Walter 'Bill' Leadley 1924-2009 (Part II)

Memoirs of NZ429151 W/O Walter 'Bill' Leadley as told to Jenny Scott, 1992.

The U.S.S. Coos Bay and H.M.A.S. Hobart.

I will give you the detail on that. I was not flying with my normal crew, I was flying I think with Burgess at the time. I will check the book on the 30th and I will explain that but you have to understand they were very short of gunners and I did fly with other crews on the odd occasion.

Just filling in. There you are. But there you are.

The Treasury early one morning I was looking straight up the into the snouts of a 'Tony' and a 'Val' coming in right on the deck, up the channel, where the U.S.S. Coos Bay was anchored and 'ummm' certainly damaged the blister trying to get the port .5 out to have a crack at them when they shot passed the stern of the Coos Bay slipped up over the coconut palms and dropped their bombs on the bomber strip there. They were after the Mitchells, they weren't interested in anything else and they did a bit of damage at the strip there. I believe some Lightnings took off and caught up with them and both of them were shot down. That may have been propaganda - I don't know.

So there will be little things like that crop up. This is where confusion comes in, there were a lot of things that were probably not recorded.

There is one thing you could do for me that I would like to know. That is we were called off a patrol it was from Espiritu Santo in '43 and we were on the Nauru sector, either 10 or 12 sector, and we got a message and we diversified off that for some 20 minutes where we picked up a light cruiser who had been damaged. It was the H.M.S. [sic] Hobart, the H.M.S. Hobart. She had been attacked by a submarine, her steerage was gone I believe and she was just wallowing in the drink when we got there. We stayed with her about half an hour until the destroyers turned up on the horizon. Two destroyers I think it was and they took her in tow and they towed her back to Espiritu Santo. I would like to have known the date of that [JS Note: 20 July 1943], I just cannot find it in any books here. I would be able to coordinate that attack in my log book with that particular flight. That would be very interesting, the H.M.S. Hobart - cruiser - Australian of course.