Figure 37.—Interior of Bellanca, showing Parker D. Cramer, pilot (left), and Oliver L. Paquette, radio operator, just before taking off from Detroit, Michigan, on July 28, 1931. (Smithsonian photo A202.)
The second of these accidents is described in the September 1931 issue of U.S. Air Services:
Columbus wanted to sail west beyond the limits set by the learned navigators of his time, and in much the same consuming fashion Parker D. Cramer wanted to show his generation and posterity that a subarctic air route to Europe via Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark was feasible.... On July 27, without any preliminary announcement, Cramer left Detroit in a Diesel-engined Bellanca, and following the course he took with Bert Hassel three years ago, he flew first to Cochrane, on Hudson Bay. His next stop was Great Whales and then Wakeham Bay. From there he flew to Pangnirtum, Baffin Land, and across the Hudson Straits to Holsteinborg, Greenland. He crossed the icecap at a point farther north than the routes that have been discussed heretofore, but almost on the most direct or Great Circle route from Detroit to Copenhagen. He was accompanied by Oliver Paquette, radio operator. They were on their way more than a week before they were discovered. To Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, to the Shetlands.
They were taxiing across the little harbor of Lerwick, Shetland Islands, when a messenger from the bank waved a yellow paper. It was a warning of gales on the coast east to Copenhagen. Cramer apparently thought it was an enthusiastic bon voyage, and, after circling the town, flew away. A Swedish radio station reported a faint “Hello, Hello, Hello” in English, but the plane was not seen again.
As the result of a personal conversation with his brother, William A. Cramer, in 1964, the author learned that the fuselage and floats of the airplane were found six weeks later. Since there was no indication of a heavy impact (not a single glass dial on the instrument panel was broken), a successful landing must have been made. Several weeks later, a package was found wrapped in a torn oilskin containing instruments, maps, and a personal letter, all substantiating the evidence that the landing was successful. It can only be surmised that there was engine failure, probably due to a clogged oil filter.[44]
Once before during the trip a forced landing had been made due to engine malfunctioning, and a successful takeoff was accomplished in spite of a moderately rough sea. This time, however, storm conditions probably made the takeoff impossible.
As a final summary of the author’s analysis of the Packard diesel engine, it must be emphasized that although the engine burned a much cheaper and safer fuel more efficiently than any of its gasoline rivals, it was too unreliable to compete with them. Even if it had been reliable, it was too small to be useful to the large transport operators, to whom its fuel economy would have appealed. In addition, this mechanism operated on the wrong cycle: 4-stroke, rather than the lighter, more compact, and more efficient blown 2-stroke cycle. Lastly, it was doomed by the advent of high octane gasolines, first used while it was still in the development stage. These new fuels reduced the diesel’s advantage resulting from low fuel consumption, and, in addition, gave the gasoline engine a definite advantage from the standpoint of performance. The Packard diesel was a daring design but, for the reasons analyzed in this chapter, it could not meet this competition, and therefore failed to survive.