He invited some fellow executives from the Southern California Aircraft Corp., family members and two attractive blonde aspiring actresses to lure the interest of the LIFE magazine camera lens. The man behind the flying yacht, Glenn Odekirk, is pictured here on the left, aboard his dingy, which would have been fixed under the wing during flight.

Scrap that! Who needs card games when you have panoramic views from the sky! With plenty of leisurely games to pass the time… Of course, with your own private (amphibious) jet, one must arrive in style… So, I decided to build an aerial luxury yacht in which you can land and live almost anywhere in the world with all the comforts of home.” “Normally, it’s just a means of transportation in which you ride from here to there with varying degrees of comfort. “It seemed like no one was getting real utility out of a private airplane”, Odekirk was quoted in a Flight magazine article in 1953. They were to be the epitome of glamorous travel that he called Landseaire. Before it was hosting blondes in polka dot bikinis, it served as a patrol bomber and submarine killer.Īfter the war, an entrepreneur by the name of Glenn Odekirk saw a new future for the roomy Catalinas as extreme luxury flying yachts. We’re looking at the photographs of LIFE veteran Loomis Dean, who was invited aboard this luxury post-war conversion of a consolidated PBY Catalina, one of the most versatile airplanes used in the Second World War. Hold the phone! A flying yacht in 1950?! Or an amphibious airplane, depending on your preference. Found deep within LIFE magazine’s archives, introducing “the flying yacht” … If you thought you were having early symptoms of the pre-summer travel bug, this will surely finish you off. They don’t call it the ‘Golden Age of Travel’ for nothing.

Could a tiger tank beat a modern tank