I love the Sea Duck! The attention to details and the way everything was put together in a realistic way is one thing I love about TaleSpin.

I have always wanted one of those planes, and have tried to figure out what real-world aircraft is closest to it. The nose is distinctly Grumman Mallard, as is the scale, but the closest match for the rest of the design is the Nord Noratlas (especially the position of the engines and how they blend with the booms).

Brilliant, brilliant work. I only wish there were more episodes!

Wasn't the SeaDuck inspired by Cutter's Goose from Tales of the Gold Monkey?

Here's another possible prototype, a German plane of World War II Focke-Wulf 189:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Cbwn [...] AAAAQbU/143MIu1ZGT8/s400/2.jpg

CL-215: http://www.airshowphotography. [...] ial/CL-215-C-FYWO-040613-6.jpg

P-38: http://www.richard-seaman.com/ [...] hows/Chino2004/Sampler/P38.jpg

See what I mean? To make the Sea Duck, combine those to planes together and then change it from a water-bomber to a cargo plane :D The possibilities are endless!

To me, the Sea Duck is like a fusion of a CL-215 and a P-38.

The CL-215 is like the Sea Duck in a lot of ways, it's yellow and red, and it has pontoons under the wings, the differences between the Sea Duck and the CL-215 is this:

The CL-215 is a water-bomber, a firefighting plane, whereas the Sea Duck is a cargo plane
The CL-215 has a single tail fin, unlike the Sea Duck's P-38-inspired twin tail.

I think it is possible to bring the Sea Duck into the real world, just combine a CL-215 and a P-38 together and you'd have the Sea Duck. The only thing that stands in the way of making it is the lack of money and the lack of people requesting it to be made....

Oh, Jymn, I've noticed that in DuckTales: The Movie - Treasure of the Lost Lamp, it started with Launchpad landing a plane upside down, the plane looks a lot like the Sea Duck, except it didn't have the P-38's twin tail or pontoons. The way he landed it, I was glad it wasn't the actual Sea Duck he crashed! Was that plane inspired from Tale Spin's Sea Duck, or it is the other way around?

That's the kind of details that make all the difference

Naturally we looked at a lot of real seaplane photos and took what worked best. I can remember sitting down with an artist saying "Kit has to be able to jump out and cloud surf. Should we have a roof hatch? Since it's a cargo plane, it probably has a tilt down door-ramp in the back. Kit could jump out that way. But if he does that, we'll have to split the back fuselage like a P-38 to make room for the ramp." Etc. That's how you noodle out this stuff.
JM