PDA

View Full Version : Boeing 314 Overnight to Hawaii


RatherBeFlying
7th Sep 2022, 17:29
TransPac Clipper

It's a 50 minute YT.

As a kid I flew to Hawaii on 377 and DC-7. They were slow enough and much less panache, but the 377 flight deck was big with at least four crew. I remember the nav using his sextant.

washoutt
8th Sep 2022, 08:54
?? There is no link to the You Tube in RatherBeFlying's post. Or is my pc revolting?

Liffy 1M
8th Sep 2022, 09:16
Here it is the link again. https://youtu.be/tneNPSEy17U

treadigraph
8th Sep 2022, 09:18
?? There is no link to the You Tube in RatherBeFlying's post. Or is my pc revolting?
I can see it ok Washoutt...

I'd have been happy flying to Hawaii - or anywhere - in a Stratocruiser or a DC-7... bliss, albeit noisy bliss... Shame the 314 is just a footnote in history now.

chevvron
8th Sep 2022, 10:47
I can see it ok Washoutt...

I'd have been happy flying to Hawaii - or anywhere - in a Stratocruiser or a DC-7... bliss, albeit noisy bliss... Shame the 314 is just a footnote in history now.
I saw one in 1956; it was moored next to the Queen Elizabeth in Southampton Royal Dock ie NOT just across the water at Hythe although there were several Sunderland derivatives moored there too.
What an area for flying boats that was in those days with the Princess boats beached at Calshot too (we were on a boat from Southsea for a tour of the docks)

Herod
8th Sep 2022, 13:51
Washout; I'm also getting blanks, and not just on this forum. I gather there is a solution, but I don't know it. Anyone??

treadigraph
8th Sep 2022, 14:04
I saw one in 1956; it was moored next to the Queen Elizabeth in Southampton Royal Dock ie NOT just across the water at Hythe

The 314s had all been scrapped or crashed by 1952, BOACs when back to the US after the war; what did you see I wonder...?

RatherBeFlying
8th Sep 2022, 15:53
https://youtu.be/tneNPSEy17U

RatherBeFlying
8th Sep 2022, 15:56
youtu.be/tneNPSEy17U

WHBM
8th Sep 2022, 19:23
Must be a bug in the PPRuNe software (probably dependent on which browser/device you are using). The link is blank for me too, in all the multiple attempts above, but if you click 'Quote' on the post you then see the clickable link shown with the rest of the message, and can get it from there.

The commentary, with excessive adjectives, sounds just like what Peter Sellers parodied in "Balham, gateway to the South".

megan
9th Sep 2022, 02:53
Video shows OK for me using all the posted links above on Firefox.

DH106
9th Sep 2022, 07:56
I'm using Firefox, but can't see any of the links - except the partial link in post #9

Herod
9th Sep 2022, 07:59
Thanks, WHBM. A long-winded way, but it works. Also thanks megan. I'm using Chrome, so maybe I should switch to Firefox for Pprune. It's especially frustrating on the War in Ukraine thread.

washoutt
9th Sep 2022, 08:12
I am also using firefox and still have blanks. But using "Quote" does show the link, and copying it gives that wonderfull film on 314 clippers. It must therefore be a Firefox problem, if other browser have no problems. No, Chrome also doesn't show the link, just checked

treadigraph
9th Sep 2022, 08:39
Video clips showing and playing in Android Chrome on me phone and I could see them in Win 11 Chrome on my laptop yesterday. The link at #9 doesn't appear to be live. Curiouser and curiouser said Alice.

chevvron
9th Sep 2022, 08:48
The 314s had all been scrapped or crashed by 1952, BOACs when back to the US after the war; what did you see I wonder...?
Well it was a 4 engined boat, it was marked Pan Am and it was 1956 so what did I see? As I said it was on the side where the liners were moored not on the other side at Hythe.
As for the video clip, I use chrome and it doesn't show, not even a link.

DHfan
9th Sep 2022, 08:49
I don't use Chrome as I don't install spyware, but trying three different Chromium-based browsers - Brave, Opera and Vivaldi, Vivaldi is the only one that works.

My normal browser is Pale Moon and that's worked since the initial post.

treadigraph
9th Sep 2022, 09:01
Pan Am definitely out of the flying boat boat business a decade before then and id think Aquila were the only passenger operator in the UK at that point. Big Short flying boat painted up for a film maybe?

chevvron
9th Sep 2022, 09:47
Pan Am definitely out of the flying boat boat business a decade before then and id think Aquila were the only passenger operator in the UK at that point. Big Short flying boat painted up for a film maybe?
No definitely a different design of boat to one of the Shorts types which, as I said, were all across the other side of the water.
Course I was only 7 years old then (you weren't even born) so although I remember some of the detail like how the announcer on the tour boat said it was an 'American' flying boat I don't remember it all.
I believe there was a sort of 'control tower' on one of the dock piers but whether that's still there I don't know, I haven't been on Southampton Water since about 1990 when Plesseys kindly took some of us controllers across to Cowes (once Cowes West airfield but by then the Plessey factory) on the hydrofoil to look at the then new Watchman radar which we were getting at Farnborough.

DHfan
9th Sep 2022, 10:35
What big flying boats were still extant then apart from the Short boats and the Princess(es)?

