What's the essential difference between a flying boat and a water plane?
by 
wickedwillie
ANSWERS: 2
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What we now call sea planes were originally called flying boats. Early sea planes looked like boats with wings attached. A great example is the Dornier Do-X (www.aviationtrivia.homestead.com/DornierX.html). Possibly the most sophisticated flying boat/sea plane was the Martin P6M Sea Master (www.aviationtrivia.homestead.com/P_6M.html). It is described as a floating B-52 with a speed of over 600 MPH and a ceiling of over 40,000 feet. The Russians experimented with a number of water planes they call Ekranoplans. These have wings like sea planes, but the wings are too short for flight. Instead the wings generated just enough ground effect lift to raise the hulls to about a maximum of ten feet above the surface. This allows the Ekranoplans to attain aircraft-like speeds. The largest Ekranoplans are the TKV-34 "Caspian Sea Monsters." They weigh over 500 tons and have a speed of 300 MPH (www.aviationtrivia.homestead.com/34.html).
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The main difference is that a seaplane usually is supported in the water by separate floats, which are sometimes interchangeable with fixed wheel landing gear for land-based operation. A flying boat floats on its hull, which is nothing more than a fuselage which has a boat-shaped bottom and is made waterproof for water-based use.
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