The Qantas Foundation Memorial (QFM), which operates the Qantas Founders Outback Museum at Longreach in Central Western Queensland, is expected to take delivery of Consolidated PBY-6A Catalina VH-EAX on Tuesday 13 September.
The Catalina is ex EC-EVK and was noted arriving into Darwin from Denpasar over this past weekend.
From QFM website... "The This Consolidated PBY-6A Catalina is one of the aircraft types considered as an iconic Qantas aircraft. The significance of this type of aircraft to Qantas history was that they flew between Perth and Colombo (Sri Lanka) during World War 2. The flight was done in radio silence to prevent detection by Japanese forces. The flights took around 28 hours non stop."
"The Catalina was the very last flying boat type operated by Qantas and indeed a Catalina was the only Qantas aircraft ever destroyed by sabotage. Most importantly, through its Catalina flying boat operations across the Indian Ocean between 1943 and 1945 Qantas created, and still holds, a world-wide air service duration record that has never been broken – and probably never will!"
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