Chesapeake Bay Magazine
If you were out on the Chesapeake Bay this past Saturday—a brilliant-blue, cool spring day—you may have seen a piece of World War II history traveling from Curtis Bay to Cambridge. The P-520 is an 85-foot, wood-hulled U.S. Army Corps rescue boat used to recover downed pilots during the second World War, built in 1944.
The vessel is the last of its kind, and remarkably, it is fully operational in its original military configuration. Its presence on the Chesapeake is improbable considering the P-520 was restored in California and donated to the Louisville Naval Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, who moved her to West Palm Beach, Florida. The boat then made the trip from West Palm to the Chesapeake, arriving via the C&D Canal. P-520 runs on twin diesel engines, but still has the original Packard M4-2500 motors in storage.