What is the longest time that a plane has been in the sky?
Oh boy, that’s a fun one! That would be Robert Timm and John Cook aboard the Hacienda in 1958.Timm and Cook (not to be confused with Tim Cook, that’s a whole other story) spent almost 65 days, more specifically 64 days and 22 hours and 19 minutes, flying over Nevada inside a Cessna 172, called Hacienda, that you may find familiar if you have been gambling in the Sin City since the ’90s as it is currently hanging at the Vegas Int. Airport.
They flew a little over 150,000 miles through the air, which is roughly equivalent to six times around the Earth.
Firstly Timm who was quite the accomplished airplane mechanic modified the Cessna by adding an extra 95-gallon tank to the belly of the plane and switching the original engine of the Cessna for a new more potent one. He also removed any furnishing inside the plane that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Which seeing as our boy Bobby Timm was carrying around more than 200 pounds himself seemed quite reasonable.
Now the refueling was done from a Ford truck from the ground (well obviously) outfitted with a fuel tank, pump, and other support items that twice a day would refuel the Hacienda from a long stretch of highway. The Hacienda would fly down to about 20 feet off the ground and use an electric winch to lower a hook and snag the refueling hose. Either one of the pilots would stand outside on the platform that was lowered out the co-pilot’s door and insert the hose into the tank that was installed on the belly of the plane. It goes without saying that this move was very dangerous and yet they did that in total 128 times.
There are many fun stories involving this adventure, as you would imagine — they spent over two months flying in a bare tiny single-engine propeller. So I recommend going deeper into it. It’s one of my favorite air and space ingenuity stories.
During those aforementioned refueling maneuvers, they would also pull up food, water, towels, oil (for the plane) and other supplies to sustain basic needs. The meals were quite healthful but had to be chopped up and stuffed into Thermos jugs to facilitate transport. Think army MRE’s but much nicer.
They got a quart of bath water, a large towel, and soap every other day to wash up and bathroom necessities were done in a folding camp toilet and disposed of through the windows in plastic bags.
Let’s take a break right here to remember that these two men, that is, grown men, grown beefy men were inside a frigging Cessna 172. If you, dear reader, have never been inside a Cessna 172, take sneak peek of it shown above.
So, yeah, not the most spacious ambient to have your buddy butt naked taking a sponge bath inches from you or even worse taking a dump. Don’t forget also that there was a constant LOUD noise from the propeller engine running that could not have been pleasant to their ears for 65 days straight, especially when one is trying to sleep.
Now, back to our regular programming, Timm and Cook worked out a schedule which had them flying in four-hour shifts. When one was piloting, the other would try to get some sleep, but it was tough as you can imagine and by the end of the first month the lack of sustained physical activity, constant engine noise, and daily chores were wearing on both men.
39 days in there was a close call in which Timm dozed off in the middle of the night; they were saved by the auto-pilot but flew off course by many many miles. A couple of days after that the generator on the Hacienda failed -- that meant that on top of all the other normal expected discomforts they were now without heat, lights, the autopilot which had saved them just a few days ago, and the electric fuel pump that transferred gas from the belly tank to the wing tanks. In order to get gas from the belly tank to the wings, they now had to use a hand pump. A wind generator was passed up to them, but it provided very little output.
It was January, which meant that at night they were super cold and in pitch black darkness. They would wrap themselves in blankets and turn flashlights on. They also had a string of Christmas lights powered by the wind generator to provide some light during those long nights.
By the beginning of February, the spark plugs and engine combustion chambers had become loaded with carbon which greatly reduced the engine’s power, making it difficult to climb after refueling with a full load. By then, they had already broken the record for flight endurance by quite a margin; their plane was literally falling apart and they were in pretty much the most miserable of situations they had ever or would ever be in, so they finally decided to land and end their great adventure with the record that still stands to this day.
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