Airmen Arrive For Furlough En Route To Pacific (1945)
Airmen Arrive For Furlough En Route To Pacific (1945)
Jul 312011
Jun 112010
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBY_Catalina
The Consolidated PBY Catalina was an American flying boat of the 1930s and 1940s produced by Consolidated Aircraft. It was one of the most widely used multi-role aircraft of World War II. PBYs served with every branch of the US military and in the air forces and navies of many other nations. In the United States Army Air Forces and later in the USAF their designation was the OA-10, while Canadian-built PBYs were known as the Canso.
During World War II, PBYs were used in anti-submarine warfare, patrol bombing, convoy escorts, search and rescue missions (especially air-sea rescue), and cargo transport. The PBY was the most successful aircraft of its kind; no other flying boat was produced in greater numbers. The last active military PBYs were not retired from service until the 1980s. Even today, over seventy years after its first flight, the aircraft continues to fly as an airtanker in aerial firefighting operations all over the world.
The initialism of “PBY” was determined in accordance with the U.S. Navy aircraft designation system of 1922; PB representing “Patrol Bomber” and Y being the code used for the aircraft’s manufacturer, Consolidated Aircraft.
Night attack and naval interdiction
Several squadrons of PBY-5As and -6As in the Pacific theater were specially modified to operate as night convoy raiders. Outfitted with state-of-the-art magnetic anomaly detection gear and painted flat black, these “Black Cats” attacked Japanese supply convoys at night. Catalinas were surprisingly successful in this highly unorthodox role. Between August 1943 and January 1944, Black Cat squadrons had sunk 112,700 tons of merchant shipping, damaged 47,000 tons, and damaged 10 Japanese warships.
May 032010
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Courtesy: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
Interactive Global Hawk: http://bit.ly/GloPac
The NASA Global Hawk Pacific, or GloPac, campaign is the first Earth Science mission to be conducted on the aircraft. The Global Hawk’s ability to autonomously fly long distances and remain aloft for extended periods brings a new capability to the science community for measuring and observing large areas of the Earth. Ten specialized instruments will be installed in the aircraft to explore the trace gases, aerosols, and dynamics of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. The instruments will also validate sensors aboard NASA’s Aura Earth-monitoring satellite.
Proposed flights of the Global Hawk for the Global Hawk Pacific Mission (GloPac) are to be conducted in support of the Aura Validation Experiment (AVE). This mission will take place out of Dryden Flight Research Center and is expected to encompass the entire offshore Pacific region with four to five 30 hour flights. Aura is one of the A-train satellites supported by NASA Earth Observation System.
The flights are designed to address various science objectives:
1. validation and scientific collaboration with NASA earth-monitoring satellite missions, principally the Aura satellite,
2. observations of stratospheric trace gases in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere from the mid-latitudes into the tropics,
3. sampling of polar stratospheric air and the break-up fragments of the air that move into the mid-latitudes,
4. measurements of dust, smoke, and pollution that cross the Pacific from Asia and Siberia,
5. measurements of streamers of moist air from the central tropical Pacific that move onto the West Coast of the United States (atmospheric rivers).
GloPac is supported by:
Randy Albertson, NASA Airborne Science Program
Earth Science Division, Science Mission Directorate
Ken Jucks, NASA Program Manager, Upper Atmosphere Research Program
Hal Maring, NASA Program Manager, Radiation Sciences Program