Hi, my wife’s uncle was killed during Korea while be a Radioman on a Mariner. They flew into the side of Fukushima Mountain while returning from Korea transporting personnel and materials. It was foggy out and the Navy never said it was pilots error or just an accident. RM3 Douglas Campbell was his name and I’m probably the only person now who knows of his memory. I never knew and my wife never knew him either, we were born much later. RIP Uncle Doug!!!
Sorry to hear that, unfortunately Japan is extremely mountainous so I suppose many American crews would not have been used to flying in those conditions. Well now I know Douglas Campbell too, and will endeavour not to forget him - RIP
My late English father was lucky. He spent 4 years in Bermuda in WW2 as a Telegrapher in the Royal Navy. He said the only military he saw was a Martin Flying Boat flew over one day.
My personal favorite flying boat is the Consolidated Commodore, especially in it's original NYRBA livery & canopy configuration. I like the old stuff. 😉
Kudos for the film footage of the 3/8 model. I’ve never seen that or much of the PBM still images you presented. Very well done video and not a rehashing of worn out images and data. Been an aviation buff for decades.
Honestly speaking, I am a sucker for flying boats. Usually I would agree 100% with your sentiment, but I never get tired of looking at photos and film of flying boats. Always nice to see more though. So I only agree 92% with your statement :D
I had the good fortune of serving briefly during '65/'66 on the USS Currituck AV-7, a seaplane tender as seen at 5:00 in the video, we served the younger brother of the PBM, the P5M, of which I never tired of watching, taking off and landing, in and around the San Diego harbor. That naval aviation chapter came to a close in 1967 with the decommissioning of that really cool ship.
We have wreckage of one on Mt. Tamalpais here in Marin. I had never heard of it, but I hiked up there and there is a bunch of debris and a sign. The rangers really don't want anyone finding it. There was a B-17 that crashed on the other side of the mountain in Fairfax and two Corsairs as well. I came across a Corsair engine in a creek and it started my search for all of this, I had never heard about any of it!
Very interesting, I wonder what went wrong. Did the crew get lost in bad weather? Like a lot of other people I first heard about the Mariner because of the Flight 19 Bermuda Triangle "disappearance" mentioned in this video - as the author says, it's too bad that the accidents overshadowed a great reputation.
My late father-in-law was the bombardier/navigator on the second PBM 5 out of Banana River Naval Airstation in search of the lost Flight 19 squadron. He said they were flying time bombs because of the way fuel was carried on board. Luckily, his PBM was the one that came home. He also mentioned that the head on board was useless and they would use their dixie cup hats or paper bags to "doo" their business in and then chuck them out the windows when coming in for landings. PBMs were also known for bombing US subs also. Great video and brings back many moments of talking to my dad about his experiences.
My father echoed the same as yours. He wasn't very kind in his remembrance either. Flying fuel bombs replaced the luxurious living quarters. He was a Radioman/ Nav, always forgetting to reel in the trailing antenna. Dropping buoys and leaving before the sub could surface and shoot the slow flying plane down.
Back in the '80s, a model builder constructed a beautiful R/C scale model of an early model PBM in New England. I saw it fly at the Brimfield, MA R/C float fly - smooth flier!
@@aviationdeepdive Sorry, I have not been to Brimfield since the late '80s. The builder must have been in his 50's then and may no longer be around today.
The PBM, otherwise known as the "Flying Gas-Can" after the amount of fuel it could carry. The problem was that the fuel tanks leaked and there was often a strong smell of aviation fumes inside the Mariners. The one that disappeared while searching for Flight 19 apparently exploded, quite likely due to gasoline-fume build-up and a spark of some sort. A nearby ship, the SS Gaines Mill, saw a fireball descending into the sea at around the time contact with the Mariner was lost. The ship headed to the crash site but there was nothing but an oil slick and some tiny pieces of debris left.
@@Alexandros11 yep. I jumped the gun on that one There’s another Mariner in Lake Washington in Seattle, but a diver was killed in a recovery effort and now it’s going to stay where it is
The PBM Mariner just made it into WWII. The PB4Y "Privateer" based on the B-24 Liberator was the Navy's BIG land-based bomber, and the ugly maid-of-all reconnaissance and rescue work, the PBY Catalina had been in service about a dozen years, and was a fine (if slow) airplane and excellent seaplane in water. Seaplanes were the "Rodney Dangerfield's" of Naval Aviation, they got "No Respect" except from downed fliers in the water, or doing ree-cee work at the Battle of Midway. The pilots and crews that "drove" them prevented many "telegrams from the War Department" to carrier pilots and crews families-something the Japanese Naval fliers greatly respected and envied, especially since we pick-up thousands of their aircrew, including Kamikaze, and the Japanese pilots were amazed we treated them with real kindness and respect-far more than their OWN senior officers did. Sorry, didn't mean to "preach", but German, Italian and Japanese POW's lived in camps in Oklahoma and many other places, and many stayed in the US because "Americans are good-hearted people."
