Lt. Edward Sizer Biography-1
Lt. Edward Sizer: Radio Operator on the 1935 World's Longest Non-Stop Flight
Lt. Commander Edward Vernon Sizer (1904-1993) served for 30 years in the Navy as a pioneering radio and radar technician. Sizer was one of six crewmen on the October 13-14, 1935 34-hour flight of the XP3Y-1 seaplane, which set the world record for the longest nonstop flight – 3,443 miles between Coco Solo, Panama and Alameda, California. (The XP3Y-1 was the prototype of the PBY Catalina, the most successful World War II flying boat).
To commemorate this event, the United Aircraft Corporation (manufacturer of the XP3Y-1's Pratt & Whitney engines) awarded a custom-engraved 10Kt gold 1935 Elgin Avigo watch to each crewman. Sizer’s watch is “all original”, including the leather band. It is carefully inscribed, "Record Flight of ~ U.S. Navy Seaplane XP3Y-1 ~ Powered by 2 P&W Twin Wasps ~ October 13-14 1935 ~ Presented to ~ E.V. Sizer ~ by the ~ United Aircraft ~ Corporation” ([P&W = Pratt & Whitney]). Presumably, an identical custom-engraved watch was given to the other five crew members.
Sizer was commissioned during World War II and stationed in Washington. In 1946, as a liaison for the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, Sizer set up the radar and radio communication infrastructure for the ships involved in the Bikini Atom Bomb Tests
Edward married Mary Katherine Hyland in1926; she died in 1987. They had no children.
Sizer retired from the Navy in the early 1950s. He then worked for Raytheon as the Air Force liaison before retiring in 1960. Sizer died on Jan 4, 1993 and was buried in Owensville, MD.