Irish coffee

Pan Am Boeing 314 Clipper

The original Irish coffee was invented and named by Joe Sheridan, a head chef in Foynes.
Foynes' port, later Shannon International Airport in the west of Ireland.

The coffee was conceived after a group of American passengers disembarked from a Pan Am flying boat on a miserable winter evening in the 1940s.

Sheridan added whiskey to the coffee to warm the passengers.

After the passengers asked if they were being served Brazilian coffee, Sheridan told them it was "Irish coffee".

Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, brought Irish coffee to the United States after drinking it at Shannon Airport.
He worked with Jack Koeppler and George Freeberg to recreate the Irish method for floating the cream on top of the coffe.

Pan American inaugurated a transatlantic passenger service using Boeing 314 flying boats on June 24, 1939. The Boeing 314 Clipper was a long-range flying boat produced by the Boeing Airplane Company between 1938 and 1941.

A fleet of six large long-range Boeing 314 flying Clipper flyingboats was delivered to Pan Am in early 1939. Pan Am flew regular weekly transatlantic passenger and air mail service between the United States and Britain. The service began on June 24, 1939. The route was from New York via Shediac, Botwood, and Foynes to Southampton.

On July 8, 1939 a service began between New York and Southampton as well. Scheduled landplane flights started in October 1945. The last Pan Am 314 to be retired in 1946.

Source: Wikipedia


Specifications Boeing Model 314 Clipper Flying Boat

First flight: June 7, 1938
Model number: 314A
Classification: Commercial transport
Span: 152 feet
Length: 106 feet
Gross weight: 84,000 pounds
Top speed: 199 mph
Cruising speed: 184 mph
Range: 5,200 miles
Ceiling: 19,600 feet
Power: Four 1,600-horsepower Wright Twin Cyclone engines
Accommodation:    10 crew, 74 passengers

Source: Boeing Company

Facts:

Boeing built 12 Model 314s between 1938 and 1941.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled by Boeing Clipper to meet with Winston Churchill at the Casablanca conference in 1943.
On the way home, President Roosevelt celebrated his birthday in the flying boat's dining room.

Source: Boeing Company