AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 116 / 319

Plate 116 of 319 · Second World War · Patrol flying boat and transport

Consolidated PB2Y Coronado

PB2Y-5R BuNo 7099, painted as Consolidated PB2Y-5R Coronado BuNo 7099, the only surviving Coronado, the flag transport that carried Fleet Admiral Nimitz’s staff west for the Japanese surrender in 1945 and was later owned by Howard Hughes, displayed at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida: the US Navy’s big four-engined patrol flying boat with four Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp radials, a deep two-step hull, a high wing whose floats retract to form the wing tips, and twin oval fins on a dihedral tailplane, its turrets removed and faired over as a transport: glossy dark sea blue above with white undersides rising in an arch on the bow, 1943–47 star-and-bar insignia on the bow and wings, a Fleet Admiral’s five-star plate below the cockpit, ‘PB2Y-5R’ and ‘7099’ on the fins and ‘NAVY’ on the rudders, with the port bow cargo door open, as photographed at Pensacola (no Coronado is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics PB2Y-5R three-view checked against photographs; the display pedestals are not modelled).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Consolidated PB2Y-5R Coronado BuNo 7099, the only surviving Coronado, the flag transport that carried Fleet Admiral Nimitz’s staff west for the Japanese surrender in 1945 and was later owned by Howard Hughes, displayed at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida: the US Navy’s big four-engined patrol flying boat with four Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp radials, a deep two-step hull, a high wing whose floats retract to form the wing tips, and twin oval fins on a dihedral tailplane, its turrets removed and faired over as a transport: glossy dark sea blue above with white undersides rising in an arch on the bow, 1943–47 star-and-bar insignia on the bow and wings, a Fleet Admiral’s five-star plate below the cockpit, ‘PB2Y-5R’ and ‘7099’ on the fins and ‘NAVY’ on the rudders, with the port bow cargo door open, as photographed at Pensacola (no Coronado is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics PB2Y-5R three-view checked against photographs; the display pedestals are not modelled). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.9 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (PB2Y-3); engine, crew and dimensions are for the PB2Y-5R BuNo 7099 modelled here.

History

The PB2Y-5R Coronado

After the PBY Catalina, the US Navy wanted a bigger, faster flying boat that could patrol and bomb at long range, and in 1936 it ordered prototypes from Consolidated and Sikorsky. Consolidated’s Model 29, the XPB2Y-1, first flew at San Diego on 17 December 1937. It was a deep-hulled four-engined boat with a high wing whose floats folded up to become the wing tips, and it flew at first with a single fin; it was soon given the twin oval fins of later Consolidated designs. It beat the Sikorsky XPBS-1, but money was short, and only six PB2Y-2s followed, reaching Patrol Squadron 13 at the end of 1940.

The main production version was the PB2Y-3, with self-sealing tanks, armour and power-operated turrets in the bow, on top of the hull and in the tail, and 210 were built, making 217 Coronados in all. They flew patrols in the Pacific and some bombing raids, but the twin-engined PBM Mariner and the land-based PB4Y Liberator did the job more cheaply, so many Coronados became transports. The PB2Y-3R had its turrets removed and faired over to carry passengers and freight, and the PB2Y-5, re-engined with R-1830-92s without high-altitude superchargers, became the PB2Y-5R transport and the PB2Y-5H ambulance, with room for 25 stretchers.

Ten PB2Y-3Bs went to the RAF as the Coronado I, but Coastal Command did not want them, and they flew freight and passengers across the Atlantic for Transport Command instead. In US Navy service Coronados of the Naval Air Transport Service carried senior officers, mail and urgent cargo between California, Hawaii and the Pacific islands, and casualties back home. They were withdrawn soon after the war, and all but one were scrapped. No Coronado is in a UK museum.

This airframe

PB2Y-5R BuNo 7099

7099The airframe modelled

BuNo 7099 was delivered to the US Navy as a PB2Y-3 in 1943 and joined the Naval Air Transport Service, flying with transport squadrons VR-2 and VR-6 across the Pacific. Converted to a PB2Y-5R and fitted out as a flag transport, in August 1945 it flew west with the staff of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, including his deputy, Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman, for the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. It was struck off the Navy’s books in 1946 and sold to Howard Hughes’s Hughes Tool Company as N69003, which used it in preparing for the HK-1 and kept it airworthy into the 1960s before storing it at Long Beach, California. Donated to the National Naval Aviation Museum in 1977, it was partly dismantled and taken by barge through the Panama Canal to Pensacola, where it is displayed today. The model shows it as photographs of it there do: glossy dark sea blue above, white below, the white rising in an arch on the bow, the star-and-bar insignia of 1943–47 on the bow and wings, a Fleet Admiral’s five-star plate below the cockpit, ‘PB2Y-5R’ and ‘7099’ on the fins and ‘NAVY’ on the rudders, with its wing-tip floats retracted and the port bow cargo door open, as displayed. Its shape comes from the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics drawing of the PB2Y-5R, checked against photographs. A small name under the port cockpit window cannot be read in any photograph and is left off, the windows are shown without interiors, and the hull rests level on its keel rather than on the museum’s pedestals.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The only survivor is at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida.

All 319 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.