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The Neptune
The P2V Neptune was a long-range maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) developed during World War II and operated by Navy patrol squadrons across the world throughout the Cold War and Vietnam. Its first milestone came as a modified P2V-1 dubbed the “Turtle” made a record-breaking endurance flight in September 1946.
On that year Lockheed Aircraft Corporation delivered the first of a fourteen-plane batch of P2V-1 Neptunes (Bureau Number 89082), an aircraft specially modified for maximum endurance. It was 30,000 pounds over its design maximum gross weight, supplementary fuel tanks taking up almost every cubic inch of the bomb bay and rear fuselage and hanging from wingtip stations.
As explained by Ralph J. Dean in his book Great Maritime Patrol Aircraft of the World: From the Curtiss “America” to the Kawasaki P-1, on Sep. 29, 1946 four men and a kangaroo departed from southwestern Australia into a sunset sky. Nothing was routine about their departure.
The US Navy P2V crew and the kangaroo who made a record-breaking endurance flight
All armament and other excess weight (except the marsupial) had been stripped from the aircraft. Total fuel weighed over two and a half times the “dry” weight of the aircraft. 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 unrelenting 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 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 credit: U.S. Navy via This Day in Aviation and FAI