When I went to Grad School at the University of Arizona, I was fortunate to go to the Pima Air and Space Museum, I was able to see a PBM 5A the last one on display I believe.
My father built (was an inspector) from 1939 into the P5M production after the war (1963). My uncle worked on the Martin Mars, another amazing aircraft. The PBM started out with .30 machine guns but they were ineffective against U-boats, so changed to.50 guns. The PBM could operate in sea and wind conditions the PBY could not. Much of the construction footage in this video were of B-26s. Martin just never seemed to catch a break on the publicity front. It made cutting edge aircraft. The B-10, pre WW2, PBM, Mars not to mention the B-26 and after the war, P5M and the P6M Seamaster. And there was the Martin Mauler that out performed the aircraft that was chosen instead the Douglas A-1 Skyraider. As well as the B-57 (a modified British design) and the B-51 which was a good aircraft but lost out on a contract. Martin then decided to concentrate on guided missiles, cruise missiles before their time. (I think Tomahawk missiles are assembled at the Dundalk MD plant today)
My father flew PBMs in WW11. Interestingly, they were really considered boats. The boat commander was the pilot. The plane captain on board was usually the flight engineer. I am looking at a photo of him and his crew (11) in front of a PBM3 on the ramp, Corpus Christi in ‘43. Dads2nd job was as photographer. I have reams of pictures from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Saipan, Eniwetok, and Singapore. His log book reads September 2, 1945, anchored in Tokyo Bay VJ Day. 1858hrs.Total time. Fair weather Dad.
at 4:33, "fifteen tons of steel later, ... " Fifteen tons of steel? Or Aluminum? This has been an illuminating video for me. Thank you for producing and posting it. Just a quick note, while it seems strange to search from the air for ships that operate underwater, that is, submarines, at least half the subs destroyed by allied forces were either spotted by aircraft which directed surface ships to the sub or destroyed by the aircraft. This includes all types of aircraft. So it still makes sense to use aircraft to search for subs but using modern technology.
Ah yes I realised that mistake afterwards and thought if anyone noticed - so kudos for being switched on! Of course virtually no aircraft throughout history have been built with steel as it's significantly heavier, the Mariner was built with Aluminium.
I flewon the PBM5 from late 1955 to late 1956 at NAS Corpus Christi Texas we were an advanced flight training unit. We flew 8 hour navigation training flights over the Gulf of Mexico. I served as radio and radar operator during these flights, it was fin to fly on. Gettin us in and out of the waster was a very detailed operation , thanks for bringing attention to this old warbird
Look at the Japanese Navy aircraft. They use a four engine turboprop that has STOL ability the ShinMaywa US-2. I hear rumors the Navy may be considering seaplanes for supplying Marine forward island bases in the western Pacific for watching the Chinese PLAN. (testing the Japanese aircraft?) And special communications and power production equipment to support surveillance and long range targeting networks.) The Army special ops people have C-130s with Eldo floats for some operations.
My late father in law was a tail gunner in the Mariner in the Pacific. He was a small man who fit in the small space of the tail gun compartment. He, like a lot of word war II veterans were reluctant to talk about their experiences during the war but I know he lost crew mates to enemy fire. Thank you for this rare story on the Mariner. The videos of the yellow winged pair was CGI, right?
Wow, must have been quite an experience to be a tail gunner on a Mariner. Yes that's right, the videos with the vintage colouring and grainy aesthetic are CGI generated with War Thunder.
I fell in love with this plane and then it's relatives the Mars and the ultimate military flying boat the p6m seamaster! Daydreams about a PBM turned into a flying RV!
I LOVE the old flying boats, My grandfather was an engineer at the Glenn L. Martin Company. The Japanese are still using and making new flying boats. If I had my way, I would buy a vintage flying boat and learn absolutely everything about one, When comfortable enough, I would kit it out for surfing. I want to live on a flying boat and use it to surf the best waves on the planet Earth.🏄🛩
I always liked the PBM. When I was a kid in the late 40's and early 50's my dad was stationed at San Juan Naval Base PR. I remember PBY's taking off and landing at the airfield so they must have been the amphibians.
