The Most Underrated US Combat Plane Of WW2

greetings this is greg there are a lot of great airplanes from world war ii in the pacific theater the hellcat was a standout as it shot down more japanese aircraft than any other fighter the corsair had the performance to match land-based fighters an impressive feat at the time it had an incredible kill ratio and has been immortalized in movies and television these two planes and their exploits are relatively well known at the other end of the scale we have a lot of airplanes that did their job well but few people pay attention to them as an example i'll point out the vaught kingfisher it was a fine airplane but few people talk about it probably because its record as a combat airplane isn't too exciting in comparative terms it did a lot of rescue work which makes it important it's the plane that rescued eddie rickenbacker and the crew he was with however its combat role was rather limited it helped to direct naval gunfire during some shore bombardments that was about it so although the kingfisher did make an important contribution its crews were brave and i think it's a really cool airplane i can understand why its exploits are not often discussed the plane i want to talk about today falls into a bit of a strange category in regards to history it has a tremendous combat record but doesn't get much recognition for its combat exploits before i tell you what plane it is let me list some of its achievements so you can think about it during the attack on pearl harbor this plane was there it was there at coral sea it was there during the aleutian island campaign guadalcanal and more it was present at almost every major naval engagement the u.s participated in during the war it has a number of firsts for a u.s airplane flown by the u.s military in world war ii it was the first plane to attack the japanese it flew in the first offensive raid against the japanese well before the famous doolittle raid it was the first u.s airplane to score an air-to-air kill against a japanese fighter at midway it was one of the few types of aircraft to score a hit on a japanese ship in fact it was the only us plane to score a hit with a torpedo at the battle of midway initially this plane seemed to be hopeless nothing but a target for the enemy to shoot down but as tactics evolved it became a highly effective anti-shipping weapon it was so effective that at one point in the war the japanese suspected there was some sort of new us super plane attacking their ships what was this super weapon the consolidated pby catalina or cat for short this video isn't going to be too technical first we'll go over some brief seaplane history then get into the catalina's specifics i do want to talk about the flight engineer position on this plane as it's not well understood not on this plane or in general i'll also cover some of the cats combat history during the war i think the catalina crews are some of the unsung heroes of the pacific war the name pby was a result of the u.s navy's designation system at the time it stands for patrol bomber and the why is the designation of consolidated the builder most u.s navy catalinas were pby fives if it's a pby 5a that's an amphibious model meaning it has retractable wheels and can operate easily from land or c this is a pdy5a in the picture there were also pby 6s and 6a's which are pretty much the same airplane but with late war upgrades improved tail and things like that the catalina name came from the british and the us navy adopted the name in 1942 there were many other names for this airplane but in this video i'm going to keep it simple by calling them pbys catalinas or cat for short seaplanes fall into two distinct categories the catalina is a flying boat not simply a float plane the difference is that the fuselage of a flying boat acts as the hull of a boat when the plane is in water a float plane is just a normal airplane equipped with floats many conventional airplanes can be so equipped to become a float plane just as they can be equipped with skids or wheels some planes like the kingfisher were primarily used as float planes but could also be equipped with conventional landing gear there was a time when some of the fastest planes in the world were float planes this happened for two main reasons first from 1913 until 1931 the schneider cup or schneider trophy races as they were often called were very popular these float plane races were an issue of national pride and a lot of money and effort was put into development of these planes second float planes had an advantage in speed because the plane's takeoff runs were not limited by the short runways of the time so they could use very high wing loading and low drag wings optimized for speed eventually of course longer runways would change this in favor of land-based airplanes notice that this super marine s4 from 1925 just seven years after world war one is already starting to show resemblance to world war ii fighters like the spitfire i do want to point out that many people think the supermarine race planes used an elliptical wing but that's false as you can see here the wing has a straight leading edge and a straight trailing edge with a well-rounded tip the elliptical wing for the spitfire would come later flying boats were very different from float planes they were not particularly fast but were a very important and large part of both commercial and military aviation through the 1920s and up until the end of world war ii this type of aircraft made a lot of sense at the time because most population centers were on coasts or near navigable waterways since airports and especially airports with long runways were relatively scarce the ability to land on water was a huge plus the british overseas airways corporation operated flying boats and passenger service over a large portion of the globe in the u.s pan-american airways or pan am flew scheduled flights across the pacific in planes like this martin flying boat as you can see from this route map for pan am the ability to land on water was a big help from a military standpoint the flying boats made a lot of sense for similar reasons there were no airplanes and some of the