Baltimore Museum of Industry Baltimore, Maryland, United States October 2025

Just the one aircraft here which is really a three-eighths scale model aircraft but was actually flown by a pilot! The museum is housed in an 1865 waterfront cannery and is the only surviving cannery building in Baltimore.

Left to right: Martin M-162A Flying Boat (NX19168). Known as the 'Tadpole Clipper' or 'Mini-Mariner', it was a three-eighths scale, single-pilot flying model of the Martin PBM Mariner patrol bomber. Powered by a 120 hp Chevrolet V12 car engine as there were no radial engines small enough. The single engine drove two propellers through drive belts. It was built by Baltimore's Glenn L. Martin Company as a flying testbed to evaluate the hull and aerodynamic layout. Constructed as a fabric coverered spruce plywood-framed aircraft with an aluminum skin. The Tadpole Clipper first flew in December 1937. Up until the summer of 1938, Martin test pilots flew the model several times, until engineers accepted they had learned all they could from it. THe first of 21 full-size PBM-5 Mariner flying boats flew in February 1939. It was displayed in the Martin assembly building at Middle River, Maryland, until in 1953 when it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1987, a team of volunteers, many of whom were former Martin employees, began the restoration of the 162A. After more than 10,000 man-hours of labour, the 162 was ready for display on loan to the Museum of Industry in Baltimore, not far from Middle River where the it had been built and flown.