Flying Catalinas: The Consolidated PBY Catalina in World War II - Hardcover

Andrew Hendrie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848847807 ISBN 13: 9781848847804

Publisher: Pen & Sword Aviation, 2012

Synopsis

The Consolidated PBY Catalina was probably the most versatile and successful flying boat/amphibian ever built, serving not just with the US Army Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard during the Second World War, but also with the air forces of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the Danes, Free French and Norwegians as well as Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and elsewhere. With a remarkable lifting capacity and endurance, this long-range twin-engine aircraft could absorb a great deal of punishment and still return home after flights lasting an entire day and covering thousands of miles. It was employed as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft, as a bomber and torpedo-bomber, as an anti-submarine weapon, as a mine-layer, as a special operations machine and as a search and rescue craft by day and night. It ferried stores, mail and people - many of them sick and injured - across all the world's oceans and is rightly held in the deepest respect by all who had anything to do with them, flying or being flown.In this book, Andrew Hendrie tells the whole amazing story of the 'Flying Cats', of their exploits and achievements, of the heroism of many of their crews and the problems they had to endure. With numerous photographs as well as appendices listing technical data and individual aircraft histories, this is the definitive history of the Catalina and its operations world-wide.

About this title

Review:

Painfully slow and highly vulnerable, the Catalina was nevertheless one of the most important aircraft of the Second World War. Hendrie's book was first published in 1988 but this is a reprint in a new format. He himself served in Hudsons, Sunderlands, and Wellingtons. He describes the amazing service rendered by Catalinas in theatres all over the world, lists the dozens of U-boat kills, and traces the fate of individual Catalinas in RAF and RAAF service. There are plenty of pictures, maps and diagrams. As it was a home-from-home complete with cooking facilities, personally I would have liked a tour of the interior of the aircraft, and an idea of what people actually did during those long, long patrols. Presumably there was rotation of pilots. Did the off-duty pilot have a bunk? - Shropshire Star. --Shropshire Star

About the Author:

Andrew W.A. Hendrie is an author and military historian.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Aviation
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1848847807
• ISBN 13: 9781848847804
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240