The key man in the crew of a Constellation was the Flight Engineer.
Second half:
The old guy at the start of the first video was Eddie Rickenbacker, who at the time was the founder and president of Eastern Air Lines, well before Frank Lorenzo killed off the airline.
I think the Connies were about the most beautiful airliner ever flown.
We - what a great find. You're right about the Connie - absolutely pretty.
ReplyDeleteIt was great to see Arthur Godfrey too. he was an avid private pilot and I can remember when he got in the air half drunk and cussed out the tower crew at (Teterboro, I think). It was a national scandal because he was a national celebrity, and the story was front page news for several days.
Beautiful, but those big Wright R-3350's were always problematic. Cramming 18 air-cooled cylinders into two radial banks and making that much horsepower out of it all was pretty at the limits for what's possible with a piston engine. There's a reason why the turboprop-equipped Tu-95 is still flying today while the B-36, its contemporary, was cut up for scrap long ago (Yes, I know the B-36 had thePratt & Whitney R-4360 rather than the R-3350, the R-4360 was even more over-the-top). Once you're up to that size engine, a turbine is far more reliable.
ReplyDeleteIt always amazes me that people actually put their lives into these cantankerous tin cans. But they WERE pretty, even if the engines were the spawn of Satan...
-- Badtux the Flying Penguin
The B-36 was a far older design, they started work on those things in 1940 or `41. First flew in `45, the B-36 was a contemporary of the Connie and DC-4.
ReplyDeleteA retired airline captain I sort of know is fond of saying "pistons for play, turbines for work."