(first posted 6/24/2013. Updated 5/25/19) The big Opels always looked the most like their Detroit cousins, and this 1954 Kapitän certainly doesn’t belie its stylistic origins. In Germany at the time, this was very much a “big” car. What does that translate to? 108.” wheelbase, 185.8″ overall length, or very much the classic size of American “compacts”. It sported a 2.5 L (153 CID) ohv six, making some 67 hp. Which also was very similar to the specs of the aborted Chevrolet Cadet, but with conventional rear suspension. And what was the Captain flying?
A Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, the 747 of its time, with a partial two decks and long-distance capability that was unparalleled at the time (first flight 1947). The B 377 was a direct evolution of Boeing’s very advanced B29/B50 bombers, and it was Boeing’s opportunity to capitalize on that expertise to potentially leap-frog both Douglas (DC-6) and Lockheed (Constellation).
The Stratocruiser offered very comfortable accommodations for between 55 and 100 passengers on long over-water flights to Europe and Hawaii, with sleeper berths and a lower-lever lounge.
This is one of the two main cabins. Ah, the good old days of airplane travel…
The cockpit crew of four had plenty of room and the best views ever.
Unfortunately, the incredibly complex 3000hp 28 cylinder Pratt&Whitney R-4360 “corncob” engines were very maintenance-intensive, which only further exacerbated the B 377’s rep for being an uneconomical proposition for the airlines. Only some 55 were built, and the DC-6 and Constellation cleaned up the long-distance market.
Here’s the first of two vintage videos, this one by Pan Am, that goes into some of the history and design of the 377.
This one is by United Airlines, shorter but covers the actual flying experience well.
But some B 377s went on to have a useful life as rocket-booster haulers, known as the Pregnant Guppy.
I love your alternate universe Holdens Paul but that looks like a Plymouth cranbrook from here, I doubt that plane ever landed here I’m sure when it was current our international flights still landed at Mechanics Bay on the water flying apartment blocks called Sunderlands were the go.
The script on the fender sure looks like it says “Kapitan”, and when I put 1954 Opel Kapitan into google image search, that’s the same car for sure. Did Paul initially call this a Holden when he meant to type Opel, then edited it later? I’m not sure what you’re complaining about. 🙂
Having grown up with these, I know an Opel Kapitan when I see one. I’m not exactly sure what Bryce was trying to say, but then what else is new? 🙂
As the south pacific version of GM Holdens copied Opel designs but this Kapital looks like the Plymouth Cranbrook especially the grille opening. The car size lines up with the local big cars too your compacts are our full size and we got Plodges from Canada just to confuse the issue.
I want to say this might be the first postwar (all new) Opel Kapitan – does kinda look like a ’53 Plymouth . . . . Insofar as the Stratocruiser . . . in 1956, the Coast Guard was on scene for one ditching; following year later in ’57, one got lost between San Francisco and Honolulu . . . . (both Pan Am).
I had the honor to fly B377 as a flight engineer in the IAF until 1978
Reuven Israel
Amazing, every seat looks like first class. And window curtains. No miserable overhead bin to stuff your suitcase into (if you ever wanted to see it again or get out of the airport quickly). Even a compete restroom – not a closet in the tail!
There is the small matter of the price of the ticket, however.
The golden age of airlines ended when every schmuck could afford to fly.
Well said.
Oh yeah, and stewardesses who actually looked like Christina Ricci.
Instead of Rosie O’Donnell…
Your comment took my imagination in a new direction, and I thank you for that.
Seriously- I would love to go back in time and fly on of those graceful planes.
If they charged a reasonable fee, I would do that today.
During that era, basically until the 707 and DC-8 jets, the whole plane was often one class, first or economy. Typically, older equipment was relegated to economy flights. Also, to cover long distances without refueling stops, not very many passengers could be carried. Notice the private stateroom aft. Since these flew at about half the speed of the jets, you were in the air for twice as many hours as today. One day in the air still beat five on a ship.
The cabin shown is the lower-density version. The higher density version still was only 2×2 seating, but with less pitch.
Did they sell a cargo version to the Air Force? I think I flew in one from Danang to Clark AFB in the PI. We were loaded in like cattle. Seats, seat belts what seats. It was “hang on we are taking off and hang on we’re getting ready to land.
The Air Force version was the C-97. It was last produced in 1956 so I’m sure at least some of them were still flying in the sixties. Most of them were the KC-97, tanker, version; some models could be coverted from tanker to passenger/cargo duty.
