Source : THE AGE NEWS
On a warm January day in Hawaii in early 1941, a flying boat appeared on the horizon over the sea, and landed in the water outside Honolulu.
The plane – a Consolidated PBY Catalina – made its landing on January 27, it had departed from San Diego, where it was built, and it had just accomplished a rare feat. It had spent “almost a full day in the air” traversing 4392km to get to Hawaii. Waiting in Honolulu was a Qantas crew.
Honolulu is where Qantas took its first delivery of the long-range planes that the “Flying Kangaroo” would later enable the Double Sunrise flights – at a distance of 6480 km between Perth and Ceylon, keeping Australia connected with the UK during World War II.
Within months of the first plane’s delivery, the Imperial Japanese Navy would stage its infamous surprise attack on US military bases in Hawaii, and the US would declare war on Japan and Germany.
But in early 1941, when the first Catalina plane was to be delivered to Qantas, the US was still neutral, while Australia, with links to the UK, was already at war.
As a result, the delivery flight “had to be flown by an American crew and that legal title would be transferred to Qantas in Honolulu,” according to academic Silvano Jung. Despite the RAAF pilots being seconded to Qantas, “the aircraft also had to be marked with civilian registration”.
Designated VH-AFA, the Australian crew included famed aviator Captain P.G. Taylor. Two days later, the plane left for Canton Island – roughly between Hawaii and Fiji. VH-AFA arrived at Rose Bay, Sydney on February 2, 1941. The delivery flight from Hawaii to Sydney was only the third time the Pacific had been crossed by air.
To get from Hawaii to Sydney safely in 1941 required flight crews to use a combination of dead reckoning (calculating location from fixed points), radio direction finding and astronomical navigation, with the Catalina’s blister bubble on top, designed for this purpose.
But these three methods themselves had to be continually cross-checked to ensure reliability. The Catalina was made for the original Double Sunrise route, connecting Western Australia to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and onwards to London.
The Double Sunrise flights began in 1943, as Japanese forces advanced through South-East Asia, towards Australia. Today, the legacy of those flights lives on in Qantas’ upcoming Project Sunrise project, which ispoised to redefine long-haul travel, even as, like in the 1940s, geopolitical uncertainty returns.
Right equipment in the right hands
Finding the right aircraft for the mission is a recurring theme of the displays at Honolulu’s Pearl Harbour Aviation Museum, home to iconic planes like the B-25 Mitchell and Japanese Mitsubishi A6M “Zero.” The museum recounts Japan’s surprise attack and the Pacific War that followed.
Ultimately, World War II came down to the right equipment in the right hands – and the PBY Catalina was a prime example – in its use by Qantas, but also the RAAF, and the US Navy.
Beyond civilian transport in Qantas livery, the Catalina military planes played a vital role in patrolling Australia’s vast borders, and they operated across the Pacific as an observation and reconnaissance aircraft. The RAAF ordered 253 of them.
As a museum docent, Scott Mensen explained to me, the Catalinas made up patrol fleets in the Pacific during World War II “so they could operate from remote locations because they didn’t need a runway.
“Since they could land in the water at any small island they could easily fly to them, and they could fly missions out of those islands.
“They were based all over the Pacific, and they had units that basically took care of the servicing of the aircraft that they could return to.”
Recognising their role as the “eyes of the fleet”, the Japanese targeted the Catalinas parked at Pearl Harbour during the attack on December 7 1941. By the time the attack had finished, only 11 of the 61 Catalinas across the island of Oahu were airworthy.
One patrol squadron of 12 saw seven of its planes destroyed. US military commanders had grouped them together to guard against potential sabotage by local Japanese spies, which inadvertently made the planes easier targets.
Even today in Australia, the legacy of the PBY is evident, as the plane is featured in museums nationwide – from the Qantas founder museum to the Aviation Heritage Museum in Perth. There’s even a monument to the PBY patrols in Cairns.
There is a cluster of Catalina wrecks in Broome that can be visited. A museum in Victoria for the wartime flying boat repair depot in Lake Boga. The hybrid fuselage-hull, dual prop engines mounted over the massive wings and the bulging blister windows out the side are a reminder of how design is shaped by needs.
In the museum, the individual stories of planes correlate to specific battles. The Battle of Midway turned the tide against the Japanese, the Battle of the Coral Sea relieved the threat to the supply lines between the US and Australia.
The museum also highlights how in a crunch, militaries and economies had to scramble to innovate, and – to use a contemporary word – iterate new versions of aircraft. The B-25 Mitchell had to be stripped down and lightened to allow it to conduct the first US bombing raid on Japan, for example.
Designers, engineers, and welders worked non-stop to make the changes needed for a mission. Some planes would succeed, while others got consigned to history books (The Brewster F2A Buffalo fighter, anyone?)
Technological progress is rarely a straight line. Radar transformed war in both the Pacific and Europe.
However, in December 1941, radar was a new technology that was not operated continuously. On the morning of December 7, US radar operators detected incoming Japanese aircraft, but officers mistook the signal for a flight of incoming American B-17 bombers from the mainland.
The evolving situation of 1941 gives the aviation engineering on display at the museum a poignancy.
It also begs the question in our time about what might be the right machines for this era (Ghost Bat? Ghost Shark? Virginia-class subs?)
The correct mix is seemingly one of hardware, lots of software, and humans who can use the technology effectively.
Culture, design and war
While many aviation museums assemble the odds and ends that are available and put them on display, the Pearl Harbour Aviation Museum boasts a more coherent collection. And the museum had, to me at least, a kind of energy to it, one that can sometimes be absent for aviation museums featuring historical planes.
Of course, the Pearl Harbour museum also has the advantage of place. The attack took place on Ford Island. From Ford Island Control Tower, visitors can see with their own eyes the landscape (and airspace) that the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked in 1941.
And in fact, the museum sits directly across the water from active base Naval Station Pearl Harbour. Given the sensitive nature of the military bases, visitors without active military ID can only get to the museum by parking at the visitor centre and taking a free bus on to Ford Island. The proximity between history and the present is everywhere.
The museum’s CEO is ex-Blue Angel pilot John Hiltz, who, until not so long ago, was flying F/A-18F off aircraft carriers.
The museum is nestled in a hive of activity with military planes and ships passing by. Its displays in this setting are a reminder that history, well, it happens sometimes.
In 1941, the Americans had based their Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour on the hunch that Japan would attack further southwest in the Pacific, nearer Australia.
Instead, a Japanese taskforce set sail in radio silence across a northern route and surprised the US, in an attempt to cripple the entire US fleet. Nearby in the waters surrounding Ford Island lies the USS Arizona Memorial, the resting place for over 1102 service members killed during the surprise assault.
Despite its serious, even solemn history, the Pearl Harbour Aviation Museum also celebrates the culture and design and even music of the 1940s – and is friendly to kids and families.
The site attracts a wide audience, including families, active-duty military personnel from local bases, and, when I visited, uniformed members of Japan Self-Defence Forces, with rising sun patches on their sleeves, also on site.
Australian visitors often take special interest in relics recovered from nearby regions, such as a Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo bomber retrieved from Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.
Displayed outside on the tarmac are additional aircraft with Pacific service history, including a Royal Australian Air Force F-111 wearing its full military markings.
The museum also owns a Catalina, of course it does, but it is currently being restored in Michigan – before it is returned for public display.
Chris Zappone travelled as a guest of Alaska Airlines. He was hosted at Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach by Hawaiʻi Tourism Oceania.
The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.
Chris Zappone is a senior reporter covering aviation and business. He is former digital foreign editor.Connect via X, Facebook or email.
