As part of the "Mobile Base Concept", the Navy had Convair develop a Bowloading Tradewind which incorporated straight-in loading. The above concept was developed by the Navy in the late 1940s around a high speed seaplane transport (the R3Y), a jet fighter seaplane (the Convair F2Y SeaDart) and a jet bomber seaplane (the Martin P6M SeaMaster).

It was planned that these three aircraft could fly anywhere in the world and have a floating base set up by suitable naval vessels anchored or buoyed in sheltered water.

It was further envisioned that the Bowloader R3Y-2s would be able to pull up and tie up to these floating docks to offload and on-load their cargo.

Power Plant: 4 turboprop engines XT-40 Allison (totalizing 11,000 sHp) driving 8 counter-rotating 15 ft diam. propellers
Fuel capacity: 44,000 lb
Payload: 12,899 lb
Weight empty: 88,000 lb
Weight full: 145,500 lb
Wingspan: 145.7 ft
Length: 139.6 ft
Height: 49 ft
Fuel endurance: 2,100 nm
Maximum ceiling: 40,000 ft
Maximum speed: 300 kn

To hold the aircraft stationary during loading or unloading, two engines, one on each wing would be operating to keep the R3Y-2 relatively stable during amphibious operations.

To pull off the beach for takeoff required the pilot to start the two shutoff engines, and put all four engines into reverse and back off the beach.

Almost everything here done by me: Marcelo M. Marques - codename 31 M.M.M
mmarques@frontier.com.br