the.com/flying boat
A seaplane with a hull instead of landing gear, because the ocean is the runway.
means A fixed-wing seaplane that lands and takes off on water using a boat-shaped hull, rather than floats attached to a conventional airframe.
from Simply compound and literal — 'flying' plus 'boat' — coined in the early 1900s-1910s aviation boom when designers like Glenn Curtiss built aircraft whose fuselage was itself a buoyant hull, letting the plane float and taxi like a boat before takeoff. The term stuck through the golden age of seaplane travel, when airlines like Pan Am used flying boats (the Clippers) to cross oceans in the 1930s, since long runways were scarce but harbors were everywhere.
- not a floatplane
- the fuselage itself is the hull, no pontoons needed
- golden age
- ruled transoceanic travel before long runways existed
- spruce goose
- largest ever built, flew exactly once in 1947
- military use
- patrolled oceans hunting submarines in WWII