Explore the ambitious and ultimately doomed era of giant flying boats. In the 1930s, flying boats were the epitome of luxury ...

and later with Lockheed to create the modern Lockheed Martin corporation, the JRM Mars flying boat was created in 1938 in response to a United States Navy request for a long-range ocean patrol ...

It measured nearly 120 feet in length and 200 feet in wingspan — roughly the size of a modern-day Boeing commercial airplane. After the flying boats were reconfigured from patrol boats to cargo ...