Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Catalina Flying Boat Captain: A Pilot's War from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean

Catalina Flying Boat Captain: A Pilot's War from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean

Saunders, Denis

Hardcover

Air CombatGeneral World HistoryWorld War II

Publisher Price: $44.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date November 30, 2026

ISBN10: 1036183319
ISBN13: 9781036183318
Publisher: Air World
Published: Nov 30 2026
Pages: 256
Language: English
A survivor's wartime voyage chronicles long, perilous Catalina flights, perilous missions, and steadfast leadership amid oceanic dangers and relentless duty.

Aged 21, Bruce Daymond enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1941. He had joined to serve the British Empire, as it then was, knowing he would serve thousands of miles from Australia.

Sixteen days into my flying training, Bruce went solo for the first time. Having trained as pilot and navigator under the Empire Air Training Scheme, in both Australia and Canada, he went on to serve in the RAF throughout the Second World War. As a pilot of a Consolidated Catalina flying boat, he flew with a number of Coastal Command units, namely Nos. 209, 357, 628, and 240 squadrons. Throughout his service, Bruce maintained a huge, detailed, candid, and personal daily diary; it is that which forms the basis of this insightful account of one flying boat captain's service. The result is a revealing account of one man's dedication to service and leadership, endurance of hundreds of hours of monotonous flying interspersed with periods of terror and courage in the face of great danger.

Bruce describes what must be an extraordinary record of hours in the air over a short time, inserting and rescuing Allied coast watchers off the Japanese-occupied Burmese coast, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Flying Cross. The former was rarely awarded to junior officers, as he was. His operational experience included flights, many of longer than twenty hours, almost entirely over the sea, often at night, on operations such as convoy anti-submarine escort, clandestine operations in Japanese controlled waters, and frequent meteorological flights in tropical cyclonic weather over the Bay of Bengal, that in one incident in a violent down draft caused a nearly unrecoverable descent into an angry sea.

This is an extraordinary account of wartime service and living life to the full under an uncertain future.

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