places navy ships were likely to visit flying boats had the additional advantage of being able to land in the water rendezvous with ships or pick things up out of the water like downed airmen or shipwreck survivors world war ii accelerated the need for flying boats and they were used by all the major powers involved in the war ironically world war ii also brought about the demise of the flying boat largely for three reasons airport development engine reliability and the helicopter after the war airports were extremely common so many had been built during world war ii and more were being built all the time engines had become reliable enough so that a four engine piston-powered airliner like a dc-6 or similar aircraft could cross the ocean safely and in pressurized comfort soon the helicopter took over sea rescue duties so there just wasn't much place for flying boats anymore outside of some very specialized missions like dropping water or fire retardant on forest fires pan am terminated operations of this type of aircraft in april of 1946 flying boats did linger on in the u.s military service for about another 20 years but in greatly reduced numbers today it is very rare to see an operational military flying boat the only place i see them regularly is in japan where they're actually still building them but again it's rare to see them clearly the age of the flying boat ended with world war ii but it sure ended on a high note the catalina was not the most modern flying boat in the war introduced in 1936 it was already considered obsolete by 1941 but it was a solid design served very well let's go over the basic design it should be obvious that this plane isn't going to set any speed records for one thing its fuselage is a boat which means it's far from optimized aerodynamically the plane also has a very high aspect ratio wing which means that the wing span is very large as compared with the average cord i drew some arrows on this plane in black to help clarify these terms side note in nearly all my videos before this one i often used red or green for arrows and for subtitles i'm switching to black and white somebody pointed out to me that a lot of people are red and green color blind and i forgot about that so sorry about that high aspect ratio wings give low induced drag and thus low total drag at low indicated airspeeds this is ideal for maritime patrol aircraft as they spend a lot of time flying around at low altitudes and at lower speeds and this helps give them a lot of endurance or time aloft the downside is they have very high parasite drag which means a lot of total drag at high indicated air speeds so the entire plane gets hit by a lot of parasite drag as compared with conventional aircraft but operates at low speeds where it just doesn't matter that much anyway i've actually been pretty amazed at how low the drag coefficients are for flying boats notice it's .0309 for the cat for comparison it's .0314 for a martin b-26f marauder of course the b-26f still has far less drag and far less parasite drag because it has less than half the frontal area but it's impressive what the flying boat designers did with what they had to work with the catalina's intended replacement the consolidated coronado which we'll talk a little bit about later is even better with .0281 and the martin mars which arguably represents the zenith of u.s flying boat development comes it comes in at an amazing .0233 so in spite of their bulk flying boats are not quite as poor aerodynamically as one might think there isn't too much to talk about with this plane in terms of speed i'll pull some numbers out of the manual for you which is a revision of a revision of a 1944 manual i think it's representative of a late war catalina i'll be using some early war manuals as well notice that name at the top of the cover page if you don't know who that is you might want to look it up it's kind of interesting some important people touch this manual at a weight of 32 000 pounds that would be a typical mission weight the plane's maximum speed is 155 knots which is 178 miles per hour or 287 kph that's the plane's maximum speed in a dive so this plane isn't going to run away from any fighter not in a dive not in a climb not at all most fighters could sustain a pretty good rate of climb at that speed running flat out in level flight at that same weight the plane can reach 147 knots which is 169 miles per hour or 272 kph typical cruise speeds are around 150 miles per hour it doesn't have any performance at high altitude either which is an area that normally would favor an aircraft with a high aspect ratio wing but the cat doesn't have engines that can take advantage of it why would it you can't spot anyone swimming in the ocean from 25 000 feet thus its engines are fairly simple they lack dual speed or dual stage superchargers they don't have intercoolers and the plane's flat out maximum speed only happens at 5 000 feet what the plane does have is a very low stall speed as you can see in this chart once the plane is lighter near the end of its mission its stall speed is down around 65 miles per hour true airspeed at sea level that's without putting the flaps down because the catalina doesn't have flaps to put that into perspective a spitfire which is a fighter with a relatively low wing loading and has flaps has a stall speed 10 miles per hour higher and that's with its flaps down this ability to fly slowly really helps the cat out on its missions i mentioned that the fuselage of a flying boat is a boat and that's literally true let's take a look at it the hull and they call it a hull is made up of five watertight compartments separated by four main bulkheads each fitted with a watertight door these doors are located here from the inside of a flying boat's hall it really does look like you're in a boat and not a plane let's go through it together at the front of the plane we have a small compartment for the bombardier who also serves as the bow gunner this little compartment is only separated from the pilot's compartment by a small curtain thus is not truly a separate section just aft we have the cockpit and aft of the cockpit we have the first watertight door the