More than 50 years before Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger saved 155 people by ditching a US Airways jetliner in the Hudson River, there was Capt. Richard Ogg. The Pan Am pilot successfully ditched a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser in the Pacific Ocean in 1956, saving all 31 people aboard. The heroics became the subject of a book, a movie, television features and training videos used by several airlines. He died in 1991 at the age of 77.
As his passengers were rescued, Ogg -- as Sullenberger would do years later -- went twice through the plane searching for anybody left behind. Pimsner accompanied him until they stepped out of the sinking plane.
Ogg continued to fly until his death in 1991, but the ditching stayed in his mind. His widow recalled asking him, as she sat by his deathbed, about a faraway look on his face.
"I was thinking of those poor canaries that drowned in the hold when I had to ditch the plane," he said.
Marilyn Ogg remembers her father getting teary-eyed years later about those canaries, too, and two dogs that were lost in the cargo hold.
http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_11602402READ IT: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867172,00.html or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_943Watch it: For a YouTube video clip of Pan Am Flight 943 landing in the Pacific, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkR4F3_fEUQ
They didn't call it a "miracle". I guess the standards for such things were higher back then.
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