This series of posts will retrace a few of the surviving airworthy (or close) PBYs around the world, and their history.
Near the Spanish city of Toledo lies an airfield housing one of the few quasi-airworthy Cats left in Europe, EC-FMC. This PBY is peculiar in that it’s a -6A model that was retrofitted with a -5A tail in order to comply with Canadian certification rules a few decades back. Its serial number is Bu64064 and it was built at the Consolidated factory of Lake Ponchartrain in New Orleans, USA.
It also served in the French Protection Civile as F-ZBAZ “Pélican Noir” for a spell. In retirement after a long career in firefighting in Europe and Canada, it still has its water tanks installed.
Now under the care of David Pajus, its restoration unfortunately was plagued with legal issues and hasn’t seen as much progress as desired… You can read more about it at http://waterbomber.blogg.se