next compartment is crewed by the navigator on the port side that's the aircraft's left or in the picture the side closest to us the navigator also has controls for the aircraft's heater if one is installed catalinas did not get heaters until very late in the war the crews just had to dress for the temperatures that might be encountered however if late in the war the plane might have a heater if so it's located under the navigator's desk and most of the controls for it are at the navigator station the heater works by burning fuel from the main tanks and the fuel supply for it has to be turned on via a valve controlled at the flight engineer station which we'll get to on the starboard side we have the radio operators station which i'll talk about later now we pass through that second watertight door and we get into a large compartment located between the second and third door there are very few interior shots of catalinas from world war ii this one will help us orient ourselves it's from the third door so just forward of the big observation slash gun blisters and looking forward back to our cutaway the photographer must have been standing on the walkway about here possibly a little further back and shooting through the bulkhead doorway in this compartment we have a lot going on this is basically where the crew lived and many of them did essentially live on these airplanes they flew 15-hour missions regularly sometimes longer and operated out of hidden remote bases with minimal supplies catalinas and other seaplanes could even operate for extended periods of time without touching land they did this by using seaplane tenders as remote and mobile bases seaplane tenders were ships set up specifically for this purpose sometimes they were older ships that had been converted like the uss gillis shown here sometimes they were ships that were specifically built for this purpose the uss timbale i hope i'm saying that right shown here with two martin mariners was completed too late to serve in world war ii she became a cruise ship around 1960. sadly this was the only picture i could find of her as a cruise ship which was only three years before she was scrapped in the late 1980s back to the pby you can see three bunks and at the very forward end on the starboard side is what served as a galley it was really just a pair of hot plates each with two settings high and low but it allowed some level of food preparation which was a real luxury in a warplane just aft of the hot plates and i mean just a few inches aft is the apu or auxiliary power unit the apu is a small piston engine which is normally used to power an electrical generator they were common on bigger airplanes and were very useful often mechanics needed the plane to have electrical power so they could do some work but didn't want to run the battery down and they certainly didn't want to start up and run one of the pre the big pratt whitney 1830s just to test some light bulbs or other electrical items the flight crew would also use the apu there's a lot to do in order to get a big airplane ready for flight and it takes time and again you don't want to start a big engine and you don't want to run down the battery so the apu is usually used while the crew gets the plane ready for its mission most modern airliners have apus which are normally small turbine engines usually installed in the tail on the pby in addition to providing electrical power in most pbys the apu can also operate a bilge pump because after all it's a boat there is a tremendous division of labor in the pby and operation of the apu really demonstrates that before it started the flight engineer has to open a supply valve to supply fuel to the apu again that fuel is just coming out of the main fuel tanks that's the same fuel that the main engines use i'll be getting to the flight engineer position soon enough but for now know that he's perched in a suspended seat up here and that's where the valve control is then someone has to start the apu which is something like starting a lawnmower pull cord and all you have to wrap the cord around it and pull and hopefully it starts of course the engineer could climb down and do it himself but i imagine that someone in the apu compartment would help out here save a little time and trouble next the generator has to be connected to the aircraft's electrical system guess who has that switch it's the radio operator back to our compartment we have bunks and general storage in this picture we see flame floats i'm not sure if the us navy used flame floats but this is a british catalina pictured these were floats that would shoot out flames when they were in the water and make the area highly visible the next compartment aft has what i think is one of the biggest distinguishing features of the catalina that's those two big viewing blisters they often had guns mounted in them twin 30 calibers are pictured here on us airplanes this would usually be a single 50 caliber machine gun per side the comp the compartment furthest aft is the tunnel gunners compartment a door in this compartment could be opened allowing a 30 caliber machine gun to be fired uh to the rear and below i'm sure stuff was stored in this area as well but you couldn't put much weight back here due to aircraft weight and balance limitations this leaves us with one final section and that's the engineers space which is located here i haven't talked about flight engineers often called fes much on this channel so it's time we do that as the position is very relevant to the catalina in fact the catalina may have been the first u.s military airplane designed with the flight engineer position i say may have been because the definition of the role's a bit murky this is a bit of a diversion but we'll get back to the cat soon enough as airplanes became more and more complex during the 1920s sometimes they started carrying flight mechanics to assist the pilots in managing the engines and other systems soon aircraft were designed with this in mind and the flight engineer position was created this dornier flying boat which first flew in 1929 was probably the first airplane designed with the flight engineer as a required crew member