The Neptune
During the Cold War and Vietnam, Navy patrol units all around the world flew the P2V Neptune, a long-range maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) developed during World War II. In September 1946, a modified P2V-1 known as the “Turtle” achieved a record-breaking endurance flight, marking its first significant accomplishment.
The first of a fourteen-plane batch of P2V-1 Neptunes (Bureau Number 89082), an aircraft specifically designed for maximum endurance, was delivered by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation that year. With additional fuel tanks occupying nearly every cubic inch of the bomb bay and rear fuselage and hanging from wingtip stations, it was 30,000 pounds over its original maximum gross weight.
On September 29, 1946, four men and a kangaroo took off from southwestern Australia into a sunset sky, according to Ralph J. Dean’s explanation in his book Great Maritime Patrol Aircraft of the World: From the Curtiss “America” to the Kawasaki P-1. Their departure was everything but ordinary.
The US Navy P2V crew and the kangaroo who made a record-breaking endurance flight
The aircraft had been stripped of all weapons and additional weight, except for the marsupial. The total weight of the fuel was more than 2.5 times the aircraft’s “dry” weight. Too heavy to taxi safely, the “Turtle” had been fueled in takeoff position on the runway, then coaxed and finally urged into the sky with the assist of jet (actually rocket) take-off-assist pods.
With the gear up and accelerating through 125 knots, Cmdr. Tom Davies, working with the three other veteran naval aviators on board, jettisoned the rocket pods and slowly eased the nose of the big new Neptune around to the east. Their objective was Washington, DC.
Then Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, wanted to show the ability of his modern, purpose-built aircraft to surmount all the challenges that would be encountered in “routine” global MPA operations.
The “Turtle” did just that, encountering and shrugging off icing, turbulence, limited or nonexistent aids to navigation, and the inevitable failures of equipment and instrumentation. Working in four-hour shifts, the pilots had confidence in the new airframe design and especially the time-proven Wright engines. Their focus was unrelentingly managing the fuel system and adjusting power to maintain maximum-range airspeed as wind conditions changed and aircraft weight burned down.
The “Truculent Turtle”
Cmdr. Davies and his crew picked up an instrument air traffic control clearance as they crossed the US Pacific coast, proceeding at under 200 knots but gradually losing hoped-for range due to icing over the western mountains. They pushed on to the limit of their confidence in their calculations and the precision of the fuel gauges, then reluctantly agreed to set down in Columbus, Ohio. Sporting clean uniforms and tired smiles, they taxied to a stop after more than fifty-five hours and 11,236 miles of flying from Perth.
Their aircraft would subsequently be dubbed the “Truculent Turtle” (and is now on display at the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida), Davies and his three copilots would each receive the Distinguished Flying Cross. The kangaroo would proceed to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, by other means.
It took a jet-powered B-52H Stratofortress to break this record, which stood until 1962. The distance record for a reciprocating engine aircraft stood for 40 years until broken by Burt Rutan’s Voyager, which completed a nine-day, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe in 1986.
Great Maritime Patrol Aircraft of the World: From the Curtiss “America” to the Kawasaki P-1 is published by Schiffer Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by U.S. Navy via This Day in Aviation and FAI
