This cylinder separated over North Africa in the middle of the night and ran for over 6 hours being only held on by the eight 1/4″ bolts on the exhaust and intake manifolds.
Normally when this happens the head departs the aircraft and you have about 5 or 10 minutes before all the oil runs out and you have to shut down the engine. What was worse, and unknown to me at the time, was that the fuel injection line broke and was spraying raw fuel into the open cylinder and out across the red hot turbocharger and out the nacelle vents. When the sun came up the whole rear of the nacelle was blue with the fuel dye. This 414 was very heavy and wouldn’t have maintained on one engine, with nowhere to go except the Sahara in the middle of the night. Ten days later I had it fixed in Abidjan, Ivory coast and was on my way to South Africa. Gregory Cotton.