No. 204 Squadron

No. 204 Squadron was a Coastal Command flying boat unit that spent most of the Second World War conducting anti-submarine and maritime reconnaissance patrols, primarily over the South Atlantic and the waters off West Africa. Originally formed in March 1915 as a Royal Naval Air Service unit and redesignated on the creation of the RAF in April 1918, the squadron was reformed in 1929 at RAF Mount Batten, Plymouth, equipped with Supermarine Southampton flying boats, and re-equipped with Short Sunderlands in June 1939. At the outbreak of war the squadron was assigned to No. 15 Group and began flying convoy escort and Western Approaches patrols, before moving to RAF Sullom Voe in the Shetlands in April 1940, where its crews made some of the earliest British sightings of the German naval build-up during the Norway campaign. After a period in Iceland conducting North Atlantic patrols, the squadron transferred via Gibraltar to Bathurst in The Gambia in late 1941, where it remained for the rest of the war hunting U-boats in the busy West African shipping lanes. During the conflict the squadron lost nineteen Sunderlands and was credited with downing at least one Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88, disbanding at Bathurst on 30 June 1945.