Pan Am Boeing 377 "Stratocruiser"-1950-Part l/lll

[dallatorretdu]

This is a very beautiful plane... what massive engines!

[niselat]

Credits: Robert Downey. As in Jr?

[Stephie2007]

@niselat i think Sr.

[christopherTsmith]

this is awesome thanks for the upload.

[VodkadAn]

That is one of the coolest and weirdest looking aircraft I've ever seen. I just think it looks phenomenal.

[colindhowell]

"... the 14,000 horsepower combination of her four engines--more power than it takes to drive a locomotive or an ocean liner." 14,000 hp was certainly more powerful than any locomotive--even today it would beat two of the largest diesel freight locomotives; only a few electrics come close. But it wasn't anywhere near ocean liner standards. Big liners were beating those levels by the 1890s; the Queen Mary of the 1930s had 160,000 hp, and the S.S. United States of the 1950s had 248,000 hp.

[JetRanger0007]

You can buy the Boeing 377 Strato-Cruiser at A2A Simulations for Microsoft Flight Simulator X version, with an optional expansion pack too very worth having in you Simulator quite complicated to fly too you really have to read the 122 page flight manua, just like flying the real McCo Awsum Propliner

[fs10inator]

"The peoples of the world"?!

[allenwong2]

They should've built more

[compdude100]

2:59 "The twin deck spaciousness designed for more than just elbow room..." Wow I wish they still designed planes with that in mind today!

[TheMaxx111]

That must have been expensive to fly back then.

[woodfern909]

Awesome video thanks Mcdonnell

[deetjay1]

Luckily, Boeing realized about 1955 that WW ll was actually over...LOL

[RJfan]

why would that plane need ground power? it's not a jet, it's a piston powered aircraft

[ketchyawl]

@RJfan Why would being piston engined negate the need for ground power?

[ketchyawl]

@RJfan One reason - imagine the amps it takes to turn over a 28 cylinder engine. That kind of battery would have been very heavy with 1940s technology and cut into freight, passenger, fuel, capacity.

[RJfan]

@ketchyawl ; I never did understand ground power, to be honest. I know a bit about aviation, but I know I've still got a LOT to learn in order to achieve my ATP license.

[antimatterXXXIII]

The ugliest airliner until replaced by La Whale, the A380.

[Zlin0035]

Thoes P&W Wasp Engines sound so goooood, why dont planes nowadays make a great sound? that said, The GE90-115B is quite a sound :D

[ConcordeCentral]

Goodness, did they not know about aerodynamics back then!

[ketchyawl]

@ConcordeCentral Huh? I don't understand what gives rise to that question.

[ConcordeCentral]

@ketchyawl It just looks so un aerodynamic with the nose and wings is all

[colindhowell]

@ConcordeCentral It was pretty aerodynamic for the speeds it flew at. Had to be for the ocean routes it was designed to fly. Of course aerodynamic calculations are very difficult, and they didn't have the benefit of the computers used to help us design today's aircraft.

[351460]

Are any of these aircraft still flying?

[TheHedgehogPilot]

@351460 no, due to safety fears, they all are kept in museum for people to watch.

[multicorncake]

I flew on one of these, back in the day.

[LexSp1]

grav-My mother, brothers and I were the first passengers down the emergency slide.Under the wing (it was raining buckets), we watched others coming down the slide. Down came a young girl, crying hysterically, her shorts bloodied. The story goes that a propellor entered the cabin, decapitated a man, his head falling on her lap. We didn't see this, however, there were broken dishes and suitcases flying everywhere and hitting passengers.

By the way, the plane was an awesome wat to travel.

[P8NTBALL60]

BOEING!!!!

[AgentPepsi1]

This thing doesn't seem to climb very fast, but it does look pretty glamorous.

[HuasoPodrido]

When I was stationed at Wainwright AAF in Alaska in the 1980's , the BLM had 2 of these still in use as fire bombers. Got to fly in them a few times. Smelly and shakey was my main memory. I guess by then the airframes were just worn out.

[phillyslasher]

It's amazing how times have changed so much. This video talks about how big the Boeing 377 was yet today, she's only the size of a 737!

[LexSp1]

Believe it or not. While watching this video I noticed that the name of the plane was the Clippen Golden Gate. In 1958 my family and I were on that very plane on a flight from San Francisco to Singapore with several stopovers along the way. While approaching Manilla and in a violent storm, the plane crashed landed off the side of the runway, demolishing the downstairs lounge.

[gcrav]

@LexSp1 You had the privilege of being in the last 377 crash before it was retired from passenger service. Any memory of the prop blade flying through the cabin? It killed one passenger. No such excitement on my 377 flight as an infant.

[LexSp1]

@gcrav 

[colindhowell]

@LexSp1 Interesting story. I was wondering if in fact it was the same plane (airlines sometimes swapped the same name among different planes), but the registration N1023V also matches, and that stays with a single aircraft.

