A stripped-down Lockheed P2V-1 Neptune lifted off from Perth, Australia, on Sept. 29, 1946, so heavy with fuel that it needed jet-assisted takeoff bottles to get airborne. The Navy patrol bomber, nicknamed the Truculent Turtle, did not touch down again until it reached Columbus, Ohio, 11,235 miles and 55 hours and 17 minutes later. No aircraft flew farther without refueling until 1962.
Sept. 29, 2026 marks 80 years since that departure, and the flight was not a stunt for its own sake. It was a Navy experiment in how far a patrol plane and its crew could be pushed, and the airframe that did it survives today in Pensacola, Florida.
The Naval History and Heritage Command’s National Naval Aviation Museum collection entry for the aircraft records the core facts: a nonstop flight without refueling from Perth to Columbus, a distance of 11,235 miles, in 55 hours and 17 minutes, “a record it held until 1962.”
Built for one job: range
The Neptune was a long-range maritime patrol aircraft developed during World War II and flown by Navy patrol squadrons through the Cold War and Vietnam. The record airplane, Bureau Number 89082, came from the first 14-plane batch of P2V-1s Lockheed delivered in 1946, according to the NHHC museum entry.
It was modified for endurance and nothing else. Lockheed removed all of its armament, replaced the standard nose turret with a more streamlined metal nose, added fuel tanks in the bomb bay and aft fuselage, and provided for wing tanks, the museum entry says.
The reason for the work was a July 1946 memorandum from the Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, to the Secretary of the Navy. Nimitz proposed a long-range nonstop flight between Perth and Washington, D.C., for “the purpose of investigating means of extension of present patrol aircraft ranges, physiological limitations on patrol plane crew endurance, and long-range navigation by pressure pattern methods,” as the NHHC entry quotes it.
Four pilots, JATO bottles and a kangaroo
The crew was four seasoned wartime patrol plane pilots, plus a baby kangaroo, per the museum. Writing in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings in August 1991, retired Cmdr. Edward P. Stafford named them as Cmdr. Tom Davies, pilot; Cmdr. Gene Rankin, copilot; Cmdr. Walt Reid; and Lt. Cmdr. Roy Tabeling. Stafford wrote that the Neptune left Perth “15 tons over maximum gross weight.”
Getting that load off the runway took help. The NHHC entry says the Turtle “lifted 268 percent of its own weight” with the assistance of JATO (jet-assisted takeoff) bottles on the Sept. 29 departure. Stafford described four JATO bottles fired from mounting points aft on the fuselage.
The weather fought the airplane the whole way. The museum account records winds and heavy weather over the Pacific, then rain, sleet and snow over the Rocky Mountains. The Neptune burned more fuel than planned and had to land at Naval Air Station Columbus, Ohio, after averaging more than 200 mph for the trip.
NHHC’s “Today in Naval History” entry for Sept. 29 dates the landing to Oct. 1 and gives the distance to a decimal: 11,235.6 miles over 55 hours and 17 minutes, a world record for distance without refueling. Stafford’s 1991 account rounds slightly differently, at 11,236 miles and 55 hours 16 minutes; this article uses the NHHC figures.
A record that took a jet bomber to beat
The Turtle’s mark stood for 16 years. It took a jet-powered B-52H Stratofortress to break it in 1962, according to the NHHC museum entry, which adds that the distance record for a piston-engine aircraft lasted 40 years.
That later mark fell to Burt Rutan’s Voyager. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum records that Voyager, flown by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, left on Dec. 14, 1986, and completed the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world on Dec. 23, 1986, covering 24,986 miles in 216 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds.
The Neptune’s own career after 1946 was quieter. It went into storage, was later displayed at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia, and was placed under the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s care, according to NHHC. It was shipped to Pensacola by barge in 1977, first on loan, and was formally transferred to the National Naval Aviation Museum in 1990. Bureau Number 89082 remains on display there.
Featured image: The Navy P2V-1 Neptune Truculent Turtle taxiing in 1946. Image Credit: U.S. Navy — Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.