[BwanaNdege]

Good post. Good bird.

Ahhhh, but the P2V Neptune..... Now THAT was an ASW patrol plane!

[Blueflag]

Don’t forget the Hoover (S-3 Viking)!

Oh, I wonder if the new 737 can lope along on one engine the way the P-3 loiters on 2 props, at low altitude, in the salty sea air ...

Time will tell.

[DCBryan1]

Apparently there is a Neptune in the bottom of a freshwater lake in the Seattle Area and the Navy will not let aviation buffs pull it up and restore it.

[Oztrich Boy]

For sheer awesome sound 72 cylinders

[ExpatGator]

My Stepfather was a flight engineer on both. He had, if I remember right, over 12k hours on the P-3.

[maine yankee]

I flew on both the ‘willy-vickers’ and tne ‘charlies’.

I found on long missions it was much easier to find a good spot to curl up and sleep on the P-3.

There are priorities after all.

[DesScorp]

Actually, I think we should do away with land-based patrol planes, and build some flying boats again. Lockheed had a fairly inexpensive version of their C-130 with the props on top of the wing, P-3 style, and a boat hull on the bottom with small balancing pontoons on the wings. I think the Navy needs to go to something just like that. Not the pontoon-plane version of the C-130 that they pitched, but the real flying boat version. If it can't take off or land from a deck or from the water, the Navy shouldn't have it.

[Tainan]

As hard as it may be to believe, some countries are still trying to keep this old bird up in the air...