Gentleman
The Douglas C-47B (Serial number 43-48415) ferried across the Pacific by Capt. Vander Wert in 1968 was bult by Douglas at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This airframe was deliverd to the USAAF in August 1944 and sent to Indo-China in 1955. It spent several years in open storage at Davis-Monthan AFB after returning to the US in 1968, and was believed to be earmarked for scrapping.
Here the original flight-route:
Day 1 September 19, 1968
Clark AFB, Philippines to Anderson AFB, Guam. Flight time: 9 hours, 8 mins
Day 2 September 22, 1968
Anderson AFB, Guam to Wake Island. Flight time: 9 hours, 20 mins
Day 3 September 23, 1968
Wake Island to Midway. Flight time: 6 hours, 20 mins
Day 4 September 24, 1968
Midway to Hickam AFB, Hawaii. Flight time: 7 hours, 40 mins
Day 5 September 25/26, 1968
Hickam AFB, Hawaii to McClellan AFB, California. Flight time: 15 hours
Here is the story of this amazing ferry flight in different chapters flown in FSX. It needed some work to go back into to the sixties!
So lets go for Day 1 September 19, 1968
Clark AFB, Philippines to Anderson AFB, Guam. Flight time: 9 hours, 5 mins
"The law of gravity is not a general rule. Fuel in the tanks is limited, but gravity is forever. To be sure, there are more planes in the ocean than submarines in the sky."
We finally departed Clark en route to Anderson, Guam ..
.. on September 19, at a leisurely 145kts and 7,000ft altitude.
Basically, the first hour was map reading, with..
.. with tiny Omalig Island our final coast-out point.
Ocean beckoned as we set our sights for Guam. Ahead, lots of water.
A remarkable three hours out, I picked up a reliable ADF bearing from Anderson.
Hey, this subsonic island-hopping might not be so bad after all.
We arrived Anderson AFB..
.. without any incident..
.. in 9 hours, 5 mins.
Sitting in a noisy aluminium tube can be fatiguing, so we were happy to bed down and get ready for the next leg!
