Black Cats: Australia's Long Range Catalina Strike Force
Biography & Memoir History Australiana
Black Cats: Australia's Long Range Catalina Strike Force by A.E. Minty spotlights the secretive World War II Catalina squadrons whose night flights from northern Australia helped turn the Pacific tide. In 250 brisk pages the author blends military history with first-hand memoir, giving aviation buffs a rare cockpit-level view of the PBY's lethal cat-and-mouse missions.
Minty, a former RAAF navigator, unpacks how the "Black Cats" flew 20-hour sorties to mine enemy harbours, shadow fleets and rescue downed airmen—often navigating by starlight to avoid detection. His narrative weaves official records, crew diaries and post-war interviews into a vivid cultural study of Australia's wartime home front as much as a combat chronicle.
The 2001 paperback edition offered here is clean, tight and unmarked—ideal for historians, scale-modellers or YA readers curious about Australian military aviation. Light foxing on the outer edges and front blank is the only sign of age; no inscriptions, dog-ears or smoke odour intrude.
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