Arrived in the ubiquitous polypropylene sack from Russia last week.
Got a chance to clean them up this weekend.
They are two parts from a Russian lend lease PBY – one of 137/139 sent there during the war. Making them a bit rarer is that they are from the PBY N-1 Nomad of which only about 155 were made by the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia.
The mooring line mount is nicely stamped Alcoa and has a 28 part number.
The float nose was made by the Naval Aircraft Factory and not Consolidated so has inked stamps on the parts ; a heat treatment HT stamp and an AM stamp which I am guessing is a sub contractor. The part is stamped inside 148L.
The float shape is specific to the Nomad and very different to the standard Catalina float so definitely not one of the 48 PBY 6A’s sent there. The Alcoa part also means that they are not of the GST local made versions.
Some details on Russian use of Catalinas here:
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/commandeur/
There are traces of the blue paint (upper surface) and white paint (lower surface) on both float nose and mooring mount – tying in with this being the left/port float – although there has been some burning to the float upper edge.
By: Flying_Pencil - 24th April 2018 at 23:52
Great find and show!
By: FarlamAirframes - 17th April 2018 at 15:53
Just confirmed that the parts came from near Archangel – Lake Lakhta/Katunino Airfield – where these aircraft flew convoy support from. Pictures show aircraft in trees in several major sections so probably a crash site
By: David Legg - 16th April 2018 at 10:37
Very interesting Brian – thanks for posting.
A couple of observations – the correct Nomad designation is PBN-1, not ‘PBY-N1’ (maybe a typo?). I have the number of Nomads committed to the USSR as 138 but one crashed pre-delivery making 137 delivered. Regarding the ‘fudge’ around the number of Nomads built, the BuNos allotted (02791 to 02946) makes 156 but the contract was for 155. One hull was destroyed by fire on the production line and was rebuilt using the previously stricken BuNo 02802 and given the 156th BuNo 02946.
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April 15, 2018 at 7:37 pm