RAF Oban

56.4185, -5.4987 — view on OpenStreetMap ↗

About

RAF Oban was a Coastal Command flying-boat base on the Argyll coast, using the sheltered water between the town and the island of Kerrera as its alighting area from 1940. Its squadrons flew long anti-submarine and convoy-escort patrols over the western approaches in flying boats — Supermarine Stranraers and Saro Lerwicks at first, then Short Sunderlands and Consolidated Catalinas, including Australian, Canadian and Norwegian crews. The station ran down at the end of the war; slipways survive on Kerrera and at Ganavan, and the bay is now given over to harbour and marina use.

Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including Oban (Ganavan Sands) — Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust and RAF Oban — Wikipedia. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.

Photographs

Royal Air Force Coastal Command, 1939-1945. Shot Sunderland Mark Is of No. 210 Squadron RAF, at anchor in Oban Bay, Argyll, after escorting a convoy into harbour.
ⓘ licence & creditStanley Devon / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Coastal_Command,_1939-1945._CH851.jpgView source & full licence →
Royal Air Force Coastal Command, 1939-1945. A crew member checks a rack containing four 250-lb AS bombs inside Short Sunderland Mark I, N9027, of No 210 Squadron RAF based at Oban, Argyll. When attacking a target, two mobile bomb racks inside the Sunderland's hull were run out to their release positions underneath the wings of the aircraft
ⓘ licence & creditStanley Devon / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Coastal_Command,_1939-1945._CH808.jpgView source & full licence →
RAF Memorial, Ganavan Bay CU.
ⓘ licence & creditPeter Amsden / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RAF_Memorial,_Ganavan_Bay_CU_-_geograph.org.uk_-_100975.jpgView source & full licence →
RAF Memorial, Ganavan Bay.
ⓘ licence & creditPeter Amsden / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RAF_Memorial,_Ganavan_Bay_-_geograph.org.uk_-_100972.jpgView source & full licence →
A Royal Air Force Coastal Command Martin PBM-3B Mariner I (s/n JX103) of No. 524 Squadron at Oban, Scotland (UK), in October 1943. The squadron was assessing the aircraft, but in the end the type was not adopted by the RAF, and in 1944 No. 524 re-equipped with the Vickers Wellington XIII.
ⓘ licence & creditRAF / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_Mariner_524_Sqn_RAF_at_Oban_1943.jpgView source & full licence →

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