I'd actually tried a few variants of search, by URL, by the flight number (including in comments) which brings up a few interesting coincidental results, and various froms of "wrong way" without luck.
> I'm shocked that this story hasn't had significant discussion on HN.
This "medium" site is unreadable to me. After waiting for the page elements slowly materialize, the only text that appears is just the first sentence of an article.
Maybe other HN users with heavily adblocked browsers are equally unable to read this site?
> I'm shocked that this story hasn't had significant discussion on HN.
It got quite a few votes before.
It's a great story and I'm glad I caught it today, I upvoted it but ... I don't really have anything to comment. I have no informed opinions to offer, related anecdotes to share, or related stories I can think of right now. It's just a great story. Comments aren't everything.
This is a splendid read. Flying 300 meters off the deck, without radio contact, detailed charts, or friends on the ground, reminds me very much of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's writing in _Wind, Sand, and Stars_.
I unexpectedly flew around the world once. Was supposed to do Canada-Germany-Dubai and then back again, but Lufthansa went on strike before my flight home so I ended up doing Canada-Germany-Dubai-China-Canada.
I've done San Francisco to Hong Kong to Bangalore, then back via Frankfurt to SFO, but that's not fully around the world, and neither was your route, because we didn't cross the equator or go 20,000 km (earth's circumference), just a Northern Hemisphere smaller circle. A route involving NYC and Aukland is the real thing, and considerably longer.
> The scene that greeted the four as they disembarked at the dock was one of pure chaos. Darwin was in the midst of an invasion scare. Worse, the arrival of the first freighter full of beer in months had resulted in a temporary breakdown of military order.
I am kinda sad that the Brazillian part in that story is how they forced them to stay because of Yellow Fever, but then they stole stuff from inside the plane...
The saddest part of this, is that I am not even surprised :(
As Brazillian I deal all the time with online distrust with Brazillians, and often when people explain why they distrust us, I can't fault them, there are even online games where Brazillians have their own server separate from the rest of the planet just to "silo" Brazillians from other people, to prevent Brazillians from ruining their fun or causing damage.
Well, don’t read too much into that. There are rude people everywhere.
From what I know, Brazil produces high-quality software developers/computer scientists (elixir and Lua come from Brazil).
Of course there are big social issues in Brazil but… aren’t there in all western countries? Poverty, unemployment, violence (maybe Brazil is an outlier in this case), etc.
Popcorntime is the smartest there is for media consumption, but not exactly an example you want to cite here. Its a software that operates in an illegal area.
Poporntime is not illegal strictly speaking, it's a software that allow to display movies as you download them via torrents.
What is illegal is the source of the torrents not there mere interface provider (which also allow you to see legal)
Thats just silly, we all know what it is used for and why it is used for and why it was built. Popcorn time has an in built search by default that looks for pirated movies. I dont have to add any indexers.
Popcorn time never had a any streaming deals, so all the movies in its screenshots from github are streamed via illegal torrents, which itself is illegal.
to be clear: Yes popcorntime is illegal because it includes by default links to illegal providers.
however popcorntime could trivially become legal by removing those links and letting the user provide them instead.
From where I come from, ie russians have much worse reputation online in general than brazillians (this was pre-ukraine war). I wouldn't read too much into that
to be honest your post sounds a lot like some Egyptians I know who seem compelled to apologize for the endemic tourist scams, bribery/shakedowns/corruption, unethical taxi drivers, sexual harassment etc in Cairo.
> As Brazillian I deal all the time with online distrust with Brazillians, and often when people explain why they distrust us, I can't fault them, there are even online games where Brazillians have their own server separate from the rest of the planet just to "silo" Brazillians from other people, to prevent Brazillians from ruining their fun or causing damage.
Nem todos pensam assim. Sou gringo, moro no rio e acho que o brasileiro é gente boa! TMJ
As others said, the fact is that scumbags exist everywhere, and Brazil is certainly not exempted from this. Another fact is that Brazil is obscenely huge. The country is almost the size of Europe, and the number of online Brazilians nowadays is probably larger than some European countries' entire population. So, given that the ratio of scumbags is probably and roughly the same for every country in the world, the chance of anyone running into a scumbag Brazilian online is naturally larger than average, which tricks our biased brains into believing that "whoa, Brazil must be filled with scumbags".
And of course, the notoriously pervasive "stray dog syndrome", a sentiment that every Brazilian thing is inferior than its imported counterpart (including manufactured goods, culture and whatnot), and which is hammered into the unconscious mind of 11 out of 10 Brazilians from a very young age (myself included), only helps strength this confirmation bias.
A lot of people dismissing your concerns as "bad eggs everywhere". I appreciate you speaking out against this.
Apologizing on behalf of others is a valid signal towards properly judging individual motives vs cultural influence. I do not want to be too quick to blame someone for acting distrustful if they grew up in a very distrustful environment / culture.
