https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/ ... rl-harbor/

Flying without charts, ground support, but with a little hostile firearms.

Captain Ford’s story is great, there’s a book on it in Amazon. “The Long Way Home” by Ed Dover.

His instruction from PA HQ in NYC

NORMAL RETURN ROUTE CANCELED STOP PROCEED AS FOLLOWS COLON STRIP ALL COMPANY MARKINGS COMMA REGISTRATION NUMBERS COMMA AND IDENTIFIABLE INSIGNIA FROM EXTERIOR SURFACES STOP PROCEED WESTBOUND SOONEST YOUR DISCRETION TO AVOID HOSTILITIES AND DELIVER NC18602 TO MARINE TERMINAL LAGUARDIA FIELD NEW YORK STOP GOOD LUCK STOP

Those were real pilots! A friend who was merged into UA from PAA said at PAA, if you diverted, you made the decisions, landed and buy everyone, including lax, room and board, if you remembered it, you called HQ and informed them. At UAL, you’d hold while Tech Ops, SOC and Engineering before being informed of the options.

He lost his medical, but lived on to die at 88.

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/19/obit ... at-88.html

Mods, if this belongs in a different thread, please feel free to move it. Since it is about a commercial flight, I figured this was the best place for it.

This is a great read and one heck of a job by that crew.

https://www.stripes.com/history/2021-12 ... 90791.html

>>...Instead of heading home by going east, they took the massive Boeing 314 in the opposite direction, flying blind with no charts and no support from the airline. They were shot at twice, narrowly escaped getting blown up and otherwise avoided disaster while piloting the first commercial flight to circumnavigate the globe. They flew more than 30,000 miles over vast expanses of empty oceans and remote landscapes on five continents while crossing the equator four times...

To top it off, the crew managed this feat without the aid of maps or radio contact, using only celestial navigation and an atlas obtained from a library in New Zealand.

“Flying around the world with no charts is astounding,” said F. Robert van der Linden, curator of Air Transportation and Special Purpose Aircraft at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “They didn’t get lost and they had only one engine problem, which they fixed. These planes were beautiful, but they were hard to fly...”

>>...All told, the Pacific Clipper had logged 209 hours in the air and traveled 31,500 miles around the globe. Even though the plane did not return to its starting point in San Francisco, historians and aviation experts were quick to call the flight the first commercial circumnavigation of the globe, since the aircraft made it back to its country of origin.

“It happened at a time when both oceans had been crossed before,” van der Linden said. “And it was not the first around-the-world flight. Several pilots had done it before. But those were all planned trips with maps and coordinates worked out in advance. What you have here is a commercial airliner with a commercial airliner crew doing this completely unplanned journey while under threat of being shot down.”

The Pacific Clipper’s record for the longest commercial flight by mileage still stands today.<<

For a more detailed version of the story, read "The Long Way Home" by Ed Dover. It's available at a reasonable price as a Kindle book and is definitely worth a read.

Just arrived in HNL a couple hours ago. Pearl Harbor is on the to do list this week

Indy wrote:

Just arrived in HNL a couple hours ago. Pearl Harbor is on the to do list this week

I had some projects that were on Ford Island back a decade ago, spent well over 20 weeks over 3 years out there. My must see's are:

Arizona Memorial - Absolutely.
The Bowfin Submarine - its right next door (same parking) & is excellent - https://www.bowfin.org/
The Missouri - Lots and lots and lots of Grey Paint - Done twice, I prefer the excellent USS Midway in San Diego because there were volunteers everywhere that manned that station and knew so much.

Polynesian Cultural Center - It's a bit corny and 'strange' but I liked it. It's a 11 AM to 10 PM kind of place, the buffet is the way to go. The villages and the evening show are good, 2 hour lull at dinner time.

Haleiwa Joe's Restaurant - the Kaneohe location, it overlooks the Haiku Gardens 40 feet below, with the cliffs climbing above. One of my favorite's anywhere. You go thru the H3 tunnel to the other side. https://www.haleiwajoes.com/

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Those were real pilots! A friend who was merged into UA from PAA said at PAA, if you diverted, you made the decisions, landed and buy everyone, including lax, room and board, if you remembered it, you called HQ and informed them. At UAL, you’d hold while Tech Ops, SOC and Engineering before being informed of the options.

Very much an oversimplification of what happens. If we have time we will bring the Network Operations Center into the loop and get as much information as we can to make an informed decision about what we will do. If we don't have that time available, we use Captain's authority and do whatever we deem necessary. Either way the final decision, as it has always been, is in the hands of the Captain.

