No. 621 Squadron RAF
military unit
No. 621 Squadron RAF was a reconnaissance squadron of the Royal Air Force during World War II, flying from Somaliland and Aden. It was after the war stationed in Egypt and Palestine and tasked with air-sea rescue and was also active in Operation Sunburn, looking for illegal immigrants.
History
No. 621 Squadron RAF was formed at Port Reitz, Kenya, on 12 September 1943 as a general reconnaissance unit equipped with 16 Wellington XIIIs, with a role of carrying out maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine duties over the western Indian Ocean and the coasts of East Africa. In October 1943, the squadron moved to Mogadishu, Somalia, and in November, supplemented its normal duties by being tasked to look for four thousand stolen camels on behalf of the army. In December 1943, the squadron moved to RAF Khormaksar, Aden.
In a more serious series of sorties, the squadron managed to knock out the U-852, but at the beginning of 1945 activities had dropped so low that the squadron was reduced from 16 to 8 aircraft. In November the squadron converted to Warwicks and started in Operation Sunburn, looking for illegal immigrants into Palestine. In April to squadron moved to Palestine and converted to Lancasters.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7043694. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “No. 621 Squadron RAF” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.