PBY Catalina 5593V

Wrecked Catalina Seaplane in Saudi Arabia

I'm watching a video about some Egyptian MiGs attacking the Israeli airbase Ofir near the southern tip of Sinai during the Yom Kipper War (October 1973). Two Israeli F-4 Phantoms shoot down 6 or 7 MiGs. Sounds about par for any Hebrew versus Musselman encounter.

Straits of Tiran

But now I'm thinking, didn't I put a post about this area once before? I did: The Straits of Tiran. Look at the map and there is an airport there and it looks very similar to the one in the video, but it's called the Sharm El Sheikh International Airport now.

The land looks pretty desolate, but there seem to be people here, so what's it look like on Streetview? Click the little yellow man and not much shows up, there's some blue lines about ten miles south along the coast, and there's some across the strait in Saudi Arabia. There doesn't look to be much of anything there, but I drag the little yellow man to the southern end of the blue line and look what jumps out at me (top).

I'm thinking this is an old WW2 wreck, but when I go looking I find no, it's not WW2, it's more recent:

PBY Catalina N5593

The Abandoned Consolidated PBY Catalina Seaplane of Saudi Arabia

During 1960, Mr. Thomas Kendall, a retired businessman, with his luxury converted Catalina PBY, registration N5593V, landed on the sandy coast of Ras Al-Sheik Hameed, with his wife and children. On the following day’s after anchoring the flying yacht, they were ambushed by bedouins of the Saudi Arabian army, who mistakenly believed it to be a military attack. The firing lasted for about 30–40mins, to which Mr. Thomas and his family were able to swim back to the aircraft, but with him being wounded, managed to move it just 800 meters. After being captured by the Bedouins, Mr. Thomas and his family were eventually taken to Jeddah, endlessly interrogated and set free, with the help of the American ambassador, Mr. Donald R. Heath.

Consolidated PBY Catalina

1944 Consolidated PBY Catalina

Over 3,000 were built during the 1930s and -40s. The Soviet Union built 27. Seems weird that they would go to all the trouble to get set up to build this airplane and then only build 27 of them, but then there are the exigencies on war.

More Consolidated PBY Catalina

PBY Catalina Tune-up

I don't know, but I suspect those two guys (there are two of them, you can see another pair of legs dangling, presumably from the guy sitting on the other side of the engine), these two guys are trying to diagnose some kind of a problem. Examining the engine while it was not running didn't produce any evidence of the problem, so they fired up the engines to see if they could figure it out. I suspect the seats are part of the normal maintenance rigging, whether they are on land or water. During the war, I wouldn't be surprised if they the left the aircraft sitting in the water instead of driving up on the land every time they landed. Shoot, some places probably didn't have any ramps onto the land.

Notice the big bulb attached to the top of the cockpit. It's a radome which means this is probably from 1945.

Previous Catalina post.

I came across this picture on my one of the sites I regularly visit, but I failed to make a note of it and now I don't know where I found it.

PBY Catalina Night Attack

Story Of The Black Cats | Stealth flying boat of the South Pacific (1944)
Armored Archivist

The Catalina is one of my favorite airplanes, but these night time bombing missions are new to me.

• Wikipedia has a page about the Catalina, which has a brief section about night time operations. 
• Navy Times has long page about the Catalina and most of it was new to me as well.

The Navy Times story mentions the Attu Zero, which I suspect means this airplane.

Previous PBY posts.

Kind of curious that I take an interest in these stories about events that happened 80 years ago, but we seem to have an endless supply of new wars, most of which I don't pay attention to. Perhaps it's because the number of people killed in new wars in one year amounts to one day's worth of carnage from WW2.

Aleutian Islands

Aleutian Islands

Bayou Renaissance Man posts about Adak Island. I've posted several times about various Aleutian Islands, so I thought I'd take a look. Right away I found that the Live Walrus Cam was broken, so I fixed it there and here it is: Round Island, Dillingham, Alaska

Adak Island is right in the middle of the Aleutians. It is near the bottom of the loop in the map above. You can see it if you follow the link to Google Earth.

