The Philippine Mars took its final flight. See photos of the flying-boat aircraft from WWII to its last 800-mile journey.
Initially developed as a Navy patrol flying boat, the aircraft later served as cargo transport.
The Philippine Mars will be displayed at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Arizona.
The last Martin Mars flying boat made its final flight last week, marking the end for a World War II-era seaplane so hulking it had rockets to assist with take-off.
Initially developed as maritime patrol flying boats for the US Navy, the Martin Mars fleet was later configured to operate as long-range transport aircraft. Some became water bombers to fight forest fires.
The Philippine Mars made its final landing at Lake Pleasant, Arizona, on February 10, where it is set to be partially disassembled and trucked to the Pima Air and Space Museum for installation as a permanent exhibition.
The Martin Mars fleet
Founded by aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin, the Martin Company developed and produced the Mars flying boat fleet for the US Navy. Best known for its contributions to military and commercial aviation, the American aircraft manufacturer was also behind innovative military bombers like the B-26 and B-10, which were widely used in World War II.
In the mid-1940s, seven Mars seaplanes were delivered to the Navy, scaled back from the 20 planes the sea service ordered following the end of WWII.
The first Mars prototype, dubbed "the Old Lady," was delivered in 1943. It was followed by the cargo variant of the Hawaii Mars, the Philippine Mars, the Marianas Mars, the Marshall Mars, the firefighting variant of the Hawaii Mars, and the Caroline Mars.
While most of the fleet has been scrapped, lost, or destroyed over the last eight decades, the second Hawaii Mars and the Philippine Mars survived to this day. The Hawaii Mars was donated to the British Columbia Aviation Museum in Canada, and the Philippine Mars will make its final home at the Pima Air and Space in Tucson, Arizona.
The Navy's largest World War II-era aircraft
The Mars flying boats were the world's largest operational seaplanes and the Navy's largest WWII-era aircraft.
It measured nearly 120 feet in length and 200 feet in wingspan — roughly the size of a modern-day Boeing commercial airplane.
After the flying boats were reconfigured from patrol boats to cargo planes, the massive flying boat had a max takeoff weight of over 85 tons — or about 165,000 pounds. It could accommodate a 32,000-pound payload, including up to seven military jeeps.
Rocket-powered takeoffs
Despite its hulking size, the four-engined flying boats had a maximum speed of over 200 mph. The aircraft had a service ceiling of up to 14,600 feet and a range of 4,900 nautical miles.
The aircraft were propelled by small rockets known as jet-assisted take-off bottles equipped under the wings. These small rockets provided extra thrust to help them get airborne quicker or take off with heavier payloads.
Setting world records
The Mars seaplanes were operated by a crew of four comprising pilots, engineers, and ground crew. It also had accommodations for a relief team.
The aircraft could also transport over 130 fully-equipped troops, or 84 litter patients and 25 attendants.
In March 1949, the Caroline Mars, set a world record for airlifting passengers on a single flight, carrying 269 people from San Diego to San Francisco.
But the youngest Mars flying boat didn't hold the title for very long — a little over two months later, the Marshall Mars broke the passenger load record by transporting 301 people from Alameda to San Diego.
A versatile transport aircraft
Though produced at the latter end of WWII, the Mars fleet supported US Navy operations by flying cargo between Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. The flying boats were later deployed as medical air transport lifts between Hawaii and California during the Korean War.
After the Marshall Mars was damaged by an engine fire near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the remaining four aircraft continued to transport cargo from San Francisco to Honolulu until 1956, when they were decommissioned and beached at the Naval Air Station Alameda.
Aerial firefighter
After retiring from military service, the remaining Mars fleet, which became known as "the Big Four," was sold to timber companies in British Columbia in the late 1950s, finding a new purpose as the world's largest water bombers to combat forest fires.
The four flying boats were modified with large tanks that could carry more than 7,000 gallons of water and up to 600 gallons of foam concentrate, which was used to create a fire retardant to smother the flames. The Mars tankers could make a drop every 15 minutes, loaded with enough water or foam to douse an area of up to 4 acres at a time.
Finding a final resting place
The Marianas Mars crashed in 1961 during firefighting operations in Vancouver Island, and the Caroline Mars was damaged beyond repair by a typhoon the following year.
The last surviving Mars flying boats — the Philippine Mars and the Hawaii Mars — were later acquired by Coulson Aviation in 2007 to "expand its firefighting capabilities," according to the company.
The Coulson Group said the aircraft underwent several upgrades and renovations to make it a safer and more reliable aerial firefighter, but officials in British Columbia replaced it with newer aircraft, like the firefighting variants of the Lockheed C-130.
