Virtual
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No.228 Squadron, RAF Coastal Command

No.228 Squadron is included on this site as one of the many RAF Squadrons to which RAAF personnel were posted during WW2, and in which they lived fought and often died, as products of the Empire Air Training Scheme.

No. 228 Squadron was a flying boat squadron in RAF Coastal Command.  It served in the Mediterranean and over the North Atlantic from bases in Scotland and Wales.  The squadron was reformed on 15 December 1936 at Pembroke Dock in Wales.

After operating a number of flying boat types that were already obsolete when delivered, in the year prior to the outbreak of the war they had been re-equipped with the superlative Short Sunderland four engined flying boat, later to be nick-named the 'Flying Porcupine' by Luftwaffe crews because it bristled with defenisve firepower. 

In 1939, the squadron was used to deliver a number of aircraft to No.230 Squadron in Singapore. In May 1939, now completely converted to the Sunderland, the squadron moved to Alexandria in Egypt, but at the outbreak of war the squadron returned to Pembroke Dock. Detachments were based at Invergordon and at Sullom Voe, and the squadron flew patrols between Scotland and Norway.

During this period the squadron helped effect the rescue of the crew of the Kensington Court, a steamship that had been torpedoed seventy miles off the Scilly Islands. One Sunderland from No. 204 Squadron and another from No.228 managed to land close to the one overcrowded lifeboat and between them rescued the entire crew.

On 30 January the squadron became the first in Coastal Command to successfully cause the sinking of a U-boat, U-55. The submarine was attempting to escape from surface ships of the Royal Navy, but a Sunderland from the squadron managed to track it until the submarine's batteries were exhausted and the U-boat's captain was forced to abandon ship and scuttle her.

In June 1940 Italy entered the war, and No.228 Squadron was re-assigned to the Mediterranean. Most of the squadron was based in Egypt, a detachment operated from Gibraltar, and the squadron used Malta as an advanced base. In October the squadron's maintenance base was moved from Pembroke Dock to Malta, where it remained until March 1941 when it moved to safer waters at Alexandria. During this period the squadron concentrated on fleet reconnaissance duties and on anti-submarine patrols. In November 1940 Sunderlands from No. 228 Squadron were amongst the aircraft used to cover the Italian fleet in the build-up to the Fleet Air Arm's dramatic and successful attack on Taranto, using the unlikely and ungainly Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers, nicnknamed "Stringbags".

In April 1941 the squadron took part in the evacuation of British and Commonwealth troops from Greece, flying them directly back to Egypt. Nearly 900 people were rescued from Greece by RAF aircraft, mainly by No. 228 Squadron's Sunderlands (Amongst them were the King of Greece and the majority of senior Allied commanders).  The Sunderland's cavernous hull and load carrying capacity was used to good effect.

In June 1941 the squadron moved briefly to West Africa, but by this point it only had two serviceable aircraft remianing, so the assignemnet was short-lived in the extreme.

By the time ground crews arrived the aircraft had already been ordeed back to the UK, to Stranraer, in Scotland, where it became operational again. In March 1942 it moved to Oban in Scotland to begin anti-submarine patrols, before moving back to Pembroke Dock in Wales reaching out over the Bay of Biscay.

No. 228 Squadron enjoyed considerable success during this final phase of the war, sinking three U-boats from Prmbroke Dock in South Wales.  , three in 1943 and the last one two days after D-Day in the Bay of Biscay.

The squadron was disbanded on 4 June 1945.

Compiled and edited by Steve Larkins March 2020

Compiled from a varitey of sources:

HistoryofWar.org

RAF MoD UK

Wikipedia