Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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On December 11th, Philippine Mars, now the last flying Martin JRM Mars took off from Sproat Lake, Vancouver Island.

Following the retirement of sistership Hawaii Mars back in August to the British Columbia Aviation Museum, Philippine Mars is destined for the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

Like Hawaii Mars, Philippine Mars has a storied history fighting fires in British Columbia for over four decades. After being officially retired from service in 2012, it was repainted back into its original U.S. Navy colours as part of a deal with the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola Florida. That deal though, fell through in 2016.

This time around, Philippine’s final journey will take it from here to San Francisco, then San Diego, and on to a, so far, undisclosed lake in Arizona. Once there it’ll be disassembled and trucked the rest of the way to Tucson.

With some nice weather along the whole west coast, this was to be the day that Philippine would leave Canada for the last time. After taking off though, they starting losing oil pressure on the #2 engine and ended up returning back to Sproat Lake. The next attempt to fly down to the States is still to be determined as of uploading.

Nevertheless, it was an honour and a privilege to be able to see this last-of-its-kind flying boat up close on the water like this! I owe an enormous thank you to Mike, Tobyn, and Darren, without whom everything you see here would not have been possible, so thank you again, and enjoy the video.

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FLIGHT INFORMATION
Airline: Coulson Aviation
Aircraft: Martin JRM-3 Mars (MARS)
Livery: U.S. Navy
Engines: 4x Wright R-3350-24WA
Registration: C-FLYK
Route: Sproat Lake - Nanaimo - Sproat Lake
Date filmed: December 2024

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Outro song - "Take Flight" by Nyhtian: youtu.be/bCTTwQ_269c

© Alex Praglowski Aviation 2024

This video is the property of Alex Praglowski Aviation and may not be used for any purpose without prior permission. Contact me at the email in the "About" section of my channel for usage.