In article , Paul Tomblin
writes
In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" said:
At Pan American World Airways, we had a Boeing 707 that created
a sonic boom and lived to fly out its natural life carrying
passengers around the world.

Well, Bob -- you can't leave us hanging! What's "the rest of the story?"
How the heck did this happen?

There was a DC-8 that intentionally broke the sound barrier in a dive, but
I've never heard of a 707 doing it.

http://www.dc8.org/library/supersonic/index.php

And this page lists the DC-8, but not the 707 as having exceeded Mach 1:
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/vmhalme/machbust.html

I did find one discussion board site where somebody claimed that it
happened to a Pam Am 707, but then another person refuted the story, and
nobody came up with any documentation.

I think you may be referring to the Boeing 727-100, TAW Flight 841 on
April 4 1979. Flight from Kennedy to Minneapolis/St Paul.

There was long running dispute over whether the crew were to blame or
not. It suffered a severe upset while cruising at FL390. Whether this
was caused by the crew wrongly extending the slats or by a slat coming
out in flight is the dispute.

It rolled over and dived towards the ground, rolling and diving near
vertical. It went down at n average 46,000 ft a minute at moments
touching 76,000 ft a minute. At this it went supersonic and it is said
the sonic booms were clearly heard on the ground. Speed brakes seemed to
have no effect.

At 30,000 ft the ASI read 450 knots. It went up to 470 knots and nothing
seemed to help. The g went up - it had already been at 3.5g. At 20,000
ft in desperation the Captain called for gear down. It sounded like an
explosion. The gear doors were ripped the right gear nearly come off
and the g went up again but the pilot noticed a small amount of control
returning. He managed to stop the roll but the nose still pointed down.
They passed through 11,000 ft and it began to respond pulling hard the
aircraft stayed together at 6g. There is lots more - after touching
5,000 ft he zoomed back up to 10,000 ft.

The emergency landing at Detroit was quite something His final approach
was at 205 knots.

Reference: Emergency - Crisis on the Flight Deck by Stanley Stewart.
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