PBY4-1 "Flying Sea Dog"

[Dave Homewood]

I thought this might be of interest to Liberator fans. I got this from Doug Clark's collection recently. He was an RNZAF Armourer in the Pacific. Does anyone know more about this aircraft?

PB4Y-1 32161 "Flying Sea Dog"


A closer look at the name

[The Inspector]

According to Baugher's info she started out as a B-24D s/n 4272883. Looks like she was stripped and served as a chow hound or homegrown C-87 'hack' given the sealed bomb bay doors, faired over window hatches, and picture window. Might have been some Admirals barge too, I wonder why it's still wearing it's de icer boots in the SWP.
And it might have been self supporting as that looks like a 'putt-putt' exhaust sticking out the bottom from under the navigators astrodome. Also looks like the Turbos have been deleted.

[Mgawa]

Interesting to see it without any armament

[Pogmusic]

Yet still has radar antenna on the fuselage....

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks for the replies. Yes I thought it was odd in that it had no weapons, so I thought it may generate some interest. I don't know anything about it, it was just a photo picked up in the Pacific by my mate Doug when he was at Guadalcanal or Munda or maybe Bougainville. If it was a transport for an Admiral then the de-icing boot would probably still be on for visits to places like New Zealand where the US had large headquarters for the US Navy operations - we get a lot of frosts here in the winter even in Auckland.

[Jim MacDonald]

I have the flight log for AMM2/c Gerald A. Rust who was a crew member of PB4Y-1 BuNo 32160. The log book is more like the log book for the plane than just him, all of his flights except for a few were in 32160. Inside the front cover he wrote "Flag Plane, BuNo 32160".

With the BuNos being right next to each other & with the Sea Dog being modified the way it was, I'm wondering if they were sister ships for transporting VIPs.

Rust's 1st flight in 32160 was on 22 Dec 43 at Kaneohe & the last was on 23 Aug 45 to Kaneohe. In that time, 32160 hit such garden spots as Guadalcanal, Espirito Santos, Sidney Australia, New Caledonia, New Guinea, Munda, Torokina, Brisbane, Hawaii, Kwajalein, Guam, Leyte, Oakland, Dallas, Washington, Mississippi, Tarawa, Tinian, Funafuti, many times to Guadalcanal, Auckland, Samoa, etc., etc. She had a lot of miles put on her.

Some of the passengers included Adm. Fitch, Adm. Halsey, Adm. Carney, Gen. Harmon, Adm. Hart, Adm. Smith, Gen. Mitchell, Adm. Gunther, Adm. Badger. The average amount of passengers seemed to be about 12 and one time as many as 17, so it would seem that she might have been modified with quite a bit of executive seating.

I was hoping that the "Flying Sea Dog" was a photo for 32160, but I guess I'll have to keep looking. But I'd say it was more than likely that "Sea Dog" was also a Flag Plane & had probably done a lot of traveling as well.

Sorry for the long post,

Mac

[Dave Homewood]

Fascinating stuff there Mac, thanks for that. If they were sister ships doing the same work, then it's quite possible that the Flying Sea Dog did visit NZ then. Neat.

[Dave Homewood]

A member of my NZ forum has discovered that the Flying Sea Dog was the personal transport of Admiral Bill Halsey himself. Cool!

http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?bo ... read=13654