HIgh and Mighty Factoid

I thought this was a stunning bit of irony.

In 1954 a movie was released called The High and the Mighty. It was a good movie with a memorable score that won an Oscar. The movie was about a passenger plane, a Douglas DC-4, that was carrying passengers on a flight from Honolulu to San Francisco when it experienced an engine fire. The crew thought they would have to ditch the plane into the Pacific Ocean, but with great skill and much luck they were able to land the plane in San Francisco with less than 30 gallons of fuel remaining. In the exterior and daylight flying sequences of the film, the plane used was a DC-4 passenger plane owned by carrier Transocean Airlines. The plane was named The Argentine Queen and had been the personal aircraft of Juan Perón, three-time President of Argentina. Transocean Airlines director of flight operations Bill Keating did the stunt flying for the movie.

A decade later, in 1964, the very same airplane used in filming the movie – The Argentine Queen – was carrying passengers on an overnight flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles when 8 hours into the 11 hour and 40 minute flight, the pilot radioed that the plane had an engine fire and might have to ditch. The pilot reported his position as 700 miles west of San Francisco. Unlike the fictional flight, on this flight luck ran out for The Argentine Queen. The U.S. Coast Guard searched for 5 days, but the plane and its passengers were never found.