I'm certain I saw the cocooned hulks of the Princesses from a boat trip from the Isle of Wight and up Southampton Water but that would have been a few years later - 1960-61 at a guess.
I've long been convinced I took a photograph of them with my first camera but I've never been able to find it.

bean
9th Sep 2022, 10:46
Pan Am definitely out of the flying boat boat business a decade before then and id think Aquila were the only passenger operator in the UK at that point. Big Short flying boat painted up for a film maybe?
Fully agree

treadigraph
9th Sep 2022, 13:41
I did wonder about the Sikorsky VS-44 but looks like Excambian was the only survivor at that point and was just about the start of Catalina Island ops. 10 years before Charles Blair acquired her.

WHBM
9th Sep 2022, 20:43
The originator seems to have a good handle on the various boat types. If it was definitely not one of the Short variants, which had some different appearances especially around the nose, then a 4-engined aircraft could possibly have been a Martin Mars, run by the US Navy, still around at the time. Normally they just ran over the Pacific from California, but if a film company wanted a big boat to dress up as Pan Am and fly over to do shots in the UK, that's an outside chance.

Back to the Short boats, and the French Air Force had a small fleet of Sunderlands, painted white, through into the 1960s, used for maritime patrols. Maybe the film company had got their hands on one of those.

DHfan
9th Sep 2022, 22:47
I can't believe that Chevvron wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a passenger flying boat and a Martin Mars.

Let alone Southampton Docks, did a Mars ever visit the UK?

megan
10th Sep 2022, 00:51
Questions, I counted eleven crew members in the video boarding the boat, what positions did they fill? interested to note as well that none wore any symbols of rank, such as Captain with four stripes, wonder when that convention appeared in the aviation scene?

WHBM
10th Sep 2022, 05:07
I can't believe that Chevvron wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a passenger flying boat and a Martin Mars.

Let alone Southampton Docks, did a Mars ever visit the UK?
Well, it was described initially as a Pan Am Boeing 314. The difference between the two is not as great as suggested. But if there's a more likely answer, we'll all be interested to hear it.

Aircraft "done up" for films are always interesting. British Eagle used to run a small DC-6B fleet just around 1960. So obviously impossible to have landed at London City, right ? Yet I have the photographs :)

treadigraph
10th Sep 2022, 05:57
The chances of Americans coming with Mars are a million to one he said... :)

Be easier to use the Princess, very local and probably not doing much by then i should think. Incidentally, I didn't know (or have perhaps forgotten) that Jack Conroy was seriously considering the Princess as the basis of a Guppy like transporter.... sadly corrosion was rife by the early 60s...

India Four Two
10th Sep 2022, 05:59
This site doesn't solve the mystery, but there are some interesting photos:

https://www.hampshireairfields.co.uk/airfields/mat.html#

chevvron
10th Sep 2022, 08:21
I can't believe that Chevvron wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a passenger flying boat and a Martin Mars.

Let alone Southampton Docks, did a Mars ever visit the UK?
Definitely not a Mars; even at my age then (7 years old) I would have noticed; the Princess boats were already cocooned at Calshot in '56.

bean
10th Sep 2022, 08:40
Questions, I counted eleven crew members in the video boarding the boat, what positions did they fill? interested to note as well that none wore any symbols of rank, such as Captain with four stripes, wonder when that convention appeared in the aviation scene?
Megan. Wikipedia Pacific Clipper. Contains a list of crew and functions

Planemike
10th Sep 2022, 10:32
Definitely not a Mars; even at my age then (7 years old) I would have noticed; the Princess boats were already cocooned at Calshot in '56.
Yes, indeed they were and did not move again until they were broken up, about ten (???) years later.............

DHfan
10th Sep 2022, 18:02
In 1956 the Short C class, G Class and Boeing 314s were extinct. The Sikorsky VS-44 was in Peru and the Princesses were already cocooned.

The only large passenger flying boats that appear to have still existed then were a few Short Solents and some Sunderland derivatives.

deja vu
11th Sep 2022, 10:50
Those were the days, not one blue singlet, flip flops or tattoos insight.

WHBM
11th Sep 2022, 11:49
There is Short Solent IV restored in Auckland New Zealand , it’s an ex - TEAL aircraft which operated inter- island services till I believe 1960 . Google flying boat services from New Zealand . The same restorers also had and ex RNZAF Sunderland. Saw them both still work in progress in 2016 .
Yes, TEAL gave them up at the end of 1960. But 'inter island' for a New Zealand operator is misleading, because the aircraft on the once-fortnight "Coral Route" was operating from Suva in Fiji, eastwards through the South Pacific islands which did not yet have airports, to Tahiti and back. It was normally two days each way. The connecting sector from Fiji down to Auckland had been passed on to TEAL DC-6s some time earlier.

Ansett continued to run from Sydney to Lord Howe Island until 1974, when the airport opened at the latter, but this was a shorter run within the day. Even then they were not finished in scheduled service, as the Ansett aircraft were sold to Antilles Air Boats in the Caribbean, where they operated intermittently with the mainstream Grumman Goose fleet there, Antilles was owned by flying boat expert Charles Blair, with his Hollywood actress wife Maureen O'Hara, who occasionally acted as flight attendant on them. I believe that was their last scheduled operation.

Ansett also did a few charters, one was in 1963, a multi-day air cruise round the South Pacific in traditional style, first day was Sydney to Lord Howe Island, where they overnighted. Unfortunately the Short had not been adequately secured offshore, a wind sprang up in the night, and crew and passengers woke up next morning to find the aircraft across the bay, overturned on the rocks. There's photos of the event, including one of all looking speechless at the scene, here :

VH-BRE Short S-25 Sandringham Mk 4 (aussieairliners.org) (https://aussieairliners.org/shortfb/vh-bre/vhbre.html)