The Black Cats have a very special place in my heart and family. My dad flew Black Cats of VP52 in the Solomons campaign, all the while two of his brothers were Marines on Guadalcanal. As a boy, I often poured over his large WW2 photo album (I still have it!). In the 1980's, we attended a large reunion of his squadron, met his mates, retold stories, etc. A Navy flier myself, it was an honor for me to be included. And, in recent years, as fortune would have it, a neighbor up my street also has her father's VP52 memorabilia. It turns out her dad & mine were crew members & friends on the same PBY. We have photos of them together under the PBY's expansive wings. It's a small world, indeed.

My grandfather flew Black Cats in the South Pacific. He was one of two pilots involved in Operation Gridiron that helped evacuate the Officers and Nurses off of Corregidor in May of 1942, days before it fell to Japan. The footage in this clip was amazing for me to watch. Thank you!

My Grandfather William Scott was a mechanic building PBY's at Consolidated in San Diego back in WW2

My dad flew PBYs for the Dutch Royal Airforce from the start of WWII to 1951 in islands of Indonesia and Australia. I have a picture of me in a flight jacket he had made for me next to his PBY. I love learning about the Catalina. My nephew and his wife are in the US Navy and are jet engine mechanics Lahore, CA. I send them links of the PBY Catalina when ever I run across one.

Lt. Commander, "You can't take off." Pilot, "Sounds like a dare to me."

One of the hidden strengths of the allies in general and the Americans in particular was their ability to improvise and adapt. Taking an old and slow recon aircraft and turning into a night bomber is prime example of that.

Big salute to the men of the Black Cat squadrons. My Father served as an 18 year old gunner on a PBM flying out of the Philippines on missions over the South China Sea, VPB-28. Another member of the crew became my Uncle after the war when he married my Pop's older sister. They both named their firstborn sons after one another, I am named after my Uncle Larry. Thanks for posting the video. Dad was always proud of his service.

My Dad's Cessna 120 was parked next to a Catalins at Van Nuys airport for a short time. One awesome warbird.

Ken if you get this, check out the history of the Naval Station that was on Palm Island, Queensland Australia. 1200 men were stationed there in 1943. It was a Catalina base. Some wreckage still there and concrete floors. Used to go camping there, beautiful place.

The PBY is on my Mt Rushmore of WWII aircraft. So versatile and effective way beyond its on-paper specs.

One of my all time favorite planes.

PBYs were actually rather elegant aircraft. Had good range, were exceptionally comfortable for the crews, were enormously useful, used for everything from ocean rescues to strafing to radar night fighting.

So many small things in ww2 added up to lives saved ! great plane!

3 squadrons were opperated by RAAF Australians they did most of the work and taught the USA crews how to lay mines there is a book written about the aussies ,a good read

Read it last week ,good stuff

Thank you so much for uploading this video. It is helping me get through the pandemic!

The Cat is one of my favorite plane, ever. Thank you, warriors.

Had it not been for “COD WAW” younger generations would not have known about VPB-54. Too bad they were not in action over Okinawa.

Good video, about a very interesting chapter of ww2.. Note that the Royal Australian Air Force had their own 'Black Cats'. The Catalinas they used were stripped down to an almost unbelievable degree, in order to reduce weight and boost range. In 1943-45, in cooperation with the US 7th Fleet, they conducted a series of successful mine-laying campaigns that extended as far north as China and Taiwan. All covered in the book 'RAAF Black Cats' by Robert Cleworth and John Linton.

This is a great video sharing the cool airplanes!

Black Cats were also used by the Australian Air Force (RAAF) laying mines as well as dropping bombs. Some missions were 25 hours and they were ear shatteringly noisy. There is a flying Black Cat in Australia at the HARS museum. Another wartime use was allied transport from Australia to Sri Lanka flown by Qantas using RN Catalinas. These flights lasted from 27-33 hours, an amazing feat of crew endurance

that badass cod waw mission... oh I do miss old treyarch

Underrated!

Don't forget the Aussie Black Cats that were mining enemy harbours as far up as Singapore

I just started reading the book about these planes the title Sketches of a Black Cat it is a well written book

With all of those qualifications, I'm surprised that you don't know that the pby isn't a float plane it's a flying boat. Flying boats and float planes are both types of seaplane. Float planes are standard planes with floats slung under the fuselage, while flying boats are airplanes that use the fuselage itself as the float in the water. Hope you find this information helpful.

The PBY was also extremely successful against German U - boats and of even more Notary : It was a PBY that spotted the Battleship Bismarck that resulted in it being sunk

My father was flown back to Australia at the end of the war in an Australian Catalina. During the flight there was a problem the aircraft was loosing height and the crew started to throw out anything that wasn't nailed down including luggage. One of the guys got really upset because his bag that had been thrown out had all his winnings from years of playing poker during his time in PNG.

My grandfather flew for VP-24

DOD really needs to put float plane back into service again. The mariner and Grumman float planes gave wide range of rescues on water. Japan has one now in inventory.

I think its crazy we don't have a functional equivalent today. We can't get helicopters to go that far and rescue.

Some carried Torpedoes. I remember when the CAF was the Confederate Air Force.

Stealth bomber with a kitchen and bunks.

I want to know more about the role of Look outs in these aircrafts. We're they Navigators or some other crew

It's an a 10 warthog With wings, anybody else got a better idea? Put on put pontoons on AA10.

Stealth fighter? Stealth bomber!

KEN! Hair Club for men!

Love hearing 1st hand accounts, we are loosing a great deal of our history from participates perspective!

Stealth fighter? 🤔 These were effective and along with PT boats they made life extremely uncomfortable for the enemy. Maybe they didn't shut them down, but they really did disrupt the resupply efforts.

