Quote:
Originally Posted by RogerBW
Conveniently, both aircraft have been run on the R-1830 Twin Wasp (sfc 0.49 lb/(hp•h)) at 1200hp, so that makes the calculation easier; each engine burns about 588lb of fuel per hour. But the Sandringham has two more engines, so it's burning an extra 1176lb every hour.
The Sandringham's faster cruise speed compensates a bit; the Sandringham is burning 1335lb of fuel per 100 miles while the Cat gets away with 941.
The Sandringham also has a higher wing load (35.6 vs 25.3 lb/ft²) – so slightly lower manoeuvreability, slightly higher stall speed, slightly longer takeoff and landing runs. In a tactical context that may make a difference.
Moving away from hard data, Cats have a reputation for solidity and reliability whereas the various Short flying-boats don't; on the other hand in the real world there are three surviving Sandringhams out of 51, none flyable but that's about 6%, versus 80 surviving Cats including 20 flyable out of 3305, about 2.5%.
(And of course if you want spare parts for a Cat now it has the advantage that there are 19 other flying Cats out there and that's enough to make it worth someone's while to build them.)
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Those are good points.
I was already convinced that it was plausible enough that Kessler could own both a Sandringham and a Catalina, so this just reinforces that.
If a PBY-5A Catalina is maintained as close to the historical WWII look, how many passengers can it carry?
By which I mean that if it appeared externally the same and didn't mount anything that couldn't be removed fairly easily, how many people could travel by the aircraft (instead of bombs and other cargo)?