This is an amazing story. “The History Guy” on YouTube has an episode about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0GbkM6n90o
Need a movie about this.
I knew of this flight, but WOW! thanks for posting this and putting flesh and blood on the story!
Excellent read.
Ping
I just toured the National Air & Space Museum in Washington and spent a lot of time with the exhibits on the development of aviation from 1903 through today. There’s a great exhibit on the development of navigation together with the aircraft. It was an amazing period of tech progress, bold executive leadership, great airmen (and women) and the formation of huge companies. I really enjoyed the exhibit about the Lindberghs and especially learning about Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
I had no idea that the Pan Am created “Plan A” to prevent their Clippers from falling into enemy hands. What this crew did to bring their aircraft home WESTWARD from Caledonia is astonishing.
Good story, but New York is is 3,000 short of around the world.
And why did they need to go all the way to NYC if corporate headquarters were in Miami?
Great story to read again.
That was an amazing story that I had to read to the very end.
That was one hell of a nail biting journey that even today would be a hell of an experience to take.
My thanks to the Crew who flew the plane and the author of the article. Without the article I probably would have never known about that astounding flight.
Quite the story, though I would have to sign up with Medium to see it all, but which testifies to the overall character and integrity of yesteryear. A version made conformable to contemporary liberalism would have pilot Ford being a married homosexual; First Officer John Mack would be a women; Leach the radioman would be a Greenpeace activist; the second radioman Poindexter would be living with his girlfriend, telling her he would be late for dinner.
The secret orders would have been leaked to the Washington Post, which orders Pan Am rejected due to protests that this would increase Global Warming, while the LA Times would describe the attack on Pearl Harbor as being America’s fault due to the Japanese being victims of American imperialism.
The crew would be heroically escaping from American military acquisition, but the Boeing Clipper would have undisclosed critical faults, while the NY Times would be working on an expose of Manhattan Project.
And America would soon be speaking German.
Great story, thanks for posting it
If such an event happened now, some of the cruise ship passengers would first learn about it when the crewless ship they were on ran aground on a reef.
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3654596/posts
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