Best flying boats, from War over the Wine Dark Sea

[haitipro]

Many years ago, my partner Mike Haller, and I arranged the return of the Emily, illustrated, to Japan, from the American site where it was stored.
I originally spotted in in 1967 when I picked up my F4U-7 Corsair 133693 the Navy had stored at the same location, after transporting it from Rota, Spain.
Lynn Garrison
[email protected]

 

[Schweik]

That is bad ass sir!

 

[BiffF15]

Many years ago, my partner Mike Haller, and I arranged the return of the Emily, illustrated, to Japan, from the American site where it was stored.
I originally spotted in in 1967 when I picked up my F4U-7 Corsair 133693 the Navy had stored at the same location, after transporting it from Rota, Spain.
Lynn Garrison
[email protected]

Pictures?

 

[Schweik]

Found this sexy looking little beast. More of a seaplane than a flying boat but I thought worth sharing. Looks like a nice ride for a James Bond villain...

Caproni Ca.316 - Wikipedia

 

[stug3]

 

[Schweik]

H6K vs. B-17

Type 97 Flying boat vs B-17

Another incident, a PB4Y-2 shot down an H8K in 1944, apparently due to catching it by surprise. This is the one which is the origin of the photos you may have seen before of the H8K being shot down. This was a description I found of the incident.

"The long, over-water patrols routinely performed by USN patrol squadrons as well as those by their IJN counterparts were, as the saying goes, "99% boredom, and 1% sheer terror:. That last 1% is what we see here. On 2 July, 1944, VP-115 with Plane Commander Lt. Stoughton Atwood Flying PB4Y-1 Bu #32274, with no markings other than the Bu. # on the tail, searched a sector extending from Wakde Island toward Mindanao, PT, …when an IJN H8K1 "Emily" intersected their course at an altitude 1,000 feet lower, when first spotted by Atwood's eagle-eyed crew. The Japanese remained unaware of the Liberator maneuvering into attack position, until the moment pictured. Atwood's copilot recorded the violent event, ending in the destruction of the Emily, from the right seat taking a series of 15 photos with the ship's K-12 camera. As an interesting aside, Lt. Atwood had a premonition before the mission that they would encounter an Emily and he asked his highly skeptical crew to prepare for this event, which the did. Also, contrary to some narrative accounts of the event. Crew 12's normally assigned aircraft; the "Briny Marlin" was not flown on the 2 July mission having been destroyed days earlier during a Japanese bomb-raid on Wakde."

Some of the photos are on this site

80-G-241259 Kawanishi H8K2 (

 

[Milosh]

Another incident, a PB4Y-2 shot down an H8K in 1944, apparently due to catching it by surprise. This is the one which is the origin of the photos you may have seen before of the H8K being shot down.

Hard for a PB4Y-2 to shoot down an a/c in 1944 as it wasn't deployed til 1945.
The Privateer entered U.S. Navy service during late 1944, Patrol Bomber Squadrons 118 and 119 (VPB-118 and VPB-119) being the first Fleet squadrons to equip with the aircraft. The first overseas deployment began on 6 January 1945, when VPB-118 left for operations in the Marianas. On 2 March 1945 VPB-119 began "offensive search" missions out of Clark Field, Luzon in the Philippines, flying sectored searches of the seas and coastlines extending from the Gulf of Tonkin in the south, along the Chinese coast, and beyond Okinawa in the north.

 

[Schweik]

My bad, it was apparently a PB4Y-1 according to the Navy site. Unit was VB-115, in the Central Pacific, 2 July 1944.