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No longer in the Navy inventory, the P5 was my first tour of flight duty. I became a "Second Mech" on the P5 in 1963. The aircraft had two Pratt and Whitney 3350 engines (Recip's with PRT's) bombay. fuselage, and wing tanks.
It was a true seaplane with no landing gear. "Beaching gear" was attached to the aircraft after we landed by a "Beaching Crew". We were then towed up a ramp by a large tractor and parked on our spot.
The aircraft was 2 1/2 decks tall and pretty heavy, on hot days we used 4 "JATO" rocket bottles to assist us in getting off the water.
I flew the P5 with VP-45 based in Bermuda. We were part of the "Cuban blockade" and for 6 months my crew flew 50 hours a week in support of operations.
One of my more interesting accomplishments during that time was to drape a roll of toilet paper over the bow of a Russian destroyer while at 200 feet and 180 knots. (Mans gotta do whata mans gotta do! ) I totaled about
1500 hours on the aircraft.
As the Russian ships would pickup anything that dropped off our airplanes that foated, Willy Dye and I collected Playboy magazines and cut all the interesting parts out. We would put them in empty sonobouy shipping containers ( which were water tight) and dropped them from the airplane next to a Russian destroyer. There must have been a lot of disappointed Russian sailors in the Cuban area.
(WE apologize!!)
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