Hi, I’m the History Guy, I have a degree in history and I love history,
and if you love history too well then this is the channel for you. On January 15th 2009,
US Airways flight 1549 under the command of Captain Chesley Sullenberger was forced to
ditch in the Hudson River after engine failure, making international headlines and turning Captain
Sully into an international hero. But US Air 1549 was not by any means the first passenger aircraft
that was forced to ditch in the ocean, and in fact in the era before jet engines it was more common,
and there was a particular instance in 1956 where a passenger plane had to ditch in much
more terrifying circumstances and it is definitely a story worth remembering,
and that is why today the History Guy remembers the story of Pan American flight six. The Boeing
377 Stratocruiser began flying commercial routes in 1949. It was a state-of-the-art aircraft for
its time, it had for example, a pressurized cabin which was rare for passenger aircraft at the time.
It was powered by four massive 28 cylinder Pratt & Whitney radial engines. It could be configured
for as many as eighty five passengers but was more often configured to have sleeping berths.
Only fifty-five Stratocruisers were manufactured. The first airline to purchase the Strato cruiser
was Pan American Airways and the first route that they flew was between Honolulu and San Francisco,
although the Stratocruiser was used to fly long-haul routes all over the world. It was
a plane known for luxurious travel, but it was also expensive to operate. On October 16th 1956,
the Pan American Boeing 377 Stratocruiser named Clipper Sovereign of the Skies,
took off from Honolulu bound for San Francisco at 8:26 p.m. with an expected flight time of 8 hours
and 54 minutes. The plane had 24 passengers and 7 crew and was commanded by Captain Richard N. Ogg,
an experienced pilot with over 13,000 hours of flight time gained over 20 years of service. The
plane reached a cruising altitude of 13,000 feet and traveled for four and a half hours without
incident, just crossing the midpoint, or point of no return on the route. It was then that the crew
made a scheduled increase in altitude to 21,000 feet and that's when the trouble began. When the
plane reached the right altitude the copilot throttled back the engines for cruising speed,
but the engine on the far left refused to throttle back, instead it faced something called prop
governor failure and started over spinning. Literally the engine was running so fast that
it ran the risk that it would tear itself apart. The crew cut off the supply of oil to the engine
allowing the engine to cease but the propeller kept spinning in the wind which was causing drag,
that meant that the other three engines had to work harder for the plane to maintain altitude
and that caused the engine on the far right to start to sputter, and it also had to be cut off.
Halfway between San Francisco and Honolulu the aircraft lost two of its four engines,
in less than ten minutes. The plane dipped, waking the sleeping passengers in their berths.
The plane could fly with two engines but at much reduced speed and the crew realized the crisis,
they no longer had enough fuel at that speed to reach San Francisco or to get back to Hawaii.
In the passenger compartment the PA buzzed, it was Captain Ogg, he told them there might be the
possibility of a ditching, please put on your life jackets, strap on your safety belts and remove
sharp objects from your pockets. The cabin crews started talking to the passengers about what to
do in a ditching, the passengers were terrified but nobody panicked. The aircrew knew that the
risks of ditching in the ocean were magnified at night when the pilot could not observe the
ocean and its swells, so they quickly worked out the best plan that they could. The United
States Coast Guard kept a cutter on station at a place called Point November, which was midway
between Hawaii and California. The purpose of the cutter was to do weather observation and provide
navigational assistance to airplanes and ships. And The Sovereign of the Skies had just passed
over the Cutter when it started having its engine problems. The Cutter that was on station that day
was the US Coast Guard Cutter Pontchartrain, under the command of Commander W. K. Earle. Ogg radioed
the Pontchartrain and said that the Sovereign of the Skies would fly back to the Pontchartrains
location where they could ditch close to rescue. Once they were circling the Pontchartrain the
crew calculated that they had enough fuel left to circle until daylight which would greatly improve
their chances in a water landing. Imagine what it was like for the passengers, they knew the plane
was going to crash but now they had to sit and circle in the dark for five hours before that was
going to happen. The crew went over instructions on what to do and got volunteers to help with
the life rafts while on the Pontchartrain they put together the plan to rescue the passengers.
In those days the Coast Guard regularly practiced ditching drills. The Purser on the flight, who is
the head of the cabin crew, was Patricia Reynolds and she had over ten years experience with the
airline. She remembered that there had been an accident a year previously with another aircraft
and in the landing that tail had been torn off and so she moved the passengers to the center of the
plane. There were twin eighteen-month-old girls on board with their parents and that was a problem as
the plane did not have safety belts their size, and so they did the best they could. They put
the girls in the parents' laps and spread pillows around them. At daylight the Pontchartrain laid
down a layer of foam on the ocean that would show the safest place to land and would prevent a fire
from the fuel. Captain Ogg took the plane down but almost immediately the worst happened, the
left wing hit an ocean swell that spun the plane around violently, tore off the tail, damaged the
nose. One of the crew members of the Pontchartrain remembered looking at the wreckage and thinking
no one could survive that. But passengers started climbing out of the wrecked fuselage and inflating
the plane's rafts, the Coast Guard raced to their rescue. The entire rescue took less
than five minutes and the last two people off the plane were Captain Ogg and Purser Reynolds.
Miraculously all the passengers and crew were safe and accounted for with only minor injuries. Less
than 20 minutes after ditching, the Sovereign of the Skies sunk beneath the waves, had they
crash-landed anywhere but right next to a ship that was ready to rescue them, it could have been
much worse. The passengers completed the trip to San Francisco on board the Pontchartrain. The Navy
tried to horn in and send an aircraft carrier for them but the Coast Guard was having none of it.
Pan Am thanked the crew of the Pontchartrain by giving each and every member of the crew a bottle
of fine whiskey. The Stradacruisers actually had a good safety record for their time but they
were eventually replaced by jet engines, and jet aircraft are not just faster but more reliable,
and of course as US Air flight 1549 proves, accidents still can happen with jet engines.
And while the two accidents are really very different, Captain Sullenberger had moments to
make a decision but was very near civilization, Captain Ogg had hours to make decisions but
was truly in the middle of nowhere. What really happened in both cases is that the flight crews,
who must have been terrified themselves but never showed it, kept their heads in a crisis.
And because that their passengers survived, and that makes them by any definition heroes. Heroes
worth remembering. I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this addition to my series, five
minutes of history, short snippets of forgotten history five to ten minutes long, and if you did
please go ahead and click that thumbs up button that's on your left. If you have any questions
or comments feel free to write them in the comment section and I will be happy to respond, and if you
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