Your photograph of the Catalina at the Shoreham air show (The Argus, August 31) brought back a memory.
They were a great aircraft – not the fastest ever made, but tough. As spotters during the Second World War, they provided invaluable data on Japanese movements in the Pacific.
But the memory was of 1951 when the great Aussie aviator Sir Gordon Taylor flew a Catalina called Frigate Bird II across the Pacific from Australia to Chile, via Tahiti and Easter Island, to pioneer an air route.
There was no airfield on Easter Island so Taylor had to land on the open Pacific Ocean. His own account of it is hair-raising – he even got washed overboard.
He took off the same way, helped by Jato bottles. Without them, he’d never have made it.
As a feat of piloting, this has to rate as one of the greatest. And “The Cat” was one of the best planes ever built.
Sinclair Robieson
Selby House, Bexhill
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