Posted by The Captain on December 26, 2000 at 08:44:55:
In Reply to: The China Clipper posted by Donn on December 25, 2000 at 14:55:22:
: The regular Pan American clipper service to destinations across the Pacific is part of the lore and legend of those places and those times. Don't you agree?
Yes, a few years back I visited a little private museum on Guam near the site of the old Pan Am hotel and flying boat stopover.
All of that was wiped out when the Japanese rolled in.
It harkens back to a lost "romantic" era. Flying boats are considered a thing of the past, but that is only artificially so. The Russians built several flying boats during the last few decades. The Japanese have the four engine Shin Meiwa PS-1 which has all the muscle and legs of a C-130 Hercules.
Alot of the absence of flying boats has to do with the ambiguity of their status with the formation of the Air Force as a separate service and the fact that they have not been very successfully jet-propelled so they are not "state of the art" (very important in some eyes).
There are those who think that part of the Osprey problem could have been handled with "off the shelf" flying boats. I've published a bit on their application in special operations...to no avail.
THE CAPTAIN,/font>