A Florida company is hoping to build a modernized version of the Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat, an aircraft developed almost 90 years ago and most famously used to hunt Nazi U-boats in the Second World War. Catalina Aircraft has announced it plans to build a turboprop amphib flying boat using the “same design principles” as the lumbering twin. A few of the type are still used in commercial service as water bombers and cargo planes, and several museums keep flying versions. The company thinks there is still a niche to be filled in civilian and military service.
The news release says the company plans to build two models, a civilian aircraft with an all-up weight of 30,000 pounds and room for 34 passengers and 12,000 pounds of cargo. A more powerful military version will weigh in at 40,000 pounds. “Interest in the rebirth of this legendary amphibian has been extraordinary,” Lawrence Reece, president of Catalina Aircraft, said in a press release. “We are looking forward to moving this program forward rapidly.” They hope to be flying in 2029.
Good thing!
I wish I’m still alive to see those aircraft to be constructed and flying.
My dad was a port gunner on Catalinas, then later on Privateers, during WWII & saw a lot of action in the Pacific. If he was still alive, he’d be amazed & excited that someone committed to reviving a modernized version of the PBY-5A.
I got my float rating 30 years ago in a Cessna 172; I was instructed that we don’t pound a 172 against waves more than 12 inches high. I’ve read that Cats made emergency rescues in seas running as high as SIX FEET. I figure that would peg just about anyone’s adrenaline meter.
After I win Powerball—it’s only a matter of time—I’m going to get on the delivery schedule for this airplane.
The email from AVWeb announcing this article incorrectly says the WWII Catalina was a turboprop. They had not yet been invented.
Yes, of course. An editor probably under a lot of deadline pressure. I lived that life for 44 years.
Does not say “was”. Just says they plan to.
” it plans to build a turboprop amphib flying boat using the “same design principles” ”
The new one will obviously have to be a turboprop.
I didn’t say the old one was a turboprop. I said the new one will be.
Always thought a Catalina would be fun to have and play with if I were a Billionaire.
https://catalinaaircrafttrust.com/
I see their address is some UPS store mailbox on Longboat Key, FL
Is this the same company promoting the resurrection of giant dirigibles for tourist and cargo carrying? Thank goodness for the dreamers. I guess they can raise the flag and see if anyone salutes.
Guys, hate to remind you that Avgas is getting harder and harder to find, and waaay too expensive when it’s found. IF this Catalina goes anywhere, it can ONLY be with turboprops because they burn jet fuel/kerosene/good grades of diesel fuel… which is available world wide.
Honeywell has a 1,600 shp version of the 331 and Pratt & Whitney Canada has a 1,700 shp version. The R-1830’s on a Catalina on a good day only put out about 1,250 to 1,300 horsepower. The availability of parts/cases for R-1830’s is diminishing rapidly, but not quite as fast as the long term reliability is. Turboprops are the only way this will be successful.
Question: What does a Catalina II do that a DHC-6 on floats doesn’t do, or maybe a variation of the DHC-515? I’m not trying to be a nay-sayer, but given the limited market for this aircraft I question how another model will sell enough to make this project financially viable.
Yep.
It’s the romance of the idea of new Cats, that’s all.
As the CL-515 enjoys a monopoly as a firefighter, a scoop-capable version of the Catalina may have a commercial niche. As a flying boat it can probably handle rougher water than a Twin Otter on floats and should be a bit roomier inside. I am not convinced there is a sizeable market for a 34-pax amphib that would justify certification of a new type. Dornier has been hawking their smaller Seastar for decades without a breakthrough. I still hope they succeed although an RV conversion will stay outside my financial reach.
The certification may be easier since they own the type certificate and the parts manufacturing authority already for the existing aircraft. It may be able to be built as a re-engined modification of the original. It’d be a steep hill to climb but I hope they make it work.
having flown the PBY, I hope that they don’t keep the adverse yaw. Kind of like herding cats to handfly…. but I still enjoyed the bit of time I got in the plane.
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I’ve been dreaming of doing this since I was an engineering student at Berkeley. Imagine a composite, turboprop version of the PBY – my favorite airplane of all time! No corrosion, no pistons…. So. Awesome.
My dream was (is?) to pilot one as a flying surf camp – no waves here, just go somewhere else. Eat, sleep, and surf on the ‘boat’. Subsidize the poor surfers by doing the same with ‘rich’ divers in the off season.
Of course, if you can fly to the surf, there is no off season! 😃
And if they subsidize it, then I get to be one of the poor surfers! Aww, poor me 😇😚🏄🏻♂️
A few weeks ago I attended a presentation on the PBY here in Colorado Springs, and the pilot said it was the worst flying aircraft he’d ever flown. It is absolutely gorgeous, though. So, top right corner of the airplane version of the hot/crazy matrix!
