PBY

The Cat beckons. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—I guess I’m gonna be able to blog that “Cat” after all.
The April 2017 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Consolidated PBY, a Catalina.
The “Cat” is a weird-looking duck; it’s amphibious.
(Although I guess the first PBYs weren’t amphibious, just a flying boat.)
Its gigantic wing is above the fuselage on a pylon, so it doesn’t dip into the water. That wing is 104 feet long.
There are retractible pontoons at the wing-ends. They also help keep the wing outta the water.
I decided to stop blogging all seven calendars. It consumed too much time.
But the incredible calendar-photo of that PBY has been grabbing my attention all month.
In my youth I had a PBY model. It was baby-blue plastic.
It was probably Revell, and given me as a Christmas-present.
Revell models were very well made. The airplane models had interlocking wing-tabs. The wings didn’t sag.
My PBY didn’t have interlocking tabs, but it was so well-made I sprung for other Revell bomber models. First a B-36, then a B-47, finally a B-52.
All had interlocking wing-tabs.
I also had an Aurora B-26 model, but its wings sagged. They didn’t interlock. The wings were held on by model cement. The wing-tabs, maybe a quarter-inch deep, fit slots in the fuselage. The wings quickly drooped.
That B-26 was also a Christmas-present.
The Catalina was used a long time, observation and patrol, and also search-and-rescue.
Many Navy fighter-pilots owed their lives to the “Cat.”
The Cats were first used after 1936, a response to a Navy request in 1933. Yet the final PBYs (in foreign countries) lasted into the ‘70s. The final PBYs in civilian service were retired in the early 1980s, serving as passenger transports and in fire-fighting.
They used two 1,200 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp radial engines, a propeller airplane. Above the fuselage, those engines could be right next to each other.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some were later converted to turboprop, although I’ve never seen one. (I’ve seen turboprop DC-3s.)
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“A total of approximately 4,000 Catalinas and variants were built between 1936 and 1945. Because of their worldwide popularity, there was scarcely a maritime battle in WWII in which they were not involved.
The PBY had vulnerabilities. It was slow, with a maximum speed of 179 mph, and with no crew armor or self-sealing tanks, it was highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft attack.
However it was these weaknesses, coincident with the development of effective radar, and Japanese reliance on night transport, which led to the development of the “Black Cat Squadrons.”
These crews performed nighttime search-and-attack missions in their black-painted PBYs. The tactics were spectacularly successful and seriously disrupted the flow of supplies and personnel to Japanese island bases.
The Catalinas also proved effective in search and rescue missions, code-named “Dumbo.” Small detachments, normally of three PBYs, routinely orbited on stand-by near targeted combat areas. One detachment based in the Solomon islands rescued 161 airmen between January 1 and August 15, 1943.”
My PBY became one of my favorite models.
It wasn’t painted. I never painted anything; I was afraid of ruining things. Better to accept an unpainted model than slop. My models often had decals. They were enough.
I remember once casting a tiny concrete weight to insert in the nose of my American Airlines DC-7 model to get it to fully stand on its tricycle landing-gear, not tipped nose-up on its tail-runner.
So now I wonder if the PBY pictured is watertight. It’s nose-wheel is in the hull; that cover could easily leak.
I also wondered if the PBY I saw was watertight. Being amphibious they could avoid water.