Flatus:
PanAm Clipper Flight 943 - Pacific
ACCIDENT DETAILS
Date: October 16, 1956 . .Time: 06:15 . .Location: Over the Pacific Ocean . .Airline / Op: Pan American World Airways . .Flight #: 943 . .Route: San Francisco - Honolulu . .AC Type: Boeing 377 Stratocruiser . .Registration: N90943 . .cn / ln: 15959 . .Aboard: 31 (passengers:24 crew:7) . .Fatalities: 0 (passengers:0 crew:0) . .Ground: 0
Summary: The aircraft ditched into the Pacific Ocean while on a flight from San Francisco to Honolulu after losing the No. 1 and then the No. 4 engine. The aircraft circled around the US Coast Guard weather ship "November" until daybreak after which it made a successful ditching with no casualties. Probable Cause: An initial mechanical failure which precluded feathering the No.1 propeller and a subsequent mechanical failure which resulted in a complete loss of power from the No.4 engine, the effects of which necessitated a ditching. The aircraft was named Clipper Sovereign of the Sky.
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On 16 October 1956, the cutter Pontchartrain had spent an uneventful two weeks on Ocean Station November when a Pan American Clipper, Flight 943, about 38 miles from the cutter, reported a runaway engine.
A few minutes later the airplane, which was on the last leg of a transpacific flight with twenty-four passengers and a seven-member flight crew, notified the Pontchartrain that another engine was out and it would have to ditch.
Commander William K. Earle called his men to rescue stations and informed them of the situation, ordering float lights laid on the ditching heading while the motor whaleboat was manned and the ship's searchlights and mortar flares provided illumination.
After some experimentation, Pilot Richard Ogg found that the clipper's altitude could be maintained by use of maximum power on the two remaining engines—thus, it could wait until daylight to come down. During the next five hours, the airplane circled November while Ogg and Earle discussed its evacuation plan, going over every possible contingency, and the Pontchartrain's men shifted her motor gig outboard of the pulling boat normally rigged out so that two power boats would be available immediately.
It was fully light by 7 am , but Ogg decided not to ditch until his fuel was virtually exhausted. Notified that the airplane would come down at 8:25, the Pontchartrain laid a. 2-mile line of foam to mark the ditching path, but before she could reach her desired position and heading, the clipper made its final approach, bouncing once and then plunging into a low swell with tail breaking off and nose smashed.
As the cutter came up at full speed, backing down close aboard and putting her her boats in the water, members of the flight crew climbed onto the wing to launch liferafts and help passengers into them. The motor whaleboat took fifteen people from the airplane, after which one of the gig crew inspected its interior to ensure that no one remained.
The gig then picked up the sixteen in the rafts, returning to the Pontchartrain as the clipper sank, twenty minutes after ditching. All were got on board without difficulty, and the hospital corpsman, joined by a doctor who had been a passenger, treated the five with minor cuts and bruises. Meanwhile, those in the two boats examined the debris left floating when the airplane sank and retrieved a considerable amount of registered mail, luggage, and other things of value.
The 255-foot cutter lacked adequate quarters for so many guests, a number of whom were women and children, so the commander of the Coast Guard's Western Area ordered her to San Francisco, leaving Station November temporarily unattended.
Off the Golden Gate, the Pontchartrain met the Gresham, which transferred thirty-one suitcases, each bearing the name of a passenger or flight crew member and containing clothing purchased by Pan American Airways in accordance with information radioed by the cutter. Thus, those rescued were properly garbed when they went ashore.
No reporters were permitted to board the Pontchartrain as she stood into San Francisco Bay, and when the thirty-one left the cutter after she had been moored, they went immediately to a section of the pier reserved for relatives and friends, with whom they talked before facing the press and television cameras
The success of this operation owed much to the fact that on taking command of the Pontchartrain two months earlier, Commander Earle had requested refresher training to familiarize himself with his crew and with techniques introduced since he had left the 311-foot Matagorda, which he had commanded on ocean station duty in the Atlantic from 1950 to 1952. And the clipper crew had gone through ditching drill at the Coast Guard Air Station, Alameda, less than a week before, with special emphasis on getting passengers out of a partially submerged airplane fuselage."
The rescue operation had been conducted almost flawlessly, as indeed it should have been, considering the favorable wind and sea conditions and the time available for preparation.
[ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: ORAC ]</p>