Today, the last great seaplane. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
Suppose you were asked to
name the airplane you find most beautiful. That
question's a lot less interesting today than it
would've been fifty years ago. Nowadays, how many
of us can tell two jet airplanes apart? Airplanes
were far more fun when we were still casting about,
trying to decide what form was best.
I have some favorites: a series of wonderfully
graceful de
Havilland Moth biplanes dominated
private use after WW-I. And for commercial
transport, who doesn't love the old DC-3?
One of my less-known favorites is the versatile
Catalina seaplane. It was a fine solution to a
compound design problem: A sea-plane needs a
seagoing hull, with the wing and propellers mounted
high enough to avoid splashing water. One solution
was a tall hull. Long-legged pontoons were another.
Both offered high drag, and made seaplanes
inherently slow. In commercial passenger ser-vice,
none flew much faster than two hundred miles per
hour.
In 1928, Consolidated Aircraft Corporation began a
special series of seaplanes. Their low flat bodies
rode in the water with a wing and two engines
supported above. The 28-passenger commercial
version was in service for years and, by 1935, that
basic design had evolved into the Navy's PBY
Catalina.
It was a
sleek airplane, whose high wing rode above its trim
body on a streamlined pylon. Two engines were
mounted up on the wing. Outrigger pontoons
stabilized it in the water, and in flight they
retracted to form wingtips. If ever a machine
displayed the marriage of beauty and function this
one did.
The Catalina kept evolving for thirteen years. In
its various forms, it typically had a range over
two thousand miles at speeds up to 170 miles per
hour. Many were eventually fitted with retractable
wheels, so they could function on either land or
water.
Over three thousand of these airplanes were built,
and they had fine staying power. The 1980s found a
hundred or so still in service. During WW-II, they
were rigged for bombing, strafing, and torpedo
runs. They saw a good deal of military service. But
they were vulnerable -- both to enemy fighters and
antiaircraft fire.
However, they were unsurpassed in patrol work, and
in search and rescue missions. So, when the Navy
quit using them, soon after the war, they went on
working. The US and Canada modified them to drop
water on forest fires. The Danes used them to serve
remote locations in Greenland. A converted
four-engine version carried sixteen passengers.
Some even became personal flying yachts.
Catalinas served Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, as
well as the US Coast Guard. We have one down at
Galveston's Lone Star Flight Museum. I go
to visit it. It's large, buoyant, and solid -- just
the airplane to fetch any of us out of the sea. I
feel secure just looking at this graceful,
now-almost-forgotten, old seagull.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
W, E, Scarborough and D. Greer, PBY Catalina in
action, Aircraft Number 62, Squadron Signal
Publications, Inc., Carrollton, TX.
And here is the Lone Star Flight Museum's Catalina
web site.