Am I the only one wondering why this hasn't been made into a movie? Nostalgia for that time period and a compelling tale. Just needs a love interest plot line and I think it'd do pretty well.
I didn't say anything about a historical movie. Sure if a historical documentary is more your thing, perhaps wait for it on the History or Discovery channel. But I'm thinking more like an Indiana Jones/Pearl Harbor/Apollo 13 style movie.
My grandfather was recruited by Pan-Am for the Pan-America-Africa project. (Hey kid, wanna learn how to fly?) and spent the WW2 years flying into many of the places mentioned in this article. It's great to read about where he spent his time before settling down as a commercial pilot. Much later on he had to dodge an errant Agean rocket that was flying where it really shouldn't have been. I bet that was a hell of a debrief.
For an early history of Pan Am and the Pacific along with this story check "China Clipper: The Age of the Great Flying Boats" by Robert Gandt. The audiobook is ok but you need to download the supplemental pdf.
I gotta admit the plane-tower conversation would make a great end to a movie.
They went the "long way around". As a flying boat their operations are centered on the oceans, not land. This route operated over the Pacific Ocean. So going through Africa to reach NYC is "around the world". In fact the crossing of Africa was itself harrowing because they had limited places to "land".
The amazing part to me is that Pan Am didn't just have them land in Miami and relieve them with a fresh crew. Story is way better the way it's told, though.
Kind of an irrelevant question I suppose - but did they have to pay for the fuel at each stop? The way it's written the various bases gave them fuel and other things out of kindness.
A banker in Australia advanced them $500 USD, which was enough to finance the rest of the journey.
I believe that would be about $9k USD adjusting for inflation, which feels oddly low given the length of the flight, but I suppose they wouldn't have needed to pay for fuel or supplies at PanAm stations.
78 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadSeveral earlier submissions, but no uptake. It is worth the read.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15537891
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10804868
The first of those has 51 comments, the 2nd, 27.
I'd actually tried a few variants of search, by URL, by the flight number (including in comments) which brings up a few interesting coincidental results, and various froms of "wrong way" without luck.
Cunningham's Law strikes again!
This "medium" site is unreadable to me. After waiting for the page elements slowly materialize, the only text that appears is just the first sentence of an article.
Maybe other HN users with heavily adblocked browsers are equally unable to read this site?
https://scribe.rip is an alternative frontend to Medium.
It got quite a few votes before.
It's a great story and I'm glad I caught it today, I upvoted it but ... I don't really have anything to comment. I have no informed opinions to offer, related anecdotes to share, or related stories I can think of right now. It's just a great story. Comments aren't everything.
Medium isn’t at fault here, it’s just the platform. Which, I’ll also say, in this case is just fine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Clipper
it's over 40,000 km
- "December 7, 1941 and the First Around-the-World Commercial Flight". Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. December 8, 2011.
> The scene that greeted the four as they disembarked at the dock was one of pure chaos. Darwin was in the midst of an invasion scare. Worse, the arrival of the first freighter full of beer in months had resulted in a temporary breakdown of military order.
The saddest part of this, is that I am not even surprised :(
As Brazillian I deal all the time with online distrust with Brazillians, and often when people explain why they distrust us, I can't fault them, there are even online games where Brazillians have their own server separate from the rest of the planet just to "silo" Brazillians from other people, to prevent Brazillians from ruining their fun or causing damage.
From what I know, Brazil produces high-quality software developers/computer scientists (elixir and Lua come from Brazil).
Of course there are big social issues in Brazil but… aren’t there in all western countries? Poverty, unemployment, violence (maybe Brazil is an outlier in this case), etc.
Is that bad?
Especially when I am traveling abroad. We can be quite bad tourists.
Nem todos pensam assim. Sou gringo, moro no rio e acho que o brasileiro é gente boa! TMJ
And of course, the notoriously pervasive "stray dog syndrome", a sentiment that every Brazilian thing is inferior than its imported counterpart (including manufactured goods, culture and whatnot), and which is hammered into the unconscious mind of 11 out of 10 Brazilians from a very young age (myself included), only helps strength this confirmation bias.
Apologizing on behalf of others is a valid signal towards properly judging individual motives vs cultural influence. I do not want to be too quick to blame someone for acting distrustful if they grew up in a very distrustful environment / culture.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wrong-way-corrig...
I gotta admit the plane-tower conversation would make a great end to a movie.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00457XJ2K/
The author acknowledges this at the end of part three and recommends that you buy the book. I recommend it too.
If you are interested in the story of the China Clippers and other flying boats, I also recommend the mini docudrama series Across the Pacific:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0887SGVPX/
And the fun movie China Clipper:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FGI69ZG/
A banker in Australia advanced them $500 USD, which was enough to finance the rest of the journey.
I believe that would be about $9k USD adjusting for inflation, which feels oddly low given the length of the flight, but I suppose they wouldn't have needed to pay for fuel or supplies at PanAm stations.