Pan Am Flight 7 disappears between San Francisco and Honolulu. Wreckage and bodies are discovered a week later.
Pan Am Flight 7 was a westbound round-the-world flight operated by Pan American World Airways that crashed in the Pacific Ocean on November 8, 1957, while flying to Honolulu International Airport from San Francisco International Airport. The aircraft assigned to the flight was a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser 10–29 named Clipper Romance of the Skies; the crash killed all 36 passengers and 8 crew members.
The flight's fate was not known until about nine hours after its last known radio transmission, by which point the plane would have run out of fuel. No radio reports of any emergencies were received from the flight crew. Under the assumption that the plane could have survived a controlled landing on the ocean surface, the United States Coast Guard launched an extensive search for the plane and any survivors. The week-long hunt became the largest search and rescue operation in the Pacific Ocean up to that date. The bodies of 19 of the victims and pieces of the plane were eventually recovered about 900 nautical miles (1,000 mi; 1,700 km) northeast of Honolulu.
Investigations into the cause of the crash were inconclusive. Despite theories that the plane may have been the victim of sabotage, poor maintenance, or in-flight fire, investigators could not find enough evidence to support any definite conclusion. The final report from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), who conducted the investigation, concluded that the board did not have enough evidence to determine the cause of the accident.