By Chris Goss
Features
SECOND WORLD WAR | AZORES
CHRIS GOSS PROFILES BRITISH FORCES STATIONED ON THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS IN 1943.
A dramatic accident involving Swordfish HS653. Its undercarriage collapsed on board HMS Fencer on 28 October 1943. Sub Lt H G Boniface was at the controls.
(ALL IMAGES VIA AUTHOR)
The archipelago of the Azores, a Portuguese group of nine volcanic islands, is situated in the North Atlantic about 930 miles (1,500km) west of the Portuguese capital Lisbon and 2,400 miles east from the eastern seaboard of the USA. During the Second World War, the Azores acquired great strategic importance as not only did they lay across the trade routes from the southern Atlantic, but they were also home to British cable stations linking much of the British Empire.
