No. 115 Squadron RCAF
| No. 115 Squadron RCAF | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Active | 1941-1944 |
| Disbanded | 23 August 1944 |
| Country |  Canada |
| Branch | .svg){kind=small} Royal Canadian Air Force |
| Role | Bomber Reconnaissance |
| Nickname(s) | Lynx |
| Motto(s) | BEWARE |
| Battle honours | Pacific Coast 1942-44 |
No. 115 Squadron was a Royal Canadian Air Force Canadian Home War Establishment (HWE) Squadron that operated during World War II.
Operational history
No. 115 Squadron flew
anti-submarine patrols along the coasts of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska as part of Western Air Command
.
On 7 July 1942,
Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee identified their victim as the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine Ro-32.[4] In 1967, however, the U.S. Navy retracted this assessment because Ro-32 had been inactive in Japan at the time of the sinking and was found afloat in Japan at the end of the war.[4] The submarine reportedly sunk on 9 July 1942 remains unidentified.[4][note 1]
No. 115 Squadron disbanded at
Tolfino, British Columbia, in August 1944.[5]
Equipment
- Bristol Bolingbroke I (August - December 1941)
- Bristol Bolingbroke IV (November 1941 - August 1943)
- Lockheed Ventura GR.V (August 1943 - August 1944)
The squadron's two-letter squadron code was BK from August 1939 to May 1942, then UV until the RCAF HWE discontinued the use of squadron codes on 16 October 1942 "for security reasons".[6]
See also
- List of Royal Canadian Air Force squadrons
- List of aircraft of the Canadian Air Force
- List of Royal Canadian Air Force stations
Notes
- Amur River in the Soviet Union on 18 July 1942 after the explosion of four of her torpedoes, was refloated immediately, sank again the following the day during a storm while under tow, and finally was refloated a second time on 11 July 1943 and scrapped. A photograph of the submarine reportedly taken by the crew of the Bolingbroke involved in her sinking purportedly shows a gray submarine — submarines of the Soviet Pacific Ocean Fleet were painted gray during World War II, while Japanese submarines were black — and the number "8" among characters painted on her conning tower, consistent with the markings on Shch-138′s conning tower. Some researchers have suggested that the Soviet narrative of Shch-138′s loss at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur may be intended to cover up Shch-138′s loss while clandestinely collecting information along the coast of the United States and Canada. (See Bruhn, p. 128, and Coyle.)
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
- Bruhn, David D. Battle Stars for the "Cactus Navy": America's Fishing Vessels and Yachts in World War II. Berwyn Heights, Maryland: Heritage Books 2014. ISBN 978-0-7884-5573-5
- Coyle, Brendan. "Of Ghosts and Submarines." Vancouver Sun. 18 August 2008. Accessed 19 November 2021.
- Kostenuk, S. and J. Griffin. RCAF Squadron Histories and Aircraft: 1924–1968. Toronto: Samuel Stevens, Hakkert & Company, 1977. ISBN 0-88866-577-6.
- No. 115 Squadron. [1]
| Squadron numbers |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squadron codes |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
1 Aircraft administered and serviced by the RCAF but manned by the
Royal Canadian Artillery .2 Non-standard code as unit using OW added L. Letters normally denoted parent Command, aircraft type (L Liberator transport, D Dakota etc), unit, and individual aircraft. 3 VC .svg){kind=small} XXA where VC was the civil code used by the RCAF replacing CF-, XX was the unit code and A was the aircraft ID letter4 XX nnn where XX was the unit code and nnn was the last 3 digits of the serial number. Unit code was replaced with "RCAF" in 1958 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