this is the engineer station on board the idea was that an fe would act much like a ship's engineer soon by the late 1930s flight engineers were common on large complex airplanes and it stayed that way until the early 2000s historically and of course it varies by airplane but the flight engineer would do just about everything except actually fly the airplane here an early fe station on a boeing 314 flying boat sort of shows what they do on most planes the station would be much closer to the pilots but i'm sure they had an intercom system still it seems odd to see the fe station so far from the pilots but i do see that on some other aircraft even some newer ones now i don't have the manual for this airplane but it looks like the station has engine gauges engine controls probably fuel system controls the desk almost certainly has the commonly used performance charts for the airplane on it as the engineer would be responsible for figuring out maximum payload range weight and balance anything else commonly used to determine performance bonus points if you're old enough to recognize this from grade school as the planes got even more sophisticated they just piled more and more responsibility onto the flight engineer this is the engineer's station on a b-29 generally speaking flight engineers operated the engines during climb cruise and descent that meant mixture rpm manifold pressure along with cowl flaps oil cooler shutters intercooler shutters and operations of these cooling flaps and shutters were critical they had to keep temperatures within operating ranges but if they open them too much the extra drag could prevent the plane from staying in formation or reduce its range enough so that would not be able to return home thus the flight engineer's engine management was really important in addition to engine operation the fes would also control pressurization heating air conditioning electrical systems hydraulics the fuel system apu and more on some airplanes the fe could also fly the airplane a little bit via the autopilot he could basically make it climb turn and descend via the autopilot controls but not all of them during times of system malfunctions for example if the landing gear fails to extend the cowl flaps don't function properly or whatever it was the engineer who would try to correct that problem as a general rule fes in the u.s military during world war ii were mechanics who had further specialized training for the job in the civilian world it's a bit different in order to become a flight engineer as a civilian a person has to first be a pilot or a mechanic and then become an engineer as an example of how common flight engineers were up until the late 1990s a new hire pilot at united delta northwest american fedex ups or dhl had to start off as a flight engineer in other words the new hire pilot to have gotten the job in the first place had to have been a pilot somewhere else usually either in the military or at an acmi airline then they would train at the new airline as a flight engineer and do that job until enough seniority was gained to upgrade into the co-pilot seat thus for a period of about 40 years most airline pilots had been engineers at some point obviously there were exceptions for example southwest airlines never flew anything but 737s and it doesn't have an engineer position so new hires there went directly into the co-pilot seat then in the 1980s automation eliminated the need for this position the 757 was set up for a two-man crew the 767 was as well although due to some regulatory hurdles that hadn't been jumped in time the first 767s actually did require an engineer i think every single one of them was retrofitted to the two-man cockpit later the 747 originally had a flight engineer as well but this position was eliminated with the 747-400 model which entered service in 1989. the three pilot airplanes for example 727s dc-8s the pre-1989-74 variants they were still around and didn't get phased out completely until 2001 a little bit later after the september 11th attack at that point the airlines parked most of the older airplanes for good and the position rapidly disappeared after that today it's very rare to see an airplane flying that has a flight engineer in the civilian world back to the catalina i think it was the first u.s military airplane designed from the outset to have an engineer and thus the position on the cat was a bit odd from his perch below the center of the wing the cat's fe had two windows and can see the engines the fes panel is relatively small seems fairly simple although there are more controls on the side walls you can't see here most of this panel relates to engine monitoring but there are other functions notice the visual signal system this is a real oddity there are a number of lights and switches here that correspond with lights and switches in the cockpit the idea was that if the intercom failed or if they were just too busy to talk the pilots could signal the flight engineer to perform certain tasks by throwing a switch and thus turning on a light on the engineer's panel for example the pilots can command the wingtip floats to be raised by flipping a switch the engineer will see the light raise the floats and when the task is complete he can flip his switch which will shut off both lights so the pilots will know the task has been done speaking of floats the cat has retractable floats once retracted they become the wingtips which i think is pretty clever here's a picture of the mechanism the pby manuals i have are not that clear i'm trying to find better ones if the electric motor fails the engineer can manually retract or extend the floats via a hand crank back to those signal lights in addition to being able to use them to signal raising floats the lights can also be used for lower floats put the engines into auto rich or auto lean stop engines inner phone which just means get on the inner phone for voice communications probably because it was uncomfortable to wear the headset the entire time on a 15 hour trip the last two are secure and recall neither of which are defined in the manual my best guess is that secure means prepare for action combat turbulence landing