Publisher's Synopsis
Wing Commander Vic Hodgkinson DFC, served throughout the Second World War as a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. His war began in 1939 when he travelled to the UK to became one of the founding members of 10 Squadron RAAF. With their training complete, the squadron took delivery of its first Short Sunderland flying boats. In early 1940, 10 Squadron RAAF was loaned to the RAF by the Australian Government. Flying from Mount Batten (Plymouth), Pembroke Dock (Wales) and Oban (Scotland), Hodgkinson, and the rest of the squadron, played a vital part in the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic as part of the RAF's Coastal Command. During that time, he was involved in numerous air-sea rescues, including picking up twenty-one survivors of a U-boat attack, and of returning the complement with depth charge attacks on German submarines. Vic himself became a survivor when, returning from a fifteen-hour patrol in fog, his Sunderland crashed into the Irish Sea on the approach to Pembroke Dock. Six of his eleven crew were killed; it was a gruelling twelve hours before the survivors were finally rescued. In May 1941, Vic and his team were despatched to the Mediterranean, flying through heavy enemy fire to make contact with Allied troops fighting for their lives in Crete. After this, they were once again back in the Atlantic, flying patrols across the Bay of Biscay. During one such sortie, Vic's crew became embroiled in a battle of the giants with a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor which ended badly for the faster and heavily armed enemy aircraft. In 1942, Hodgkinson was sent back to Australia, going on to serve with Nos. 20 and 40 squadrons RAAF. It was in this period that he also flew the Consolidated Catalina, Martin Mariner and other flying boats - including Dornier Do 24s that had been impressed into RAAF service after the fall of Dutch possessions in the Far East. His missions included dropping supplies to remote areas, minelaying, reporting on Japanese ship movements, and engaging in the bombing of enemy positions. During his wartime service, Vic flew Lord Lloyd to Bordeaux to encourage the French to continue fighting the Germans during the last desperate days of the Battle of France and flew alongside a Free French pilot who attempted to escape with his floatplane from the French submarine _Surcouf_ after it was seized by the Royal Navy in the summer of 1940. This is his remarkable story, told here in his own words for the first time.
