Survivors
None of the dozen 314s built between 1939 and 1941 survived beyond 1951 with all 12 having been scrapped, scuttled, cannibalized for parts, or otherwise written off. Underwater Admiralty Sciences, a non-profit oceanographic exploration and science research organization based in Kirkland, Washington, announced in 2005, at the 70th Anniversary of the first China Clipper flight in San Francisco, its plans to survey, photograph, and possibly recover the remains of the hulls of two sunken 314s: NC18601 (Honolulu Clipper), scuttled in the Pacific Ocean in 1945; and NC18612 (Bermuda Sky Queen, formerly Cape Town Clipper), sunk in the Atlantic by the Coast Guard in 1947. UAS has also spent significant time at Pan Am reunions and with individual crewmembers and employees of Pan Am conducting videotaped interviews for the mission's companion documentary.
There are unconfirmed reports that a private team of French businessmen FRT initiated an expedition to find the Honolulu Clipper on February 15, 2011 using Russian equipment. It was further reported that the aircraft will be kept in a private collection and not open to the public.
On June 14, 2012 the Honolulu clipper was spotted by the French Recovery Team FRT, with very little damage. Studies for recovery of the aircraft continue.
There is a life-size 314 mock-up at the Foynes Flying Boat Museum, Foynes, County Limerick, Ireland. The museum is at the site of the original transatlantic flying-boat terminus.
Read more about this topic: Boeing 314
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)