Quote:
Originally Posted by chuckinca
Flew on the real airplane (DC-6B) from Travis AFB, CA to Saigon, RVN in 1966.
39 hours in the air. Travis to Honolulu to Wake Island (still had a wrecked zero on the beach near the Japanese bunkers) to Clark AFB in Manila to Ton Son Nhut in Saigon. All on three engines - we would take off with 4 and about 2 hours into the flight 1 would die. Each stop they got all four running again but not for long. Saturn Airways contract carrier.
On the return a year later was on a 707 that made the flight in 17 hours in the air with one stop in Japan.
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The airplane used in most of the scenes of
The High and the Mighty-- except the scenes at the end on the runway-- later disappeared. From Wikipedia's article on
The High and the Mighty
"...ironically a decade after its appearance in the motion picture this same aircraft suffered a similar engine fire during an overnight trans-Pacific flight and was lost with no survivors. At 8:47 PM (HST) on March 27, 1964, N4726V took off on a charter flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles with a crew of three and six passengers on board. A few minutes before 6 AM (PST), eight hours into the anticipated 11 hour, 40 minute flight, a Mayday call from the pilot was heard reporting the flight's position as about 700 miles west of San Francisco with a serious fire in engine #2 (left inboard), and saying that "...we may have to put it in" (aviation jargon for ditching in the ocean). No further transmissions were heard."