In 1936 Grumman was approached by a group of businessmen who believed that taking a train or driving from their homes north of New York City was too much of a bother and wanted something…namely an aircraft…that could get them to their offices without having to rub elbows with the Great Unwashed. Grumman designed the Goose in response. Many of those houses were near water and NYC was (and still is) surrounded by water, so it made sense to design something that could land on water (more than once, anyway) or land (ibid), and the Goose was born. It was also the first Grumman design that had less than two wings and more than one engine (a pair of Pratt & Whitney R-985-14 engines rated at 450hp for this aircraft) with the first one going into the air in 1937. It had a range of 700 miles and a flight time of four hours. Several were built and sold and then WWII blew up.

The Navy, oddly enough concerned with something that could land on water (more than once), was interested in an aircraft that could carry a couple of depth charges for anti-submarine patrols, carry several people, put down safely on water to rescue people stuck out there in a flotation-deficient environment, be ruggedly built (probably Grumman’s motto), and reliable (ibid). From what I can find, 345 were built overall and the Navy named the aircraft JRF. I’ve been unable to find any mention of how many were commandeered by the military from civilian owners. Interestingly, it was Canada’s RCAF that put in the first military order to Grumman. The Army Air Corps got in line with an order of 26 which were designated OH-9 and OH-13 (those designations were later used for helicopters) and the Navy and Coast Guard ordered 169 of them.

The Goose also saw war service with several other nations who needed a relatively small amphibian aircraft (operate from both land and water) for search and rescue, patrol duties, and to transport people with enough rank to get their hands on (not limited to other nations in that regard).

Pilots regard this bird well, one comment found online was that on the ground it looked like a big aircraft. In the air it didn’t fly like one.

And yes…my first exposure (he says as if he encounters this aircraft frequently) to the Goose was the 1982 TV program, “Tales of the Gold Monkey”, that ran for one season.

Even the late Jimmy Buffet owned one…