A few days ago, one Catalina spent more than 25 hours in reconnaissance fights over harbours.and, fiords in northern Norway, photographing dock installations, ships at anchor and new military works. Quite early on her Jong trip this Catalina was holed by three anti-alrerft shells from Ger man batteries. The cockpit was filled with fumes from bursting shells but the splinters did not do much damage fand the crew went on with their Might and brought back information of greatest importance to their of-
Costal Command reconnaissance falls into two categories: one pur pose is for the gathering of informa. Xion, the other is for offensive patrol.
"Aireratt on news-gathering ights fy along given courses and report everything that they ses, "Pilots and observers are specially trained for this work as their despatches must be models of news reporting; they must be brief and accurate, yet including all details, Planes have sometimes dived over holly defended places, such as the Brest harbour, to photograph special targets. Usually their work, "how: ever, consists of taking a series of Slightly overlapping" photographs Which" are later' mounted mosalc-{Iashion. These composite photographs cover whole areas and contain every scrap of latest news about the layout of ground defences and other developments, Over Boulogne photo. graphs have even been taken while planes were dropping bombs and the bombs and bursts can be soon in the resulting pictures.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.