Channel Catalina

This is the third part of a four-part series on the four Catalina Air Transport planes that were appropriated by the U.S. Army early in World War II.

Today's "victim" was Douglas Dolphin NC14204, the flagship of the early Wilmington-Catalina Airline fleet. This was Chief Pilot Walter Seiler's favorite and was the most photographed of the airline's Dolphins.  Roughly 9 out of 10 publicity photographs of the airline you will see feature NC14204 as the subject.

On September 1, 1942, Seiler ferried NC14204 to Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank where she was officially handed over to the Army.

On April 18, 1943, she was shipped from the U.S. to Australia where she spent a month with the Royal Australian Air Force's 1 SFTS (Service Flight Training School) and then sent to 1 OTU (Operational Training Unit).

On July 29, 1943, less than a year after leaving Catalina Island, the pride of the Wilmington-Catalina fleet crashed at Rose Bay, New South Wales. From there she was "converted to components".

Last month I posted about two "mystery" reels of film donated to the Catalina Island Museum. I finally got a chance to look at them with Jeannine Pedersen, the Museum's curator, on an old Island Company 16mm projector in the Projection Room of the Casino where I work.

While there wasn't as much aviation-oriented footage as I had hoped, there was at least one bathing beauty (pictured). Anyone recognize her?

CLICK HERE for a short (1 minute plus) video clip I made from the film that was simply labeled "Catalina 1947 & 1948". There is a great shot of a United DC-3 Mainliner at the end (Is that Leo Lambert flying?), but the only other airplane shots are a group of fighter planes that appear about halfway through.

Who can be first to identify the fighter planes???? Or for that matter, who can identify any of the people in this?

(NOTE: This may take awhile to load. Hit the "pause" button when it starts loading and grab a cup of coffee or something)

My field trip to the mainland last week was primarily for distributing WINGS Part 1 to airport retail shops, museum gift shops and other places.  This was the first major push that I've made to sell the film off the Island and it went very well.

Click on the classic tower at the Bob Hope Airport (formerly Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport, Burbank-Hollywood Airport, Lockheed Air Terminal, and several other names prior to that!). You'll find a brief series of photos of more warbirds from the Planes of Fame air museum in Chino.

My next post in a day or two will involve a special treat for Grumman Goose enthusiasts and a project in the works regarding same...

The day that the very first United Air Lines DC-3 flew to Catalina Island happened to be the same day that the U.S. military made the first post-war atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll.

On July 1, 1946, UAL Captain Donald McBain flew an excited group of reporters and airline personnel to the Catalina Airport in the Island's interior to inaugurate service to the Island.

Despite the previous detonation of three atomic bombs, including those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the world was terrified that the Bikini test would do anything from destroy the earth's gravitational field to crack a hole in the earth's crust through which the world's oceans would drain.

A Catalina-destroying tidal wave was believed to be in the realm of possibility and newspaper accounts of the flight could not help but touch on the subject: "Imagine taking off to find no island," wrote one reporter. "That would bother the hell out of the pilot and co-pilot."

The same reporter quipped, "It occurred to all the passngers that something ought to be done to protect Catalina from A-Bomb damage. Buffalo, goats and beautiful women in bathing suits make an esoteric combination. It would be very sad if this thing no longer existed."

(Little did that reporter know that within a few years the descendants of those "bathing suits" would be named after the very atoll that was about to be nuked.)

While visiting Curator Jeannine Pedersen at the Catalina Island Museum last Thursday, I discovered two reels of 16mm footage in her office.

One of them, donated by Chuck Liddell, is evidently a short Rotary or Lion's Club "travellogue" that was filmed in Avalon in 1947 and 1948. I am hoping against hope that there will be some seaplane footage in there. If there is, it would be either Amphibian Air Transport or, possibly, California Maritime Airlines with their PBY Catalinas.

There will almost certainly be some rare footage of the United "Mainliner" up at the airport in there.

The other reel is simply labeled "Catalina, New Year's, 1939" and I can't wait to see what's in there!

Sometime within the next couple of weeks, I will get a chance to view these films (Jeannine has not even seen them yet) and when I find out what's on them, you'll be the first to know.