The small one was more to test hydrodynamics & water handling than flight characteristics. Lots of B-26 Marauder factory footage. I suspect their trouble with securing contracts had to do with their performance on the P3M contract. "15 tons of steel"? These planes were built of aluminum. Production of PBM-5's began before the end of the war & some were deployed to the Western Pacific before Japan surrendered. The comment about "accidents in the post-war years" is illustrated with a PBM-3 wearing early 1942 insignia. Classic aircraft; typically spotty RU-vid documentary...but thanks for the color footage!!!
The 'Coronado' should have replaced the 'Catalina' but the Navy wanted numbers. Later in the war, Boeing produced the 'XPBB', a high-performance twin-engined patrol bomber that used the basic wing of the Army's 'B-29' bomber: sadly, the 'B-29' program required both the wing and engines of the flying boat, so only the prototype 'X-PBB' was made.
That aircraft was the XPBB-1 Sea Ranger, and the plant that would've built the production version; if it had gone into production, was traded to the air force, and used for the B-29, and, in turn, the Navy purchased B-25s, and designated them as the PBJ.
My grandpa was a flight engineer on a PBM Mariner during WWII - shot down north of Okinawa while trying to pick up a downed marine pilot; my grandpa said the Japanese would fly over, then you’d see the Americans fly over later, and eventually it was only Americans flying over them
Watched from Old Harbour Jamaica. During the war the US had a naval air station Just 3.5 miles south of my town call Little Goat Island. PBY's, Mariners use to be based their and one such was VP-206 who hale the base as the most comfortable advance base they were ever based. VP-32, who started out with PBY;s also stated that the Mariners were better. they also made one stop at Little Goat Island and sank the U-759 off the east coast of Jamaica. It is sad that only servive to this day.
I would think the even larger Martin Mars would better be described as the forgotten American giant. The true giant of the Martin lineup the Mars dwarfed the Mariner and only six examples of the Mars were ever built.
I'm old now, but growing up on a farm in the 70's I was talking to one of our neighbors, he told me he was a crewman on a mariner. I was like, "you must love to fly" or "your so lucky " He was like " f that, do you know how many hours I spent inside that fockin noisy tin can! 😅
To me the PBY (Catalina) the best once it could land on solid ground. Not just roll up out of the water after a water landing. Gaining a military/naval contract was more BRIBE in the right place than quality of engineering. Always was, and might still be today. 12.7 mm = to .50 caliber. The U.S. White Star with the RED Meatball in the centre is Pre-1942. Later Mark loses the confusing to AAA gunner Red Ball, and eventually adds huge White Stripes. (Doin't to be confused with Japanese Aircraft).
nice video but there where also a lot of deadly accidents in Papua Nw Guinea in service Dutch naval aviation 1955-1962 they called it the flying dead coffin
Absolutely right. The Mariner had huge problems with internal leaking of fuel leading to a build up of fuel floating around within the fuselage, ultimately leading to fires which destroyed a number of aircraft. Martin were never able to cure this fault.
The Tadpole Clipper was never funded by the navy, instead, Martin built it with their own money, and then the Navy ordered one example of the M-162, which they designated as the XPBM-1. Also, Martin wasn't struggling because of a lack of orders, instead, they were producing the A-29 Maryland, and the A-30 Baltimore for the British Commonwealth air forces, and Pan Am did buy the M-130 Clipper, which augmented the Boeing 314 Clipper.
The tadpole clipper was not funded by the Navy, I didn’t say it was. My sources imply that yes, Martin was not doing as well as they’d hoped and desperately wanted to secure the contract. The M-130 was to be used once it was built of course, but it lost the contracts and only 3 were built, Boeing got 4x more sales as they won the contract.
Huh..."Martin's" P3M was actually an inferior copy of the Consolidated P2Y-1, built in small numbers before the Navy realized that their old contract award process had only granted low bidder Martin permission to build those inferior copies of the winning design. The PBY Catalina series is the legitimate descendant of the Consolidated/Martin P2Y/P3M series. The Mariner is an entirely different, unrelated & more advanced design. Footnote: Consolidated almost went under at the very beginning of the Great Depression because they had sunk everything into that design competition. The one thing that saved them was a man named Ralph O'Neill requesting a passenger version of the P2Y with a revised fuselage & securing bank funding to have Consolidated build them as the "Commodore". The P2Y contract was finally taken from Martin & awarded to the actual designer, & Consolidated was finally back in the patrol bomber business. I highly recommend "A Dream of Eagles" by Ralph O'Neill, if you can find a copy.
The Sunderland was also more capable as it had a larger bomb capacity (and the ability to access the bombs in flight to set fuses). The Sunderland crew could also reload the bomb racks in flight which was useful for repeated attacks on U-boats).
