Norseman Aircraft

[HAHalliday]

I am writing a piece about the RCAF in the CBI theatre and have included the text below. Can anyone add more details as to particular sorties, deliveries or evacuations, with dates and names ? I am also interested in details of the RAAF Norseman aircraft. Am I correct that most of these were retained in Australia itself ?


The Norduyn Norseman

Several Canadians in the Far East were mechanical rather than personal. These, of course, were Norduyn Norseman aircraft in allied service. Little has been published about these machines. Twelve were assigned to the American First Air Commando, supporting the second Chindit expedition, and their work was described in the 7 December 1944 issue of CBI Roudup, an American service newspaper published in Delhi ("CBI" signified "China-Burma-India"). The American army designated them as UC-64s:

UNSUNG PLANE 'WORKHORSE OF THE SKIES'
Rugged Little UC-64 Performs Minor Miracles In Jungle

BURMA - To the wounded, isolated, supply-starved foot soldiers, lost in Burma's dense jungles and to the pilots and other crew members who fly her, the UC-64 is a 'sweet little airplane - the workhorse of the skies."

The stories told about those small, single-engined utility cargo planes are many and most always exciting.

Members of the late Gen. Orde C. Wingate's phantom army tell a typical tale of what these planes have done under combat conditions in Burma. A number of Wingate's boys found themselves deep in enemy territory, cut off from all possible help, many of them wounded, some on the verge of starvation. Evacuation by air seemed almost impossible, too, as they were faced with Jap machine gun fire on one side and surrounded by long stretches of rice paddies. Certainly, it wasn't an inviting landing spot for an ordinary plane.
Suddenly, a lone, stubby-nosed aircraft appeared overhead, swept low over enemy installations and settled on a small rice paddy clearing. Painted on its fuselage were the five white diagonal stripes of the First Air Commando Group. The plane was a UC-64 Norduyn Norseman bringing in 2,000 pounds of supplies and ready to evacuate 10 seriously-wounded soldiers to a base hospital.

Another story of the plane's durability is proudly told by Lt. David C. Beasley, a pilot. "You can bang her up, but you can't keep her down," he declared upon returning from an advanced Commando-built airstrip that had, a moment before his arrival, undergone a severe attack by enemy bombers. His radio wasn't working and he hadn't learned of the bombing that had dotted the runway with dangerous craters. When he landed, one of the craters snatched off his tail wheel. But five minutes later, with the wheel wired into place, Beaseley was back in the air.

The C-64, as it is frequently called, is strictly a new bird in India-Burma skies. Prior to last spring's airborne invasion of Northern Burma, Col. Philip Cochran, commanding the Air Commandos, foresaw the need of landing vital supplies upon short strips hacked from Burma's rugged terrain. He needed a ship as tough as the jungle. His choice was the Norduyn Norseman, a plane unproved in any other theater of operations.

"We knew very little of her capabilities," Lt. Julius Goodman, a volunteer pilot, admits, "as no other organization had used her in combat. We had thought of her as a very tricky ship to handle because of her narrow landing gear. It wasn't long, though, before we knew her as a tough little workhorse."
As operations progressed, new hazards developed to test the aircraft's durability. Shortage of transportation between Commando airstrips and the home base frequently forced the plane to carry 1,000 pounds in excess of its factory-stated capacity. She carried them with ease.

The scarcity of C-64's in this neck of the war necessitates the immediate dismantling of their frames after crack-ups. The constant ferrying of troops into small clearings supplying their positions and other outposts with radio equipment, drop packs, ammunition, rations and other supplies, plus evacuating the wounded would diminish the effectiveness of an ordinary plane. But the Norseman, with its Pratt-Whitney Wasp engine, the pilots insist, isn't an ordinary plane.
The Americans operated the largest military fleet of Norseman in all theatres including the Philippines. Late in 1943, fourteen were transferred to the Royal Australian Air Force. Most appear to have been used in Australia itself, but one was wrecked in New Guinea on 21 August 1944. Most of the RAAF Norsemen ended up on that country’s civil register, but one was repatriated to Canada in 1973, became CF-ISM, and crashed in Manitoba in 1978.

[vingtor]

Hi,

I wrote a book on Norseman aircraft in Norwegian service a few years ago. Although this focuses on Norwegian service, it does include a chapter on the type's development and it describes the difference between the Mk.IV (that RCAF used) and the Mk.VI/UC-64 that was operated by the USAAF and RAAF).

Nils

[Bill Walker]

Hugh, have you contacted the people at http://www.norsemanhistory.ca/ ? They have access to a lot of info on individual aircraft.

[Col Bruggy]

Hello,

RAAF Norseman Aircraft.

Overview:

http://www.adf-serials.com/2a71.shtml

Aircraft Status Cards:

http://naa12.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetri...arcode=3046041

Norseman Accidents:

http://naa12.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetri...arcode=6950651

Col.