Poor PBY

Bummer, I wonder why they didn't sling the nose with some lift bags?:dunno: Usually we secure those on salvage before we even deploy the pumps.
 
Awwww...took this picture of that PBY just a couple of weeks back....

pby1.jpg

Ron Wanttaja
 
Story elsewhere is that they ripped the airframe apart during recovery. My guess is they didn't allow for the weight of all of the water in the hull when they attempted to lift it.
 
kyleb said:
Story elsewhere is that they ripped the airframe apart during recovery. My guess is they didn't allow for the weight of all of the water in the hull when they attempted to lift it.
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I heard the same story....:sad::sad::(
 
Oyyy, who the hell was doing the recovery? FMD it's not that difficult to synch the lift and pumps, and jet free the gear from the bottom. What did they do hire Bubba's Salvage? :dunno:

It wasn't like they had big seas to contend with.
 
Henning said:
Oyyy, who the hell was doing the recovery? FMD it's not that difficult to synch the lift and pumps, and jet free the gear from the bottom. What did they do hire Bubba's Salvage? :dunno:

It wasn't like they had big seas to contend with.
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Story was they may have brought in Atlanta Air Salvage ( Edit - Other stories say AAS didn't manage the recovery - I don't know..). I saw pictures of barges with cranes.

I have no idea how hard it is to coordinate multiple floating cranes to keep station and lift something fragile.
 
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kyleb said:
Story was they may have brought in Atlanta Air Salvage. I saw pictures of barges with cranes.

I have no idea how hard it is to coordinate multiple floating cranes to keep station and lift something fragile.
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You don't use a crane for stuff like that until you have it empty, you use a sling between 2 lift bags, put a bit of air in them and start pumping, and keep just enough air in them to provide just minimum positive buoyancy, and use the outflow of the pump hosed to a jet nozzle and direct it at whatever is stuck in the bottom so it can come up freely. Who the hell would hire someone from Atlanta to do marine salvage?:confused:
 
Henning said:
You don't use a crane for stuff like that until you have it empty, you use a sling between 2 lift bags, put a bit of air in them and start pumping, and keep just enough air in them to provide just minimum positive buoyancy, and use the outflow of the pump hosed to a jet nozzle and direct it at whatever is stuck in the bottom so it can come up freely. Who the hell would hire someone from Atlanta to do marine salvage?:confused:
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Personally, I would have air bagged it, pumped the water out of it and winched it onto the beach.... My guess is the gear was up so nothing is getting stuck in the sandy bottom...

Once on the beach, make a temp repair to the hull to fix the leaks, drag it back off the beach and tow /tug it back to a marina...

IMHO...:rolleyes:
 
N801BH said:
Personally, I would have air bagged it, pumped the water out of it and winched it onto the beach.... My guess is the gear was up so nothing is getting stuck in the sandy bottom...

Once on the beach, make a temp repair to the hull to fix the leaks, drag it back off the beach and tow /tug it back to a marina...

IMHO...:rolleyes:
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I read they stuck the gear in the sand hard. The sand there is really fine, silty, and sticky.
 
N801BH said:
Why the hell would the gear be down after a water landing ???
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Not sure, but if you're gonna taxi up the beach, you put the gear down while still in deep enough water. They may have also lowered it as the bow was sinking to keep it from going down that much further. The water around there is skinny. Pretty far out from the beach.
 
Henning said:
Not sure, but if you're gonna taxi up the beach, you put the gear down while still in deep enough water. They may have also lowered it as the bow was sinking to keep it from going down that much further. The water around there is skinny. Pretty far out from the beach.
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If the sand is like you said it is... They AIN"T gonna taxi through that quicksand...:no::no::no::rolleyes:
 
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N801BH said:
DAMN....

The recovery crew are IDIOTS......:mad2::mad2::mad2::mad2:....

Poor plane...:sad::sad::sad::sad:
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It should have been soooo easy, put a sheet of visqueen under the fuselage, and pump it out float it away.
 
I'm no recovery expert, but it looks like the plane was beached, and instead of doing whatever was necessary to drag it out of the water, they pulled it further out in an attempt to lift it into the barge. A floating fuselage full of water seems to be an entirely different problem than one already resting on the quite shallow bottom.
 
Looks like it is the one I saw last week. Was thinking it wasn't since the incident happened on the east coast, but the photo of it looks like it was taken in Washington. Believe it stopped in Idaho overnight to repair some electrical issues. Watched it take off while I was doing touch and goes in the pattern.

Brian
 
That really does suck. Flying a Catalina is one of my aviation bucket list major dreams. I am planning to do my AMES this winter and then look for a way to fly one at least once. Now there is one less to possibly fly.
 
I am glad I got a pic of it while it was in Puyallup.

WP_20150624_12_18_28_Pro.jpg


They put 600 or 800 gallons of gas in it before it left last week. I liked that plane even though I never got to go in it.
 
N801BH said:
Look at all the wreckage pieces on that barge.....

If they do fix it.. it will NOT be cheap...:no::no::yikes:
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I don't know where the lift points are on the Catalina but they sure as hell didn't use them.
 
I saw this plane in Destin the day, or a day or 2 before, that happened
 
Here it is right before they started winching on it.

image.jpg
 
Someone will patch it back together. It would have to be in a lot more pieces than that to not be worth it.
 
I am afraid that the salvage contract stated something along the line of ....success of the operation is not guaranteed and xxxxx company is not responsible for any damage occurred during the salvage operation....
 
I was down there for the entire debacle. Wheels were initially down, as someone mentioned, to keep it from sinking further. Even with that, the cockpit was completely flooded to the lower windshield sill.

They pumped out the water and re-floated it, then towed it out to the crane barge. The actual hoist which broke the aircraft occurred after dark, so I don't know the exact chain of events.

A few photos attached:
 

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Zeldman said:
I am afraid that the salvage contract stated something along the line of ....success of the operation is not guaranteed and xxxxx company is not responsible for any damage occurred during the salvage operation....
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Most salvage contracts are also "No cure, No pay". The question is was the hull insured? If so, then it's only a matter of the insurance company's ability to subrogate.
 
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