Beautifull aircraft.!! I thought it was a little bigger!!! I still have the Revell kit, from the '60s, and his box in mint condition.!!!

Looks like a great aircraft and concept for the time!!

The primary reason the aircraft was retired early was because the engines were lemons. God bless.

An amphibious Hercules... brilliant. Too bad it didn't stay around long.

Interesting "hypothetical"... And the real shame is that we actually were very close to having reliable turboprop engines, which went on to power a whole era of passenger and military aircraft, some used to this day. C-130, anyone? Because this is the aircraft the C--130 never was but would have been an incredible system in combat. Just imagine the R3Y-2/C-130/CH-54 combination.

I wonder how it would've done had they switched to the T56 for reliability and added another pair to (more than) make up for the 3000hp total power lost in the engine swap?

Convair had a heritage of building flying boats with the Consolidated Commodore, used by Pan Am during the early 1930s, and the Catalina, which saw action during World War II in both military and civilian use.

This looks to be from the mid-50's. So it's very interesting that about a decade before the U.S. plunged headlong into Vietnam, military contractors were already hot to propose "solutions" for that "problem". And how nice of Convair marketing to familiarize Americans with the Mekong river! The Tradewind never scooped up its share of those sweet Pentagon dollars, but that's OK. Convair shareholders would do **very** well before too many years went by.

Thing to remember about this video's scenario: Dien Bien Phu was recent memory when this was made. France had just pulled out of Indochina because of it, and the US seriously considered intervening, at one point, to save the French. South Vietnam was a shiny, happy new country, and we were just into the cease fire in Korea.....Vietnam loomed large, long before Kennedy was anything more than a freshman rep from a snooty district in Yankeeland.

Awesome video! The Convair Tradewind was a promising aircraft and the US Navy was very interested in it but the Allison T-40 turbo props that powered it were garbage and after they contributed to a few crashes of the Tradewind the US Navy killed the program.

a few should have been kept!!!

At the time, no one was thinking of radar guided anti-aircraft missiles. Radar guided anti aircraft artillery was already well advanced, having been used in WWII with proximity fuses, no less. These things might have worked against a limited and under equipped third world enemy, like the Viet Minh. but, if any superpower were to get involved, which obviously they surely would as was evidenced by the Korean debacle, the Big Slow Flying Targets would not have lasted long enough to deliver half a brigade. Even an under-resourced force such as the adversary at Dien Bien Phu had shown how they could assemble masses of AA to defeat a modern air force. This was also pretty much shown to be a big worry even at Khe Sanh, too. The US had to apply massive air resources, at considerable and styeadily increasing risk, to keep the Marine base from being overrun. On a more strategic level, I could understand the importance of large, well made and long rage, cargo handlers like the Tradewind. I wonder if the Navy kind of missed the beat here with their more tactical slant on their promotional effort. Almost anyone could plainly see such an ungainly, even though well designed, aircraft was never going to be put at such risk with so many troops in a purely tactical role.

Looks like a C-133 in a way

The first turboprop flying boat

All noteworthy and insightful comments. Lockheed's design challenge of putting pontoons on the C-130 is a boondoggle looking for a military contract. I flew the USCG HC-130H for many years and it will be a design nightmare. Pontoons are not snow skis. They require a significant aircraft elevation when mounted, leaving an equally significant distance for the rear cargo ramp to reach loading elevation. The R3Y Tradewinds was a purpose-built aircraft that with modern modification and significantly better performance, could exceed a pontooned C-130 in virtually all areas of capability. But money and politics speak louder than conventional wisdom when it comes to military design and procurement.

Should STILL be in use, just needed better engines

Too complicated with all the intermediate steps. Too expensive compared to cargo planes and LSTs. What a waste of money!