They helped detect the German battleship, the Bismarck, in 1941. But they would never even have reached the sky without the tenders that serviced them. "All seaplane bases had tenders to bring ...

and that one of my first jobs would be to go to Hamburg to bring back a newly arrived seaplane tender from England. For this purpose I had been allocated two German ex-sailors — Stegman and Somers.

launched from the seaplane tender (carrier) HMS Engadine, bombed a German zeppelin base. Less well known is a ship-based air raid that took place a few months earlier that year in Tsingtao ...

16, 1940, and converted into use as a seaplane tender. She was renamed the USS Pocomoke (AV9 ... She tended two patrol planes which scouted waters approaching the harbor searching for German U-boats, ...