Warbird Information Exchange

Kinda neat as its an Amphibian, and yet they are loading her on beaching gear...As a taildragger. Wonder why...

can't drive the bomb loader into the water!!

Was the ramp too steep for the Amphibious gear?

Steve

They may have had main gear issues.

Canso42

note also 1 prop in black and the other unpainted

They may have had main gear issues.

If so you'd think they'd fix them before hanging 250#
depth charges

Jack Cook wrote:

They may have had main gear issues.

If so you'd think they'd fix them before hanging 250#
depth charges

Parts is parts..and if you ain't got 'em, the mission goes on. Maybe it was easier
to bomb-up than to fix the gear?

Dumb thought -

I didn't think amphibious Cats had attachment points for beaching gear - what would the point be? (Just for Jack's pic, of course.)

But then the RAAF took the gear out of amphibious cats to increase range - then they'd have needed those hardpoints.

JDK wrote:Dumb thought -

I didn't think amphibious Cats had attachment points for beaching gear - what would the point be? (Just for Jack's pic, of course.)

But then the RAAF took the gear out of amphibious cats to increase range - then they'd have needed those hardpoints.

Dunno, about your first comment James..but when the pic was posted of the
PBY posed in that attitude, the first thing I looked at was whether the gear bay
was faired over. Looks like the gear is either there..or the bay is unfaired..which
would be a drag..in the water as well as the air.

Talked to a U.S. PBY Vet who escaped the Phillipines early in the war, last year and
came back here to the States and trained PBY crews on the later models. He said
they removed the LG and faired 'n filled the space with fuel tanks so they could increase
their range/training time...Dunno how they handled the beaching gear situation..

Thanks, airnutz,

Thinking further, as the Consolidated design was originally a pure flying boat, hardpoints for beaching gear attachment was built in - that structure would stay, and I guess the lugs were as easy to retain when building amphibians as to take them off to save a minimal amount of weight. Only query would be if the attachment was placed where the retractable gear was fitted in the later versions...

The Amphibian Cats (at least the PBY-5A and Canso's & I assume the PBY-6A as well) had the attachments for flyingboat beaching gear still in place, and the beaching gear was used for difficult ramps etc as well as a method of "jacking" the aircraft to do undercarriage maintenance.

Many post war Cat operators used beaching gear to do U/C maintenance etc.

The 19 RAAF PBY-5A amphibians such as A24-88 at the Australian National Aviation Museum were modified back to pure flying boat, and therefore required beaching gear for all future "ground handling".


http://aarg.com.au/Catalina.htm


regards

Mark Pilkington

Thanks for that Mark.

To add to what has been said, the Catalina could be loaded with bombs/DCs or torpedoes on water in the same way as shown in the photo of it on the slip that started this thread. It was done from a launch or 'bomb scow'. A portable winch was installed on the upper wing surface with cables running through the wing and the down to the launch. Crew members on top of the wing then wound the winch until the armament was lifted into the underwing cradle and secured in place. In fact, in the photo, that is what the personnal on the wing are doing.

Regarding the beaching gear attachment points for the main legs, we still use these on the Duxford-based Plane Sailing amphibian G-PBYA when we do retraction tests.

The beaching gear points are still attached to the HARS PBY-6A at Albion Park