1 Good post!  Of course, now I'm eagerly awaiting whatever you have to say about the Hornet's after action report.
One of the air museums up here has a Catalina on display.  Probably Tillamook, but it might be at Evergreen.  It's not as big in person as you'd expect, but then few of the World War II planes are.  I remember being amazed the first time I saw a B-17 static display sitting next to an F-15 or maybe an F-14 that was nearly the same size.
I'm now curious to learn how they handled certain inevitable events on a 20 hour mission on this plane and others that had similarly long missions in those days.

2 About how you'd expect, David.  I suspect the hatches on the dash-4 and before had more than one use.

3

A PBY had a galley and I'm pretty sure it had a toilet. Just a hole in the hull beneath the seat, of course.

But one of the things that the Dumbo missions used to do when they pulled a man out of the water was to serve him a hot meal.

4 By the way, thank you for this post. It's very good.

5 I found plenty of references to the galley... heck, TIME did an article on the "PBY Dumbo" back in 1945 that featured a lovely photo of a sailor  "making breakfast for his crew"... but I couldn't find a picture of the head arrangements to save my life.

Except in modern PBYs... there's one flying out of Durban that has a full bathroom (minus tub/shower) with a standard-looking commode.

I'm sure you're right, Steven, about the hole, except... well, flying boat.  Maybe they just went into the bilge.

6

Thanks, brother.  The Cat has always been near and dear to my heart (I just LOVE butt-ugly aircraft!) - and the thought of paintin' one black and hangin'  lousy-operating torps off it to hunt Nips at night freezes the marrow in my bones.  Do you know anywhere I could buy a ride?  Already have notched a Ford Trimotor, T-6, and B-17...

Now tell the story about Ring.  Swede Larsen already seems to have been a perfect rectum - and I'd like to see how Stanhope measures up to him.  Looking forward to your next posting.

7

Reading the post about the PBY (For those who do not know, 'Catalina' was the name the British gave the PBY when they started to receive them.  Unlike the Martlet, it stuck with the Americans.), I was reminded of one of the odder little tales to come out of the WW2, namely of the Dutch PBYs that spent time as part of Midway's aircraft complement following Pearl Harbor.  And it was a PBY of the Royal Canadian Air Force which located the Kido Butai when the Japanese started their first Indian Ocean Raid.

The Australian also used the PBY as airborne minelayer in the Solomons, New Guinea, and South-East Asia, as well as a covert transport for supply coastwatchers and other parties behind enemy lines.

C.T.

8

The British are responsible for a lot of the names we hold near and dear. They named the Mustang, for example. They were the ones that named most of our tanks e.g. Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, Lee.

That's because the US Army wasn't into those kinds of names early in the war. The US Navy was, though, and it was Americans that chose names like Hellcat and Corsair.

9 I didn't know that they had named the tanks too. And really, Lee? That's... possibly not 100% politic, no? It'd be like supplying a tank to Soviet Russia and calling it the Czar...

10

I do not believe the British ever used 'Sheridan' as the name of a tank.  They used 'Stuart' though, for the M3 light tanks.

As for whether it was politic - the US Army had already named some bases after Confederate officers (Fort Bragg comes to mind.), so why not name a tank after the one of the best? 

The US Navy was obviously different from the US Army in giving names, though it seemed to have adopted names a bit (Catalina, obviously, and IIRC, 'Helldiver' for the SB2C was suggested by the manufacturer.).

And related to what Wonderduck commented - as much as Stanhope Ring's performance left much to be desired at Midway, I would add Marc Mitscher as another officer who fell short.  The main difference between Mitscher and Ring was that Mitscher received a better reputation.