Boeing 377

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boeing 377
Boeing 377 Stratocruiser
Boeing 377 Stratocruiser
Type: Long-haul aircraft
Design country:

United StatesUnited States United States

Manufacturer:

Boeing

First flight:

July 8, 1947

Production time:

1947 to 1950

Number of pieces:

56

The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a long-haul passenger aircraft built by Boeing from 1947 to 1950 with a capacity of 55 to 117 people in a pressurized cabin . With its double-deck fuselage, it was a kind of jumbo jet from the 1950s. A total of 56 pieces were built.

The Boeing 377 was based on the military cargo plane Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter , which in turn had been developed from the long-range bomber B-29 Superfortress and its further development, the B-50 .

construction

The Stratocruiser was a Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter that had been redesigned for civil traffic . When it was first introduced into regular service, the Stratocruiser was one of the largest passenger aircraft. The wings were almost unchanged from the successful Boeing B-29 bomber , as were the tail unit and landing gear.

The plane was 28-cylinder four major quadruple radial engines of the manufacturer Pratt & Whitney (each 3,500 hp) via four-blade propeller driven. The Strato Cruiser reached as the B-29 h at a maximum speed of 604 km / had a climb rate of 5.5 meters per second and a maximum range of about 8,500 kilometers. The summit height was 10,000 meters.

use

Pan Am Boeing 377 at Heathrow

The most important buyer of the Stratocruiser was the American airline Pan Am (which opted for opulent furnishings with 72 seats and a bar for about eight people on the lower deck), but also Northwest Airlines , United Airlines , American Overseas Airlines and the British BOAC and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) ordered this sample. Despite its technical qualities, the machine was not a great commercial success: the group was only able to sell 56 copies. The SAS order was canceled and the four machines intended for it were delivered to the BOAC. The aircraft was still too big for the circumstances at the time, and the luxury equipment that Pan Am was currently offering for wealthy passengers, as in the flying boat era before the war, was no longer in keeping with the times. Instead, competing models like the Constellation series from Lockheed and the DC-6 and DC-7 from Douglas shaped long-haul civil aviation in the 1950s. They could be operated more cheaply, making air travel affordable to a larger audience. The production of the Stratocruiser therefore had to be stopped in March 1950.

A guppy from the Aero Spacelines

Nevertheless, some pioneering feats were accomplished with the Stratocruiser . For the first time, non-stop connections were flown eastwards from New York to London . The speed record for this route was set in April 1949 with nine hours and 46 minutes. In a westerly direction, because of the main wind direction, refueling still had to be done in Gander or Shannon .

For the first time, regular Pacific connections were established from San Francisco to Honolulu , which also lasted more than nine hours (for Pan Am this was only one leg of a round-the-world flight). Northwest Airlines used these machines to serve the inner-American route Seattle - New York in just over six hours of flight time.

The weak point of this aircraft proved to be the very sophisticated engines with their failure-prone propellers of the Hamilton Standard type , which occasionally also led to serious incidents. A total of ten Stratocruisers were lost through crashes, crash landings or ditching, with almost 18 percent of the units built, an unusually high rate.

BOAC retired its 14 Boeing 377s in 1958. The planes were taken over by Transocean Air Lines . Pan Am used the pattern until 1961. Some machines of this type were converted by Aero Spacelines on behalf of NASA into guppy aircraft with an extremely large fuselage diameter that transported rocket parts. Others were modified to the Super Guppy Turbine variant , some of which transported large aircraft parts for Airbus .

Incidents

Ditching the Boeing 377 on Pan-Am flight 6

A total of eleven machines were destroyed from the first flight in 1947 to the end of the mission in 1978, with a total of 140 fatalities between 1951 and 1958. Full list:

