Boeing 314 Overnight to Hawaii

[bean]

Originally Posted by treadigraph

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by DHfan

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]

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]

This site doesn't solve the mystery, but there are some interesting photos:

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

[chevvron]

Originally Posted by DHfan

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]

Originally Posted by megan

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]

Originally Posted by chevvron

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]

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]

Those were the days, not one blue singlet, flip flops or tattoos insight.

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by Wheezygeezer

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)