In a tradition normally reserved for ships, the mother of Hospital Apprentice First Class Fred Lester, who received the Medal of Honor posthumously for actions on Okinawa in 1945, prepares to break a bottle of champagne on the hull of a JRM-2 flying boat. The occasion was the christening of the aircraft with the name Caroline Mars, which took place in Chicago on August 27, 1948, sixty-five years ago today,after the aircraft completed a record-setting non-stop flight between Honolulu, Hawaii (note the leis), and Chicago carrying forty-two passengers and a 14,000 lb. payload. One of six JRM Mars flying boats produced by the Glenn L. Martin Company for the Navy, Caroline Mars was the only JRM-2 version, which differed from the JRM-1s in part in its gross weight (165,000 lb.) and range (6,750 miles). Before retirement in 1956, the Caroline Mars logged 10,116.8 hours of flight time along Pacific routes stretching from California to the Philippines and points in between. Upon being retired from Navy service, Caroline Mars joined three of its sister aircraft began services as aerial tankers to fight forest fires. While serving in this capacity in 1962, Caroline Mars was at Patricia Bay, British Columbia, when Hurricane Frieda struck, damaging the venerable flying boat beyond repair and ending her flying days.
