RAF antishipping aces

[cpaige5@hotmail.com]

I've never come across it but did the RAF keep any tallies for sinking of ships by their pilots. In other words ship attack aces.

[Larry]

As far as I'm aware the RAF didn't have any score keeping for shipping and so hitting a ship was treated the same as hitting a land target. Many Coastal Command pilots sunk more than five ships but never became aces. However the more a pilot sunk the more likely he was to get a DFC and Bar and a promotion.

As for U-Boats these were harder to attack and any successes in sinking them were usually remembered as a great achievement but I have never heard of any Allied pilot that sunk five U-Boats.

If you are thinking of starting a 'Shipping Ace registry' good luck to you!

[Alan Clark]

The reason for no list being made is it might have been quite hard to say who had actually sunk a ship if more than 1 aircraft was involved in an attack. For instance how would you go about dividing up a sinking by one of the Beaufighter Strike Wings?

[andy bird]

Officially Coastal Command did not keep a tally of the merchantmen, tankers, escorts, etc., sunk by the individual squadrons or wings be they four engine or two engine squadrons.
Unofficially I know that Nos: 235 and 248 Squadron did keep a tally when at Portreath. When the Mosquito Wing was formed at Banff, NE Scotland the base OC Grp/Capt Max Aitken did have a tally for all squadrons painted in the entrance hall of the Banff HQ building, a smaller version appeared above the bar area for 143, 235, 248, 333, 144 (Beau) and 404 (Beau) Squadrons.
A tally painted on a sea grey background in 1940s stylised black text was also visible for everyone to see in the Banff Operations Room of all the Banff Strikes from September 1944 to May 1945. In 1994/95 it was still visible despite the ravages of time, in 2005 it was in very bad shape, today it is virtually non-existent.

Kind Regards

Andy Bird

[Felix C]

There is a notation in a recent book I read about the most successful Coastal Command pilot of the war in terms of Uboats sunk. I seem to recall the number was three. Give me a bit to search the citation and number.

[bearoutwest]

If you are interested in RAF Coastal Command U-Boat "aces", try google-searching a couple of names such as:
Squadron Leader Terence Bulloch, or
Wing Commander Michael Ensor.

Both seemed to have an extraordinary success with locating U-boats, with multiple attacks recorded. Bulloch had 4 wartime* successes and Ensor 3 (I think though likely to have remembered incorrectly).

*That subsequent post-war review indicated a number of "sinkings" in fact only resulted in heavy damage to the U-boat which managed to limp home, should not detract from the achievements of these gentlemen (and Coastal Command crews in general).

Regards,
...geoff