David R Lentz, Columbus, Ohio, USA (Saturday, 20 July, 2024) Thank you for your information and experiences. Were these PBY-5 seaplanes, or PBY-5A amphibious aircraft? As a boy, I had built the Revell 1:72nd-scale kit of the Consolidated PBY-5A Black Cat Patrol Bomber seaplane, molded in black polystyrene (Academy makes a newer kit with a smoother exterior). I also built a PBY-5 seaplane in its more conventional Navy Blue Grey over Light Grey (if memory serves). I would like to find several of the Revell Monogram 1:48th-scale kits of the Consolidated PBY-5 seaplanes, PBY-5A amphibious, amongst other versions; one I would rework into a Black Cat, complete with red illumination in the crew positions, and convert a nother to a PBY-6A with the larger vertical stabiliser and more powerful engines. For that matter, I wish I could find a reasonably good-quality kit (ideally in 1:48th-scale) of Consolidated’s PB2Y-1 Coronado USN Flying Boat; it had an appreciably deeper, two-storey fuselage housing a galley, crew quarters, etc., bomb bays in the wings inboard of the engine nacelles, with a boat hull generally similar to Martin’s PBM-3/5 Mariner USN Patrol Bomber Flying Boat. Coincidentally, I also had assembled a model kit of the USS Pine Island (AV-12) Currituck-class seaplane tender (would “AV” stand for “auxiliary ship, fixed-wing aircraft”?) in 1:426th-scale, which included a miniature of a PBM-5 Mariner. I wanted to build them to a Second World War configuration, though I could not determine how to fashion three-bladed propellers to scale thickness. At 3:08 you report of PBY Black Cat seaplanes searching the coastal waters off Guadalcanal to interdict Japanese naval and maritime resupply shipping of the Imperial Japanese Army’s ground forces in the Tokyo Express. Some questions: 1) did the Catalinas have the Yagi early radar antennæ mounted under the parasol wing? 2) Did any Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator U.S. Navy Patrol Bombers (the Navy’s version of the B-24 USAAF Heavy Bomber) participate in any of this? These the ground crews had re-painted in the USN Pacific Theatre of Operations (PTO) tri-colour camouflage scheme of gloss dark sea blue on the dorsal wing surface, flat dark sea blue on the upper fuselage, intermediate blue on the vertical surfaces, and gloss white on the ventral surfaces; some had minor alterations in their electrical equipment here and there. Both æroplanes carried 500-lb bombs and 350-lb depth charges, the four-engine warbird internally. The PB4Y-1 had its bomb bay divided in half to either side of the centre of gravity, the forward part bearing a large rubber fuel tank to extend its range for patrolling; the other portion held ordnance, depending upon the expected targets: eight 500-lb bombs for ships, eight 350-lb depth charges for submarines. Round a month past, I had read/watched a KZfaq article/video (my hearing misses words intermittently, so I always read the closed-captioning) that coincidentally felt rather like your own: the on-camera narrator, Jeff Boyling, co-owns and pilots a PBY-5A amphibious, making personal appearances round the world: “The most underrated Allied aircraft of WW2 | PBY Catalina” (Imperial War Museums, Wednesday, 19 June, 2024). In my response, I replied in part, “A delightful look at a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina RAF Amphibious Seaplane.” I learnt that his æroplane whilst in service during the Second World War officially had been a Canadian Vickers PBV/G-PBYA Canso RCAF Amphibious Seaplane. (Canadian Vickers is/was located in Cartierville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) The USAAF’s version of the PBY-5A was the Consolidated OA-10 Catalina United States Army Air Forces (Monogram makes a kit of this iteration, too), and after 1947, the United States Air Force (USAF) Amphibious Seaplane. With Consolidated’s main focus centring upon their B-24 Liberator and their new B-32 Dominator Very Heavy Bomber, the Naval Aircraft Factory made several hundreds, under the designation “PBN-1 Nomad USN Amphibious Seaplane”, incorporating significant modifications to the current Consolidated PBY design.

I knew some black cats.

Is there a list of ALL PBYs that are on display throughout the US? Where could I find one near me?

have some faint memory of them being used as dive bombers in the aleutians.

This appears to be a 5A or maybe a 6A. However it is a long way from its wartime configuration, especially that nose. Where is the 50 cal single or dual machine guns in the front of the nose!?

And Bomber. 1 X torpedo hit confirmed...anti sub armmament a regular.

Stealthy bombers they were, fighters they were not.

Elon will buy this channel

Nothing going as good as the FBI is still flying. I'm sorry talk to text fby my bad

A stealth fighter, Not. But they Did do night missions with success.

I miss the old Confederate Airforce

Absurd proposition. A stealth fighter because it was camouflaged and had flame dampers? SMH. The British were doing this with the Mosquito before Guadalcanal so it wasn’t new. RAF Beaufighter night fighters were all black and radar equipped in 1941. The PBY was comfortably one of the best aircraft of the Pacific war but this is silly.

Pby is a better stealth fighter than the F-22

That is a bit weak calling it the first "stealth fighter bomber," merely by painting it black. I wouldn't call camouflage stealthy. If they got painted by radar, and the Japanese had it, they would have lit up just like any other aircraft. On half to full moon nights lookouts paying attention could have spotted them, especially if silhouetted, in what is called 'up-moon'. I don't think it changed the pucker-factor for air-crews and leave their rabbit foots at home.

Maybe a Stealthier aircraft. BUT NEVER AS A STEALTH FIGHTER.

Haha, a PBY as a "stealth fighter"? Twas a big SLOW flying boazt nothing more, nothing less. My money for "stealth fighter" is on the Mosquito intruders.

Fighter? And you call yourself an historian? Try another con.