WW2 Photographic Album of a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Sailor HMS ARk Royal / HMS Garuda India - Cowley

A WW2 wartime album, the property of Royal Navy Rating who appears to have served with the Fleet Air Arm judging by some of the photos. The album is almost full, with tissue paper between most pages. Over 80 original mounted black and white photos (one with head portrait of owner cut out) and 8 black and white postcards of places he visited. In good condition.

The first two pages start off with very exiting images of a Royal Navy shooting war, showing the range of activity which HMS Ark Royal was engaged in prior to its sinking in the Mediterranean having been torpedoed, but the rest relate to a more tranquil wartime existence at the airfield at H.M.S. Garuda at Coimbatore, Southern India. The airfield was quite sizeable and home to a squadron of C45 Expeditors of the Fleet Air Arm, planes that ferried up to 18 VIPs between various airfields in Southern India and several in Ceylon. It also includes photos taken in Goa, Bombay India and South Africa.

There is an interesting photo of a Vichy French Diplomatic ship and also a Swedish Diplomatic ship the Gripsholm and a crashed Fairey Fulmar (x877?) at Pollachi, Southern India.

Annotated with the owner's name A. C. Cowley on inside cover and includes a full portrait photo of "myself" in tropical kit dated 1943. An interesting photographic account on one man's war.

The first two pages suggest he was on board the carrier HMS Ark Royal, witnessed the end of the Graf Spee. There is photo taken at Narvik (sinking of HMS Defence) and also of German paratroopers filling the sky over Crete. There are two final photos on the second page showing the last moments of HMS Ark Royal before it sunk.

An interesting lot.

B10.3

NY675322765GB

Code: 61144