Flying Tiger Line Flight 923

At 17:09 GMT the flight departed Gander. Around three hours later, at 20:19 GMT, the pilots reported a fire on engine No. 3, which was shut down and the fire extinguished. Unable to maintain altitude on three engines, a descent to 9000 feet was initiated. Six to seven minutes after the fire, engine No. 1 oversped and was promptly shut down and feathered. Restart attempts were unsuccessful. At 20:25 the crew requested descent clearance to 5000 feet and an escort. The weather in Keflavik, Iceland was poor, so the crew chose to continue to Shannon.^[1][4][5]

At 21:25 a fire warning sounded for engine No. 2, and power on it was reduced, but was not shut down. The warning sounded and power was reduced again. The plane managed to maintain altitude at 3000 feet. At 21:57 Riddle 18H, a Douglas DC-7 was in visual contact with Flight 923 and provided weather reports to the crew. At around this time engine No. 2 failed, forcing the crew to ditch. The failure of this engine caused a loss of hydraulic pressure, making the controls appear frozen, although Flight Engineer Garrett managed to restore it. The waves were distanced 200 feet apart and 15 to 20 feet high. Captain Murray decided to ditch into the waves, instead of parallel to them, as was procedure. The plane landed on the top of a swell and the left wing was torn off. Everyone survived the initial impact. Although there were five 25-man rafts on the plane, two in each wing and one in the crew compartment, only one was able to be used. This is because the left-wing rafts detached due to impact forces, though the reason for the failure of the right-wing rafts couldn't be determined with certainty. The one available raft was flipped over. 51 people climbed on board the raft, double its capacity, three of whom died later. The 48 survivors were rescued by the merchant ship Celerina six hours later.^[1][4][6][7]

The accident was investigated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). Although engines No. 2 and No. 3 failed due to unrelated mechanical failures, engine No. 1 failed due to Flight Engineer Garrett's blunder, that being pulling the firewall lever for that engine instead of engine No. 3, which cut off most fluids' flow to the engine. Although this mistake was immediately recognized and reverted by Garrett, it was too late because lack of oil in the engine led to overspeed. Investigators also criticized the captain for landing into the waves, because this increased the impact forces and may have led to the left wing detaching, taking two life rafts with it.^[4]