Overview

The Consolidated PBY Catalina was probably the most versatile and successful flying boat/amphibian ever built, serving not just with the US Army Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard during the Second World War, but also with the air forces of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the Danes, Free French and Norwegians as well as Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and elsewhere. With a remarkable lifting capacity and endurance, this long-range twin-engine aircraft could absorb a great deal of punishment and still return home after flights lasting an entire day and covering thousands of miles. It was employed as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft, as a bomber and torpedo-bomber, as an anti-submarine weapon, as a mine-layer, as a special operations machine and as a search and rescue craft by day and night. It ferried stores, mail and people – many of them sick and injured – across all the world's oceans and is rightly held in the deepest respect by all who had anything to do with them, flying or being flown. In this book, Andrew Hendrie tells the whole amazing story of the ""Flying Cats"", of their exploits and achievements, of the heroism of many of their crews and the problems they had to endure. With numerous photographs as well as appendices listing technical data and individual aircraft histories, this is the definitive history of the Catalina and its operations world-wide. 100 b/w illustrations

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9781399013093

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Reviews

...an in-depth, extensively researched study of this extraordinary flying boat/amphibian... -- Midwest Book Review

""...an excellent work for anyone interested in the Catalina's international service.""-- ""Air Power History"" ""...an in-depth, extensively researched study of this extraordinary flying boat/amphibian...""-- ""Midwest Book Review""

...an excellent work for anyone interested in the Catalina's international service. -- Air Power History ...an in-depth, extensively researched study of this extraordinary flying boat/amphibian... -- Midwest Book Review

Author Information

After completing a tour of operations on Lockheed Hudsons during the Second World War, ANDREW HENDRIE logged flights on over seventy Sunderlands, largely air tests of machines delivered by the Short's factories at Belfast and Windermere. He then began a second tour on Vickers Wellingtons. Post-war, Andrew joined the RAFVR. After 1980 he began researching and writing books about maritime flying operations. His first title, Seek and Strike: The Lockheed Hudson in World War II, was published in 1983. Andrew passed away in 2004.

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