Sometime
in the early 1960s*, Polynesian Airlines, who had been operating routes in
the Pacific, with a single borrowed DC-3, decided to buy one of their own. A
pilot was needed to ferry the "new" aircraft, named "Savaii", from
California to Samoa, and EK Gann was lured away from his typewriter to fly
his first DC-3 for nineteen years.
"Savaii" was equipped with a single ADF radio, but no VOR/DME/ILS radios
(the latter would have been of no use in her new area of operations), and a
pair of rubber 400-gallon ferry tanks (due to a plumbing fault, they stopped
feeding after 770 gallons). She also had an astrodome, which was used to
take sun- and star-fixes with an octant (bubble sextant).
The story of the flight is the last chapter of "Ernest K. Gann's Flying
Circus" (ISBN 0 340 20693 4).