Yea, I think I was on an AirGuard crewed plane on its summer two weeks of duty. Join the guard to avoid the draft and get to fly to Nam in an obsolete aircraft, Ha Ha what fun.
One of the most interesting versions was the KC-97L, an airborne ‘hybrid’ with a couple of J47 turbojets slung under the wings to try and speed the thing up.
Even then, the B-47s and B-52s it was meant to refuel had to slow right to the ragged edge of stalling to keep pace with it. The KC-135 arrived not a moment too soon.
On the civilian side, that B377 has to represent one of high points (if not THE high point) of piston-engine travel in the last century. Still, I’d trade glamour for the ability to actually afford a ticket any day.
The B-52s would lower the gear to create drag and then spool up the turbojets a little to compensate. The combination gave it a little more controllability compared to not having the gear down and throttling back even more to stay under the KC-97, not that a plane that was described as flying like a truck was all that controllable on the ragged edge of stall, but you did what you could. They usually refueled during a slow coasting descent that helped the KC-97 go as fast as it could, and then the B-52 would burn off a third of that getting back up to 45,000 feet and .85 Mach
More please.
Interesting that most of the comments are about the B 377.
Probably because most of us recognize the plane. I’m willing to bet that this is the first time the vast majority of the readership have ever seen a mid-50’s Opel Kapitan. I knew the car existed, but in all my reading this is the first time I’ve seen a picture.
Forget the car, with all due respect, Opel shmopel (and yes, it does look like a ’53 Plymouth, stubby little thing). The plane is much more fascinating. Never saw one of these, but I remember the photos in my airplane card collection (like a baseball card collection). My dad took me on a DC-6 flight when I was a child, still remember the 2X2 seating, and the rough ride. And how everyone dressed up, and how quietly elegant it was, not the cattle car flights of today, with slobby rude passengers and jillions of pieces of carry on junk. I posted recently about the B-29 progenitor of this plane, how the world’s only remaining flying B-29 came here to the Air Museum at the Palm Springs Airport, and it flew right over my house, too, on its approach, those four massive propeller engines throbbing overhead. Touring the plane later was mind-boggling. This PanAm Clipper, to borrow a phrase, must have been “the only way to fly.”
Oh good it isnt only me then.
Each B 377 had a total of 224 spark plugs!
The B-36 had 336. Same engine, but six of them.
A friend of mine was a B-36 mechanic in the Air Force. He had many tales to tell about trying to find a dead cylinder out of 168 of them!
I have never seen a Kapitan before, but I kind of like it. Maybe because, as someone said, it looks like an early 50s Plymouth. I do see a little Chevrolet around the windshield and A pillar, though.
Admittedly, the grille is a bit Cranbrook-like, although the 53 Chevy was rather similar. And I see some Olds 88 in the general lines of the car, mostly the front.
That sir, is a 54 Chevrolet. The 53 has the round signal lights inside the grille. I think this one is a mis-labeled google image.
Did each plane have a name? This one is the Clipper Constitution? Something else from a bygone era.
Yes; and that was kept up by PAA for a long time, possibly all the way to the end.
The iconic photo of the forward part of the the fuselage of the 747 destroyed over Lockerbie laying in a field there, stands in testimony to PAA’s continuity in naming its fuselages; IIRC, she was “Clipper Maid of the Seas”. PAA itself met its demise not too many years thereafter.
Yes, each Pan American plane was Clipper “something”, Clipper Great America, Clipper Juan Trippe, etc etc, all the way to the end of the first Pan Am in 1991, and in the 2nd re-launched Pan Am from 1996-1998.
The KC-97 variant of the Stratocruiser wasn’t completely retired from National Guard service til 78. Somewhere I have a pic of one refueling an early F-16. And we think some CARS are used for a long time…..lol
Does anyone know how much would’ve cost to go from, say, San Francisco to Tokyo on one of these things?
(Well, first you have you weld on some pontoons…)
The closest info I could find was a $208 price for roundtrip NY – LA in 1958. That adjusts to about $1600. Even then, there was some variation in prices, depending on whether it was regular coach or economy. But if you extrapolate that, I’m going to guess that a flight back then to Tokyo and back (via a stop or two) would have gone for say $4000-5000 or more (adjusted).
But then have you priced a first-class ticket today to Tokyo and return?
