On September 4, 1947, Ensign richard Donelson and his co-pilot, Lieutenant Raymond Soelter,
ditched a Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon roughly 1,000 yards north of the end of the runway at Sand Point. The aircraft sank in about 140 feet of water, and now sits almost completely vertically.

While the PV-2 was expected to have increased range and better takeoff, the anticipated speed statistics were projected lower than those of the PV-1, due to the use of the same engines but an increase in weight. The Navy ordered 500 examples, designating them with the popular name Harpoon.

Early tests indicated a tendency for the wings to wrinkle dangerously. As this problem could not be solved by a 6 ft (1.8 m) reduction in wingspan (making the wing uniformly flexible), a complete redesign of the wing was necessitated. This hurdle delayed entry of the PV-2 into service. The PV-2s already delivered were used for training purposes under the designation PV-2C. By the end of 1944, only 69 PV-2s had been delivered. They finally resumed when the redesign was complete. The first aircraft shipped were the PV-2D, which had eight forward-firing machine guns and was used in ground attacks. When World War II ended, all of the order was cancelled.

With the wing problems fixed, the PV-2 proved reliable, and eventually popular. It was first used in the Aleutians by VP-139, one of the squadrons that originally used the PV-1. It was used by a number of countries after the war’s end, but the United States ceased ordering new PV-2s, and they were all soon retired from service. from: Wikipedia

More: Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon HISTORY

OTHER PV-2 Pages: Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd    or    The Flying Kiwi