Sea Darts were wonderful planes in their day, still the only supersonic seaplanes. But it wasn’t just the improvement of aircraft carrier technology that made them an answer in search of a question. The bigger problem is that islands don’t contain natural supplies of jet fuel and spare parts. Or usually even adequate food for an airbase. So while you could put a Sea Dart squadron’s minimal launching facilities on enough islands to cover the Pacific much cheaper than building a bunch of aircraft carriers and their escort ships, you still needed to supply those islands. Which meant a whole lot of Sea Darts, a whole lot of airbase crews to maintain them, a whole lot of freighters and tankers, and even more escort ships to protect the supply ships. So overall, making enough Sea Darts and convoys of supply ships to cover all the US commitments in the Pacific turned out to be at least as expensive as a few carrier battle groups, which could go to whatever areas needed coverage at the moment.

@Blissey1
 
Nope, but she is kinda’ cute.

it’s no spruce goose