Warbird Information Exchange

So I take it then you didn't stick around to see the sequence filmed at Republic Airport?

With the AAM's C-47 as set dressing and the DC-7B firing up belching smoke and taxiing out. Nice night shot! It's pretty cool to see the ramp where your plane is normally tied down on the screen!

Horrible in every way except looking at pretty young stews..................they are not flight attendants, even the purser is a gal.

Agreed, apart from the stews, not much to see here.

But I did enjoy the scene with the DC-7B in "Cuba" when the brit stew was getting a metric a**ton of oil on her crisp white blouse when standing on the airstairs. I thought to myself, "That's no studio windblower there, as it doesn't get more real than that!" Anyone else notice that?

I wanted to see them taxi out with the stairway still pused up against the door!

Let's see, what I watched featured a flight deck crew of party animal 30 somethings who were jovial and buddy buddy with the entire crew flying a new route in a totally new type of airplane. Pan Am would have put the three crustiest, oldest, most senior fossilized Captains in that flight deck, the kind of guys who smiled and looked at ease when their hemorrhoids were raging and who treated every other flight crew member junior to them like cabin boys on a sailing ship. The first officer jumps up to 'christen the lav' and no one else puts on an 02 mask. I loved the 2 inch thick cabin door with no visable hinges and no slide pack and the operating handle mounted @ eye level.
At that point my gag reflex started to kick in, good thing I watched what I did on hulu this morning and didn't stay up for that big stinker!

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

sounds like my crystal ball called this new show, i missed the first episode, but i figured it would lay an egg.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I guess I was alone in liking it. It reminded me of a time when flying somewhere on an airliner was an adventure. When seeing an airline Capt was like seeing a movie star. It brought back a time when we could actually go to the gates in the airport and watch airplanes. The airport was not some building locked up like a SAC base. It reminded me of a time when my folks would take me out to the airport as a kid and we would watch airliners take off. As we approached Pittsburgh Airport from the Moon Twp. are the first thing you would see was the verticle of a Pan Am 747 sticking up like a huge flag welcoming you to the airport. You had a sense of a great adventure then. Now, it's like getting on a subway.
As for the hardware, remember they are trying to recreate items that in many cases is extinct. And as the show goes along, if it becomes a hit, it will have more money to do more things. I for one hopes it stays. It is better than what TV has become, reality TV garbage. We all love aviation and like to pick at things from time to time, but the hardware is not the main focus of the show, it is the story. So let's sit back and enjoy a show that is atleast trying to be different rather than pick it apart.
"Take my advice, pull down your pants, and slide on the ice"-Sidney Freeman

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Quite. Guys (and gals) it's a soap opera with an aviation theme not a documentary.

The two females I watched it with enjoyed it and that's the demographic the producers are interested in. I diplomatically (self-preservation) refrained at guffawing at the various 'bloopers' but the DC-7 sequence was well done. I might find something more err.. pressing to do next Sunday night though.

a good attitude to overlook some of the set props now long gone. i have a pan am menu, & some cocktail swizzle sticks they can buy!! i remember smoking on flights, & was invited into the cockpit as a kid for landing on a mexicana airlines 727 to mexico city. boy those were the days!! most of all flying was still an event, everybody was dressed up........... now flip flops, torn jeans etc.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I haven't watched it yet, but maybe tonight via the DVR. The ratings numbers were 10 million viewers so they must have done something right!

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Sure, Charles Lindbergh flew the plane... but Tom Rutledge built the engine!

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I rather enjoyed it.

It’s my understanding, and it’s more likely, that Jet Clipper Majestic is new to the Pan Am fleet rather than the 707-321 itself, because the -320 was already in service by 1963, and Pan Am had been flying 707s trans-Atlantic with the 707-121 since the late 1950s. I agree that if this was the first commercial flight of a new type on a premiere Pan Am route, the men up front would have been probably twice the age of the ones seen on television, and I bet there’d be company men milling about alongside Boeing tech reps as well.

