Last Mars Waterbomber To Be Trucked To Arizona Museum

One of the enduring mysteries of the summer aviation news cycle was just how the world's largest flying boat was going to get to one of the country's most land-locked museums, but that may have been solved. The folks who keep the A-26K "Special Kay" flying posted on Facebook Sunday that the massive Philippine Mars, which has no landing gear, will be flown from its current base on Sproat Lake on Canada's Vancouver Island to Lake Roosevelt, Arizona's largest body of water. It will then be dismantled and trucked 150 miles to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson where it will join about 400 other historically significant aircraft.

A total of seven Mars were built for the Navy and most were used for long-range cargo service, mainly to Hawaii. The four surviving airframes were retired in the 1950s and sold to a consortium of B.C. forest companies who converted them to self-loading waterbombers. One was lost in a fire, another in a crash and Coulson Air Tankers, of Port Alberni, bought the last two. Philippine sister ship Hawaii Mars fought the type's last wildfire in 2015.

Coulson looked for buyers for years and finally donated them both to museums earlier this year. Hawaii Mars was flown to its new home, the B.C. Aviation Museum, in nearby Victoria last month. Victoria International Airport is on the ocean and it was relatively straightforward to haul the big airplane up the seaplane launch ramp and move it to the museum, where it's already in its final place. Details of the enormously more complicated move of Philippine Mars to Pima are expected in coming months.