But after sitting in storage for half a decade, the Coulson Group decided to retire the Philippine Mars in 2012, donating it to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Florida as a permanent exhibit. Its red-and-white paint scheme from its time as a water bomber was replaced with its original dark blue Navy colors, but the trade deal with the Navy was put on indefinite hold amid the 2016 presidential election.
Last April, Coulson Aviation announced that the Philippine Mars would instead find its final landing at the Pima Air and Space Museum.
As the aircraft's retirement approached, the Coulson Group offered experiences for aviation enthusiasts to get "up close and personal with their Martin Mars water bombers."
The program, which had packages ranging from $1,000 to $15,000, featured tours of the planes and the opportunity to observe maintainers working on them. The top-tier experience, which included an opportunity to taxi the plane on the water, sold out in three days.
End of an aviation era
Over the last few months, multiple attempts have been made to get the Philippine Mars airborne to make the 800-mile flight from Vancouver Island to San Francisco to commemorate its service with the US Navy.
After four engine and propeller changes with parts taken from the Hawaii Mars, the Philippine Mars successfully took off from Sproat Lake, making its final flight to San Francisco Bay on Sunday.
The next day, it departed the Alameda Seaplane Base and flew to Lake Pleasant, Arizona, where the plane is expected to be de-watered, dismantled, and towed to the museum.
"Against all odds, the team behind her has worked tirelessly to prepare her for this final journey to Arizona," Coulson wrote on social media. "She may be leaving the water, but her legacy will always ripple through history."
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San Francisco Chronicle
14 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members
(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since. 'We need chaplains,' he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith. 'In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,' said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention's chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination's June annual meeting in Dallas. A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander. 'My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,' he said. 'We increased our chapel's membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base's core curriculum.'' ___ Chaplains serve in hospitals, hospices and manufacturing plants, and while chaplaincy researchers see commonalities among them, there are also key differences in the military. All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University, then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. "It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' The Army's chaplaincy corps also includes religious affairs specialists and religious education directors. Some service members provide armed protection to unarmed chaplains and set up worship spaces in on-base chapels or makeshift altars on truck hoods in the field. For example, Berry Gordy, who later founded Motown Records, served as a private in the Korean War and played a portable organ and was known as a chaplain assistant, notes ' Sacred Duty,' a new comic book posted on the Army's website to mark the anniversary. While 218 chaplains served in the Revolutionary War, 9,117 chaplains served in World War II, according to the Army. Currently, the Army has 1,500 chaplains on active duty. The Navy Chaplain Corps, which began on Nov. 18, 1775, had 24 chaplains during the Civil War; 203 by the end of World War I; 1,158 at its height in 1990; and currently has 898 on active duty, according to the Navy. 'Today's Chaplain Corps includes Chaplains representing a multitude of faith groups, and the Chaplain Corps recruiting team is actively working to increase the Corps' diversity, with a special focus on increasing the number of women Chaplains in the Corps and the number of Chaplains representing low-density faith groups,' reads an Army historical booklet marking the Chaplain Corps' 250 years. Initially, U.S. military chaplains were Protestants. The first Catholic chaplains served in the Mexican-American War in 1846, and the first rabbi was commissioned in 1862 and served in the Civil War. The first Muslim chaplains were commissioned in the Army in 1993. The first Buddhist Army chaplain was named in 2008, followed by the first Hindu chaplain in 2011. Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' Those private conversations often are not faith-filled, added Kibben, reflecting on her military career that began in 1986. 'What I realized later, 20, 30 years later, was that many service members have never learned the language of faith,' she said, citing terms like confession and forgiveness. 'So as a chaplain, we had to figure out our way around the lack of a lexicon of faith. How do you speak about grace to someone who doesn't have a clue how powerful grace is?' Another change, sparked by the efforts of Julie Moore, the wife of a military officer who served in the Vietnam War, was the Army's method for notifying the next of kin when a soldier died. Soon after a 1960s battle in that war, a chaplain and a uniformed officer began teaming up to knock on families' doors; prior to that time, the news arrived in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. The work of chaplains has sometimes been the source of church-state debates. For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.'
