Posted on 04/03/2019 3:20:48 PM PDT by NRx
A documentary on the history of the great flying boats in the early years of passenger air travel including the famed Pan Am Clippers.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
If by chance you’re a gear head?
Here are the maintenance manuals fully readable.
I wondered about them servicing the engines on the water in the middle of nowhere.
https://aviationshoppe.com/pw-r1830-twin-wasp-documents-manuals-a-73.html
IIRC the engines could burn just about any type of Fuel. Kinda like a Tank did.
??? Maybe not???
At Surabaya, Captain Ford had to refuel with automobile grade gasoline, instead of their usual 100 octane. “We took off from Surabaya on the 100 octane, climbed a couple of thousand feet, and pulled back the power to cool off the engines,” said Ford. “Then we switched to the automobile gas and held our breaths. The engines almost jumped out of their mounts, but they ran. We figured it was either that or leave the airplane to the Japs.”
This was the first time ever that engine was not run on avgas.
See link in #4 for the full story.
A great read.
As I recall, back in the dark days of the CAB, international carriers were not allowed to have domestic routes.
You needed to transfer from, let's say, Eastern to Pan Am or TWA at Idlewild/JFK if you wanted to fly to Europe. No through routes except maybe charters, but only with permission.
Quite possibly, this route regulation scheme was a result of domestic competition doing some heavy-duty lobbying.
Thanks to deregulation, we can now fly on the same plane from sea to shining sea and land on the ground.
An entertaining movie is 1936 “China Clipper” with Pat O'Brien. & Bogart, A Hollywood version of the Pan Am story... lots of artistic license though.
Great article! Thanks for posting.
The Smithsonian Air & Space used to have a section of cabin from a Clipper, arranged as if it was meal service time. Passengers ate on china dishes with real metal flatware. Food probably sidn’t suck, too,
I read that account several years ago, Its a must read for everyone. The crew of Pan Am 18602 were heroes.
With the exception of a couple of PBY s , I dont think any of these magnificent aircraft are around anymore.
That's grounds for a topic in its own right!
An odd ping to a modern history topic, but I think you'll enjoy it.
The Flying Boats | Speed Machines | Spark
What killed flying boats was that it was just too hard to keep the sails out of the propellers when tacking up wind.
I looked this up and you’re correct.
Still, Trippe and his pals could have lobbied for the right to go cross country.
We flew Pan Am from Tokyo to SFCA way way back.
I had a neat blue carry on bag with the Pan Am logo for years until it self destructed.
That’s grounds for a topic in its own right!
Repost it if you like, many have yet to see it.
My memory ain’t what it used to be...
And IIRC, I learned of it here on FR some time back??
site search found it:
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3739568/posts
Wrong link.
Would you believe?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3654596/posts
There are many dangers in using two monitors.
This is just one of them.
There are huge numbers of aviation-related videos and documentaries on YouTube. Watch one, and the YT bot will suggest a bunch more.
> Watch one, and the YT bot will suggest a bunch more.
One of the best things about Y.T. - it’s AI comes up with all sorts of really great suggestions.
:^) I've got three, but as I've aged along with this setup, I think I might prefer to have one really large one and run the browsers each in a separate VM window.
Amazing how fast that changed after WWII. Then, 15 years after the War, the jet age of passenger travel began. Those old ships were sure beauties, though.
ping
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