Aleutian Island posts, West to East:

• Attu Island - PBY Catalina Night Attack
• Shemya Island - What Island is this? -and- Yes, we have no bananas.
• Akatun & Akun - Richard H. Geoghegan
• Dutch Harbor - Nick Comes to Lunch
• Amaknak Island (Dutch Harbor in the town of Unalaska) - F/V Kari Marie
• Cold Bay - Shanghai to Chicago

Other Alaskan Islands, West to East:

• Round Island - Walrus Cam
• St. Paul and St. George - St. Paul Alaska
• Kodiak - White Alice
• Baranof Island (town of Sitka) - Fishing Report

Shanghai to Chicago

A painting of a WW2 scene of B-24 Liberator bombers & PBY Catalinas at Amchitka AAF.

An airliner traveling from Shanghai to Chicago encountered a problem the other day and diverted to Cold Bay, Alaska. Cold Bay is a hamlet out in the Aleutian Islands. Why is there this giant, jet capable runway in this out of the way spot? WW2, of course. Looking for more information I came across Paul Freeman's Abandoned & Little-Know Airfields, which has a page devoted to the Alaska, which is where I found the picture. Several airfields listed on the Alaska page are in the Aleutian Islands, and most of those were built during the early part of WW2.

Reading about the airliner incident brought a couple of questions to mind. The first one was why was a giant airliner carrying only a hundred people? Every plane I've been on recently has been packed to the gills. And then I plot the trajectories on a map, and I wonder why are they diverted to Cold Bay. Cold Bay is way south of the Great Circle route from Shanghai to Chicago. I smell a conspiracy! The CIA is probably up no good, and this engine malfunction story is just part of the coverup.

Then I do a little more checking. Seems airlines sometimes need to stage a plane to be ready to pick up a full load of passengers, but there just aren't enough people where the aircraft is, who want to go where the airplane is going, but the plane has a schedule to keep so it goes anyway, which means that sometimes they are darn near empty. Wish I could find one of those flights when I need one.

Shanghai to Chicago

Looking at the Great Circle route again I notice that it goes over North Korea and we don't want to be flying over North Korea. They might not be able to hit the broadside of a barn with a bowling ball, but let's not tempt fate, eh? The route also goes over the Kamchatka Peninsula, which is part of Russia. These days I am pretty sure airlines are allowed to fly over Russia, but maybe they need permission, and you know, maybe we ought not go there either. Plug those allowances into the route and Cold Bay looks like a more likely solution.

SUPERMARINE WALRUS

RARE SUPERMARINE WALRUS TO FLY AGAIN
GULL PERCH FLYER

Cool video. I like the way he has combined old footage, animation and new stuff. The Vought Kingfisher was the American version of this airplane. The PBY Catalina was also big in search and rescue. The Walrus was tiny compared to the Catalina. The Walrus was a quarter of the weight and had less than half the wingspan.

Beriev Be-12

Drone's eye view of Russian Beriev Be-12 flying boat

Ukraine sent drones to attack a Russian base in Crimea and blew up a couple of flying boats and a helicopter. Still trying to adjust my thinking to accommodate the idea that weapons can give you eye-witness view of their own destruction. I mean, it was only last week that video cameras cost zillions of dollars.

Beriev Be-12

The Be-12 is a big airplane. The wingspan is a hundred feet, it's a hundred feet long and it weighs 25 tons. For comparison, the PBY Catalina is only 65 feet long and weighs 10 tons. The Japanese US-2 is about 10% longer and wider and has four engines. First flight was in 1960, so the design is like 65 years old. The Russians built 150 of them.

10 Short Videos #6181

10 Short Videos #6181

Dostoevsky was right 😅

High Altitude Steel Track Docking 🎯

When the Ground Suddenly Gives Way 🏔️

Scary Water Takeoff  - PBY Catalina

The Most Underrated Combat Aircraft...Ever? - A-6 Intruder

Turning a big crankshaft on lathe

The priorities - marriage

Ship carrying motor yachts

300-Meter Impact in the Gulf of Carpentaria

JUMPING FOR NO CLEAR REASON - Mobula Ray