Dad always got to ride in a Goose when we went to the Aleutians while I would get stuffed in an overloaded Cherokee or something. Sadly PennAir retired all of them some 20 years ago

Dad used to convert them in to water bombers.
I got to go on a couple of rides but no water landings.

They were called "Canso's" up here.

A Russian MiG15 shot down one of ours in 1952, three days after downing one of out DC3s.

Catalina Affair

The Catalina is still in the water, but the DC3 was recovered a few years ago. I got a look at the wreckage right after it had been recovered as I was working at the naval base where it was stored at the time. It's now in a museum a few kilometers from where I live. They also have an intact Catalina on display.

My dad served on one in WWII.
He told me they were the Black Cats Squadron 13.
He had a tattoo of a black cat jumping over an orange ball,circle with the number 13 in it on his left arm.
These are the things he brought home
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More pics next post

A couple more pics
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Victory: On the attack, edited by Steven Coonts, has a really good PBY Black Cats story.

Learned something today, need to go visit the place

That's where I first read about the Lahodney Mount.

From "Black Cat Raiders of WWII", Richard Knott:

"Back at Palm Island, Australia, Patrol Bombing Squadron 52 under Lieutenant Commander H. A. "Hal" Sommer had been readying itself to move north and relieve VPB-11. Here, one of the war's more colorful Black Cat pilots, Lieutenant W. J. "Bill" Lahodney, was deeply involved in a project which he hoped would substantially increase the striking power of the Catalina. Something was needed, he felt, to enable a Cat to press home an attack even after all bombs or torpedoes had been expended. Further, he knew that they would encounter many targets, too small to waste bombs on, which would succumb to an attack by concentrated gunfire.
In his quest for increased firepower, Lahodney made several flights in the Army's B-25 bombers and was impressed with their gunfire capabilities. These planes had 75-millimeter cannon in the nose but also mounted several fixed-quad .50-caliber machine guns which were of particular interest to the Cat pilot. He decided to with the same .50-caliber installation in the nose of his PBY. It was a somewhat radical concept and, as might be expected, there were many raised eyebrows. The PBY after all was a patrol plane, not a fighter, and it was the opinion of some that the fifties would tear the nose off of the airplane. The old Cat was simply not built to take that kind of abuse, they said. Others thought the installation would have an adverse affect on aircraft weight and balance. Few were optimistic that the idea would work.
Lahodney was not to be deterred. Removing the bombsight (which had not proven very effective for the specialized work of the Black Cats) and the small bow plate window, he bolted the guns, mounted two over two, to the keel of the big boat. The top set of two were mounted forward of the lower set, so the muzzles of all four were aft of the angled bow plate. An aluminum panel with four blast tubes extending forward for seven inches replaced the window, and was all that was visible of the lethal addition from an exterior view. An electric trigger on the pilot's yoke, and a selector switch which permitted the pilot to fire the guns individually or together, completed the installation. Bill Lahodney was confident that the Cat would not only withstand the vibration of the fifties, but that the twin thirties normally mounted just above that spot could be retained along with the gunner's position."

"The experiment was a complete success, so much so that quad fifties were installed in at least three planes in every succeding squadron. Other tests also bore out Lahodney's views. They demonstrated that a gunner could straddle the quad mount and operate the thirties with almost as much mobility as before. A burlap pad was placed on the hot .50-caliber barrels to prevent the gunner from being burned."

Awesome aircraft

Wow.

Same

Absolutely awesome

When I was a kid in Coco Solo Naval Air Station I used to watch them JATO out of the bay over the breakwater right out our kitchen window...the noise was awesome.
I used to fish off the sub pier and got an even better view...sometimes I'd ride my bike down to the airfield and watch them get their wheels lowered and come ashore...

That's the same one that I posted. It's at Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, right down the road.

It was the only Catalina to fly in the Arsenal Of Democracy on DC a few years back. It was so slow, they sent it up from Culpeper first even though it wasn't in the first wave to fly down the mall. It just circled on the other side of the Potomac waiting for its turn lol.

Here's a great gallery with pics of Lahodney's quad .50 setup. Also, quad .50's are cool, but twin 20mm's may be even cooler.

http://www.daveswarbirds.com/blackcat/photo4.htm

Had a bunk and a mini kitchen, they stayed up that long.

When my dad was a teenager in WWII, he worked at the PBY plant in New Orleans before he was old enough to join the Navy with his parents permission at 17 years old.  He was inside the aircraft working when he felt a pinch on his back and he jerked his back away from the outer wall.  A large piece of his shirt ripped off and he turned to see it get wrapped around a spinning drill bit that had punctured the wall.  The woman who drilled into his shirt tried to pull the bit back out and the big ball of shirt prevented her from getting the bit back out.  So she kept pounding the drill back and forth while my dad yelled at her to stop.

Double Sunrise the longest scheduled commercial flight ever was a Catalina route from Perth to Sri Lanka about 30 hour flight during WW2