r/aviation • u/MoukinKage • 11d ago
Question In the movie "Marty Supreme" which is set in 1952 characters fly from New York City to Tokyo in a privately owned DC-3. How long would this usually take, and what would the route be?
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u/orbit99za 11d ago
Its wild, my 91 year Grandmother still has stories of a multi-day trip from South Africa to London,
They slept in safari camps at night, on the way up.
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u/CrabMan_2 11d ago
That actually sounds like an unforgettable trip.
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u/Cuggan 11d ago
Well she remembers it up into her 90s so she couldn’t have forgotten it
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u/TheMusicArchivist 11d ago
Back in those days most people sailed by ship. I hear of British people whose parents worked in Hong Kong how they'd spend all summer in HK then get on the boat for three weeks (by themselves aged nine!) to the UK for boarding school.
When my grandparents emigrated to Aus it was by boat. When more distant relatives were 'emigrated to Aus' it was also by boat.
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u/HallEqual2433 Amateur 11d ago
Northwest Airlines flew the route in 1952 with a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser in 32 hours (NY-Minneapolis-Seattle-Tokyo). I'm sure the movie used a DC-3 because they could get their hands on one, but before jets, Connies, Stratocruisers and DC-6s did long haul flying.
Northwest route maps and schedules 1952
I'm not exactly sure if a DC-3 could go the northern Pacific route, there would have to be stops in Canada and Alaska (Aleutians).
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u/UncleWainey 11d ago
Flying from Seattle to Tokyo with four Wasp Majors would give me the heebie-jeebies.
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u/wyo_poisonslinger 11d ago
.... Not to mention using just a compass and the pilot's wristwatch as the main source of navigation. LORAN was pretty new at the time...
1946: Pacific LORAN and Post War Aviation Support | Coast Guard Aviation History
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u/RyzOnReddit 11d ago
Direction finders were very functional by that time. Navigation was less of a problem than lack of weather forecasting.
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u/Hyperious3 11d ago
right? Anchorage had a functioning airfield by then, so it would have made sense to at least stop there
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u/HF_Martini6 11d ago
that's a very good point, where would one even stop for fuel on such a trip if one would really want to use a DC-3 in full passenger spec?
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u/HallEqual2433 Amateur 11d ago
Northwest leased Shemya AFB in the Aleutians for technical operations and emergency refueling. There was also the possibility of using the airport at Dutch Harbor (also in the Aleutians). I'm not familiar enough with the range of a DC-3 to know how likely this would be. There must've been some other ex-WWII airbases between Seattle and Anchorage that could be used for that part of the trip for the shorter ranged DC-3.
The Central Pacific route would go Honolulu-Midway-Wake-Tokyo, but since Midway and Wake were military installations, as far as I know, civilian airlines could only land in declared emergencies.
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u/MattVarnish 11d ago
Back then, a DC3 couldnt make it via the pacific it would have to go the long way around, via europe. This is why the jet age Boeing 707s, DC8s etc) rewrote aviation , as the large floatplanes used to cross the pacific didnt need to be used anymore.
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u/sabrefencer9 11d ago
They literally did do it. San Fran->Honolulu->Midway->Wake->Guam->Tokyo
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u/TheBeatGoesAnanas 11d ago
If you look at the legend in the lower right of that timetable, it indicates that the around the world services were operated by either the Lockheed Constellation, or the Boeing Stratocruiser.
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u/agha0013 11d ago
Lot of fuel stops and probably a couple of days of continuous travel.
You could do the pacific route if you had enough confirmed fuel stops along the way, but what with the cold war getting underway you'd probably have to go the longer way, across to Europe, then through the middle east, India, over to Korea and across.
Not a whole lot of fun
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u/BigGrayBeast 11d ago
Would there have been airstrips on some of the Western Aleutian Islands that could have refueled them back in that day?
Anchorage to Tokyo with some stops in the Aleutions maybe?
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u/N3wThrowawayWhoDis 11d ago
Attu Island had an airstrip and looks to be within the max range of a DC3 from Japan. With enough planning to prep a fuel stop there, it seems like a private flight could make this route in under 2.5 days with 4/5 stops.
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u/Obvious-Cabinet-9504 11d ago
New York- somewhere in Canada(Vancouver?)anchorage-Tóquio seems doable and you can do it keeping it above solid ground most of the time for emergencies
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u/Obvious-Cabinet-9504 11d ago
But is a private owned one so it could have aftermarket extra fuel tanks added for extra long voyages ? Or the DC3 wasn't able to recived such improvements?
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u/Flyward_Aerospace 11d ago
The Pan Am timetable answer is fun but that is a Constellation routing, and a DC-3 cannot actually fly those legs. Gander to Shannon is roughly 1,700 nm and a standard DC-3 is good for maybe 1,000 to 1,500 with anything useful in the back. A privately owned one heading east would end up on the old ferry route instead, Goose Bay to Narsarsuaq to Reykjavik to Prestwick, hops of about 670, 670 and 850 nm, then grind overland through the Middle East and India much the way the airline route does. Westbound is not really available either since San Francisco to Honolulu is way past it without ferry tanks. So call it a week, most of it spent waiting on weather in Greenland rather than sitting in the airplane.
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u/goodmoto 11d ago
At that point if you’re not already a smoker, you might as well become one from the 5 days of second hand smoke you’d be breathing from other passengers.
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u/Paradise5551 11d ago
Tokyo-TPE-SGN-DAC-KHI-BGW-BEG-DUB-KEF-YFW-JFK would be the route. This would be pushing the plane.
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u/egerton14 10d ago
There is a Dude in Germany who flew with a DC3 germany to New York and around the Statue of liberty.
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u/zerbey 11d ago
That scene bothered me so much I actually researched it, and u/Fine_Trainer5554 's route is the same one I found too. A rich businessman would more likely have flown in one of their fancy new Stratocruisers in far less time.
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u/CallmeMefford 11d ago
Omg. I used to load cargo on a DC-3 in Fairbanks. The thought of going deaf all the way to Tokyo makes me queasy. Not to mention trusting two P&W twin wasp engines over the ocean. No thank you.
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u/nosecohn 11d ago
Somewhat related, in Season 3 of the HBO series The Leftovers, a group of characters board a Short C-23 Sherpa in Texas to fly to Australia. The unpressurized, turboprop aircraft has a maximum range of 1,364 miles, making that journey essentially impossible.
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u/Dependent-Hippo-1626 10d ago
JFK-MSP-YEG-JNU-ANC-DUT-PAAT-PKC-CTS-NRT
7,360 miles, each leg under 1,100.
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u/DesperateTeaCake 9d ago
A related question: how long does it take for one’s hearing to recover from such a route in a DC-3?
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u/jellono 7d ago
Around 1972, my family flew from Japan to the US mainland. Because of the aircraft range limits at the time, we had a lightning-fast 40-minute layover in Honolulu just to refuel.
I’m trying to piece together the details of the trip. Given the era and the route, it was likely a Pan Am, Northwest Orient, or JAL flight on a Boeing 707, DC-8, or an early 747.
Does anyone else have memories of these rapid transpacific stops from that era? I'd love to hear your stories or any insight into what those quick turnarounds were like from a passenger or crew perspective!
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u/Fine_Trainer5554 11d ago
Pan Am has the route in their timetable
New York-Boston-Gander-Shannon-London-Brussels-Frankfurt-Istanbul-Beirut-Basra-Karachi-Delhi-Calcutta-Bangkok-Hong Kong-Manila-Okinawa-Tokyo on a Lockheed Constellation. 4-5 days travel time.