Thread: MIA WW2 Catalina found

Sad ending but good find for the families. Boy those catalinas were a great aircraft. Jim

Had a quick look, don't think this has been posted. Apologies if it has.

https://youtu.be/xMkYzO0_By0

Had to post this.A passenger calls the PBY the Land Rover of the air, because of the oil leaks.

https://youtu.be/Fifvp38DDGo

A look around the inside.

https://youtu.be/l9bioK7PAbU

I have a friend who was a wireless op on these out of W.A. He said that when the Aussie planes laid mines they dropped them inside the harbour. The yanks would not do that, they dropped theirs outside the harbour. 24 hour plus endurance and almost a double crew on long flights. They got just over 25 hours on one trip.

Qantas still hold the world record for the longest ever engine powered aeroplane flight , in a Catalina , fair bit more than 25hours.

further to this a commanders log in the Vega Star by a Capt Crowther logged 31hrs 50 mins , while the Qantas Western Command report to Head Office logged it as 32hrs 9mins. 30th August 1943.

While talking about the PBY, worth remembering the use of them for a non-stop Sri Lanka - Perth service by Qantas after one of their Empire boats (Corio) was shot down off Bali.

The service was operated with takeoff weights 6,000pounds over peacetime MTOW. To operate ate these weights they needed dead flat water for about five miles, provided by the Swan River in Perth and Lake Koggala in Sri Lanka. Flights took from about 23hours to over 32 hours, depending on wind conditions. Payload was about a thousand pounds - usually a few passengers and the rest microfilmed mail. See Hudson Fysh's "Qantas at War".

Also worth remembering is P.G.Taylor's Pacific and Indian Ocean flights in PBYs before, during and after WW2.

John

The Aussie way of laying mines was to cut the throttles from way out, glide into the harbour area, drop the mines and then push the throttles through the firewalls to get out fast before the defenses woke up. Bloody smart!