Last of its Kind
A look inside the Smithsonian's Stratoliner.
- By Paul Hoversten
- AirSpaceMag.com, August 14, 2009
Dane Penland, NASM
The Boeing 307 Stratoliner at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia is the final survivor of 10 Stratoliners built in the late 1930s as the world’s first pressurized airliners.
Named the Clipper Flying Cloud, the Museum’s airplane has played a number of roles over the years—as an airliner for Pan American in South America in the early 1940s, personnel carrier for the Army during World War II, personal transport for Haitian dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the 1950s, and, finally, freight hauler in the 1960s and early 70s.
The Museum acquired the Stratoliner in 1972 in a trade for a Lockheed C-121C Constellation, and exhibited it at the Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona. There, the airplane was “discovered” by several Boeing employees who were visiting to recover a 367-80 (known as the “Dash 80”), the prototype of the Boeing 707—the United States’ first production jet airliner.
Boeing offered to restore the Stratoliner with original parts and materials, and the Smithsonian agreed. The six-year restoration was finished in June 2001, and everyone expected the gleaming silver airplane to take its place in the Museum’s soon-to-be-opened Udvar-Hazy Center.
But the storied Stratoliner had one more role to play—as a lifeboat—when it ran out of fuel on a final test flight and ditched into Elliott Bay, just west of downtown Seattle, in March 2002. Damage was significant, but all four crewmembers escaped serious injury, and Boeing volunteers restored the airplane a second time. After taking a final bow at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual fly-in at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the Clipper Flying Cloud was finally delivered to the Museum in August 2003.
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Comments (6)
I saw this aircraft at Oshkosh 2003. Talking with the pilot, who was also flying it when it went down in Seattle,I pointed to a puddle of water under the plane and joked "looks like you didn't get all the water out of it yet.
Posted by Jim Olson on August 17,2009 | 02:08 AM
I worked as an FAA- Designated Engineering Representative
on this airplane when it was returned to United States from
Haiti. The B-307 was certificated under Part 4a of the
Civil Air Regulations, which consisted of four Pages.
To-day an Airliner is certificated under Part 25 which is
a very large book.
Posted by Robert M Jensen on August 20,2009 | 04:45 PM
Only at EAA Airventure '03 could you view two historial aircraft side by side: C-17 "Globemaster III" and the Boeing 307 "Stratoliner"(C-75)
Posted by thomas C. Voigt on August 22,2009 | 10:08 AM
wow, it still has square windows! Lucky that it didn't went to the same fate with the de Havilland Comet, who had rapid decompression due structural failure with square windows.
Posted by Egz Aguilar on September 15,2009 | 01:09 PM
As a kid riding with my parents from Everett to Tacoma, I can remember seeing one of two of these Stratoliners sitting outside one of the final assembly buildings, ready to be moved across the road over to the flight line area on the airport. During the 1948/1949 time period, I worked as a Boeing flight line mechanic on all of Northwest Airlines Stratocruisers. (About 15 to 20 years in between the two "Strato" models.)
Posted by Stan Rober on December 8,2009 | 12:10 AM
I never saw it fly but there was what appeared to be a 307 parked on the ramp outside the Air America hangar at Ton Son Nhut during my 1968-69 tour. I've always wondered what happened to it.
Posted by Jay Swindle on December 15,2011 | 07:11 PM