Bruce Barth was a Navy aircrewman with Patrol Squadron Forty at the peak of seaplane involvement in Vietnam, between 1965 and 1967. A decorated veteran of two operational deployments in the Martin SP-5B Marlin, he participated in the last seaplane-tender operations with the U.S. Navy at Cam Ranh Bay, in April 1967.

Transferred in 1968 to a carrier based squadron in South East Asia, attached to the USS Kearsarge, CVS-33, he flew operational support missions in the Grumman S2F and E-1B early warning aircraft with VAW-111. At the time of his honorable discharge in 1969, Barth had flown more than 1,100 flight hours and completed three deployments to South East Asia in support of the Vietnam conflict.

An accomplished historian and author on Martin seaplanes, Barth formerly served as director and historian of the Mariner/Marlin Association and has been a consultant to the Lockheed-Martin Company, Naval Historical Center, National Air and Space Museum and the Pima Air & Space Museum. In 1992 he worked with noted celebrity Jimmy Buffett on his best selling novel, "Where is Joe Merchant," and in 1994 published the first book on the history of the Navy's last flying boat, "The Martin P5M Marlin."

In addition to his work as an archivist and historian on Martin aircraft, Barth was the liaison for the 1995 salvage attempt of a Martin PBM-5 Mariner in Lake Washington and the coordinator for the preservation and restoration of the sole surviving PBM-5A at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, AZ from 1998 to 2003. He also played a key role in the 2008 restoration of the last Martin SP-5B (P5M-2) Marlin at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fl.