Mars Makes It To Arizona

Thanks to some forecast weather, the Philippine Mars headed straight to Arizona today from San Francisco rather than flying to San Diego for some public appearances and media flights. The aircraft landed on Lake Pleasant, near Phoenix, about 3 p.m. It will be hauled up on shore and partly disassembled before being trucked to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. A timeline for that process has not been set.

The historic flying boat left Vancouver Island on Sunday for the trip to San Francisco. It and sister ship Hawaii Mars spent the last 65 years in British Columbia, 50 of them fighting forest fires. Hawaii Mars was donated to a museum in B.C. The planes were built by Martin for the Navy in the late 1940s. They were mostly used for shuttling cargo and personnel from San Francisco to Hawaii until they were retired in the 1950s. A consortium of forest companies bought them in 1960 and converted them for fighting fires. They were able to pick up 7,200 gallons from lakes or the ocean to drop on fires.