If I went through my collection of old airline timetables I could probably answer the question, but now is not the time.
In any event, the experience of International first now (on those airlines that still offer it), is incomparably better than first class service in the 50s. International business class these days probably is better in terms of seating and sleeping comfort than first was back in the day. It’s economy and domestic (first and economy) that feels like cattle class compared with the Goode Olde Dayes.
SFO or LAX to HNL was $160 (plus tax) on one of these according to an early 1950’s United ad. Today, United charges $3349 (including tax) for a first class ticket, more than double the inflation-adjusted price of $1406.
I wanna know more about this lower deck Hawaiian Lounge!
Its interesting to note that Boeing offered a lower lounge configuration for early 747’s in the 70’s, but no customer ever ordered it for a production plane, they have a full size rendering of what it would have looked like at the Boeing Museum in Seattle, along with 747 number 1.
Here’s a pic of that lower deck lounge. Pretty small really–the couch goes U-shaped right behind the camera and the wall was mirrored, that was about it.
Some B377s had a full-service bar in place of the wall where the rear stewardess is standing. That would have made things more interesting.
We have to remember that this wasn’t really a big plane by modern standards, and that lower fuselage was essentially the original B29/50 fuselage, which certainly wasn’t designed for lounging!
I’ve had the pleasure of touring the Commemorative Air Force’s B-29 Superfortress, “FIFI.” That lounge picture was either taken on a staged set, or shot with a veeerrry wide-angle lens!
A lower lounge like below the main floor, in the cargo hold? Or you mean on the main floor? Because many early 747s did have a lounge/bar on the upper level; in fact that’s all that was up there on some early 747s. I experienced one myself.
Upper level PA 747 lounge: Correction: that’s a main level first class piano bar.
Maybe you’re right: here’s a pic of a lounge that has to be in the “basement” (note stairs going up). I did not know that…
Here’s the penthouse lounge (Quantas):
Groovy man.
I was in a 747 upper lounge/bar once when flying with my Dad. I seem to remember that there was a bar of sorts at one end but not being of drinking age I was more interested in the table version of Pac-Man or maybe it was Ms Pac-Man.
That lower level lounge was a mockup by Boeing that no one put into place. But PSA did have lower level lounges on its L-1011s in the early seventies.
Lockheed’s Tristar, another very neat plane, also offered the option of a lower-deck lounge. But apparently very few few were ordered that way, all by PSA I believe. Other airlines used it as a galley.
Absolutely my favorite plane to fly, ever.
Lower…never mind, that’s the pic.
I remember Newark Airport from about 1963 when you could walk out by the planes on a sort of raised concrete strip bordered by chain link fence. I remember polished aluminum American Airline propeller driven planes that were tremendously loud when they taxied in or fired up and taxied out. Today you are completely enclosed or not let outside until everything is shut down.
My first trip was in one of those silver propeller driven planes in 1962. From San Diego to Tachikawa Japan. 33 hours in the air and stops at hawaii and midway for sure. Maybe Wake Island but that’s stretching the memory.
I think I prefer the long trips to the homeland security stuff that’s happening now. Where did I park my delorean?
Same thing at LAX, prior to 1962. At the old terminal you would walk out onto the tarmac edge to a low chain link fence, where boarding would take place. It was fascinating going out there to see off family or friends, watching the DC-6’s and 7’s and Constellations taxi up, or fire up for departure. Pretty low-tech and low-security stuff. That all changed that year when passenger operations moved across Sepulveda Blvd. to the present day terminal location, where the big spider legged theme building is.
As stated, these (and their B-29 and B-50 counterparts) were extremely unreliable and maintenance-intensive, thanks to the R-4360s. That said, I wonder if today’s aircraft maintainers at ANA, JAL and United wouldn’t rather have to deal with Wasp Majors instead of the rash of service issues affecting Boeing’s latest plane, the 787-8.
I love airplanes, damn near ALL airplanes… but I think I’ll take my chances with the Opel in this case, even for the transatlantic crossing.
Actually, the B-29 had the 18 cylinder Curtis-Wright 3350’s, like the Lockheed Constellation. That engine also had plenty of “issues”, sometimes resulting in fire.
Whoops, you’re right.
