In the event of a water landing ...

Here is a web site devoted to the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser.

It features numerous photos, drawings, and contemporaneous magazine articles and brochures about the airplane.

The part I found especially interesting was the reprinting of the chapter "Lady With a Past" from the book "Ernest K Gann's Flying Circus," in which Mr Gann humorously points out what a troublesome and expensive airplane the Stratocruiser was. You will find that chapter under the "Articles" tab on the site. I had forgotten that a lot of Stratocruisers wound up in the water, including one that went into Puget Sound shortly after takeoff from SeaTac, almost always due to engine problems.

When I was fairly new at Boeing in the early 1980s, working at the wind tunnel on East Marginal Way with a desk offering a fine view of the Boeing Field runway, there was a period of about a year or two when a number of surviving KC-97s frequently flew in and out of the airport. The KC-97 was the military cargo/tanker version of the Stratocruiser. The ones I saw were still in USAF paint, although I am pretty sure they were not still in active service. I knew at the time what they were doing at Boeing Field, but have forgotten. They were beasts.

Anyway, I found all this information after reading about the QANTAS 747 that lost all electric power the other day due to coffee grounds in a galley drain and was in some danger -- no kidding, coffee grounds -- and started reading about planes that went into the water. The QANTAS plane had thirty minutes' worth of backup batteries and used about fifteen of them getting to the ground, but if they had been out over the ocean and lost all electric power, well, it would have taken some fine aviating to get safely back on the ground.

Posted: Thu - January 10, 2008 at 01:52 PM

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In the event of a water landing ...

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