The history of air-travel is peppered with tales of bold adventure and derring-do on the part of entrepreneurs and aviators. Numerous are the accounts chronicling the daring feats of flyers and their consortiums who were responsible for aviation’s incredibly rapid progress since the Wright Brothers first achieved powered flight on December 17, 1903. One of the most colorful and fascinating of these histories involves Pan American Airways and its successful introduction of trans-Pacific air travel in the early nineteen-thirties. The famed China Clipper is the enduring symbol of that accomplishment!
Sadly, even world leader Pan American Airways is no longer with us, unable, by 1991, to absorb management mistakes and remain competitive in an airline environment increasingly focused on the bottom line and profitability. Other former household names like TWA and Eastern Airlines suffered a similar fate. And yet, Pan Am’s legacy will long be remembered. It was the airline that gave meaning to “stylish air travel” while pioneering the industry with innumerable “firsts” and an international travel network. Pan Am’s story is the story of the airline industry and the beginnings of today’s ubiquitous air travel.
The China Clipper and Flying the Pacific
Flying the Pacific in 1935 was not for the faint of heart. Amelia Earhart proved that in 1937 when she and her famed navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared without a trace over ocean waters. Flying to Honolulu, Hawaii non-stop (no choice) from San Francisco was no simple matter, even for the military, in 1935.
The opening photo in the post shows Pan Am’s Martin M-130 seaplane, bearing the name China Clipper, as it wings over the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge on November 22, 1935 carrying the first airmail to cross the Pacific.
China Clipper reached its destination in Manila on November 29 after stops in Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam. Its point of departure was the port of Alameda on San Francisco Bay.
The pilot, Pan Am’s very first, Edwin C. Musick, was forced to employ an emergency maneuver by skimming the bay waters and flying under the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge which was also still under construction. This maneuver was necessitated by the fully-loaded Clipper’s inability to gain enough altitude on its initial takeoff run from the port of Alameda. Captain Musick’s navigator on that storied flight was the very same Fred Noonan who would be lost over the Pacific on Amelia Earheart’s doomed flight, two years later.
Loading China Clipper with the first trans-Pacific airmail cargo prior to departure from Alameda. Captain Musick (closest to plane) and Postmaster General James Farley (next to mail sacks) take part in the brief ceremony on November 22, 1935.
Flying in Style on Pan Am Clippers to Exotic Ports of Call
Soon, Pan American began passenger service across the Pacific to Hawaii, and Southeast Asia. Flying aboard these Clipper ships was limited to only the wealthiest of customers, of course, but what an adventure for those privileged passengers!
Soon, Pan Am’s three original Martin M-130’s were supplanted by the much larger, faster, and more luxurious Boeing 314 clipper ships. The actual name, China Clipper, was assigned only to one of the three original Martin 130’s, but that generic name was used widely for the fleet of clipper ships that followed even though they wore individually given names like Phillipine Clipper, Hawaiian Clipper, etc. Pan American put tremendous effort into charting and opening the trans-Pacific routes, flying close to half a million miles before paying passengers were carried on these flights. Considerable infrastructure including docking facilities, radio service, roads and accommodations was initially required on barely inhabited stopover points like Wake and Midway Islands. Landing fields capable of handling large clipper ships would have been yet another problem – one of the major reasons the service was comprised of “flying boats.” Clearly, these were also preferable to conventional aircraft over ocean waters should ditching be required!
On early flights of the China Clipper using the smaller Martin 130, the crew might outnumber the passengers. Accordingly, the round-trip fare from San Francisco to Honolulu was then $1,700 or roughly $30,000 in today’s inflated currency. In January of 1939, the larger, more efficient Boeing 314 began service on the Honolulu route.
By then, Pan American Airways was well on its way to becoming the World’s premier airline with a world-wide network of routes and offering the ultimate in travel luxury.
In the span of this writer’s lifetime, air travel has changed incredibly. With advancements made in aircraft performance, safety, and efficiency, the formerly impossible is done daily on a routine basis in the skies around our planet. And yet, with all this progress, much has been lost in today’s travel experience. The former glamour is almost completely gone.
The once common-place experience of nattily dressed stewardesses serving dinner to passengers replete with linens and silver-plate are now only a dim memory for someone my age – unless flying first-class. And good luck in coach with room for your elbows while cutting your food with plastic utensils! On the plus side, It is good that commercial flying is no longer limited to the wealthy/privileged as was the case with the China Clipper, but there is a price for everything in life, and that certainly includes low-cost air travel. Those of us who first flew the airlines before the jet age began in 1958 understand precisely what that price is.
My first flight was on a United Air Lines DC-4 back in 1948. My father had a thirty-seven year career with United which included his transfer and our family move from Chicago to San Francisco in 1948 – on that flight. The historian in me feels privileged to have experienced this revolution (for better and for worse) in air travel, first-hand. Kudos to the aviation/airline industry for the amazing story, and a special acknowledgement to those early pioneers who started it all – like United and Pan American Airways!
A Postscript on this piece:
The idea to do this post came last week due to a serendipitous rendezvous with an online bookseller’s offering. While searching for something else, I came across a very early Pan Am “manual” on instrument flying written in 1931 by a pilot-employee. The pilot’s name, “Kenneth Beer,“ sounded familiar to me for two reasons:
First: I recalled reading long ago that he flew some of the early clipper trans-Pacific routes. He was with Pan Am from 1929 until he retired in 1963 as the airline’s senior pilot!
Second: His daughter was the head cheerleader at San Mateo High School back in 1954 – my freshman year, there.
This, and my interest in all-things aviation prompted me to investigate the early years of Pan American, especially the routes of the famous China Clipper. It was well worth the effort: I learned a lot and decided to pass some of it on to you in this post!
Reason and Reflection 