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Well away from the war

Chicago airport, today Chicago-Midway Airport, end 1941, well away from the wars theaters: a TWA’s Boeing 307 Stratoliner on the pad. Designed with wing, tail, landing gear end engines of the bomber B-17, 1st flight 31 December 1938, purchased by Pan American (three aircraft received), by Transcontinental & Western Air or TWA (five aircraft received) and by TWA’s “patron” Howard Hughes (one aircraft), the Stratoliner, first airliner built in series with a pressurized cabin (pressure differential 2.5 psi, cabin altitude 14,700 ft/4,480 m at flight altitude 8,000 ft/2,440 m S/L), was one of planes which dramatically showed the enormous technological gap between the American projects and the contemporary European aircraft. After the USA’s entry in the war the five TWA’s Boeing 307 were pressed into service with the US Army on January 1942 for transatlantic transport with the military designation C-75 without pressurization of cabin for save weight. Two main routes were flown: Washington, D.C., to Cairo across the South Atlantic and New York to Scotland across the North Atlantic. Victor Sierra