Feasibility/usefulness Question. Pby-5a Catalina

[Tuck]

Ok, so what if a PBY-5a (the one with retractable gear) Cat was fitted with arrester gear and folding wings so it could operate from carriers.

Any real operational advantage for this?  I guess as long range patrol/attack a/c it would mean an increased range due to not having to return to land.


It's feasible as the Cat could land VERY slow, so the long wings interfereing with the superstructure is almost null.

The Cat did NOT have flaps, but what is the carrier version did?  ULTRA-slow landings.

What do ya'll think?

Why?  I have the Monogram 1/48 kit in my stash.

Tuck    :ar:  

[Daryl J.]

How about leading edge slats too?   Would the Catalina be catapult launched?  One could pose the Cat on a cat!     And would they attend the Liberty Ships as they traverse the ocean?    Think of all the U-boat kill markings on the hulls.

The only Monogram Catalina tip I can think of is the Belcher's Bits tail replacement as the Monogram kit seemed to be put on a  high carb diet and got its rear end rather overlarge when viewed from above.

Great idea!
Daryl J.

[jcf]

Rather than carrier based, howzabout catapult launched ala inter-war Lufthansa mailplanes? Maybe from a modified CVE hull. That would increase patrol radius.
Adding wingfold to something as large as the PBY would add a lot of weight, as it would probably have to be a powered system... manually folding surfaces of that size on a parasol wing would be extremely difficult in any wind. The weight of the retracting float mechanism would also require a very beefy hinge arrangement. Put the wing on a turntable ala the V-22? That would give the engineers some headaches vis-a- vis control runs etc.


Wal


Ha 139

The Wasp flight deck was 727' X 93', Enterprise 802' X 86',  Essex 862' X 108'. Mark 4, Mod 5 arresting gear had a maximum load of 19,800 lbs at 85mph, end of the war Mark 5 was 30,000 lbs at 90mph.

As an aside, Convair did propose the four-engined XP3Y-2 based on the PBY, that would definitely increase the power to weight ratio. Another proposal was the XP3Y-A powered by two Allison V-1710 driving pusher propellers.

Jon

[Jennings]

You'd need a LOT more power on a Catboat to get it off a carrier.  Even with a catapult (get it?  CAT-a-pult? Hahahaha... I amuse myself).  Anyway, even with a catapult, something that big needs a lot of power to get off in a short space.  Maybe a couple of R2800s?

J

[Archangel]

Why would you need anything morethen what you have except for slatted flaps. They launched and landed a C-130 off the deck of a carrier and its twice the size of a PBY.  

[Jennings]

Why would you need anything morethen what you have except for slatted flaps. They launched and landed a C-130 off the deck of a carrier and its twice the size of a PBY.

Because a C-130 has over 20,000 shp, and a Catboat has a few hundred!

J

[Archangel]

Why would you need anything morethen what you have except for slatted flaps. They launched and landed a C-130 off the deck of a carrier and its twice the size of a PBY.

Because a C-130 has over 20,000 shp, and a Catboat has a few hundred!

J

ok. I forgot to take that into consideration. Still the engines can be uprated some and the rest would then have to be assisted by a catapult.  

[Burncycle]

Why not just bring her to the AO aboard ship, and put her in the water to take off and land?

[jcf]

Why not just bring her to the AO aboard ship, and put her in the water to take off and land?

Large seaplane tenders were used for that purpose.

Here is a US type, the USS Pine Island:




The Tangier (AV-8) and Currituck (AV-7)  in 1944:


Lots more here:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/41/41idx.htm

Jon

[Tuck]

I think ya'll might be missing my point.  I agree that there was already plenty of options with the seaplane tenders and existing operational use of the PBY.  My "conversion" would simply be to add more fexlibility to operations.  For example, a PBY-5a leaves it's island base, lands on the carrier to refuel, and continues ops.  Or, several PBY's are based on an escort carrier in the Atlantic, giving more flexibility than PBY's based in Iceland, Britain or the USA.

Of course, it's all just hypothetical.  My main question is whether ya'll would think there would even be a need for this type of flexibility in the PBY.

Tuck

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Aside from the obvious engineering issues surrounding the construction of a carrier capable flying boat/amphibian (that could be launched and recovered from an aircraft carrier) and fitting it with folding wings, this WHIF does sound intriguing.  Of course in real life designing all of the features into a Catalina would have created an aircraft that was so heavy that range and performance would have been curtailed to the point that it would have needed a sail to get underway.  

This however, is a WHIF and it is something that has yet to be done and no worse than some of the other ideas that have graced this forum in the past.  I say go for it and add a tail hook to your Catalina.  While you are at it, put some Grumman style folding wings on it since those always look good folded up against the fuselage.  

Looking forward to seeing your WHIF on display.  

[Madoc]

Tuck,

As a pure Whif, why not?

As a bit more realistic What If? it doesn't make much sense.

For operational flexibility all you'd need is for the Cat to land next to the ship and then refuel while alongside it.  No need to land on the ship for refueling.  This saves all the weight, complexity, and stresses involved in making a carrier landing.  Also, you wouldn't need a carrier for the purpose.  Just about any navy ship that can carry some AvGas tankage would do.

Madoc

[Jschmus]

If it helps any, I read somewhere that a single example of one of the PBM variants was built expressly to test the first ever RATO installation for the purpose of cat-launching from a modified barge.  Hang on a sec...

Found it!  From Greg Goebel's Air Vectors site:

A single PBM-1 was converted as a prototype of a long-range variant of the Mariner, designated the "XPBM-2". This machine featured additional fuel tanks that raised fuel capacity by over 75%, giving a range of 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles). It was to be launched by a special catapult on a barge, with the Mariner's airframe reinforced to tolerate launch stresses. The catapult launch was successfully tested in 1942, but the idea was not followed up. The XPBM-2 remained in service as a test machine until 1944.

Actually, I seem to have gotten my PBMs mixed up, as further reading in the same article indicates that RATO bottles didn't become standard kit until the PBM-5.  But the idea does lend itself to some whiffing.