Flying boats

A flying boat is a type of fixed-wing seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane, which stands on floats under the fuselage: the fuselage of a flying boat is itself built to float. Many flying boats also have retractable wheels; they are called amphibians.

Alphonse Pénaud filed a patent for a flying machine with a boat hull and retractable landing gear as early as 1876. In the First World War flying boats patrolled the seas, in 1919 the Curtiss NC-4 was the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic, and in the 1930s large flying boats such as the Boeing 314 Clipper flew passengers across the oceans. Today amphibians are mainly used for search and rescue and for fighting forest fires.