An iconic piece of British Columbia aviation history has left the province on its final flight.
The Philippine Mars conducted one final pass over Vancouver Island’s Alberni Valley before a flight south.
The historic aircraft stopped Sunday evening in San Francisco, before heading to its final destination at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Ariz., on Monday.
The Philippine Mars is the sister aircraft to B.C.’s famous wildfire-fighting water bomber the Hawaii Mars, which was finally retired at the B.C. Aviation Museum in Patricia Bay last summer.
“It’s the end of the road. I hate to take it away from here, but they are going to good places,” said pilot Peter Killan, who was at the controls for the Philippine Mars’ retirement flight.
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“(We’re) sharing it for all of North America by having one in the states and one here.”
The massive Martin Mars aircraft, which boast the wingspan of a Boeing 747, were conceived as patrol bombers during the Second World War, where they became the largest flying boat to enter Allied service, and were soon repurposed as a transport aircraft.
After the war, they were repurposed in the 1950s as firefighting aircraft, making use of an impressive payload capacity of 27,000 litres of water.
Martin manufactured just seven of the planes, only two of which remain today and were in the possession of Vancouver Island’s Coulson Aviation for years.
“It’s very special to be the sort of stewards of the airplane for the last time, as our family, and now, to say goodbye,” Britton Coulson told Global News.
Getting the Philippine Mars to the U.S. has proven to be challenging.
“It’s a lot of work to get the Mars airworthy,” former mechanic Steve Kendall told Global News.
After several abortive attempts to fly it south, which were met with mechanical issues, crews had to swap out the Hawaii Mars’ engine to power its final journey.
Unlike its sister aircraft, which is painted bold red and white colours for firefighting duty, the Philippine Mars was repainted with period-correct U.S. Air Force colours in 2016 in anticipation of a move to a U.S. aviation museum.
Coulson has retained one final piece of Martin Mars history: the nose of an eighth, never-built, aircraft, which remains at their Sproat Lake facility.
“We’re gonna keep that,” Coulson said.
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