Catalina - the flying yacht

[ChemicalChaos]

What's unbelievable? Just the fact he manages to Macgyver his way out of tricky situations all the time?
Whatever you do, never read Dean Koontz in that case. 90% of his books have a huge buildup to an inescapable finale for the protagonist, which then gets suddenly solved in about 1 page by a previously unmentioned supernatural phenomenon!

I'm another one who likes the distant-past prologues of the Pitt books and how they tie into the main storyline.
My favourite one of the series is probably either Dragon, or Vixen 03.

[Dr Jekyll]

ChemicalChaos said:

I'm another one who likes the distant-past prologues of the Pitt books and how they tie into the main storyline.

That's just it, I can't resist finishing them just to find out what the Viking longship was doing with a nuclear reactor or whatever.

[Simpo Two]

ChemicalChaos said:

What's unbelievable? Just the fact he manages to Macgyver his way out of tricky situations all the time?

So if you were flying an Albatros fighter and a Catalina came up alongside you and started firing at you you'd just go 'der' and wave at it whilst being careful to fly straight and level so they can shoot you?

Please yourself but I'd turn the fk out of there using my far better manoeuverability. The Cat's side blisters give a very good view/field of fire but I have two relatively steady forward-firing machine guns and he has one wobbly rifle, so I'd aim to kill him first then settle down to pick off the engines. Or if there's no front gun, aim for the pilot and let gravity do the rest. Then home for tea and medals, hurrah!

[jpringle819]

IanMorewood said:

Ok so a new link with some gratuitous flying yacht pictures and the odd young lady wearing a bikini, finishes with some pictures of Kendalls derelict PBY.

http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/04/24/all-aboar...

Jimmy Buffett was once attacked in his Grumman HU-16 Albatross http://www.buffettworld.com/incidents/jamaica-mist...

[Simpo Two]

Are we talking about the right kind of Albatros/s?

[Roger Woods]

I worked in Saudi between 1999 and 2011 and can confirm that the Catalina was still there, sitting by the side of the lake in 2004 ish, Myself and 2 others went on walk about from Tabuk and covered about 1500 kms that weekend having a mooch.

[Hooli]

Simpo Two said:

Are we talking about the right kind of Albatros/s?

Nope. The one in the Dirk Pitt book is a WW1 biplane, painted yellow IIRC.

[Simpo Two]

That's what I thought; it was jpringle who introduced the Grumman version.

[AW111]

Roger Woods said:

I worked in Saudi between 1999 and 2011 and can confirm that the Catalina was still there, sitting by the side of the lake in 2004 ish, Myself and 2 others went on walk about from Tabuk and covered about 1500 kms that weekend having a mooch.

Not condoning the people who shot up the plane, but the Middle East was a bit of a war zone in the late '50s / early 60s :
1956 Suez crisis UK vs Egypt
1958 kingdom of Iraq overthrown, royal family killed
1958 US intervention in Lebanon


Maybe, just maybe, a really stupid place to land an ex-military transport aircraft off the coast.

[ilovequo]

Found another few photos of our Catalina rescue...
Beautiful Plane!