Oban
OBAN see seperate entry for CONNEL (The regional airport at CONNEL [NORTH CONNEL] is now known as OBAN)
OBAN: Flying boat station (Two sites, one operational and the other maintenance)
Notes: These three pictures were obtained from Google Earth ©
Military user: RAF Coastal Command 18 Group
330 (Norwegian) Sqdn (Consolidated PBY-5 Catalinas, later Short Sunderlands)
210 Sqdn (Short Sunderlands)
Location: The operational base was 2.5nm SW of Oban town centre, and the maintenance base 2nm N of Oban town centre
Period of operation: WW2 only?
Alighting area: (Operational) Approach from any direction and land in the Firth of Lorn
NOTES: I have Mr Graham Frost to thank for investigating the history and discovering there were actually two sites!
Consolidated PBY-5 Catalinas were delivered here from BEAUMARIS, Angelsey by ATA 6FPP. A crew would typically be 1st and 2nd pilots, a flight engineer and at least two ATC or possibly Sea Cadets aged about sixteen or seventeen.
There are so many aspects of RAF operations that utterly confuse me. For example I came across this account in Air Commodore Graham Pitchforks exemplary book Shot Down and in the Drink which chronicles the history of Air-Sea Rescue in WW2. Let me quote;
“In July 1944, Flight Lieutenant Tom Harvey and his crew had just completed a short course at 302 Ferry Training Unit when they took off from Oban in Scotland to deliver Sunderland ML 860 to 490 (RNZAF) Squadron based at Jui in Sierra Leone. The 13-hour transit flight to Gibraltar passed without incident.” Can you now imagine how foolhardy the RAF training regime was in those days?
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