I was wondering if you’d be so kind as to expand on the “worst plane I’ve ever flown”. What was it as best you remember that the speaker found so intolerable about the PBY, just very curious.
At least in the first few months of WWII these were the eyes and ears of Theater Commanders and they’d kill to get their hands on just one more PBY.
I left out a word. He said it was the worst *flying* plane he’d flown. He said it humorously and with obvious reverence, to an audience of people who love the airplane. Sorry I accidentally mischaracterized his remarks.
He elaborated that it has a very slow response to control inputs. It “wallows.”
There seems to be a market for a large amphibian like the Catalina. Hope this comes off. Yes, it will be expensive but since something like a turboprop business aircraft on floats ain’t happening this would be the next best thing. As a retired A&P, this would mean maintenance for a seaplane of this size would have to re-taught since most mechanics have probably never worked on this type as I never did.
A friend of mine worked for an outfit that used the Grumman Goose for flights to and from Catalina Island, CA. I went there one night to have a look and the view was not heartwarming. Peaking into removed inspection panels in the wings were showing quite extensive corrosion, especially stringers.
When I saw the Miami seaplane tragedy where the wing folded during takeoff I was immediately hit by the memory of that night.
I foresee it being used as a downtown to downtown or vacation commuter plane: eg NYC/Albany/Hamptons/DC/Boston, etc as it would cut 2 hrs off any trip requiring use of NYC airport.
My Dad helped build PBYs (and B24s) at Consolidated in San Diego during the war.
Cool!
Let’s not forget all the Grumman variations who’ve seen their day.
Here in NE NJ I see what appears to be a Caravan on floats shuttling a west-east route that would take it to just north of the George Washington bridge, ultimate destinations unknown, MMU, LGA, Wall St piers??
Are Catalina’s approved for wheel landings? I don’t ever recall seeing them touching down on runways only vids of them crawling up ramps for maintenance I presume.
Some of the Cats were straight boats & needed to be maneuvered onto a big dolly to be brought ashore via a big ramp. Other Cats were amphibs.
Interesting discussion here.
If they can pull this off maybe the Martin Mars will be next! Now we’re talking!
I think the Germans built a retro Amphibian a DO-? based on a WW2 design they installed turboprops too. I don’t think it went anywhere. I don’t think there is a market for a plane like this. Romance and nostalgia won’t fill the bottom line if this is expected to pay for itself.
Sparky
I love this forum! Print something about an electric airplane and you get a thousand reasons why it’ll never work. But suggest resurrecting a NINETY YEAR OLD airframe that will sip about a thousand gallons an hour, putting it into production and selling it? No problem, where do I sign up?
Pilots are funny!
That’s because the Catalina is cool. Personally I doubt there will be enough demand to start production but I’m glad to live in a world that has these things still able to prowl the sky.
I’m still holding out for the Martin Mars though. Nothing exceeds like excess 🙂
The Catalina DOES work by the way. Helped win WWII and saved many Allied lives.
True words Don!
Apparently OK for many readers to approve of a completely useless Catalina type airplane but nix emerging technologies.
That’s because the Catalina is cool. Personally I doubt there will be enough demand to start production but I’m glad to live in a world that has these things still able to prowl the sky.
I’m still holding out for the Martin Mars though. Nothing exceeds like excess 🙂
If only the reason for reviving them was the cool factor, it’s not.
Instead, this is yet more evidence to support what everyone knows, but which the mob cannot yet be bothered. The government has destroyed innovation in most fields of industry. Tech is the big exception. Medical innovation is simultaneously suppressed and supported.
Money now abhors labor. This process began a little over one hundred years ago, and if we do not fix it soon it’s going going to do to most everything what has already been done to piston GA. Counterintuitively, it was mostly done in the name of the “little guy”. Being faced with all the taxes, liabilities, and regulations on labor, people wanting to create businesses either move them to the gulf coast or move them out of the country.
Some people want to make things like airplanes, and other people just like to make money, but few people are masochistic enough to desire becoming simultaneously a punching bag for politicians and a slave to them and bureaucrats.
We do not make a new, 30 passenger amphibious aircraft because the risk and reward calculations no longer work. Instead we make a new, milquetoast freight carrier with very marginal improvements over the existing models except that the fuselage shape is maximized for a popular sized container!
Any sensible society would make a much superior aircraft from those built five decades ago and then create containers to maximize the advantages of the plane.
I was a Navy brat and my family traveled with my father twice to Hawaii where one of my brothers was born. Later we moved to Midway Island for two years and I was six years old at the time. Some of my favorite memories are getting to hang out at the pier where I would watch my father and his Navy buddies don flippers and then float a set of wheels out to a Catalina where they attached them to the plane so it could roll up a large concrete ramp into one of the hangers for maintenance. One time he was able to sneak me into the plexiglass nose of what I believe was a P2V where I rode on a round trip flight to Hawaii….. It was absolute heaven for a six year old boy.