Avro Shackleton - Ecological Bomber

Video from the channel Mark Felton Productions about Avro, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 10:07. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about the sinking of the oil tanker SS Wafra in 1971, whose end came at the hands of the South African Air Force's Avro Shackletons.

The Wafra left Ras Tanura on February 12, 1971, with 472,000 barrels of crude oil bound for Cape Town. On February 27 its engine room flooded, and on the 28th it ran aground on a reef near Cape Agulhas. About 26,000 tons of crude reached the sea, and the penguin colony on Dyer Island was coated in oil. On March 8 a tugboat freed it from the reef and towed it about 200 miles out to sea to sink it in deep water. On March 10, Buccaneers hit it with seven AS-30 missiles and set it on fire, but failed to sink it. On March 12, the Shackletons dropped depth charges on it: nine fell around the hull and the ship sank in about 1,800 m of water.

The Shackleton was a maritime patrol aircraft derived from the Lincoln and, through it, from the Lancaster. It entered RAF service in 1951. South Africa received eight MR3s starting in 1957 to replace its Sunderland flying boats. In August 1963 one was lost against a mountain, killing all 13 crew members. The South African Air Force grounded the fleet in 1984, and the RAF retired the aircraft in 1991. In 1994 Shackleton 1716 made a forced landing in the Sahara and all 19 people aboard survived.