Being an aviation buff and history buff, I thought this was a fascinating story. It read like one of those serialized adventure TV shows.
One remarkable thing about the whole saga (to me) is the whole notion of putting yourself in the minds of the pilots & crew. I guess they had a list of airports/refueling stops they could go to. I assume they had good navigation tools of the day; however primitive those might seem to us today. And a functioning radio. As I read this story about a month ago, I think they had about 5% of the money they would need to buy the fuel they would need. I guess it just wasn’t the thing to do for an unfriendly nation to hold a giant plane like that hostage for a giant payment from Pan Am.
So here they were, kind of setting off on an incredibly lengthy journey without knowing how they would get through it, without knowing whether the plane was in good enough shape to make such a journey, and certainly knowing that they didn’t have the money to buy the fuel they would need at their various stops. There’s something mythical about the whole thing when you consider the impossibilities they had to sit with for several days without knowing whether they’d come out the other end of the pipe.