Map showing the flight path of the U.S. Navy Lockheed P2V-1 "Truculent Turtle". The third production P2V-1 (BuNo 89082) was chosen for a record-setting mission, ostensibly to test crew endurance and long-range navigation but also for publicity purposes: to display the capabilities of the U.S. Navy's latest patrol bomber. Its nickname was "The Turtle", which was painted on the aircraft's nose (along with a cartoon of a turtle smoking a pipe pedaling a device attached to a propeller). However, in press releases immediately before the flight, the U.S. Navy referred to it as "The Truculent Turtle". Loaded with fuel in extra tanks fitted in practically every spare space in the aircraft, "The Turtle" set out from Perth, Australia to the United States. With a crew of four (and a nine-month-old gray kangaroo, a gift from Australia for the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.) the aircraft set off on 9 September 1946, with a RATO (rocket-assisted takeoff). 2 1/2 days (55 h, 18 min) later, "The Turtle" touched down in Columbus, Ohio (USA), 18,083.6 km from its starting point. It was the longest un-refueled flight made to that point. This would stand as the absolute unrefueled distance record until 1962 and would remain as a piston-engined record until 1986.
U.S. Navy
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/department_arch.html">U.S. Navy All Hands magazine</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/archpdf/ah194611.pdf">November 1946</a>, p. 36.