Review by Cmdr. Peter B. Mersky, USNR (Ret.)
Editor’s Note: In this issue’s column, we are reviewing books on a very important but often overlooked craft, the flying boat, each from one of the opposing warring powers, Great Britain and Japan. After the successful launch of the first powered manned aircraft, the Wright Flyer in December 1903, much of subsequent aviation development in the next five to 10 years was based on water-borne types. In particular were flying boats, where the fuselage was also a boat-shaped hull that was the base to hold two large-span wings that could offer the required lift obtained from the relatively low-horse-power engines of the time while bearing the weight of one or two crew members, pilot and observer/mechanic and fuel.
World War I also saw the development and use of flying boats as anti-submarine weapons. By World War II, every major power involved in the conflict had several indigenous flying-boat designs and, before the war, a few countries used the design as a long-range commercial aircraft, especially the U.S., to cover the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean to reach Hawaii and the Orient. Here, we have a recent book both England’s currently most prodigious publisher, Osprey.
— Cmdr. Peter B. Mersky, USNR (Ret.)
No. 153 in the extensive Combat Aircraft series, this new Osprey book combines two of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s (IJN) primary long-range flying boats versus the U.S. PB4Y-1/2 Liberator/Privateer (Duel 126, 2023). We reviewed the latter in the Summer 2023 issue.
The Mavis—the Allied code name for the type (we have often noted the Allied system of code names for Japanese aircraft during WWII instituted by late 1942)—was the most active long-range IJN “boat” at the beginning of the Pacific War. According to the author, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 15 Mavises bombed and strafed little Howland Island, which raises the question of whether famed and now-missing aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan had crashed anywhere near the small outcropping (which was their intended destination of their 1937 flight), and if so, were they alive and had seen and survived the Japanese attack?
The Emily has long been considered among the best, if not the best, flying boat of the war. A few of them were engaged and shot down by Navy B-24/PB4Ys.
The book is edited by Osprey’s premier aviation editor Tony Holmes and written by an experienced author with 15 titles to his credit, including a previous book in the Osprey Duel series. It includes a predictably stunning front-cover illustration by Scottish artist Gareth Hector and aircraft profiles by long-time American profile and illustration artist Jim Laurier. And, oh, yes, the customary collection of aircraft photos rounds out this excellent description of two Japanese naval aircraft that might not be that well-known to enthusiasts of World War II aviation history. One can’t ask for a better combination than that.
