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(More customer reviews)Right after World War II the Navy had a big problem. From every movie Hollywood put out, combined with excellent public relations, the Air Force was the Golden Boy of the war. It appeared that the Air Force won the war themselves (especially if you listened to an Air Force General) and there was no longer any need for any other services.
This translates to no budget for the other services. The Navy had to find a way, or better yet, multiple ways to deliver nuclear bombs. And the short range and limited lift of carrier based aircraft eliminated them. The answer was a plane to complete with the B-47. And since there had to be something to do with the water, make it a flying boat. Great idea, it got the budget, unfortunately it didn't work.
This is the story of the development of the Martin P6M Sea Master. It was a sleek looking, jet powered, high performance machine. Unfortunately technical problems delayed its development, and the needs of the Navy changed. Although it could be argued that the admirals in charge at the end of the war were as carrier oriented as their predecessors were battleship oriented.
Also the technology passed them by. Nuclear weapons got smaller, carrier aircraft got larger, no need for a big bomber. The maritime patrol application got replaced by the satellites. And by then there were a lot of concrete runways all around the world.
It's sad to see the project fail, but looking at it realistically, there haven't been any really successful flying boats produced since the war except for specialty applications such as air-sea rescue or forest fire fighting.
Very enjoyable reading.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Attack from the Sea: A History of the U.S. Navy's Seaplane Striking Force
During the Cold War, the Navy fostered a plan to develop a long-range seaplane that would serve as a viable striking force against the Soviet Union. The Navy considered several possible ways to achieve that aim, but the most practical at the time seemed to lie in a sea-based seaplane force that could provide the advantages of strategic surprise and mobility. In the early 1950s the Navy contracted with the Glenn L. Martin Company for the P6M Sea Master, a high-performance jet flying boat, to be integrated into the Seaplane Striking Force (SSF), which was a family of advance water-based aircraft for attack roles backed by surface tenders and submarines. This story shows the strategic and political dilemmas faced by the Navy in the 1950s and how it proposed to resolve them. In the end the seaplane technology could not be delivered to meet the Navy's needs. That in itself is instructive as part of the topic of "disruptive technology," a term in common use today in the Pentagon and taken from a recent book from the Harvard Business School.In the 1950s both the seaplane and the submarine-launched ballistic missile were disruptive - that is they went against the accepted working technology of the time. Only one of them would work out but no one at the time knew which one it would be. This book provides an excellent case study to look at just such important current ideas relating to weapons development.
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