HOME > Guidebooks > Product Museum > The Story of Flying Boats > The Story of Flying Boats 2
2 : History of Flying Boat Development
The Wright Brothers made their first historic flight on December 17, 1903. Seven years later, on March 28, 1910, the Frenchman Henri Favre succeeded in the world's first flight of a waterborne craft. Then in 1912, the American Glenn H. Curtiss completed the world's first flying boat. For his success in building the world's first waterborne craft, Curtiss received the First Colliers Prize in 1911.
The world's first regularly scheduled commercial flying service was started in Florida in 1914, using the Benoiste Flying Boat. Since 2 people could ride in it, the pilot could take a passenger. The first Trans-Atlantic flight was done in a Curtiss NC-4 Flying Boat. Then Pan American started to fly routes across the Atlantic Ocean, the North Pacific Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean and around South America using the Sikorsky S42 Flying Boat.
In Japan, southern seas routes to such destinations as Saipan and Palau were pioneered with the large 97 flying boat built by Kawanishi Aircraft Company Limited (presently ShinMaywa Industries Ltd.). (At that time, most long flights over water were carried out by large flying boats.)
With the large increases in size of land-based aircraft during World War II, the need for flying boats decreased, and flying boats disappeared from the commercial airlines, but since 1960 ShinMaywa Industries, Ltd. has developed STOL technology which makes it possible for aircraft to operate in rough seas in which operation was previously impossible; and production of the US-1A STOL Search and Rescue Amphibian is continuing to this day. This is the only large flying boat in production today.
 |