Poor little chaps, they were only chicks.
Originally Posted by
Father Dick Byrne
With only two on board, unless carrying an extraordinary amount of fuel or freight, performance should not have been a problem. People forget the huge variation in OEI performance available in bigger piston twins. People like to make comments like this, partly, in my opinion, to reassure themselves, but history often tells another story if the full facts ever out (which they’re most unlikely to in a case like this).
The single engine climb on the 414 is pretty miserable, 240 fpm, but...as you say with gear up and feathered engine.
Gear up transit speed is quite high and VMC is, for a twin, quite low. Hadn’t flown the 414 but had a fair bit if time on 310, 401, 402 and 404, none were that great single engine, and luckily never had an engine out on any of them.
Had one on the Twin Com, five on DC3’s, and two on DC4’s. Twin Com was the trickiest, the others fortunately pretty standard. The DC4’s we had were called the LAVCO Tri-motors, went out on 4 back on 3, they were pretty old.