Malcolm Earle sure gets around, doesn't he?

Neat!

Eeeeeee! It's beautiful!

Flying boats is my favouritest things!

Hey Rabbi I didn't know you were an aviation nut like myself.... I'm also an EAA member and home built aircraft builder as well.... Small world!

Femm

nice craftsmanship

Long nose. A bit too long mayhaps? Cool paint job.

The lack of air worthy examples does not surprise me. Seaplanes have the worst of both worlds in the environment department.

Ooooooh . . . She's a pretty 'un.

A plane that cool needs its own pulp series.

Man, I want to make it to Oshkosh one of these years, but it's like 2,000 miles away and I don't have a private plane to fly there in. :P

very cool the upper wing an tail booms remind me of a p-38 lightning

Too bad you don't have any Comic characters of the time that these things existed. Then you would get to draw them more often...

*Passes out* Oh....my....god! *whump*

Jetta would love it!

It's a mini-Catalina! But what possessed someone to paint a seaplane as a zebra?

That's gorgeous! I want one.

Here's some information on the plane from the National Aviation Heritage Invitational from 2008:

The National Aviation Hall of Fame's People's Choice award winner was a 1929 Sikorsky S-38, Osa's Ark, named for famed naturalists Martin and Osa Johnson. It garnered the most votes by the thousands of fans viewing the airplanes. The unique plane is owned by Tom Schrade of Reno and restored by Born Again Restorations of Owatonna, Minn.

The 'naturalists Marting & Osa Johnson' were a husband & wife team that would go out to exotic locations and film exotic peoples and regional wildlife, and edit short films and feature-length films that they would show as part of a lecture tour (or release for regular movie distribution). They were pop culture icons, who helped start a certain style of pop natural history movie. Osa Johnson somewhat looked like a cute petite housewife, and might likely be on-camera in pith helmet chatting-up the tribal moms, or in view skritching the baby zebra while holding the heavy rifle and watching out for lions.

In the late 1920s they realized there would be advantages if they had their own aircraft that they could use for aerial movie sequences, and for traveling from location-to-location in a region. Being able to land on both water or smooth ground had advantages. Zebra stripes for the plane was an example of their showmanship.

"I Married Adventure" was a very popular book written by Osa Johnson after her husband died -- an easy book to find, used.

Just as an update - "Osa's Ark" will be undertaking a trans-Atlantic flight at the end of August. Information on the upcoming journey is available here: http://www.unlimitedadventure.com/ and information on the Johnson's can be found here: http://www.safarimuseum.com/

Another nice collection of original pictures of the first "Osa's Ark" and "Spirit of Africa" can be seen here: http://www.airminded.net/sikorsky1/spirit.html and http://www.airminded.net/sikorsky1/s38.html

Ah, a flying boat. Wonder if anyone still makes them...

Se4veral companies do. But the biggest currently is probably Beriev in Russia.

http://www.beriev.com/

It looks at home flying in formation with Buffet's Catalina.

Oh yes, the Johnsons: I remember seeing one of their films on TV, and recognized the plane immediately..... 7@=e

If I lived on a lake, I'd kit build one of these. They're simply fantastic.

Oh, that is a nice place. And bonus for getting to go to Air Venture. I'm going to make it one of these years. ;)

Oooh, two huge radial engines on a flying boat! Nice

I've recently rekindled my childhood obsession with building model aircraft, so I had to see if they made a model of this, because you're right: damn sexy plane. Of course, the zebra stripes don't hurt, either. :)

...insert intermission music here...

To make a long story short, a paper model is available for $8.50 at fiddlersgreen.net. Beyond that, the prices jump into the $50s to over $100. Yeouch. Rare subject = high prices. Still, a very cool plane.