something like that some basically put on your seatbelt strap in and get ready in the military context the word recall means either break time is over or drills are ending so it could be used in that context here but again i don't have anything official on that one of the engineers primary duties on the cat or any airplane is to manage the fuel system let's take a look at that normally the cat holds all its fuel in the wing via two integral sealed chambers with a total capacity of 1750 gallons it's possible to install five individual self-sealing tanks in one or both of the chambers which will reduce the fuel capacity of the plane to 1497 or 1244 gallons respectively self-sealing tanks reduce fuel capacity in any aircraft which is one of the reasons designers avoided their use so much before the war the fuel is not only used for the main engines it's also used for the cabin heater if installed the apu and the tail heater which was used for tail anti-icing the wing and prop anti-icing use different systems the engineer controls fuel to all of these items via shutoff valves for the engines selector valves for the engines and a supply valve for the other items total quantity is determined by the engineer via sight gauges at his station however the quantity in the tanks is so great the plane is so big that a slight inclination of the plane can throw off the readings so an inclinometer is used and the engineer can calculate the fuel quantity by correcting what he sees in the site gauges for the plane's attitude there was a chart for this it was literally called a tilt chart one of the main jobs of the engineer on this or any airplane that has an engineer again is to manage the fuel in flight normally it's pretty easy but when things go wrong it can get pretty complex to finish off our discussion of what the engineer does let's take a look at the fuel selectors and their usage there is one on each side of the engineer's forward panel each selector has multiple positions here are the options this may be this may seem to be confusing right now but i'll clear it up as best i can keep in mind the diagrams i have are crap and i've never even been in a ca in a catalina normally the left engine will feed the left tanks and the right engine will be fed from the right tank so you'll select the fuel selectors like this which will give you what the engineers and pilots call tank to engine again this is what i would call the normal setup and on the fuel system diagram it's going to look like this i put a line in blue here to help fuel leaves the tank goes past the fuel shutoff valve which is also controlled by the flight engineer and of course has to be on for the engine to run from there due to our current fuel selector position it goes through the ael unit which i'll talk about in a minute from there it goes through the flow meter which enables the engineer to monitor fuel flow in a normal airplane fuel flow would display on a gauge but apparently in at least some cats it's somehow displayed in a transparent tube i was not able to find a picture or a complete explanation of this from there it goes to the engine driven fuel pump then then to the carb and into the engine so if you're having a really good day that's all you have to do fuel selector's on tank to engine and your work is done however now your day is about to get worse the pilot just informed you that the plane is feeling a bit right wing heavy and it's getting worse it's a long mission you don't want to drag the ailerons and waste your critical fuel supply so you have to burn more fuel out of the right tank to balance the airplane by the way i'm only i'm only drawing one side here you guys can imagine what the mirror image side looked like for the tank to engine configuration so moving on this imbalance is not a real problem for a crack engineer such as yourself we're going to balance the plane by running both engines off the right aka starboard tank for a short time and this sort of thing happens all the time even in modern airliners now being the crack engineer that you are you choose these two positions for your fuel selectors back to our diagram so you can see what's happening i used the solid blue line for the starboard tank to starboard engine and the dashed line for the left engine feed these two arrows show lines that would have fuel in them but that fuel can't go anywhere the cross feed lines fuel is bought is blocked by the closed cross feed valve and the other line is blocked by the fuel selector positions after a while the fuel is balanced the pilots are happy and you go back to your normal tank to engine configuration here we are tank to engine although again i didn't bother putting in the blue line for the port engine soon something else goes wrong you notice fuel pressure dropping on the port side again being a sharp engineer you know that means the engine will fail soon which would be bad you're out over the pacific so you activate the wobble pump represented by the ael unit here the wobble pump normally used for starting is a manual fuel pump you can keep the engine running by using it but you don't really want to keep pumping fuel manually for the next 10 hours the wobble pumps are both located in the engineer station and they're they're set up so that both can be operated with one hand but again we don't want to use them at all we want to be lazy so now is the time to use the cross feed valve on the pby the cross feed is there specifically so we can run both engines off of one engine driven pump cross feed valves are very common on multi-engine airplanes i don't think you will find any flying today that don't have one so we need to use our starboard engine driven pump to feed both engines not a problem we open the cross feed valve and set our fuel selectors thusly our left selector is off and our right is set to both on now we have both tanks feeding both engines via our starboard pump it's going to look like this both tanks feed fuel through the starboard selector from there it's fed to the starboard engine and through the now open cross feed valve to the left engine it's possible you'll get out of balance again due to unequal feeding from the tanks one engine