Hello,

I am helping the American Heritage Museum with the restoration of their PBY-5A Catalina flying boat. This specific aircraft (BuNo 2459) has quite a history. It was the first PBY to sink a U-boat in August 1942 and went on to sink three and share the sinking of a fourth.

The idea is to restore this aircraft to its configuration at the time of the first sinking on August 20^th, 1942. It carried ASE/SCR-521 radar and broadside arrays on the forward fuselage and one on the aft.

We will have to replicate these arrays and find or build the components for the radar and operators station unless we can find them. Attached is a photo of its sister ship, 2458, in the same squadron in Iceland showing the antennas and array that we need to replicate.

Would any of you happen to have better photos than this one photo showing the details of the stand-offs? We see that they are on plates that attach to the stringers and bulkheads. I am thinking that they would have been steel with welded tube stand-offs like other antennas of the day but they could have been phenolic or another insulated rod. The details of the round bases/insulators are also of great interest so we can replicate them accurately.

I am also trying to figure out how they were fed. Would the array have been fed through separate insulators or through one or more of the stand-off tubes?

My dream is to find an ASE/SCR-521 manual that might give these details but I haven’t had any luck with finding these either. Any ideas?

I believe that this aircraft left the Consolidated factory in San Diego and flew to NAS Norfolk where she was equipped with the ASE radar. There must be technical orders or documents relating to this work somewhere. Have any of you come across anything like this?

Thanks for any help with this. It is a worthy project for a bird with great history. 2459 will be restored and flown to the museum for public display. She is too rare to do much more flying than that. The museum in Massachusetts is a world class museum worth visiting.

We have also found some very specific documents that have nailed down the exact radio compliment that 2459 carried. I am compiling a list of the components and what we have found so far and what we need. Thanks to all of you who have contributed so far.

Besides this thread, direct email is a good way to go for me. [email protected]

Thanks again,

Taigh

Thanks,

Taigh

Taigh Ramey

Vintage Aircraft Inc.

7432 C.E.Dixon Street

Stockton, California 95206

(209) 982-0273

(209) 982-4832 Fax

www.twinbeech.com

KEEP 'EM FLYING...FOR HISTORY!