[Doomsday2060]

I love all that pre space age colour footage

[irishimp2]

The First truly Intercontinental aircraft ever produced! The older DC- models still had to make a stop-over for refueling prior to transoceanic flights. Oh how I miss the days when you still heard the run-up of those piston engines down the street at Boeing's Renton Plant!

[CaptBubble]

A great and characterful airplane, but within a year of its first flight the British Viscount turbo prop was flying, and another year later turbojets were, and the era of giant piston prop-liners was coming to an end.

[percino1]

American expertise at it's best. Now...everything on the airplane is outsourced to some creepy Third World country.

[azimuth361]

Why is the ground crew wearing headgear? Can't do that today.

[DenisWasHere12]

yes u can....

[azimuth361]

Well, perhaps you're right, on civilian airports. I was thinking of military flightlines, that I see much more of and where the jets and turboprops are fairly sensitive to stray flying objects.

[aviationcenter]

even back then boeing planes where amazing and depandable

[redtag501]

The 377 was quite remarkable. I never got to fly in one but I saw any number of NW's at MDW and PDX back in the day. The supercharged engines, however, were a maintenance nightmare and were subject to having to be shut down in flight if oil ran low or spark plugs started missing. Still, they were a hit with passengers. NW was done with them after only twelve years or so.

[gamepro325]

boeing ftw

[lms264t]

Sometimes I think we need to go back to these fine aircraft.

[9T6Q]

yeah..

[psychoclown420]

that is one of my all time favorite planes

along with some old bombers like the b-36, xb-19 and xb-15

[UncleDuke1001]

Thanks for posting this series, all three parts are great and well worth the time and efort to view

so many people assume that how it is now is the way it always was, this is the airline travel i remember from my youth, things have changed, not always for the better

[tchapman1977]

I agree. The commercial aviation world is worse off without Pan Am & TWA plying the skies. Even near the end after airline de-regulation, service was still far better with those two than even the best airline operating today. I never did get the pleasure of flying Pan Am having lived in St. Louis, but I flew TWA everywhere & it truly was a wonderful airline w/wonderful employees. Too bad Carl Icahn got his dirty hands on TWA & ran it into the ground.

[redslownight]

*gulp* Erm...you mean....the props went threw the cabin? o.o

Cutting people....and falling out of the sky?

[colindhowell]

@redslownight The props on 377s were unusually vulnerable to throwing their blades. Two 377s were lost probably because a prop threw a blade and the now unbalanced engine tore itself from the wing. The first went down in the Amazon in 1952, killing all aboard. The other was ditched off of Oregon in 1955; most of the people survived. After that the government issued an advisory to replace the hollow steel propeller blades with solid ones.

[colindhowell]

@redslownight One more 377 was lost between San Francisco and Honolulu in 1957 for reasons unknown; might have been blade failure, might have been something else. The only other 377 to go down in the Pacific had an engine failure, but not blade failure. As for a failed blade going through the cabin, there's no record of that in the 377, though it has definitely happened in other planes. Blade failure is a huge safety threat for propeller aircraft, so it is very closely guarded against.

[niselat]

@colindhowell It happened when a 377 overshot the runway at Midway

[colindhowell]

@niselat I think I found the accident report for this case in Embry-Riddle's online safety archives: Northwest Flight 410, August 5, 1955. From the report (3rd page, top paragraph), the fuselage was indeed slashed open (fortunately, no one was injured), but not by a failed prop blade. After the plane overran the runway, it crashed through a chain-link fence which got tangled in the props, and the tangled *fence* slashed the fuselage. Still pretty hairy if you were there, though!

[indyme2]

@colindhowell My father went down in that plane. He loved to fly Stratocruisers.

[pepito060666]

I have 42y and I feel nostalgia also about how simple easy and happy this men work , no terrorism, people well educated, and all personal very professional. How times change  wow.

Thanks for this video.

[DEP717]

Was this the plane in "The Crowded Sky?"

[mcdonnell220]

DC-7 in "The Crowded Sky", :-)

Chris

[mcdonnell220]

Correction: DC-6B in "The Crowded Sky".

D'oh!!

[clipper377]

Great nostalgia trip on my favorite plane!

[XB70Playboy]

I read that FiFi, the worlds last flying B-29, is wearing an old pair of B-377 wings. They shared the same wings.

[kizitoutube]

The Stratocruiser was a transport version of the B-29/B-50. If I recall properly, it first appeared as the military C-97, then they developed the civil version.

The lower deck, wings and tail were originally all B-29, but the tail was revised and enlarged, ending up more like the one on the B-50. The engine nacelles are also from the B-50.

I was hoping that Boeing would give the 787 a 'Strato' name too but alas this did not come to pass :-(

[ywe3]

@kizitoutube almost the plane first flew in the late 30's and the military caught on to the idea of using her to bomb germany from the us mainland thus we get the B-29/50