An aircraft that is just a beautiful practical design . I would like to build a quality 1/48 scale of this if any manufacturer is watching. Even knowing the risk of propeller injury I doubt any pilot would have refused to fly it. A sad truth of war given how many lives this aircraft saved.
No doubt the PBY Catalina played a crucial role in WWII. One critical design defect, which I had never heard about before, was the fact that the plane's propellers were in the exact same plane as the head of the pilot, and so if any piece of the propeller detached, there was a good chance of the pilot suffering a fatal injury. Some time back, I saw this TH-cam video that somebody had made as a tribute to one of their family members, who had served in WWII as a PBY pilot. He survived until near the end of the war when, one of the propellers came loose and flew into the cockpit and killed him. I don't remember the name of the pilot or the video, but probably the video is still on TH-cam somewhere, just can't find it right now.
![Fairey Swordfish | Darling of the Fleet Air Arm [Aircraft Overview #16]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y7km1F_6eqM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Fairey Swordfish | Darling of the Fleet Air Arm [Aircraft Overview #16]](/img/tr.png)
my late dad was a radio operator/navigator on one one these airplanes in the pacific.
An aircraft that is just a beautiful practical design . I would like to build a quality 1/48 scale of this if any manufacturer is watching. Even knowing the risk of propeller injury I doubt any pilot would have refused to fly it. A sad truth of war given how many lives this aircraft saved.
No doubt the PBY Catalina played a crucial role in WWII. One critical design defect, which I had never heard about before, was the fact that the plane's propellers were in the exact same plane as the head of the pilot, and so if any piece of the propeller detached, there was a good chance of the pilot suffering a fatal injury. Some time back, I saw this TH-cam video that somebody had made as a tribute to one of their family members, who had served in WWII as a PBY pilot. He survived until near the end of the war when, one of the propellers came loose and flew into the cockpit and killed him. I don't remember the name of the pilot or the video, but probably the video is still on TH-cam somewhere, just can't find it right now.