By Sam Oleson
Eighty-four years ago, above the freezing waters of the North Atlantic, the crew of Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina BuNo 2459 was annoyed. Perhaps angry. Definitely motivated. For the past several months, the airplane and its crew had been operating from Fleet Air Base Reykjavík, Iceland, with Patrol Squadron 73 (VP-73), hunting for German U-boats during the all-important Battle of the Atlantic. After months of disappointing results, with no U-boats sunk, VP-73’s Iceland commanding officer, Capt. Daniel V. Gallery, decided he needed to create some incentive. So, until a U-boat victory was recorded, the officers’ club would be closed. Keep in mind, this wasn’t the Iceland of 2026. It was no tourist destination. The club was one of the few places that Navy officers could have a good time on the isolated island. Apparently that was all the motivation the crew of 2459 needed.
On August 20, 1942, Lt. Robert B. Hopgood and his crew, flying 2459, attacked and sunk U-464, a large “Milchkuh” supply submarine, south of Iceland. After the attack, Hopgood sent a simple, now-famous, four-word message back to base: “Sank sub, open club!”
Catalina 2459 was the subject of a Tuesday presentation at Warbirds in Review during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh and is undoubtedly one of the highlights of this year’s event. Believed to be the oldest surviving PBY, Catalina 2459 is owned by the American Heritage Museum, located in Stow, Massachusetts.
During its 19-month deployment to Iceland, 2459 flew 195 combat missions and more than 1,675 combat hours. Its crews made 13 U-boat sightings, attacked 10 submarines, and sank three of them: U-464, U-582, and U-194. Another U-boat, U-528, was badly damaged and later destroyed. Following its service in the North Atlantic, 2459 returned home and served at a number of Navy stations, including Anacostia, Gainesville, Pensacola, and Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City.
The aircraft entered civil service in 1946 and was eventually converted into a water bomber, fighting forest fires in Canada. After its retirement as a water bomber in the 1980s, 2459 was rescued by a Dutch group and repainted in Royal Netherlands Navy markings in 1995. In 2019, 2459 was purchased by donors for the American Heritage Museum. The aircraft was ferried across the North Atlantic and brought to American Aero Services in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, for restoration to its 1942 configuration. Civilian passenger fittings were removed, and turrets, crew stations, radar, radio areas, and wartime details were rebuilt or re-created. Just a few weeks ago, on July 6, Catalina 2459 flew once again.
Rob Collings, president of the American Heritage Museum, and Joe Scheil, a pilot and historian of PBYs and 2459 in particular, chatted in length about the historical significance of the airplane and the care and detail that went into its seven-year restoration. As the longest continuous battle of World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic and the importance of PBYs was a particular emphasis during Tuesday’s presentation.
“So I think the video [that preceded Tuesday’s presentation] did an amazing job stressing how important the battle for the Atlantic was that someone like Winston Churchill said, ‘I never lost a night of sleep over the battle for Britain, but I did over the battle for the Atlantic.’ When you think of how wars are won, it’s logistics, production, oil,” Rob said. “Everyone has troops that fought valiantly, whether they were German, British, America, Japanese, all of them fought with honor. … If those supply chains got cut off by the U-boats, England would fall. The Soviet Union would fall. And the Soviets took out 8 million Germans that we would have to deal with. If we didn’t have all of our bases in England, there would be no 8th Air Force. There would be no D-Day. All of these events would have ceased from happening. So the [U-boat] wolf pack were out there hunting the sheep as they were coming across. This is the sheep dog that protected them.”
Rob’s journey with PBYs began about 40 years ago in Oshkosh when he had the chance to poke around one owned by legendary warbird pilot Connie Edwards. Around two decades ago, he started searching for one to acquire and met Joe, who helped him find and acquire 2459. After Rob and Joe ferried the airplane across the Atlantic, the process of converting it back to its 1942 configuration began, which meant shedding its civilian type certificate.
“We knew the type certificate we would lose,” Joe explained. “This would become an experimental airplane instead of standard category, but we corrected the rudder back to what we call an unbalanced, no counterweight. We put the bomb nose in, the turrets. All civilian equipment was removed. We found the military equipment to put back in. That was probably seven years on eBay by a host of people that are all friends and helpers of the American Heritage Museum. A lot of guys in the stands here devote their time and money to find little parts.
“The specifics of the airplane were, we wanted to, as close as we could get, get the aircraft to August 20, 1942. We had a specific place in time that we wanted to present to audiences. And so we couldn’t go on eBay and buy a 1945 radio or a 1948 radio. It had to be prior to January or February of ’42 in build date. And we did pretty well, but the airplane represents very accurately a beginning of the war opening day show for an airplane like this,” Joe said.
You can get a closer look at Catalina 2459 on Boeing Plaza during the latter half of AirVenture 2026, and be on the lookout for a full-length feature story on the airplane in a future EAA publication.