Consolidated PBY Catalina

The Consolidated PBY Catalina is an American twin-engine, flying boat and amphibious aircraft. Designed for the US Navy for the maritime patrol and bomber roles it first flew on March 28, 1935, entering service in 1936 with VP-6 and VP-11, US Navy. Known as the OA-10 in USAF service, Catalina with the British Commonwealth and Canso with the Canadians. With the end of the war, the flying boat variants were withdrawn from service while amphibious variants remained in military service up until the 1980s. Built under licence in Canada and the USSR, production ended in 1945 with over 3,000 airframes built.

Airframe construction is all metal, mainly aluminium alloy, except for fabric-covered flight control surfaces—a semi-monocoque fuselage with a stepped hull and enclosed cockpit. Wings are double parallel strutted parasol wing and central pylon with retractable wing tip floats—a conventional single-fin tail assembly with a high-mount tailplane. The amphibious PBY-5A had a retractable tricycle type undercarriage. Flight crew consists of ten: pilot, co-pilot, bow turret gunner, flight engineer, radio operator, navigator, radar operator, two waist gunners and ventral gunner. The flight engineers station is up in the wing pylon between the engines.

The PYB-5 uses two Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines mounted one to each wing driving three-bladed constant-speed propellers. The PBY-5A had a cruise speed of 210 km/h (125 mph), a top speed of 315 km/h (196 mph), a service ceiling of 4,800 m (15,800 ft) and a range of 4,060 km (2,520 mi).

Armament consisted of three .30 cal (7.62 mm) machine guns, two in nose turret, one in a ventral hatch in tail, two .50 cal (12.7 mm) machine guns, one in each waist blister. Underwing racks could to carry up to 1,814 kg (4,000 lb) of bombs, depth charges or torpedos.