It has been a while since I've done one of these. Try for two paragraphs and for this one the definition is a flying boat or seaplane. This excludes things like float planes. To qualify, it must have been designed primarily for operation on water. This means it has a hull and, typically, has no landing gear for land-based landings. My choice is as follows. In WWII, there existed many glorious flying boats. They had giant ranges and could land in all sorts of places, as opposed to needing to land on ship or on land. If you look at water with the right perspective, it's not a barrier but a highway. Flying boats have a pretty awesome history and WWII was where I think their apex was. It's a damned shame that we don't really make 'em anymore. But, the UK had the most awesome. Flying boats were really quite rugged and could take quite a bit of abuse. They didn't move quickly but they sure had some mass. They were every bit as awesome as you can imagine. Now, make it more awesome. Cover that fucker with machine guns. Yeah... The one I like most is called the [Short Sunderland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Sunderland). It is actually even more awesome. Not only did they outfit it to the point where it bristled with machine guns, it could drop bombs while it was patrolling! The Germans had a name for it, it was "Fliegendes Stachelschwein" which translates to Flying Porcupine. See, they were never gonna win what one might think of as a traditional dog fight - but they could throw a wall of lead at anything that approached them. They actually *did* have claimed kills in dog fights - but I'm pretty sure all of those occurred when they were being attacked. Something like eight ME109s attacked one - and they downed like three of 'em before they gave up trying to attack a flying porcupine. I'm hard pressed to pick anything more awesome in the flying boat category, but there's lots of other choices. What's your favorite, and why?