![]() The photo below left is one of the dining areas. The photo immediately on the left is one of the passenger compartments on the Boeing 314. The room provided today, especially in coach, is water-boarding torture compared with then. ![]() Since an Atlantic cross would take at least 25 hours, the view then was big seats that converted to berths. The Airplane Main Cabin: As soon as you walk in, you are stuck by how much room there was back in the day of pre-war flying. One item that cracked us up is the 1939 description of the use of alcohol by Pan Am personnel: One mural superimposes the profile of the B314 against the 747, to scale, showing that the length of the 314 goes from the nose of the 747 to mid-fuselage. The Museum: On display are murals, photos of seaplanes, photos of operations at Foynes, the movie and some models. Here’s a sort of blow-by-blow of the tour: But to recreate the Clipper, access was previously provided to Boeing blueprints and plans. Despite entrees since, Boeing has not provided any monetary assistance. Before this was fulfilled, 9/11 happened and Boeing withdrew the commitment. In 2001, the Museum obtained a commitment from Boeing for a donation of US$150,000. While not related directly to the airplane itself, the technology of the hologram is pretty darn impressive. This hologram is a short skit of a couple who have completed a Clipper flight entering a bar and ordering Irish coffee. The Museum also has a hologram, the first time we have seen one outside of Star Trek: The Next Generation–and, of course, that was only on TV and in the movies. We also saw the archives, with tens of thousands of documents a 15 minute movie in which the last flight out of Foynes as a commercial seaplane base was an American Export Airlines Sikorsky of the type restored and on display at the museum at Hartford-Windsor Locks (CT) murals, models and more. It’s opened only seasonally, but the operators were kind enough to open it for us, providing a one-on-one guided tour. Oddly, the roof over the ballroom is of the same design as that over the Denver International Airport. The building contained the waiting room and control tower for the operations, now converted to a restaurant, museum and related facilities. Shannon, Ireland, is to the far upper right out of view. They would moor to the right and passengers would be shuttled to the dock. Looking from the control tower at Foynes over the estuary where the flying boats landed. The Museum is located across the street from the docks where boats embarked and disembarked passengers from the Clippers, which would moor in the estuary at Foynes and downstream from Shannon. Here is the Foynes Flying Boat Museum, where there is a full size replica of the 314 fuselage, triple-tail plane and part of a wing. And when we went to Dublin on our recent trip, we make special plans to drive across lower Ireland to Foynes, three hours to the west, the port of entry and exit for Pan Am’s trans-Atlantic flying boat service. While we found the book somewhat slow-reading, the descriptions of the challenges facing ocean flying in a slow, pre-war aircraft certainly give you plenty of understanding of what flying was like then.īut we weren’t satisfied with Follett’s description. Follett weaves fact with fiction and this war-time mystery is no different. In addition to the usual histories and enthusiast books written about the 314, fiction writer Ken Follett penned one largely set on a westbound trans-Atlantic flight on the Clipper. This newsletter contains a wealth of history. Here’s one such effort announced in 2005. All 12 314s were destroyed or scrapped, yet there have been a couple of attempts to find a couple of the destroyed models–sunk in the Atlantic or Pacific–to recover and restore them. ![]() ![]() But the airliner nonetheless evokes fascination. We’re going to talk about another Boeing airliner, a classic airplane of which there were only 12 built and whose useful life was cut short by a World War: the 314, the famed Pan Am Flying Boat Clipper.Īs Classic as the 314 Clipper became in aviation history, Boeing’s website is remarkably brief about it.
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