One of the enduring mysteries of the summer aviation news cycle was just how the world's largest flying boat was going to get to one of the country's most land-locked museums but that may have been solved. The folks who keep the A-26K "Special Kay" flying posted on Facebook Sunday that the massive Philippine Mars, which has no landing gear, will be flown from its current base on Sproat Lake on Canada's Vancouver Island to Lake Roosevelt, Arizona's largest body of water. It will then be dismantled and trucked 150 miles to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson where it will join about 400 other historically significant aircraft.
How does one even disassemble this thing enough for trucking? I doubt the wings were designed for easy removal, but even if they were, one wing is a huge thing to move over 100+ miles of road. The fuselage alone is probably too big of a piece. This will be interesting to watch.
C’mon guys, get creative!! Get 4 or 5 D9 dozers and several big excavators and dig a trench a couple of thousand feet long, 10’ deep and 50’ wide!! Line it with visqueen plastic sheeting and start pumping!! The plane could even be floated to its final resting place. When finished, pump the water back into the ground, pull the plastic and fill the ditch. It won’t be cheap but neither will disassembly, trucking and reassembly. I know how to operate the equipment so let me know when you want to start . Put some excitement into the last operation of this legacy airplane!!
The renovation of the TWA terminal building at JFK needed a Lockheed Constellation for its restaurant/bar and trucked one from Auburn, ME to JFK in parts: tri-tail on one trailer, fuselage on another, wings together on another with engines removed to be mounted at JFK. It took a few weeks with police escort, raising utility wires, and a route where any overpasses were inches high enough. I would expect similar ops for the Mars bomber.
Hey Russ, you lost roll control of your listing of fate of the seven Mars that were operational.
Of the four brought to BC by Dan McIvor:
one crashed fighting a fire
One was wrecked by Typhoon Freda which broke its tiedowns at YYJ, salvaged for parts
the Hawaii Mars is now at the BC Aviation Museum at YYJ
your article covers plan to get Philippine Mars to a museum in Pima AZ
USN lost one Mars in a fire well before McIvor bought the remaining four, I forget fate of the other two before McIvor purchased four. I recall one sank but not why. The prototype may have been counted in the seven even though its configuration was quite different. (As you know, the unused nose Coulson has is labelled 8, I forget what I saw in the museum Coulson had at Sproat Lake.)
Besides question of work to remove wings, note the fuselage is quite high - built as double-deck troop transport. Fuselage is conventional aircraft construction of the era, so desirable to not take it apart.
It’s already been mentioned that the Hughes H-1 (Spruce Goose) was trucked to its final destination.
What may not be understood is HOW MUCH SMALLER the Mars is… It’s a bit more than half the length of the Spruce Goose! The Mars fuselage is about a hundred feet shorter. Wingspan is about a hundred feet less, too…
The Goose was brought from factory(s) to its flight point in pieces.
Apparently wings bolt on.
As best I can learn, to get to the museum in OR it went in pieces by sea barge then up the Columbia River, then up the Willamette River - probably under bridges in Portland OR, then last 7.5nm by land using truck-trailer.
(A thought: with wings and tail off perhaps the Mars would be lower laid on its side, just a guess.)
. Put some excitement into the last operation of this legacy airplane!!
