Today...

...marks the traditional start of the summer in this part of the world.  Parades and parties, baseball and barbecues.  Air shows, swimming, out of doors activities. Sunshine and funtime.

"Some Gave All."

For those who didn't come Home.  

I Remember.

Peace.

Aviation History

Shortly before 5 p.m. local time on the 11th of January, 1935 a bright red Lockheed Vega (NR-7952) struggled into the overcast and rainy skies over Wheeler Field in Oahu, Hawaii. 
  
The Vega was originally designed to carry six passengers, this one carried only a pilot and fuel, a lot of additional fuel, 520 gallons or so.  This fuel extended the range of the Lockheed from 725 miles to over two thousand.  The lone pilot would need that range.   

Eighteen hours later a bright red Lockheed Vega landed in Oakland California and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California stepped from the airplane to claim that title.

In 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic ocean and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for that endeavor.  

Two years after this flight across the Pacific that flyer would cement her place in aviation history when her attempt to fly around the world ended in tragedy.  Her Lockheed Electra disappeared en-route to Howland Island, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan remain lost, their fate unknown.

Fire and Ice, come Hell or high water.

The worst maritime disaster in American history outweighs the loss of the R.M.S. Titanic.  In fact, this shipwreck ranks as fourth in the list of the ten worst maritime disasters in recorded history.  However, it’s not as well known as Titanic, Lusitania, the Andrea Doria or even the Edmund Fitzgerald. There are a number of reasons behind this; in the three weeks prior to this disaster The United States of America celebrated the end of a long drawn out, painful war, suffered the loss of a President, and on the day before this shipwreck occurred that President’s assassin was himself killed.  All in all, April 1865 was a busy month in U.S. news.

S.S. Sultana, (probably Memphis April 26, 1865)

On April 21st, 1865 the S.S. Sultana, a side-wheeler steamboat, departed New Orleans with about one hundred passengers and about eighty-five crewmen aboard.  Bound for St. Louis, she headed north in a Mississippi river that was swollen and heavy with runoff from the spring thaws further upriver. This spring runoff is the first piece in the upcoming disaster. Three hundred and forty miles north the two-year old Sultana docked in Vicksburg, Mississippi for a planned stop. While there, repairs were undertaken on one of her four boilers. Rather than delay the trip the three or four days that would be required to completely replace the boiler, it was decided that hasty repairs would be sufficient for the trip north.  Steam boilers are fickle bitches requiring constant tender loving care, and at least one of Sultana’s had been mistreated. A warped section of boilerplate was removed and a thinner section riveted in its stead. This would be the second piece of the tragedy.

While moored in Vicksburg the Sultana began to take on more passengers, recently liberated Union prisoners of war released from the Confederate prison camps of Andersonville and Cahawba. More than 2,000 weak, ill and injured Union soldiers, many of them from Ohio, crowded aboard a vessel with a legal capacity of about three hundred and seventy five persons. Piece number three.

The repairs to the boiler completed, Sultana heads upriver for Memphis, Tennessee. So severely over-loaded was the Sultana that she nearly capsizes while moored in Memphis when her passengers crowd the railing in order to be included in a photograph that was being taken of the steamship.

Around midnight on the morning of the 27th of April Sultana departed Memphis for St. Louis, and those pieces of the disaster began to fall into place. The strong current had a two-fold effect on the Sultana; first, she was more likely to roll from one side to the other as the ship maneuvered and was caught by the current, and lastly, that heavy current and the overloading would have required more steam pressure than would normal operation.  Sultana’s four boilers were interconnected and fitted side by side.  This would not normally be an issue, however the water level in her boilers had not been maintained properly.  As Sultana rolled, listing from side to side the water partially drained out of the boiler tubes in the boiler located on the high side and flowed downhill into the other boilers.  Remember when I mentioned that steam boilers were fickle?  With the fires still burning, trying to produce steam this low water run-out created hot spots in the boiler tubes. As the Sultana listed from port to starboard and back again, water then flowed back into what is now the boiler on the low side and flashed into steam as hit hits those hotspots. This produced an over pressure of steam.  Evidence, logic and common sense supports the notion that Sultana’s Captain would have ordered her engines to be run at or near their maximum to produce the power that would have been required to push the severely overloaded riverboat upriver. Remember piece number two that hastily repaired boiler?  At about 2:00 a.m. the pressure in the boilers had increased beyond dangerous, and at least one of the boilers exploded. The explosion killed many of the Sultana’s crew and passengers outright.  It hurled hundreds overboard into the cold river waters, scalded others with steam, and set the Sultana ablaze, burning still more.

The Sultana may have been carrying as many as 2,400 persons, more than six times her legal capacity. With no official passenger manifest, exact numbers are unknown. The final death toll is officially listed at 1,547, but may range as high as 2,000. 

The loss of the S.S. Sultana remains the worst shipboard accident in American history.