[Michael Louey]

Hi Carl,

As my main area of interest is the RAAF, the only operations (in the Pacific at least) were restricted to the Beaufort and Catalina.

I checked my Beaufort references last night. There are 2 which may be of interest.

1. The Beaufort File - Roger Hayward (Air Britain). This book contains a lot of history of individual aircraft with some technical details and photos. It does have a comprehensive list of ships sunk (confirmed/probable) in the Appendix naming the Ship, Type of weapon (Bombs, Torpedo, Mine) and the date of the action. I don't think there is any detailed action accounts in the book though. Note the summary includes RAF actions as well.

2. Nr 6 OTU Base Operations Unit and RAAF Beaufort Torpedo Operations by John Lever (Self Published - Sunnylands Press). This book has a quite extensive history of the training and technical development of the Beaufort for Torpedo bombing. The last few chapters also have a number of action reports of Torpedo attacks.

Both these books are Out of Print, though by a quick search the second is still available for various prices.

The Catalina, from memory was only seldom used for night Torpedo attacks. I think they were on harbours. I have quite a few Catalina books and can't recall which one such an account was in but I don't think there were more than 1 or 2 instances of such attacks.

The only other RAAF squadron that could possibly have performed torpedo attacks was 455 squadron operating Hampdens but I can't recall whether they ever flew on operations as torpedo bombers.

Regards

Michael