For many, the "Golden" age of the flying boat began and ended in the 1930s when Imperial Airways flew the privileged few in great luxury aboard their fleet of majestic Short 'C' Class boats to exotic places on the Empire routes and later to North America. However, fewer than 500 flying boats and amphibians of all sorts, commercial and military, were built during the 1930s while almost 8,000 left the world's production lines during the six years of World War Two, and some saw no reason why their popularity should not continue after the war was over. They were to be proved wrong.
Due in part to the fact that the reliability and economy of land-planes had improved dramatically during the war years, and the abundance of new airports with long paved runways that had appeared worldwide, again products of wartime expansion, the flying boat quickly lost favour with both airline operators and the public. However, American manufacturers such as Martin and Grumman took advantage of the latest technologies to develop a new post-war breed of military flying boats and amphibians. Here again there were casualties, the most costly of which, both in money and men, were the revolutionary jetpowered Martin Seamaster and the turboprop Convair Tradewind, which were designed ahead of known technology. Despite the spectacular failures, it may come as a surprise to learn that some 1,700 multiengined military and commercial flying boats and amphibians have been built since 1945. The development of compact, reliable and economical turbo-prop engines in recent years has given the flying boat and amphibian a new lease of life, not only by extending the lives of some types by replacing existing piston engines, but also by encouraging new designs that are able to compete favourably with landplanes in terms of economy while retaining their unique ability to land on water if and when necessary.
There are currently more than 350 multiengined types operating worldwide in the search and rescue (SAR) and inshore maritime reconnaissance (MR) roles with the military, the commercial transport of people and supplies in remote areas, and fighting fires. This book describes 12 major multi-engined flying boats and amphibians that have been produced, albeit in small numbers in some cases, in 7 different countries since 1945. All have either served with operational military units or have been sold to commercial operators, with which many of them continue to serve to this day.