Consolidated PBY Catalina
The Consolidated PBY Catalina was an American patrol flying boat that first flew in 1935 and became the U.S. Navy's most successful flying boat of the Second World War. Its range and durability suited it to maritime patrol, anti-submarine work, night attack and air-sea rescue in every theatre. Production by Consolidated and its licensees reached 3,282 by August 1945, a record for flying boats, and the type flew on with other air forces and as a fire bomber for decades.
Why It Mattered
The National Air and Space Museum calls the PBY Catalina the U.S. Navy's most successful patrol flying boat of the Second World War. Many aviation experts had written it off as obsolete when the war began, but combat proved the critics wrong. Its crews prized two attributes above the rest: great range and excellent durability. By VJ Day in August 1945, production by Consolidated and its licensees had reached 3,282 aircraft, a total no other flying boat or seaplane has matched. Flying far ahead of the fleets, its crews gave early warning of enemy ships and aircraft, attacked shipping at night, and searched for and rescued people stranded at sea.
Design Notes
The Catalina grew out of a 1933 U.S. Navy request for a flying boat to succeed Consolidated's own P2Y. Consolidated answered with the XP3Y-1, built mainly of metal and fitted with a single vertical stabilizer and rudder in place of the earlier twin tail. Its parasol wing rested on a massive pylon above the fuselage, and the pylon housed a flight engineer's station from which the engineer could closely inspect the two engines mounted in the wing's leading edge. Floats suspended from each wingtip were hinged to fold up after takeoff. The prototype carried racks for up to 2,000 lb of bombs. In November 1939 Consolidated flew the PBY-5A, whose retractable undercarriage turned the flying boat into an amphibian and breathed new life into the design.
Operational History
The XP3Y-1 prototype made its maiden flight on 21 March 1935, the Navy ordered it into production as the PBY-1, and production Catalinas were first delivered to the U.S. Navy in October 1936. In December 1939 the Navy ordered 200 PBY-5s, aircraft it needed for the Neutrality Patrol over the Atlantic approaches. Britain's Royal Air Force gave the type the name it is known by, Catalina, after Santa Catalina Island off California. On 26 May 1941 a Catalina of 209 Squadron sighted the German battleship Bismarck, and the Royal Navy sank the warship the following day. In the Atlantic, PBYs sank a number of U-boats and forced many more to remain submerged during daylight, wasting time the submarines would otherwise have spent attacking Allied ships. On 3 June 1942, PBYs of patrol squadron VP-44 spotted the Japanese fleet steaming toward Midway Island, giving the U.S. fleet the opportunity to surprise it. Radar-equipped Catalinas painted black, the "Black Cats", attacked Japanese shipping at night; the San Diego Air and Space Museum credits fourteen Black Cat squadrons with sinking 112,700 tons of merchant shipping between August 1943 and January 1944. On "Dumbo" rescue missions, crews picked up airmen and sailors adrift in the Pacific, and Lieutenant Nathan Gordon earned the Medal of Honor for rescuing fifteen airmen in rough seas under near-continuous enemy fire. Demand outgrew Consolidated's own capacity, so licence-built Catalinas also came from the Naval Aircraft Factory, Boeing Aircraft of Canada and Canadian Vickers, which built the Canso for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Afterlife
After the war, large seaplanes and flying boats suffered a mass extinction, as wartime runway building and longer-ranged landplanes took over most of their work. The Catalina lasted longer than most: U.S. service with the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force continued until the final retirement in 1956. Catalinas soldiered on with dozens of other countries' air forces and navies well into the late 1960s, and Brazil flew the type until 1982. Civil operators used them to move people and cargo into remote regions where there was no suitable airfield. Many postwar PBYs became fire bombers, able to skim across a lake and pick up four tons of water in fourteen seconds. The San Diego Air and Space Museum counts about 100 surviving Catalinas, all but two of them amphibians, largely in the hands of collectors and museums. The Smithsonian's own PBY-5, accepted by the Navy in February 1943 and flown on patrols from Pensacola, Florida, is now on loan to the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola.