3D model
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A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Lockheed P2V-1 Neptune BuNo 89082, ‘The Truculent Turtle’, which flew 11,235 miles from Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio, without refuelling in 1946 and is displayed at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida: the US Navy’s twin-engined long-range patrol bomber with two Wright R-3350 radials, a high-aspect-ratio shoulder wing, tall single fin and tricycle gear, stripped of its turrets for the record flight with a streamlined metal nose: overall gloss sea blue, a thin red stripe round the forward fuselage, ‘The Turtle’ nose art of a pipe-smoking turtle pedalling a propeller, 1943–47 star-and-bar insignia on the rear fuselage and small white ‘NAVY’ and ‘89082’ on the fin, as photographed at Pensacola (no P2V-1 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics drawing of the P2V-4 checked against photographs of the airframe). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.3 MB)
Data plate
Specification
- First flight17 May 1945
- Built~1,180
- Top speed~350 mph
- Engine2 × Wright R-3350-8 Duplex-Cyclone 18-cylinder radials, 2,300 hp each (P2V-1)
- Crew7 (4 on the record flight)
- Wingspan30.48 m
- Length23.74 m
- Height8.56 m
- In serviceUS Navy 1947–late 1970s; RAF 1952–57 as the Neptune MR.1
- RoleMaritime patrol bomber
- MakerLockheed Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California, United States
- UK collections—
First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (P2V-1 to P2V-7 (SP-2H)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the P2V-1 BuNo 89082 modelled here.
History
The P2V-1 Neptune
Lockheed’s Vega subsidiary began designing a land-based patrol bomber for the US Navy in 1941, but wartime work on the Hudson and Ventura held it back, and the Navy did not order it until 1944. The XP2V-1 first flew at Burbank on 17 May 1945, too late for the war. It was a big, clean twin with a long, slender shoulder wing of 100 feet span, two Wright R-3350 radials, tricycle gear, a tall single fin and gun turrets in the nose, the top of the fuselage and the tail, and it could carry bombs, depth charges or torpedoes for 4,000 miles. The P2V-1 entered service with patrol squadron VP-ML-2 in March 1947.
To show what the new type could do, the Navy stripped the third production aircraft of its armament, filled it with extra tanks and gave it a streamlined nose. On 29 September 1946, with a crew of four and a kangaroo, it left Pearce Field near Perth, Western Australia, with rockets to help it off the ground, and landed at Columbus, Ohio, 55 hours 17 minutes later, after 11,235 miles: a record for an unrefuelled flight that stood until a B-52H beat it in 1962. In 1949 P2V-3Cs, meant to carry atomic bombs, were launched by rockets from the carrier USS Coral Sea, though they could not land back on it.
Neptunes hunted submarines and flew patrols off Korea and through the Cold War, growing longer noses, radar, searchlights, tip tanks, magnetic anomaly booms and, on the P2V-7 (SP-2H), two jet engines in pods under the wings. The RAF borrowed 52 P2V-5s under the Mutual Defence Aid Programme from 1952 as the Neptune MR.1, to fill the gap until enough Shackletons arrived, and returned them by 1957. About 1,180 were built, including Kawasaki’s P-2J in Japan, and they flew with the navies or air forces of the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, France, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal and Japan. The US Navy replaced them with the P-3 Orion. The RAF Museum Midlands holds a Dutch SP-2H; no P2V-1 is in a UK museum.
This airframe
P2V-1 BuNo 89082
BuNo 89082, the third production P2V-1, was the aircraft chosen for the 1946 long-distance flight and named ‘The Truculent Turtle’. Commander Thomas Davies, Commander Eugene Rankin, Commander Walter Reid and Lieutenant Commander Roy Tabeling flew it from Perth to Columbus, Ohio, between 29 September and 1 October 1946. It then flew with the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River until 1953, when it was given to the Smithsonian Institution and displayed at NAS Norfolk, Virginia. In 1977 it went by barge to Pensacola, on loan to the National Naval Aviation Museum, which took it over in 1990, and it is displayed there today. The model shows it as photographs of it there do: overall gloss sea blue, a light nose cap, a thin red stripe round the forward fuselage, ‘The Turtle’ nose art on both sides of a turtle in a white cap smoking a pipe and pedalling a propeller, the star-and-bar insignia of the time on the rear fuselage, and small white ‘NAVY’ and ‘89082’ on the fin. Its shape comes from the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics drawing of the P2V-4, checked against photographs; the nose is kept to that drawing’s length because photographs of 89082 show its streamlined record-flight nose is as long as the later production nose. No photograph shows the upper wing, so the wings carry no insignia; the nose art is simplified, and the aircraft is shown standing on its gear.
Where to see one
Not on charge
P2V-1 ‘Truculent Turtle’, which flew 11,236 miles from Perth to Ohio without refuelling in 1946, is at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola. In Britain, the RAF Museum Midlands holds Dutch SP-2H 204.