JayinKitsap wrote:

Indy wrote:

Just arrived in HNL a couple hours ago. Pearl Harbor is on the to do list this week

I had some projects that were on Ford Island back a decade ago, spent well over 20 weeks over 3 years out there. My must see's are:

Arizona Memorial - Absolutely.
The Bowfin Submarine - its right next door (same parking) & is excellent - https://www.bowfin.org/
The Missouri - Lots and lots and lots of Grey Paint - Done twice, I prefer the excellent USS Midway in San Diego because there were volunteers everywhere that manned that station and knew so much.

Polynesian Cultural Center - It's a bit corny and 'strange' but I liked it. It's a 11 AM to 10 PM kind of place, the buffet is the way to go. The villages and the evening show are good, 2 hour lull at dinner time.

Haleiwa Joe's Restaurant - the Kaneohe location, it overlooks the Haiku Gardens 40 feet below, with the cliffs climbing above. One of my favorite's anywhere. You go thru the H3 tunnel to the other side. https://www.haleiwajoes.com/

Thanks for the tips.

I don't know how things are post-Covid, but before it was wise to buy USS Arizona tickets ahead of time, as they usually sold out.

Jongum wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Those were real pilots! A friend who was merged into UA from PAA said at PAA, if you diverted, you made the decisions, landed and buy everyone, including lax, room and board, if you remembered it, you called HQ and informed them. At UAL, you’d hold while Tech Ops, SOC and Engineering before being informed of the options.

Very much an oversimplification of what happens. If we have time we will bring the Network Operations Center into the loop and get as much information as we can to make an informed decision about what we will do. If we don't have that time available, we use Captain's authority and do whatever we deem necessary. Either way the final decision, as it has always been, is in the hands of the Captain.

I don’t think the comment was anything other than on the very different cultures at the two airlines and it’s clear which culture was, in the long run, safer.

There is an awesome museum on Ford Island/Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum (not sure if its open due to covid), was still being set up when I was there in 2013 on my honeymoon and was awesome then, im sure its gotten better. Also the behind the scenes tour on the Missouri (once again dont know if its going due to covid) is well worth the price.

the other main thing I would recommend is the submarine tour off Waikiki, its a real sub that does go down about 100 ft and they sank some YS-11s to create a reef you can see out the window.

The drive to the very west end of Oahu is very pretty, the road turns into a 4x4 trail but where that starts is beautiful and normally not too crowded.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Jongum wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Those were real pilots! A friend who was merged into UA from PAA said at PAA, if you diverted, you made the decisions, landed and buy everyone, including lax, room and board, if you remembered it, you called HQ and informed them. At UAL, you’d hold while Tech Ops, SOC and Engineering before being informed of the options.

Very much an oversimplification of what happens. If we have time we will bring the Network Operations Center into the loop and get as much information as we can to make an informed decision about what we will do. If we don't have that time available, we use Captain's authority and do whatever we deem necessary. Either way the final decision, as it has always been, is in the hands of the Captain.

I don’t think the comment was anything other than on the very different cultures at the two airlines and it’s clear which culture was, in the long run, safer.

In that time period, long haul flights like this were largely on their own, with little to no support outside of a full company established station with a Company Manager, who handled such things. They usually carried a mechanic and few spare things like an oil pump, or even pistons, to keep it going. The Purser carried an actual purse, filled with cash and gold coins, to pay for whatever needed to be paid for, such as hotels, gas, surprise "fees", etc.

TWA and Pan Am both carried real pursers who handled most local transactions in the more exotic places well into the late 70's. (Hello Diner's Club!")

According to my 2021 Pan Am Historical Foundation calendar, PAA had just started service to Leopoldville, then-Belgian Congo, the day before the Pearl Harbor attack, December 6, 1941. The article mentions the flight landed there, on the Congo River, on New Years Day 1942, and the 'small' Pan Am ground staff. A quite fortuitous coincidence!

AndoAv8R wrote:

The drive to the very west end of Oahu is very pretty, the road turns into a 4x4 trail but where that starts is beautiful and normally not too crowded.

That Ka’ena Point road requires a permit now. Available online, free or low cost, sold out until 2022. And I would rent a Jeep. But the North Shore is definitely worth a trip.

mga707 wrote:

According to my 2021 Pan Am Historical Foundation calendar, PAA had just started service to Leopoldville, then-Belgian Congo, the day before the Pearl Harbor attack, December 6, 1941. The article mentions the flight landed there, on the Congo River, on New Years Day 1942, and the 'small' Pan Am ground staff. A quite fortuitous coincidence!

Yes. The article says that "crew was given a beer on landing in Leopoldville". Apparently, more importantly, they got their first real navigation charts for the rest of the journey.
Before that, they basically improvised with an atlas, some maps and hand-drawn copies of maps, plus some hand-written notes on winds, etc.

So, Leopoldville office of Pan Am was a "return to company territory" for them. Charts, fueling with company fuel (rather than begging various Allied air forces to donate some of theirs), money...