Can you imagine a lumbering Walrus departing the catapult of HMS Exeter at an alarmingly low speed? The envisaged role of gunnery spotting hardly happened in wartime but the type, while often disliked by its pilots, was probably useful for flying in groceries to its mother ships. Photo likely taken in Vancouver, BC where K8343 and the other Walrus, K8341, visited an airshow. Photo from: Naval History and Heritage Command

A Walrus at an airshow on the Candian west coast. K8343 / 769 and K8341 / 780 were on board the British cruiser Exeter which visited Victoria, BC in the summer of 1937. K8343 was probably no longer assigned to the ship at the time of the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939, in which Exeter's aircraft were damaged by shells from Admiral Graf Spee and dumped overboard. Photo by: James Crookall / City of Vancouver Archives