80 Years, a Tribute to the Pby Catalina

This book describes the Saga of the best Flying Boat ever made, the Consolidated PBY Catalina. This iconic WWII Sea Patrol Bomber evokes strong nostalgia related to its wartime heroic role as a Rescue aircraft in search for downed crews and as a ship convoy guard against the ever-looming Submarine attacks. But the aircraft also had a dominant role in the post-war seaplane transport, the Coast Guard and arial Firefighting. With over 400 stunning images of its military and civil operations from 1937-2017, this book is the only photo album covering the full 80-year- career of the Catalina/Canso, of which 3,200+ aircraft were built in the USA and Canada until 1945. The book includes over a hundred of the best images from the author's own impressive collection taken during the two Transatlantic crossings for the 8-episodes " Catalina Odyssey" TV-documentaries. It also features a wealth of photographs from private family albums and professional photographers from all over the world, many of them never published before. Additionally, the Smithsonian Institution and other leading aviation museums , plus many Catalina/ Canso operators from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, they all have supplied rare images from their WWII photo collections and of their Cats for this book! Moments in time are captured in unique photographs of Catalinas flying around the globe to places all over the Americas, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, to far-flung Caribbean and Pacific islands and to the remote outposts in the Amazon, Alaska, and Greenland, The Cats can be seen on their mooring stations, in harbors, on lakes, flying passengers and cargo in peacetime, but also in wartime while attacking enemy submarines, or hidden during the daytime in lagoons, waiting for the night to fly out for making their surprise attacks on Japanese ships, port-installations, with torpedo/ mine-droppings in their role as the legendary " Black Cats". All photos come with captions that describe in detail the aircraft depicted, their armament, location and year. Maps, weapon-systems, radar equipment, the Cats' role as a pilot-rescuing " Dumbo", it is all in the book with a very informative text of 50.000 words.