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.
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.
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It is the very stuff of myth. A dangerous journey into the unknown. Man and his machines against the elements.
There’s a great vid on youtube of an original 1945 film describing the odyssey of this Boeing 314 Clipper right after the crew learns of the Pearl harbor attack.
The captain changes course, orders windows blacked out & navigational lights out, orders radioman to monitor but not transmit, then orders the passengers into the lounge area in their nightclothes to inform them of the situation.
Imagine being on board a Boeing flying boat over mid ocean at midnight & America is at war and every aircraft is a Jap target. Anyway, they made it to Stateside.
And by 1950 not a single Boeing 314 flying boat remained in existence.