Airliner Ditches at Sea, All Live

52 years before the USAirways Airbus landed in the Hudson River, Pan American Clipper Sovereign of the Skies, a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser operating as Pan Am flight 934, left Honolulu on schedule at 8:26PM en route to San Francisco.  The leg from Hawaii to the mainland of the United States is the longest overwater stretch without alternate landing sites in the world.

Shortly after passing the Equal Time Point, that spot in the flight where the time to San Francisco or back to Honolulu was the same, Clipper 934 climbed to 21,000 feet.  Just as the first officer, George Haaker, throttled back the engines for the new cruise segment the number one engine, the outermost engine on the airplane’s left wing, began to overspeed.  Unable to control the RPM, the crew elected to shut down the engine and “feather” the propeller.  To feather a prop, the blades are rotated so that they are presented edge-on to the slipstream, thus minimizing drag.  But the propeller would not feather so Captain Richard Ogg elected to shut off the oil supply to the engine.  As predicted the engine soon seized.  The propeller, however, did not stop spinning as Ogg planned.  Its gearbox had sheared away from the engine allowing the propeller to continue to spin like a windmill.  This condition created a tremendous amount of drag on the aircraft.

The Stratocruiser slowed to an airspeed below 150 knots and began to descend at 1,000 feet per minute.  Capt. Ogg selected climb power on the remaining three engines in an attempt to arrest the descent.  But as he did the number four Pratt & Whitney engine, the one outermost on the right wing, also began to fail!  Ogg had no choice but to shut down that engine and successfully feather the propeller.

Now, operating on only two engines, the crew calculated that the airplane at its reduced speed and with the increased drag and associated higher fuel burn, did not have enough gasoline to reach San Francisco … or return to Hawaii.   At three o’clock in the morning Capt. Ogg faced the next set of decisions in the crisis.

In those days before satellite weather and computer aided navigation, the U.S. Coast Guard maintained a ship on station roughly halfway from the mainland and Hawaii.  Called “Station November,” the USCGC Pontchartrain, provided overflying aircraft with a beacon  for a navigation fix and updated mid-ocean weather reports.

Homing in on Pontchartrain, Capt. Ogg told the ship’s captain that he planned to ditch his airplane in the ocean as close to the ship as possible.  He would, however, orbit the coast guard cutter until after daylight.  Seeing the condition of the sea was a vital part of a successful ocean landing.  Or so went the theory.

Flying longer would also burn off fuel, reducing the chance of fire upon landing and give the crew ample time to prepare the aircraft and 24 passengers for the landing.  Being lighter on fuel would also make the aircraft more buoyant.  Assuming, of course, that it did not break up upon striking the water.

For almost three hours Sovereign of the Skies circled the coast guard ship at 2,000 feet.  The purser secured loose objects and moved the passengers toward the front of the airplane.  Just the year before, on May 26, 1955, the Pan American Stratocruiser Clipper United States ditched in the Pacific just 35 miles off the Oregon coast on its way to Hawaii.  In that landing the tail had broken off upon landing.  The same thing also happened just a few months later.  On April 2, 1956 a Northwest Orient Airlines Statocruiser ditched in the Puget Sound.  Its tail separated, too.

In 1956 there were no special procedures for children on board airliners.  The purser instructed the parents of two babies to place the children on laps and put pillows between the babies and the seats ahead.

At 5:40AM, Captain Ogg told the Coast Guard that he was getting ready to ditch.  The Pontchartrain deposited a foam path on the water to suggest to the airliner captain the best heading for the ditching and to give him an aid to judge his height above the sea.  The Pan American Boeing made one practice run and then, at 6:15 the airplance descended and touched down at 90 knots with flaps full down and the landing gear retracted.

As feared, one wing touched an ocean swell causing the aircraft to twist.  The torque caused major damage to the nose section.  And like the other Stratocruisers, the tail of Sovereign of the Skies tail broke off.  The crew deployed three life rafts.  One failed to inflate properly.  The people in that raft were quickly taken aboard Pontchartrain’s life boats.   All 31 people on board the airliner survived and taken aboard the Coast Guard ship.

The Coast Guard captain reported the last piece of the airliner sank at 6:35AM.

There were no serious injuries.  One of the children, an 18 month old girl, was knocked unconscious, but she soon recovered and suffered no lasting problems.

Several days later Pontchartrain delivered the Pan American passengers and crew to San Francisco.

In 1991, while Captain Ogg lay on his death bed, his daughter said that she noticed a “far off look in his eyes.”  Asking him about his thoughts, he said he was thinking about the accidents fatalities.  Captain always regretted he could not save the two dogs and hundreds of canaries stowed in the hold of the Stratocruiser which sank to the bottom of the sea.