in 1960, u.s. airlines were disposing of their obsolete piston-engined boeing 377 stratocruisers in favor of the newer jet-engined airliners. nasa was finding that barge transport of their increasingly large space program components from manufacturers on the west coast to test and launch sites on the east coast was slow and expensive. aircraft broker leo mansdorf was stockpiling surplus stratocruisers at van nuys prior to resale, and ex-usaf pilot john m. conroy realized the potential of these aircraft to transport the large but relatively light rocket components.