could be using a little more fuel than the other if so you can balance fuel with proper manipulation of the fuel selectors keep in mind you must choose wisely here while cross feeding choosing the wrong position could shut down one or even both engines so it is critical as an engineer as a flight engineer to know what you're doing and pay attention i think that's about enough for the flight engineer duties hopefully at this point you have some idea about what this job entails the other crew positions were of course very critical to the operation of the plane pilot navigator co-pilot bombing ear position but they were all somewhat normal by world war ii standards i have read that at least two of the aft gunners on either waist or tail gunners would have been mechanics or at least people with some mechanical training the radio operator had a lot of equipment to manage and was responsible for electrical power distribution since the control box was at is his station in every other airplane that i've ever been in and looked at the flight engineer panel electrical power distribution would be a flight engineered duty but the catalina is a bit odd in this regard and the radio operator handles this in addition to a myriad of other electrical and radio type equipment another oddity is that the cat has three separate systems for anti-icing which would allow it to fly in weather that a lot of other military airplanes couldn't handle it could dispense alcohol onto its props exhaust heat onto the wings into the wings and heat the tail via a gasoline burning heater that's located back there it looks like it takes at least three people to get all the anti-ice stuff on a pilot throws switches in the cockpit the engineer has to turn on the fuel supply to the tail heater and someone has to go back to bulkhead 7. the non-amphibious version of the pby could taxi up on to land after a water landing only after a ground crew waded into the water to attach beaching gear of course when going back into the water for a flight the ground crew had to wade back in and remove the beaching gear this is probably okay in hawaii but i imagine this was incredibly unpleasant in arctic conditions and time consuming even under the best of circumstances thus the amphibious pbys were created these can operate off land or water they can also land in the water extend the wheels and then taxi up onto the shore this proved very useful when operating from remote beaches on and around islands in the pacific but of course it came at some cost in payload range and complexity the retractable gear also took up a lot of interior room in the space below the flight engineer station the catalinas were very good search and rescue airplanes because they had great visibility and they could operate efficiently at low altitudes and low speeds and they could do it for a long time many sailors and airmen were rescued by this airplane including famously the survivors of the uss indianapolis the crew of that pby involved which is shown here landed the plane in 12-foot high seas apparently the captain of the airplane asked the rest of the crew if they wanted to risk it and they all bravely decided that was the right thing to do and once they landed of course they couldn't get everybody in the airplane so using parachute cord they tied survivors to the exterior of the plane which rendered it unflyable and they waited for a rescue ship to show up the pby and its crew saved 56 people on that one mission the catalina had a long list of post-war services with multiple countries using it as a search and rescue plane it stayed in service with the u.s navy reserve until 1957 and in the brazilian air force until 1982 the catalina far outlasted its intended replacement which was the consolidated coronado shown here it's pretty interesting to look at these two airplanes if we compare them by basic specifications speed and payload at first the coronado appears to come out ahead it's bigger faster it can carry far more it has the advantage of four engines for better reliability on super long missions however the catalina was more successful almost all coronados were scrapped in 1946 there's a few reasons for this first the cat has not only a longer range but can remain aloft far longer both of these factors are a big deal in search and rescue however the biggest advantage of the catalina over the coronado was cost which is the usual overlooked factor among armchair historians you could buy three catalinas for the price of its newer bigger brother now if you were lost at sea would you rather have one coronado out looking for you or three cats which could stay out longer that's not even factoring in the operating costs which were about three times higher or more for the coronado not to mention the logistical issue of supporting the bigger more complex four-engine airplane in remote locations both planes could be used in combat roles but that was very rare for the coronado it was primarily assigned transportation duties a task for which it was reasonably well suited speaking of combat it's time to take a look at the catalina's combat record i think it's very impressive and it's an excellent example of how tactics can make or break a combat aircraft i'm going to focus mainly on the actions of the us navy simply for brevity however the catalina was at war before the us officially entered world war ii it was a british catalina flown by a u.s naval officer that spotted the bismarck leading to an attack by swordfish torpedo bombers though that attack by the swordfish ultimately led to the bismarck's demise this was seven months before u.s entry into the war so we'll just overlook that obvious neutrality violation when the japanese attacked pearl harbor the catalinas were there in fact the cats had been there since about 1936 so the japanese clearly knew about them and it appears to me that they were specifically targeted during the attack probably because admiral yamamoto understood the great threat that they posed there were 81 cats on or near oahu enough to search a vast area of the pacific and find the japanese fleet after the attack there were only eight pbys still flyable of those seven had been