Shark watch was mentioned in the film.
Posted on 10/17/2019 5:11:14 AM PDT by fugazi
We arrived in Japan in September 1956. The Pan Am ditching was a month later and the magazine covers showed the doomed tailless plane. Post barber shop still had Life magazines on the Andrea Doria sinking.
There were several Stratocruiser crashes in the Pacific during the next two years. There was one where an engine seized & tore up the adjacent prop; they landed safely on two engines. One, The Romance of the Skies, had friends of ours on board when it disappeared without a trace.
Learned much later that the 28 cylinder “corncob” engines on the Boeing 377 were notoriously unreliable.
Flew to Japan & back; I always envied those who voyaged on Army transport ships like the Gen. E.D. Patrick (there are vids of its final days).
I watched the video. Very good. Although the plane was torn up pretty good. It’s a miracle that no one was killed or severely injured.
Shark watch was mentioned in the film.
I noticed that but had forgotten the mention of the shark watch. My mind went immediately to “terrorism”. I need help.
If a plane with four engines could fly with just ONE engine (like 2 engine planes can), then 4 engines would be better.
I have over ten years experience on USAF version of the this aircraft and several others with the same engine/prop systems. That includes 1957-58 providing maintenance on those spending 26 hours on the Pacific run. I’m surprised they are still in service.
Funny in the movie “Sully” they had the question
” when’s the last time you ever heard of an airliner ditching and everybody survived?”
Well before the “Miracle on the Hudson” this is the last time and airliner ditched and everybody survived
I stand corrected. Re-reading the article, I realized it was an old story.
When I was going to college at Santa Barbara the airport was the base for the “Pregnant Guppy” an interesting modification of this kind of plane.
Thanks to oldbill, I had to add this to the story:
In 1969, a C-97 Stratofreighter (essentially the military’s version of the Boeing 377 above) was enroute from Travis Air Force Base (Calif.) to Hawaii’s Hickam Air Force Base on their way to Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam when the crew experienced a similar problem. One of the 28 cylinders in the Number 4 engine cracked its head and threatened to disintegrate the propeller. The crew managed to feather the engine and continued with three engines as they reached the halfway point of their flight.
No sooner than the crew finished their post-emergency checklist, the crew chief reported that the Number 2 engine was on fire. Now down to two engines — which due to their location provided asymmetrical thrust that made flying extremely difficult — the crew turned around and headed for San Francisco. Ocean Station NOVEMBER was again called on for a potential rescue at sea as the C-97 dropped out of the sky.
“The C-97 was a good ditching airplane, averaging 11 minutes of float time. That was marginally comforting,” recalled William Campenni, (Col. (ret.), U.S. Air National Guard) who served as copilot on this particular Air National Guard flight. However, “a C-97 that had ditched off the Azores floated for 10 days until it was deliberately sunk as a hazard to shipping. It wasn’t rocket science to compute that 10 days factored into that 11-minute average meant those other C-97s must have sunk like stones.”
The crew applied full takeoff power to stay airborne, finally leveling off at 1,000 feet. To keep from getting wet, they would have to keep constant pressure on the rudder pedals and the throttle at full power — for the next four hours. They made it past the Coast Guard cutter, who called for a C-130 rescue plane to fly west and meet them in case the remaining two engines gave out But as the fuel burned off, the Stratofreighter became lighter and they could back off the throttles.
The two engines held out and got the crew back to San Francisco. The engines on the C-97 were so unreliable that crews jokingly called the Stratofreighter the “Boeing Tri-Motor.”
My God, that is a riveting video! What a bunch of amazing people!
6 trips on five different ships, including;
William O. Darby
E. D. Patrick
M. M. Patrick
G. M. Randall
W. A. Mann
The MM Patrick was nicknamed the “Mickey Mouse.”
One of the vessels broke in half at a dock in California, was raised and welded back together. It went on to serve for years...
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