a thousand miles from land on the way to Frankfurt from New-
foundland, a red f lash on the instrument panel caught Captain John
Murray’s eye: fire in engine no. 3; inboard, right side. The 73-ton
Lockheed 1049H Super Constellation had 76 people onboard, but the
44-year-old pilot from Oyster Bay, Long Island, wasn’t rattled. He’d
survived back-to-back plane crashes as a f light instructor in Detroit,
Egyptian anti-aircraft as a black ops freelancer, and several overwa-
ter engine failures as a commercial pilot. Murray knew the most likely
explanation for the signal was a transient electrical malfunction—
the aircraft’s fire-detection system was notoriously finicky—but
still, Murray was puzzled: There was no alarm bell to go along with
the f lash. His log books accounted for 20 years of fire warnings, but»
Eric Lindner’s book Tiger in the
Sea: The Ditching of Flying Tiger
923 and the Desperate Struggle
for Sur vival tells the story of pilot John
Murray’s 1962 lifesaving “ditch” of an
L-1049H Super Constellation in the North
Atlantic Ocean. The barely controlled
water landing with 76 passengers and crew
members onboard captivated the world at
the height of the Cold War. Newspapers
from London to Los Angeles ran breaking
updates of the crash’s aftermath, and Pres-
ident Kennedy received hourly updates
concerning the fates of all involved.
Lindner conducted dozens of inter-
views with survivors and eyewitnesses
to write Tiger in the Sea. His account
is definitive, unearthing details and
insights from Murray and others that
reveal the full extent of the event’s unprec-
edented danger, as well as Murray and
his crew’s miraculous airmanship and
extraordinary ingenuity.
Here, read an exclusive adaptation
from Tiger in the Sea.AS FLYING TIGER
923 SLICED
THROUGH THE
DARK SKY OVER
THE ATLANTIC,
46 November/December 2021
PREVIOUS SPREAD: COURTESY JOE WIGHT