As for the hardware, Jet Clipper Majestic essentially has to be a 707-321 of some mark if she’s new in 1963; as I understand it, the -120 had been superceded by the -320 at this point in production. The one good look I got at her engines suggested that she had the “soda straw” JT3C engines found on the 707-121. I was under the impression that Pan Am (and perhaps Boeing as a whole) switched to the JT3D in time for their -321s, with Wikipedia suggesting that there had been a Pan Am conversion program to install JT3Ds on the -121s as well. I’m not a 707 expert, so I could be wrong. Still, that’s an extremely picky thing to worry about and it can be quietly fixed on a computer once the next round of episodes is put together. I enjoyed seeing the CGI sequences of a new 707 in flight, and I was sufficiently impressed with the CGI work on the landing sequence.

Where the rest of the program is concerned, that world is awfully attractive, and hey, so are the stewardesses. I must confess, however, to not watching oil splatter when the British stewardess was being proposed to—I was watching her. The IMDB suggests Annabelle Wallis is on for three episodes, so perhaps we’ll see more of her. I'm hoping the whole espionage thing is played well, because that's something that can draw me back far more easily than say, does stewardess A succeed in her romantic pursuit of pilot B. I don’t know how sustainable the audience numbers are for this series, but I’ll keep watching.

Beside Clipper Majestic being a non-existent name as far as I can find, it appears that (given the timeline) Clipper Majestic would have been delivered late in 1962 (with entry to service being in early 1963) as a Boeing 707-320 with JT4A turbojets. PanAm received no 707-320 (JT4A) or 707-320B (JT3D) aircraft during 1963; only the Boeing 707-320C convertible aircraft which were delivered in late 1963, and those aircraft came from the factory with the JT3D installed. The JT4A-powered 707-320's were upgraded to 707-320B status in the mid-late 1960's after the delivery of the 707-320B's was complete.

BTW, couple things to note -

1) don't believe everything you read at Wikipedia.

2) Boeing didn't "switch" to anything. Boeing began offering the JT3D turbofan engine once Pratt made it available in 1961 or 1962 (can't find reliable info on when exactly it became an option). However, many orders had already been made prior to that and the new engines cost more and there was a lot of question as to their reliability (and justly so). PanAm made the decision that they would only partially convert their new orders to the JT3D engine while keeping the JT4A's on their 707-320 order until they were sure that the new engines worked well. Once they'd received the first half dozen aircraft in 1962/1963 in the 707-320B and 707-320C, they made the decision to fully convert, changed their orders to reflect it for all deliveries not already under construction and began converting all the JT3C and JT4A-powered aircraft. The conversion was complete by 1968 or 1969 based on the AeroTransportDatabank information I got. Thus, they still received turbojet-powered aircraft as late as 1965.

When this Rover starts to wobble along with 'The Playboy Club' the producers can combine them into a storyline revolving around a DC-9-15 painted black-do a lot of filming during turbulence and give a whole new meaning to 'jiggle TV'

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I'm glad someone else was comparing that name to lists of known Clippers. Now, the question is, did you do so while the program was still airing? I'd like to know how much green screen versus mock-up they're doing.


Ah, thank you. More stuff for the 707 file. Did you get that from the reference you mentioned at the bottom?


It seemed like a good idea at the time!



I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. I was solely relying on what I could see from the rear, with the soda straw noise suppressors indicating to me the engines used on the 707-121 versus the method used "later", reflected on what I understood to be the C/KC-135 and "later" 320-series examples without soda straws. For my own sake and since the little bit of searching I've done since reading your post has gotten me even more thoroughly confused, does Majestic as a -321 have the right external engine look? I think I'm going to have to break down and buy a book on the 707; do you have any recommendations?

I admit, I can only distinguish between soda straws, non-soda straws and Conways. I like modern engines with large manufacturer logos on the side.

I'll admit, most of my knowledge of the 707 comes from dragging the internet for information for the Historic Jetliners Group (www.simviation.com/hjg) and my work with Microsoft Flight Simulator over the years. There are several excellent articles on the 707 and its development on their forum in the section entitled HJG Aircraft Histories. If you look at the main site, they have good pictures of all the 707 models in their download section as part of the previews of the models available. It has been very enlightening working with them and enjoying their products (all free for FS2002, FS2004 and FSX).

There's several good 707 books out there, but I don't have any of them. Generally, anything from the "Airliner Tech" or "Airliner Color History" series has proven to be very good sources of information for me on other aircraft types in the past.