FOUR PBY-5 CATALINAS FROM CRAWLEY SEA
BASE
SUNK OFF ROTTNEST ISLAND AFTER WWII
The five aircraft (PBY-5) that QANTAS Empire Airways used at the Crawley Sea Base in Western Australia were supplied by the RAF. They did not come from RAAF stocks and they flew with civilian registration marked on the fuselage and each aircraft had a large single number on the fin and rudder. The aircraft themselves were camouflaged in standard RAF pattern and they had to be disposed of after the war under the controversial Lend Lease arrangements as they could not be kept on the British register. The RAF had leased the Catalinas from the United States.
The following four Catalinas were sunk in the Rottnest Graveyard about 11 miles southwest of Fremantle and they may still be laying there today.
G-AGFM, Altair Star (RAF
Serial No. FP-244);
G-AGFL, Vega Star; (FP-221);
G-AGID, Rigel Star (JX-575),
G-AGIE, Antares Star (JX-577 )
The fifth Catalina, G-AGKS, Spica Star (JX-287), was scrapped off Sydney in March 1946.
QANTAS was not the only airline that was a wolf in sheep's clothing during the war. ANSETT did a lot of transport work for the US Air force as did other smaller airlines. It was Reg Ansett's war time work that made him so successful.
Doug Wauchope (born 1943) told me that he lived near Crawley, in Western Australia in the 1940s. Doug's father was in the Army at that time. After the war, the remaining Catalinas that flew the double sunrise flights from Crawley Bay to Ceylon were taken about 30 km out the back of Rottnest Island to what the local fishermen called the Trench where they were sunk. Doug told me that their repair shops were turned over to the Department of Civil Aviation and used as a depot after the war.
REFERENCES
Précis of the Wrecks in the Ship's Graveyard, Rottnest" by Dena Garratt
"£80,000 Plane Destroyed", The Daily News (Perth), Monday 21 January 1946
"Destruction off Rottnest", The West Australian (Perth), Monday 21 January 1946
"Doomed Catalinas", The West Australian (Perth), Wednesday 23 January 1946
"Scrapping Aircraft", Mount Barker and Denmark Record", (Albany, WA), Monday 21 January 1946
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I'd like to thank Dennis Whiley and Doug Wauchope for their assistance with this web page.
Can anyone help me with more information?
"Australia @ War" WWII Research Products
© Peter Dunn OAM 2020 |
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This page first produced 21 November 2000
This page last updated 18 July 2020