airborne during the attack and avoided contact with the japanese fighters the eighth was attacked while at her mooring but the strafing zeros uh missed and thus didn't do any damage so ground crews were able to get her fueled she took off and stayed safe so the japanese attackers successfully destroyed every pby on oahu except one i think that shows what a high priority target they were one hour before the attack on pearl harbor a pby crew out on a training mission spotted a surfaced vessel which turned out to be a japanese mini sub the pby attacked the sub before a destroyer the uss ward moved in and sank it with gunfire thus a catalina was in the first combat action between the u.s and japan in world war ii and effectively fired the first shot in the philippines the catalinas were largely involved in defensive actions and evacuations and of course were extremely vulnerable to attack by japanese fighters and they suffered great losses however on december 10th of 1941 near the philippines a nose gunner in a pby shot down a japanese fighter i think this was the first air-to-air kill against a japanese fighter since u.s entry into the war it was certainly the first verifiable air-to-air kill by the u.s navy against the japanese i'm assuming that the gunner whose name was chief boatswain payne didn't have to buy drinks for the rest of the war at least i hope not during the initial months of the war in the pacific the u.s and thus the catalinas were on the defensive the cat crews quickly learned to hide by staying in the clouds and when possible flying at night with all lights extinguished under some conditions the plane's exhaust flames could give it away at night but that was about all hiding was the name of the game and not only in the air u.s crews got pretty good at setting up hidden remote bases and they made good use of seaplane tenders to make it harder for the japanese to catch the pbys when they were not in the air on the 27th of december 1941 the u.s launched its first offensive raid against the japanese this is only about three weeks after pearl harbor the plane called upon for the job was the catalina they had to fly unescorted as the target was too far away for any allied fighters to join them this raid is not well known there is no wikipedia page for it which is unusual and information on this raid is hard to find most of my information on this raid and a lot of the information for this video comes from this u.s navy lieutenant commander's excellent document at this point in the war the u.s had not figured out how to use the catalinas offensively and they sent in six planes to attack the japanese ships at jolo island just southwest of the philippines lacking any experience in in attacking ships with catalinas they came in at ten to twelve thousand feet which was the doctrine that was that was uh generally thought to be the right way to do things before the war ten to twelve thousand feet is pretty high for a catalina they attacked at dawn the planes were equipped with norton bomb sites which were very accurate from that height but also very nearly worthless against ships because in the time it took the bombs to fall the warships could remove could maneuver out of the way out of desperation two cats resorted to low altitude dive bombing attacks or at least dive bombing to the extent that a cat could dive bomb it's not going to really dive all that steeply but this almost worked and they scored two near-misses four of the pbys were shot down although the raid was costly for the americans and did essentially no damage to the japanese valuable lessons were learned up until this point pby crews thought that a low altitude attack on ships was suicidal and that high altitude attacks with the northern with the norton bomb site were the way to go this raid changed their thinking i'm trying to stay focused on combat but be aware that during this period pby crews performed some amazing evacuation and rescue work uh getting people out of the philippines there there are flights they flew or just one of those flights could be a whole youtube video next up we have the battle of midway due to code breaking the us was confident that the japanese would attack at midway but they didn't know for sure and it was catalina cruz that provided confirmation and the location of the japanese fleet while the us soundly won the battle it could have easily gone the other way and ended with u.s carriers at the bottom of the ocean i think that the catalinas finding the japanese on june 3rd one day before the attack on midway gave the us forces a huge advantage without which i'm not sure they would have won catalinas operating at night scored the only torpedo hit by a us aircraft in the entire battle the torpedo hit the oiler akubonu maru i couldn't find a picture of this ship but it was similar to this japanese oiler the akabono maru was only damaged but this was the first time catalinas had performed a torpedo attack no no planes were lost and valuable lessons about attacking at low altitude at night were learned at this point it was starting to become obvious that the catalinas could possibly operate at night and attack shipping in late 1942 on guala canal crews started darkening their catalinas by covering them with lamp black and soap lamp black is soot you get from burning oil i'm guessing an oil burning lamp specifically you might be wondering why they didn't just paint them black well eventually they did but initially resorting to lamp black and soap was probably done because at forward and remote bases they didn't have black paint or not enough of it in any case the lamp black and soap made them black in appearance and very hard to see at night soon after the aircraft that were arriving in theater were showing up already painted black to make the planes even harder to see at night mechanics installed flame arresters on the exhaust these black catalinas are often referred to as black cats and they went on the offensive in a big way during the guadalcanal campaign as with any island campaign involving large forces the japanese were heavily dependent on shipping to supply food ammunition fuel anything else needed to run the military machine