[bearoutwest]

Hi BruceMk11,

In Ray Sturtivant's "Fleet Air Arm at war" chapter on East Indies Fleet 1945, there appear two photos of RN FAA Helcats with rocket projectiles.

On p.113, there is Hellcat JX688 B-8H (896 Sqn HMS Empress) armed with British-style RPs on rails (not the usual USN RPs on zero-length launchers).

On p.114, there is a scene of senior officers visiting 896 Sqn ashore. Aircraft JX690 is coded 2-AB, and has what appears to be 4x RP rails under each wing. The partial view of another Hellcat aircraft on the edge of the photo shows 4x RP rails as well.

The Channel Operations chapter (covering the D-Day landing support ops) has photos of Avengers and Wildcats (no RPs) and lots of Swordfish (with RPs), but no Hellcats. These RN FAA aircraft are shore based. 896 Sqn - equipped with Wildcats at that stage - operated off HMS Pursuer. The 24th Naval Fighter Wing - Seafire IIIs of 887 and 894 Sqns - flew escort missions to fighter-bomber Typhoons, but were shore based.

Sorry, no other mentions of other Hellcat squadrons involved in Normandy in this book, but hope it's of some help.

From Kenneth Poolman’s “Allied Escort Carriers of WW2”:
Hellcats of 804 Sqn were aboard HMS Ameer in December 1944, when it arrived to support British Army operation along the coast of Burma. The D-Day reference for Gerald Haynes may just be a journalist mistaking a general D-Day reference – meaning a beachhead landing day – for the Normandy Overlord landings. On 18th Jan 1945, HMS Ameer’s Hellcats flew top cover for the landings at Kyaukpyu, north Ramree Island – on the central west coast of Burma.

In Operation Dracula (imaginative names!), the amphibious assault on Rangoon – 20 Hellcats of 804 Sqn were embarked on the “assault carrier” HMS Empress, as well as 4 additional 804 Sqn Hellcats on the GP carrier HMS Shah. Hellcats of No3 Naval Fighter Wing were aboard HMS Khedive and Emperor. In my 2nd edition copy of “They Gave Me A Seafire” (poorer paper, so photo is quite grainy) the photo of the Hellcat with RP rails – which a number of sailors are rearming with RPs, the Hellcat has the same markings (white engine nose ring and tip of tail above fin flash) as the photo of HMS Khedive’s Hellcats (without RPs) in Poolman’s book. Campaign markings for the entire fleet? So it’s likely the Hellcats used RPs when flying strikes in these amphibious landing campaigns around Burma in 1944-45. The Hellcats off HMS Empress and Shah flew the last strikes on Car Nicobar as part of Operation Dracular.

Following the sinking of the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro on 16 May 1945, HMS Emperor “…launched four Hellcats with eight 27kg (60 lb) RPs apiece to find Kurishoyo Maru No 2, but she had in fact already berthed at Penang. ….” (This is the only actual reference I managed to find of RN Hellcats operating with RPs.)

Regards,
...geoff