  • On September 12, 1951, a United Air Lines Boeing 377 ( aircraft registration number N31230 ) crashed into San Francisco Bay. One engine had been shut down on the test flight; the machine crashed on approach to the San Francisco airport due to a stall from a height of 100 meters. All three crew members on board were killed.
  • On April 29, 1952, the worst accident of a Boeing 377 occurred when a plane belonging to the US Pan American World Airways (N1039V) crashed into the Brazilian jungle on its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Port of Spain . All 50 passengers and crew members were killed (see also Pan-Am flight 202 ) .
  • On March 26, 1955, engine no.3 of a Pan Am Boeing 377 (N1032V) tore off. The crew succeeded in ditching about 35 miles off the coast of Oregon . 4 of the 23 occupants were killed in the accident.
  • On April 2, 1956, a Boeing 377 operated by Northwest Airlines (N74608) suffered severe vibrations after the landing flaps were retracted shortly after take-off from Seattle-Tacoma Airport ( USA ). The altitude could no longer be maintained, and a ditching was carried out in the Puget Sound bay , almost 9 kilometers southwest of the departure airport. About 15 minutes later the plane sank. Of the 38 occupants, 5 were killed, 1 crew member and 4 passengers.
  • On October 16, 1956, the pilots of a Pan Am Boeing 377 (N90943) had to make an emergency landing on the route between Honolulu and San Francisco in the Pacific after two engines had failed. With the engine failing, it was clear that the fuel would not be enough to reach San Francisco or back to Honolulu. Before it landed, the plane circled a US Coast Guard ship until dawn to consume fuel and reduce landing weight. All 31 people on board survived (see also Pan-Am flight 6 ) .
  • On November 8, 1957, a Pan Am Boeing 377 (N90944) with 44 people on board had an accident on the route from San Francisco to Honolulu about 1,600 kilometers east of Hawaii . Six days after the accident, ships found some floating debris and corpses. The wreck was not found. The cause of the accident remained unclear (see also Pan-Am flight 7 ) .
  • On June 2, 1958, the landing gear of a Pan Am Boeing 377 (N1023V) collapsed while landing at Manila Airport ( Philippines ) . The aircraft continued to slide, swung to the right, and came to a stop about 8 meters to the right of the runway after 870 meters. One of the 57 occupants was killed when a propeller blade struck the passenger cabin. The aircraft was totaled.
  • On April 10, 1959, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 377 (N1033V) coming from Seattle-Tacoma Airport touched down in front of the runway threshold when landing at Juneau Airport ( Alaska ) and collided with an embankment. The machine caught fire and was destroyed, but all 10 occupants survived (five passengers and five crew members).
  • In August 1967 (exact date unknown) an Aero Spacelines Boeing 377 (N90942) collided with another Boeing 377 (N402Q) while taxiing at Mojave Airfield ( California , USA ) . People were not harmed. The machine was totaled.

Technical specifications

cockpit
cabin
Parameter Data
crew 3-4
Passengers 55-117
length 33.63 m
span 43.05 m
height 11.66 m
Wing area 164.34 m²
Empty mass 37,875 kg
Takeoff mass 66,134 kg
Cruising speed 547 km / h
Top speed 604 km / h
Service ceiling 9750 m
Range 6760 km
Engines four air-cooled 28-cylinder quadruple radial engines Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major, each with 3,500 hp (approx. 2,600 kW)

See also

Web links

Commons : Boeing 377  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter M Bowers : Boeing Aircraft since 1916. Putnam Aeronautical Books, London 1989, ISBN 0-85177-804-6 , pp. 365-371.
  2. ^ Bowers, p. 366.
  3. ^ Aviation Safety Network, list of accidents involving the Boeing 377 aviation-safety.net
  4. ↑ List of accidents with Boeing 377 Stratocruiser , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on October 22, 2019.
  5. ↑ Air-Britain Archive: Casualty compendium part 53 (English), June 1994, pp. 94/53.
  6. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N31230 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 27 August 2017th
  7. ^ Accident report B-377 G-ALSA , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on December 10, 2018.
  8. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N1032V , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 10 December 2018th
  9. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N74608 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on February 18 2020th
  10. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N90943 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 27 August 2017th
  11. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkR4F3_fEUQ&feature=player_embedded ! Video of the landing and rescue operations
  12. ↑ Air-Britain Archive: Casualty compendium part 68 (English), March 1998, pp. 98/26.
  13. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N90944 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 27 August 2017th
  14. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N1023V , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on February 18 2020th
  15. ↑ Accident report B-377 N1033V , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on August 5, 2019.
  16. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N90941 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on February 18 2020th
  17. ^ Tony Eastwood, John Roach: Piston Engine Airliner Production List . West Drayton: The Aviation Hobby Shop, 1996, ISBN 0 907 178 61 8 , p. 38.
  18. ↑ Accident Report B-377 N90942 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on February 18 2020th
  19. ↑ Model 377 Stratocruiser. In: History. Boeing, 2017, accessed January 14, 2018 .
List of civil aircraft types made by Boeing


Propeller aircraft:

1 • 40 • 50 • 73 • 75 • 80 • 200 • 221 • 247 • 307 • 314 • 377

Jet aircraft:

707 • 717 • 727 • 737 • 747 • 757 • 767 • 777 • 787 • BBJ

Test aircraft, projects and studies:

367 • 7J7 • NMA • 2707 • Pelican ULTRA • Sonic Cruiser • X-40 • X-43 • X-48 • X-53 • Y1 • Y2 • Y3