PBY Catalina US Coast GuardCoast Guard Consolidated PBY Catalina airplane model. ,The first PBY obtained by the Coast Guard, V189, was purchased from the Navy in the spring of 1941. It was specially outfitted at Air Station San Francisco with a nine lens camera for mapping coastal regions around the country. While the arrangement worked well in the lower 48, after two mapping trips to Alaska the camera was transferred to a newer PBY 5A (PBY BuNo 08055), an amphibian, making it