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Don Boyd | all galleries >> Memories of Old Hialeah, Old Miami and Old South Florida Photo Galleries - largest non-Facebook collection on the internet >> Miami and Florida AVIATION Historical Photos Gallery - Airports, Airlines, Aircraft - All Years - click on image to view >> Historical Pan American Airways System and Pan American World Airways Photo Gallery - click on image to enter > 1940s - Passengers on a Pan American Boeing 307 Stratoliner
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1940s Florida State Archives

1940s - Passengers on a Pan American Boeing 307 Stratoliner

Inflight


From the state archives: "First of Pan American World Airways four-motored airliners with sleeping compartments was the Boeing 307 with still another innovation - the pressurized cabin. Built for added comfort, the clipper was equipped to carry 33 passengers in day flights and 25 at night. Full course meals were served, and dressing rooms were smartly decorated. The cockpits were spacious and outfitted with the most modern equipment befitting the first of the high altitude passenger airliners in the world. Powered by four 1100 horsepower Wright Cyclone engines, the Boeing 307 had a wing span of 107 feet; a length of 74 feet; an overall height of 20 feet, and a gross weight of 45,000 pounds."

The B307 flew at 220 mph, had a range of 1250 miles. Pan American only ordered three of these aircraft in 1937 and each aircraft cost $315,000.

Eleanor Roosevelt christened the first B307 with a bottle of water garnered from all the world's Seven Seas. The first Boeing 307 flew December 31, 1938.



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Mark Lincoln 10-Nov-2016 13:10
The Boeing 307 was operated initially by Pan Am and TWA. Most ended up in South East Asia in the 1950s-60s. One disappeared in the 1960s while enroute to Hanoi fling for the International Control Commission. Two Boeing 307s survive but only one is intact. The intact airplane is in the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The other was owned by Howard Hughes after WWII converted to a luxury business plant called the "Flying Penthouse. It was damaged by a hurricane in the late 1960s at Fort Lauderdale. It was converted to a houseboat and is operated as the Cosmic Muffin. It was the inspiration for Jimmy Buffett's "Desdemonas Building a Rocket Ship Lyrics."