A similar story happening at the same Ocean Station November with the military version of the Stratocruiser, the C-97, can be found here:
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/above-amp-beyond-mission-unaccomplished-27032965/?all
Not to ruin your vacation plans, but the mid-point of the route between California and Hawaii where Ocean Station November used to park is the most remote from land airway segment in the world. There you are farther from land, and any divert base, than anywhere else in the world, 1100 miles.
(Yes, there is a more remote spot in the sub-Antarctic South Pacific, but no one flies there.)
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.”