The Long Way Home

[John Beaman]

An interesting video based on an incident that you may not know about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms84WfJwalI

I asked the book's author about two items in the video:

1. How did PanAm know about the pending attack in order to put a "secret envelope" in the Captain's possession: His reply:

From Chapter 1, titled "For Captain's Eyes Only": page 16:


"Ford reached for his thick black leather flight case, unsnapped the latch and withdrew the pre-flight checklist. Then he removed a flat, sealed envelope and carefully placed it in the inside breast pocket of his uniform jacket. As he did so, White glanced over and noticed that the envelope had large black cryptic letters stamped on it. “PLAN A – TOP SECRET – FOR CAPTAIN’S EYES ONLY”. Ford had been handed the envelope by the flight dispatcher in the operations office only a few minutes earlier.
"For the last couple of months Pan American’s top management had been working with Army and Navy brass to formulate a contingency plan in the possible eventuality of the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan. Pan Am’s fleet of large flying boats, providing as they would, essential aerial transport capacity in the Pacific, would present a tempting target for either capture or destruction by Japanese forces. Without knowing precisely where or when hostilities might begin, it was necessary to keep the plan flexible, up-to-date, and very top secret. Even so, it had become a source of common hangar flying talk among the flight crews that each flight leaving the mainland had, as a routine part of its pre-flight documentation, this flat, thin, legal-size envelope containing secret instructions as to what course of action to follow when – and the emphasis was on WHEN, not on if – the Japanese attacked.
"As each captain arrived at the dispatch office on Treasure Island he was handed one of the envelopes for which he had to sign off on a special log. It was then his responsibility to ensure the security of that document for the duration of his flight assignment, returning it unopened to Dispatch if nothing had happened to require revealing its contents."


That envelope contained detailed instructions about what course of action to take when the word came that war had begun. It could have started at any time during the flight or not at all; in which case the Clipper would have returned in a normal manner to San Francisco. It just so happened that the Clipper was two hours out of Auckland on the last outbound leg of the flight when they got word of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. If the attack had occurred any earlier or any later than December 7th, the secret instructions were flexible enough to provide appropriate instructions for diversion which may not have included a flight around the world. In any case, Ford followed his instructions and the rest, as they say, is history!

2. If an engine "exploded" over India did they have only three engines for the remainder of the flight? The author's reply:

"The term “engine exploded” requires a bit of explanation. Thirty minutes after takeoff from Karachi the number 3 engine blew a cylinder. They shut down the number 3 engine and returned to Karachi. They had spare parts on board which included a spare cylinder, so the engineers replaced it (the engines were 14 cylinder Wright Cyclone radial engines configured in two rows of 7 cylinders each) and they continued on their way after a delay of a couple of days to repair the damaged engine. This is all explained in detail in the book."

Just goes to show how filmakers short-circuit the truth in order to fit some format or perceived story line. However, a good story.

[CJE]

Never mind, John.
That's a story I had little heard of.
Thanks for this posting.