'Ships crews would say once they saw us overhead they felt they were safe, which was very nice. But just by being there you could force submarines to submerge and not get in a position to torpedo our ships. 'If you were lucky you would sink a submarine. 'We would fly out day and night to patrol around the convoys and protect them. Martin said: 'Sunderlands were the only long range British aircraft which could reach the middle of the Atlantic for the first couple of years of the war. They hope to have the entire vessel extracted and pieced back together in about a year's time. The operation costs thousands of pounds, and it was only this year that the Trust managed to extract the front two turrets of the flying-boat. Having been brought in to work on the 15-year project, Martin became Patron of the Pembroke Dock Sunderland Trust in 2001 and has helped identify the parts of the plane dive teams have raised from the seabed. They would be sent out across the oceans to intercept German U-boats using co-ordinates picked up by the secret codebreakers at Bletchley Park. Martin, who now lives in the village of Colnbrook, Berkshire, was an instructor at a training unit based in Pembroke Dock when he last flew the plane in 1940.Īircrews would have to fly up to 600 miles out into the Atlantic to escort convoys and attack German submarines who were slowly starving the British into submission. Many were kept at Pembroke Docks (above). Two Vickers K machine guns were attached to the wing, a second gun was added to the nose turret, and constant speed propellers and deicing boots were installed. A year into the war, amendments were made to combat Nazi tactics. Initially, it carried 910kg of bombs, mines and other weaponry. The first was received in Singapore in June 1938.īy the start of the war, they had a fleet of 40, which acted as one of the major components of the UK's overseas operations for at least the first few months. With a deeper hull and turrets on the nose and tail, it was a military version of the Empire crafts used by Imperial Airways.ĭesperate to roll out the new model, the Air Ministry filed an order in 1937 to strengthen defences. More than a year before the first prototype was built, the RAF ordered 21 production examples of the Mark I Sunderland flying-boat.
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