A PBY-6A Catalina aircraft recently concluded a week-long visit to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and Oak Harbor, Sept. 25.

The aircraft landed in Crescent Harbor Sept. 18 and taxied up the seaplane ramp onto the NAS Whidbey Island Seaplane Base in front of a crowd of over a thousand. The event marked the first time in over 60 years this has been witnessed at the location.

The visit coincided with both NAS Whidbey Island’s 67th anniversary Sept. 21 and the 11th anniversary of the PBY Memorial Foundation (PBYMF) Sept. 22.

“We worked on this for some time and we found that the owner (Bud Rude, of Deer Park, Wash.) was favorable to letting the plane come over here. We told him about our anniversary, then we got the Navy involved and Capt. (Gerral) David (NAS Whidbey Island commanding officer) really pushed to get this working,” said Win Stites, of the PBY Memorial Foundation.

The PBY is a World War II-era aircraft that was produced by Consolidated Aircraft in the 1930s and 1940s which fulfilled an array of maritime operations including antisubmarine warfare, search and rescue and protecting convoys.

“My dad was a flight engineer on these airplanes in the war,” said Adolph Meisch, Jr., PBYMF member. “One story he’d like to tell us is that one day (during WWII) there was a PBY sitting on the base and there was a solitary soldier guarding it. Dad walked up to the guard and said ‘Isn’t that the ugliest airplane you ever saw?’ The guard pointed his gun at him and said ‘Don’t you ever talk about this airplane like that again! This is the same airplane that rescued me and my crew from the sea.’ He was making sure that airplane was safe because it saved his life.”

This particular Catalina is currently serving as a firefighting plane in Eastern Washington. According to Fred Owens, the aircraft’s pilot who has been flying it since 2002, the plane can load up with up to 1700 gallons of water and be in the air in approximately 12 minutes after receiving a call.

The PBYMF has a display open to the general public on the Seaplane Base in building 12. Visitors can see a cut-away Catalina engine, vintage uniforms, aircraft models, and a Catalina “skeleton” wing at the display. The PBYMF plans to one day acquire one of the historic aircraft to preserve history according to Stites.

“A lot of men lost their lives in these planes in the early part of the war; mostly due to weather in Aleutians. We need to memorialize what they’ve done to keep us free,î said Stites.