PBYs at C&S help please...

[gordonpagecolorado]

Does anyone know the serial numbers and registrations of the PBYs that were sold by C&S Enterprises in Ontario?

Any idea where they went to?

[Canso42]

Gordon,
David Legg is the man to ask about post war PBY's..

Canso42

[Warbirdnerd]

Does anyone know the serial numbers and registrations of the PBYs that were sold by C&S Enterprises in Ontario?

Any idea where they went to?

Hello Gordon,
Do you have any more information, like a year or a Bu/Serial number for one of the pig boats they sold? A search of Warbird Directory #4 does not register any hits with C&S and searching on ONT did not provide any more clues.

[Canso42]

Gordon,
In David Legg's book "Consolidated PBY Catalina-The Peacetime Record" I cant find any listing for C&S. Maybe that was the parent company of some other outfit. This is the definitive work on post war PBY's in the opinion of PBYers though I'll probably embarass David with the comment.
I'll post you query to PBY@yahoogroups.com.

Canso42

[David Legg]

Whoa! Never use the word definitive!!! Since that book was published, a lot of gaps have been filled and some anomalies/errors corrected, mainly due to the increased use of the internet/e-mail and the hard work put in by other researchers. The Survivors section was always going to go out of date as soon as published! I am working on an update that, when it is in a decent format, will be offered free. Thanks for the 'plug' tho'!

Meanwhile, perhaps Gordon can ellaborate a bit. Do you have any approximate timeframe for these sales and is the Ontario you refer to in Canada or Calfornia? - this may be relevant as one of the major commercial PBY conversion shops post-war was in Ontario, Ca. I think the company was linked to movements of Catalinas within Latin America.

[David Legg]

OK - I think I have the answer to this one now. Simpler than I thought! Ignore previous comment about Latin America - a different company with similar name. I'm pretty certain that C&S Enterprises in Ontario were the brokers (not owners) that handled the sale of two of the three former Saskatchewan Canso water bombers that had been sold to Hicks & Lawrence upon their retirement from fire fighting. H & L put them up for sale through C&S and they were both acquired by a Malaysian company that wanted to use them for passenger carrying in and around Zimbabwe. They were flown to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island but the plan faltered and eventually one of the aircraft was sold to Catalina Aircraft Ltd of Duxford, England for whom it is operated by Plane Sailing Air Displays Ltd. This was C-FNJF and it remains fully active. The mug shot of me to the left of this posting was taken inside it outbound from Geneva, 10/2006. The other, C-FNJB, remains at Nanaimo in increasingly poor condition.

Individual histories are....

C-FNJB - Canso A c/n CV-249 ex-CF-NJB, F-ZBBC, CF-NJB, F-ZBAR, CF-NJB, 9815 (RCAF)

C-FNJF - Canso A c/n CV-283 ex-CF-NJF,F-ZBBD, CF-NJF, F-ZBAY, CF-NJF, 11005 (RCAF). Now G-PBYA and painted as 44-33915 (USAAF).

[Canso42]

Hi again David,
I got a rise out of you again, my friend. Actually I think you're quite modest. Ask any PBYer. Nobody else has beaten your exhaustive work. and you do make the effort to keep the update coming. Well done- carry On!

Doug.