carry out this task. I did point out that this was against all the rules and tha they had always been camouflage and grey but they ended up blue fuselage, blue topsides and duck egg blue underneath, with black lettering. No-one ever told the CO about this change in colour. We came back to Dunsfold in the latter part of 1945, November I think. We arrived before the aircrew by Dakota and our 3 Walrus aircraft were the last to arrive. I will never forget the look on the face of the CO when he saw the 3 PRU Shagbats: he was not a very happy man and neither was the flight commander."

No photos, unfortunately. According to Jefford, the move to Norway took place on 23/8/45 and the move to Dunsfold on 10/11/45 for disbandment on 14/11/45.

[Julien]

Quite interesting.

Just goes to show there is no substitute for first ahnd knowledge. Without this no one would believe a PRU Blue shagbat!

Julien

[brewerjerry]

Hi

276 Sqn I can well believe,

The stories I heard from ex members were very interesting, it seems they were mostly aircrew who had just come from frontline combat units.

Most of their aircraft seemed to be painted just not quite exactly as should be, the few photos of 278 Sqn aircraft I saw also were similar.

cheers

Jerry