With a window on each side, it gave him a good view of the nacelles, where any oil leakage would first show up. The pylon was just wide enough to serve as the military flight engineer’s lofty but lonely office, his seat suspended from the wing above him like a playground swing. (National Archives)Īt the time, the PBY was the cleanest flying boat ever designed, at least when it came to drag. The plane closest to the camera is 14-P-1, which on 7 December 1941 was flown during the attack by the destroyer Ward on a Japanese midget submarine. These planes, from Patrol Squadron 14 (VP-14), arrived on Oahu on 23 November 1941. ![]() The streamlined pylon put the wing-mounted engines well above spray height, since water can do a surprising amount of damage to prop tips moving at near-supersonic speeds.įly in formation in the Hawaiian area, circa November 1941. The PBY’s single shapely central pylon was a great leap forward, following first use of the concept on the slightly earlier Sikorsky S-42. Popped rivets and even sprung seams were not uncommon, but crewmen learned to use the navigator’s pencils to plug rivet holes, and pilots soon realized that a touch-and-go or immediate beaching was the only defense against an open hull skin. Open-sea landings required a practiced touch, since the Pigboat asked to be stalled on at minimum speed - a characteristic that soon made it such a superb rough-water boat. Having flown a B-17 of the same era, I can attest that one pilot’s “light and responsive” is another’s “at least I don’t have to go to the gym today.” Old-timers accustomed to the open-cockpit biplane boats that had preceded it laughed and opined that the PBY was light and responsive. ![]() New flying boat pilots complained that the PBY was brutally heavy on the controls. ![]() The Consolidated team that limned its lines knew exactly what to include and what to leave off: a shapely, minimal hull rather than a standard flying boat barge two tightly cowled and wing-faired engines close to the centerline, ideal for single-engine handling, though they made directional control on the water a bit difficult a towering, fish-tail vertical fin to help with the steering both on the water and in the air clean, cantilever, strutless horizontal stabilizers and the colossal, fuel-fat wing that gave the PBY range and endurance far beyond anything else with propellers.Įven the waist-blister goiters that became so much a part of the flying boat’s look when they were added to the PBY-4 might have seemed excessive, but they were effective gunnery and observation posts.Īfter all, the famous “Attu Zero,” the largely undamaged example of the Japanese navy’s mythic fighter, was discovered by an airsick crewman who had leaned into his PBY’s blister and opened it to vomit just as the crashed Mitsubishi flashed below him. But never mind, the PBY, like all great objects of industrial design, exuded an air of absolute purposefulness.
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