Those Stratocruisers are so cool! And the Opel isn’t bad either, though I’d rather have one of these:
On the one hand, the interior of that Stratocruiser looks pretty cushy. On the other hand — imagine three-quarters of those people smoking. Now add in the din of 112 pistons in all reciprocating. Top it off with the greater turbulence of air at the lower cruising altitudes of the time. All of that, as noted, for twice or more the travel time as today. When all the factors are taken into account, I’m not sure I would choose it over the middle seat in an Airbus A-Whatever.
Good point about the noise (and vibration) of a piston engine plane.
You’re right about the smoking….I forgot about that.
(from a never-smoker!)
I was told by an older aircraft engineer that the older full-fresh-air HVAC systems in the “effieciendy be damned” pre oil-crisis, pre hush-kit era actually made smoking in planes quite a reasonable proposition, as the air was replaced constantly. Having only experienced a smoking flight once in my life (1994, c. 1980-ish El Al 747-200 to Israel), I remember the air being tolerable, but that was a long time ago and I smoked a pack a day back then. How funky (as in stinky) was it on a plane with smoking?
It was not tolerable on an Alitalia DC-9 full of businessmen in the 1980’s.
i flew commercial several times in the late 70’s from San Francisco to Chicago (and back). IIRC there was a designated smoking section in the cabin but no real separation between that and non-smoking. Depending on the number of people smoking, the atmosphere could get pretty bad. The only real advantage about sitting in smoking was that (usually) you were farther away from the obligatory screaming child.
I flew on an LH 747 as part of a high school group in 1971, and can remember waking around landfall over Ireland and seeing a brown cloud around face height from all of the HS students smoking all night.
Love commercial planes too. Got to ride in the cockpit of a 707 once from Miami International to San Juan, Puerto Rico and back with my uncle who was a flight engineer for a cargo company, back in ’81 when I was 15. Sat in the navigators seat, (4 seat cockpit, directly behind pilot and navigators were replace by electronics by then) Fun times, and I will never forget it.
When I saw this article, I kept thinking that I recognized this airplane from somewhere. Then I realized it looked a lot like the plane from a movie I saw as a kid, where the characters flip over their crashed plane and turn it into a boat to escape from an uncharted island.
As Paul has pointed out in the comments above, the Stratocruiser was basically a B-29 Superfortress with a larger, more passenger-friendly fuselage. After some searching, it turns out that the plane I was thinking of was a B-29 and the movie was “The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark”.
Nice article combining auto and airplane. The 377 Stratocrusiers were very advanced aircraft but in terms of pure aesthetic beauty, I prefer the graceful lines of the Lockheed L1049 Super Connie.
Yes, the military-based Boeing is rather frumpy looking, as is the Opel, IMO. Picture instead a TWA Connie pilot driving a Corvette.
My personal favorite airliner from that era were the Douglas DC-4/6/7. With the same engines, the single tail DC-7 was slightly faster than the sleeker-looking Super Connie.
The definitive B-377 site is
http://www.ovi.ch/b377
I saw a (the?) Super Guppy in the early ’90s while stationed in Panama. The beast landed at Howard AFB but I don’t know why.
The problem of changing spark plugs had been eliminated by the simple expedient of changing to turboprop engines. Wikipedia has some basic information at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Super_Guppy#Specifications_.28Super_Guppy_Turbine.29 with the interesting note: “All Super Guppies remain either in service, mothballed, or on display.” I think that pretty well sums it up.
Oddly enough “Super Guppys” were used by Airbus to carry wings for their planes from France to Germany. I saw them on several occasions in Hamburg. Wikipedia says they were in service until 2008.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of American Airlines flight 191. The worst commercial aviation accident to happen in the US. And sadly, fully avoidable due to negligent maintenance practices. Many will never forget this photo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191
Thanks for the interesting and thorough wiki article.
I was a child when it occurred, and it significantly shocked and saddened me (like so many others) at the time.
I was pleased to see a permanent memorial was eventually built.
I left on vacation the day following this crash, and remember walking through the terminals at Detroit Metro seeing the newspaper front pages announcing the disaster. I knew I was an air travel junkie when I could get on an American flight the day after that.
I’m not an airplane or aviation geek, not even a little bit, but I’ve always lamented having never experienced a Stratocruiser. Born too late for it!
I’ve been lamenting that I will never get to fly in a 747. All my adult flying has been on the 737. I flew on a 727 when I was a kid but I don’t remember it.
For those of you in love with golden age of the big piston, keep in mind on Pan-Am a mixed drink was $1.00 at a time when the average wage was around $9.00 a day.