Hamilton Spectator
14 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members
(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since. 'We need chaplains,' he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith. 'In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,' said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention's chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination's June annual meeting in Dallas. A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander. 'My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,' he said. 'We increased our chapel's membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base's core curriculum.'' ___ This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story. ___ Chaplains serve in hospitals, hospices and manufacturing plants, and while chaplaincy researchers see commonalities among them, there are also key differences in the military. All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University , then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. 'It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' The Army's chaplaincy corps also includes religious affairs specialists and religious education directors. Some service members provide armed protection to unarmed chaplains and set up worship spaces in on-base chapels or makeshift altars on truck hoods in the field. For example, Berry Gordy, who later founded Motown Records, served as a private in the Korean War and played a portable organ and was known as a chaplain assistant, notes ' Sacred Duty ,' a new comic book posted on the Army's website to mark the anniversary. While 218 chaplains served in the Revolutionary War, 9,117 chaplains served in World War II, according to the Army. Currently, the Army has 1,500 chaplains on active duty. The Navy Chaplain Corps, which began on Nov. 18, 1775, had 24 chaplains during the Civil War; 203 by the end of World War I; 1,158 at its height in 1990; and currently has 898 on active duty, according to the Navy. 'Today's Chaplain Corps includes Chaplains representing a multitude of faith groups, and the Chaplain Corps recruiting team is actively working to increase the Corps' diversity, with a special focus on increasing the number of women Chaplains in the Corps and the number of Chaplains representing low-density faith groups,' reads an Army historical booklet marking the Chaplain Corps' 250 years. Initially, U.S. military chaplains were Protestants. The first Catholic chaplains served in the Mexican-American War in 1846, and the first rabbi was commissioned in 1862 and served in the Civil War. The first Muslim chaplains were commissioned in the Army in 1993. The first Buddhist Army chaplain was named in 2008, followed by the first Hindu chaplain in 2011. Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' Those private conversations often are not faith-filled, added Kibben, reflecting on her military career that began in 1986. 'What I realized later, 20, 30 years later, was that many service members have never learned the language of faith,' she said, citing terms like confession and forgiveness. 'So as a chaplain, we had to figure out our way around the lack of a lexicon of faith. How do you speak about grace to someone who doesn't have a clue how powerful grace is?' Another change, sparked by the efforts of Julie Moore, the wife of a military officer who served in the Vietnam War, was the Army's method for notifying the next of kin when a soldier died. Soon after a 1960s battle in that war, a chaplain and a uniformed officer began teaming up to knock on families' doors; prior to that time, the news arrived in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. The work of chaplains has sometimes been the source of church-state debates. For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.' Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
My teens are making their own plans this summer. While my husband enjoys the freedom, I feel left behind.
As a work-from-home mom, I was worried about how to balance work with my kids' summer break. I hadn't realized that, as teens, they didn't really need me to keep them busy. I'm thankful that they're enjoying summer activities without me, but I miss doing things together. As a freelancer, I'm lucky to have a flexible schedule. But I'm faced with the pesky fact that if I don't work, I don't make any money, so that's extra difficult during this time of year. I can't afford to take an entire summer off to spend with my teenagers. Before the summer break, I tried to figure out how to get my work done and also create memorable experiences for my teenagers. I wrote out a schedule, with blocks of time each day to do something fun with them. I planned to get up early before everyone else, so I could work without missing time with them. It was all very ambitious and probably unrealistic. But when I checked in with my kids, I realized they had made a lot of summer plans without me. My teens no longer need me to have a great summer On the first day of summer break, I asked everyone what they'd like to do that day. And I discovered they'd all made plans … without me. They were hanging out with friends they didn't get to see during the busy months of school. One was looking for a job. One was taking summer college classes and working. They had tickets to a sci-fi fan convention. I dropped my youngest off at the pool with her friends and realized it was the first time she had gone without an adult tagging along. Some of the kids had summer camps and other planned activities, but I thought we'd still have lots of free time together. Instead, even when I did have time to spend with them, I had to make sure they weren't already busy. Our weeklong family road trip was extra special because we spent time together. But even then, the kids borrowed the car to go exploring without my husband and me. My summers used to revolve around my kids When they were little, I quit my job to stay home with them during the summer. I'd take them hiking, to the library, splashing in creeks, and — if I was splurging — to the zoo or museum. It was hard work getting them out and about. Sometimes it was lonely not being around other adults during the day. But along with being hard work, I enjoyed the freedom of doing whatever I felt like that day. We could take off to the mountains, or go swimming, or make ice cream. I was trying to make special summers for them, but those summers were special for me, too. Now, things are slowly shifting. I'm getting much more work done, but I've hardly been to the pool or the lake this summer. My kids have, though. They're still making memories, but I'm not experiencing these memories with them as often. I'm trying to enjoy this new change My husband calls this the Golden Age of Parenting. The kids are still around, but they're no longer in the exhausting stage where we need to be present every single moment. They don't need me to entertain them or even drive them places anymore. It's the way things should be, and I'm happy our kids are more independent. I know this is a preview of what things will be like in a few years, when my husband and I are empty nesters. I'll have more time for work. I'll have time for nights out with my own friends. I can pick up hobbies that fell away when the kids consumed most of our time. I also know I'm remembering all of the happy moments and forgetting the tantrums, carsickness, scraped knees (and, on one memorable outing, stitches). I miss piling everyone into the car to head off on an adventure on an early summer morning. But I appreciate that now, we don't do anything early on summer mornings if we can help it. We sleep in. Then, we all head off to savor our summer — sometimes together, but more often these days, independently of each other. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
