Meet the P-3 Orion: the sub hunter, by the numbers 2e1b3aa

Out to the west of the carrier group, low and slow and endlessly patient, flies the Lockheed P-3 Orion — the Navy’s maritime patrol workhorse since 1962, derived from the Electra airliner and hunting submarines for over sixty years. Ours works an 11×5 km oval at 500 feet and breaks off now and then to eyeball a surface contact up close. Her card:

1. Crew: eleven — two pilots, a flight engineer, and a full sensor and ordnance team down the back.
2. Powerplant: four Allison T56-A-14 turboprops, 4,600 shp each — the same engine family as our Hawkeye, twice as many of them.
3. Performance: 411 kt max, but she earns her pay at 180–200 kt, 500 to 1,500 feet, ten hours on station.
4. Dimensions: 99 ft 8 in span, 116 ft 10 in long — the biggest aircraft in our gallery that isn’t an airliner.
5. Ceiling: 28,300 ft. Range: about 2,380 nautical miles.
6. The kit: the magnetic anomaly detector in the tail stinger — the MAD boom you can see on our model — sonobuoys by the dozen, Mk 46/50 torpedoes and Harpoons in the bay and on the wings.
7. In the bay: radar-visible but nobody’s target, she announces every visual inspection pass on the radio — 400 metres abeam the contact at 300 feet, then back to the oval. Gallery page 12/14; spectate the hunt with J.