Abandoned Catalina (1 Viewer)

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That first Cat I have visited Chris when I worked at Tabuk in Saudi in the early 80s, it broke my heart to see it as it's my favourite aircraft. It was about 4 hours by road back then and one had to get permission from the local authorities to go beyond 25K outside the base, they gave you a pass which you could not travel without. The Cat was not on our pass and we had to sneak of the main track to take a peek. One old Bedouin got a bit upset that we were poking around the Cat and would not let us take photos. How times must have changed. We were heading a bit further down the cast to hunt crayfish at night. Gosh, I can still taste them now, so fresh and sweet.
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Very nice find, and nice website too. I know exactly where the Straits of Tiran is located, and immediately went searching for the Cat on googlemaps. After a few minutes I found it, here it is -

Google Maps

Unfortunately it appears the wing has since broken off and seems to be at an odd angle to the fuselage. I wonder if something like that could be restored? The engines don't look half bad at all. Zoom out from the image and across the little bay you will see an outpost, the single road and an old oil well tower.
 
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Still it looks to be in decent shape compared to some wrecks Ive seen that where restored to flying condition. Im really suprised some group does not try to recover it.
 
Very unfortunate. Too bad. I am sure the money involved to get the permission to recover the plane from all the local political groups involved would add a large expense to the restoration too. I'm sure it will sit there and rot.
 

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