allied air power made daylight shipping almost impossible for the japanese and they resorted to nightly supply runs through an area called the slot as seen here the allies referred to japanese supply operations as the tokyo express and the black cats dished out some real punishment here the crews had learned the lessons of jholo island and midway and they understood that a low-level attack at night was the best way to utilize the cat in the anti-shipping role they generally flew in low and slow and dropped bombs rather than torpedoes and with great effect the japanese found themselves in an impossible situation here at first they were using freighters for these supply runs but they couldn't make the trip and get back out of range of allied air attacks before daybreak then they resorted to using warships as supply ships this didn't work out well warships just can't carry much freight and simply couldn't move enough supplies furthermore they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow and thus create an additional supply problem in short the fuel cost by the ton mile meaning the amount of fuel needed to deliver a ton of freight was just too high for this to be a viable method long term the japanese then resorted to using barges and small boats but these were vulnerable to strafing attacks by the cats and sometimes other airplanes operating from hidden bases and from seaplane tenders which were effectively mobile bases the catalinas were very hard to stop seaplane tenders could also resupply pt boats which were used in a similar way to the catalinas at the guadalcanal campaign here you can see both docked with the uss gillis the converted destroyer now see planetender which we saw earlier in this video i don't have exact stats on how many ships were sunk by the catalinas but here are some examples according to a u.s navy period film in one month the black cats sunk 41 000 tons of cargo vessels and damaged another 43 000 tons a typical japanese freighter like the one shown here was about 7 000 tons so within a given month let's say 12 ships sunk 12 ships heavily damaged another source is from the u.s navy aviation museum they have a video with a veteran who claims that his squadron vp11 was credited with sinking 100 000 tons of enemy shipping and damaging a further 100 000 tons that was only one squadron there were at least 14 squadrons of black cats the cats accolades go on and on they directed naval gunfire in battles rescued many downed aviators and sailors they sank at least 38 german u-boats and it was a catalina crew who discovered the akutan zero which helped us aircraft designers and pilots fight the menacing japanese airplanes although i mostly focused on u.s cats the british australians and others did quite well with them too the brazilians flew them as well even sinking a u-boat the catalina and her crews have an impressive combat record one to be proud of that's all for this video before i go i want to point out something for those viewers who may be considering becoming a pilot or considering a career in aviation the u.s military still has flight engineers as seen on this u.s air force recruitment page you can go in as an enlisted person thus don't need a college degree here are the requirements right off that page being a flight engineer is a really cool job if you like airplanes and you like flying they still have them on c5 galaxies kc-135s and kc-10s as well as on some helicopters of course it's a dead end in terms of post-military career potential but if you really like flying you can work on getting your civilian pilot's licenses via a military flying club while in the service or via some other method it will be tough to do because of the cost and in the military you don't make a lot of money but it is possible by the time you're ready to get out you should then be able to get a job as a pilot at an acmi airline depending of course on how the job market is at that time and who knows can't see into the future i'm just pointing this out because most people don't even know about this option for getting into aviation in fact i just called and i mean like a few hours ago an air force recruiter to get some details on this option for this video and he didn't seem at all familiar with what a flight engineer was he had to look it up so i know it isn't well publicized i think this option also exists with the us navy and marine corps but i didn't look it up specifically i know that p3 orions which are operated by the navy used to have flight engineers as did older marine corps c-130s of course you might ask why not just join the military as a pilot in the first place well that's a good option but there are some real barriers there first you'll need a college degree and not everyone is in a position to get one second it's very difficult to get a pilot slot in the military i fly with quite a few pilots who got into this career via the air force flight engineer route and so i think it's worth mentioning here specifically um you know i just think being a flight engineer on c5 would be a really cool job those things go all over the world and they break down all the time so uh you're gonna get to actually spend a lot of time in all the countries you visit moving on a special thanks to all my subscribers and especially my patreon supporters i really appreciate you folks i'll be sending out a link to all the pby catalina manuals as well as the other manuals um links to the other manuals i've used within about 24 hours of this video's debut please check out my teespring store i have three mugs there each commemorating a famous combat cat one is the cat that found the bismarck one is a black cat slightly r rated there but i don't think you could really make out the nose heart without a magnifying glass and one is the brazilian cat which sank a u-boat that's all for now have a great day you

Channel: Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles

Views: 882,812

Rating: 4.9003687 out of 5

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Id: iOi0o91Sw7U

Length: 56min 34sec (3394 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/thatothersir225]

My man Greg back at it again with the quality videos