The Coast Guard Sank This Airliner on Purpose

On 14 October 1947, a Boeing 314 flying boat called the Bermuda Sky Queen was crawling across the North Atlantic at 59 knots into a headwind of more than 60. There were 69 people on board. The airliner was overloaded, the point of no return had passed unnoticed in the night, and its 26-year-old captain had one option left: turn back 300 miles and land on the open ocean beside a Coast Guard weather ship. All 69 survived. And then the Coast Guard sank the airliner with gunfire. Nine years earlier, the Boeing 314 had been the most luxurious airliner ever built — dining salon, sleeping berths, a bridal suite, and crawlspaces in the wings so engineers could repair engines in flight. It carried Churchill home and Roosevelt to Casablanca. This is the story of how all twelve were lost — and how the last owners of the finest airliner in the world asked too much of it. Did you, or someone in your family, cross the ocean on a flying boat or serve on the weather ships? Tell us in the comments. 00:00 Fifty-nine knots 02:40 Pan Am's Atlantic gamble 04:10 A hotel with wings 05:40 The flying boats go to war 06:35 The Lisbon crash 07:15 Why the flying boat became obsolete 08:05 Into the wrong hands 09:00 The last flight of the Bermuda Sky Queen 10:00 The chart nobody kept 10:50 Too heavy, too much wind 12:45 Ocean Station Charlie 14:05 Landing on the Atlantic 15:00 The rescue 16:10 Why they sank it 17:05 What the investigation found 18:10 What happened to all twelve Sources: CAB accident report, NC18612 (Bermuda Sky Queen): https://rbogash.com/NC18612%20Acciden... "Ocean Stations Saved Lives", Naval History magazine (USNI), June 2009: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-... Boeing 314 Clipper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_...