GreenKnight121
Actually, the B-52 flew on (and is now certified to use) a Fischer-Tropsch fuel derived from natural gas.
That makes more sense.
It was a USN F/A-18E that flew on a 50/50 blend of conventional jet fuel and a biofuel that comes from camelina, a hardy U.S.-grown plant that can thrive even in difficult soil.
Okay, that sounds better than using corn.
LowObservable
Piet and Raithel say that the whole Seaplane Striking Force concept - which included the SeaMaster, the F2Y Sea Dart for air defense and the R3Y Tradewind for logistics - started after the Truman administration canceled the USS United States, the first supercarrier. The Navy was worried (as was the Army) that they would suddenly become irrelevant if all war was to be nuclear.
The supercarrier was the preferred choice because at the time the US Air Force was not just trying to achieve a nuclear monopoly -- but they were trying to sink the Navy. They were effectively arguing that the Air Force and Army could do everything that the US Navy could
(and in fact, during parts of WW2, the USAAF was doing a better job at laying mines from the air, than the Navy was from the sea). The Air Force roundly disliked carriers because it was one aerial asset that they could not fully control.
While the USN could have developed a flying-boat nuclear-bomber at the time, which would have been better from a
practical standpoint it wasn't the best choice from a
political standpoint as the USAAF/USAF could argue that they could operate sea-planes too. The carriers however were, an asset the USAF couldn't control, USAAF/USAF pilots were not trained to operate off carrier decks -- and for this reason, the USN wanted a carrier-based nuclear-bomber which of course necessitated a new carrier to be built to operate them.
Even though the USS United States was cancelled, the motions the Navy went to, simply to build the bomber and carrier effectively gave the USN the justification to basically exist. Once that was done, the Navy could now focus on other options (more practical ones too) which included the Seaplane Strike Force.
The P6M's primary role was minelaying but it was also tested with nuclear bomb shapes. It was a difficult and (for the 1950s) long development program - the P6M-1 was far from operationally suitable and the P6M-2 was different in many ways and only just emerging from development when the project was shopped.
Yup, which kind of makes it similar to the TSR-2 (though admittedly, not quite as cool) -- a great design that could have worked but politics doomed it.
It's near the top of the "damn, why did the bu99ers have to scrap all of them?" list.
In a way, had this seaplane strike force worked, it's possible that carrier-aviation could have been hurt or killed.