@@allangibson8494 The Sunderland did not have a larger bomb capacity, the PBM Mariner could carry 8,000 lbs of bombs, the Sunderland couldd carry - the highest number I can find quoted for an internal load on the Sunderland is 4,960 lbs
@@aviationdeepdive The Mariner had a max capacity of 2000Lb of bombs with a full fuel load, it could carry heavier loads but then had a limited range with less fuel. The Sunderland also carried additional bombs/mines on the wings on top of its internal load, not surprising really as the Sunderland was the larger aircraft with the added benefit of 4 engines.
Oh dear, someone hasn't done their research upto and including the F model, the B-17 could carry 8,000lb of bombs externally plus a full internal load of 9,600lb of bombs. It's all there in the flight manuals. With 17,600lb of bombs you could fly a mission out to ,170 statute miles but 9nly at an altitude of 6,000ft or you could get up to 25,000ft but could could only carry it for 790 statute miles.
I said "more than early B-17s", B-17Fs only began to appear in mid-1942, four years after its introduction and seven years after it's first flight, so it was hardly an early version. Furthermore, I'm talking about the realistic bombloads that the aircraft could realistically carry, even the B-17G could only carry 8,000 lb on very short range missions no more than 400 miles.
@@aviationdeepdiveplease go and read my posting again as it clearly say "upto and including the F model" which means all of the early models of the B-17 had this capability. The B-17G and later models could not carry external stores. As these bomb loads are listed in the Pilot's Handbook, which is freely available on line, these bomb loads must be considered realistic bomb loads otherwise why put them in the manual? If you had said the typical or average bomb load of a B-17 then your point would have been perfectly valid and would have been ignored by me.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Well notice I didn't say 'maximum' bomb load, I just said 'bomb load' - which I assumed could be taken to mean the average. I don't have the Mariner handbook on hand, but we may discover that it too could could carry vastly more tonnage on short hops. That comparison is just the nominal standard load.
@@aviationdeepdive according the United States Naval Institute the Mariner's maximum bomb load was only 8,000lb and with no external bomb racks, that's the limit. So you were comparing a maximum bomb load against the not maximum bomb load. But if you want to compare typical bomb loads than the Mariner would have between 2,000lb and 4,00lb of bombs aboard. And just to be clear the figures quoted are for the B-17F.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 According to 'Britannica' the maximum bomb load for the B-17 is also 8,000 lbs, websites don't necessarily reflect the actual maximum capacity - as we've seen. Going so far as to include external racks isn't really relevant, comparing strictly internal bomb loads the B-17 could carry 8,000lbs, same as the Mariner, but only on missions less than 400 mi, whilst the Mariner as far as I can see had no such limitation. You are perhaps reading too much into, I was simply trying to show how large the Mariners bomb load is by showing that it could carry more bombs than B-17s virtually ever would.
Well, very different utilities so not really sure you can say it was better. The B-17 was far faster and better defended, with a higher ceiling - much better suited for long range bombing.
@@aviationdeepdive thank you for the video! As someone who has sailed on Middle River, I am of course biased. Also, I used to work for Boeing as a sub, and I can't stand the company.
A comparison often drawn! From what I can see its more of a case of convergent evolution as they were designed for essentially the same purpose - there could be some influence but the Be-6 was actually fundamentally built around quite a different platform than the Mariner, it was of a different generation and extremely complicated.
Hi, the guns were not .30 cals, but .50 cals (often referred to as 12.7mm). From now on I'll likely just do the measurements that's used in whatever country I'm covering
Another great video! Very interesting to watch this in comparison to Rex's excellent coverage of the same plane - I enjoy both your offerings for their specific approach.
That must have been quite a sight. What did the Bunker Hill look like? I heard she was badly damaged from combat against the Japanese, and was all burned up - quite a lot of sailors did not make it
@@neptunenavalmods4420Bunker Hill was fully repaired and recommissioned in September 1945 - ready for the November 1945 invasion of Japan, which fortunately for both sides, didn’t happen.
I was stationed at NAS North Island in 1971. The Bunker Hill was tied up at the far edge of the base. At the time she was being used for some kind of radio testing. A carrier would make an excellent Faraday Cage.
Sorry, I, m late! Too much work, I watched the Video now. A HUGE MODERN FLYING BOAT FOR IT'S TIME IN SERVICE! I'm very impressed! I think, it was better than the British SUNDERLAND! Very supreme U. S. Technologie! Like this boat and your special video! Good Job!
Thanks, that's quite a debate starter - the Mariner vs the Sunderland. Personally I'm not sure which side I fall on, they were both excellent aircraft. Thanks for the comment Ralph, nice to hear from you!