She
was without doubt the most famous—and
romantic—single commercial aircraft ever to take wing, an icon of a
shrinking world, and an honest-to-god movie star in her own right.
It all began on November 22, 1935 when the Pan American World Airways China Clipper lifted out of the
water off of Alameda, California
with a cargo of airmail bound for Manila in
the Philippines. Heavily
laden with cargo and fuel the mighty four-engine Martin M-130 struggled to gain altitude. A scheduled
loop around San Francisco for
the benefit of an eager press and newsreel cameras had to be scrubbed and pilot Edwin Musick realized he could not get over San Francisco-Oakland Bridge, then still under construction, so he dramatically flew under the span. It was
a rocky start, but the plane was on
her way.
It
was epic, arduous and took seven days
with lay-overs for fuel and to rest
the crew at Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam. Setting down in Manila Bay with her cargo of 110,000 pieces of mail was cause for national celebration. The Clipper
was soon in regular scheduled
service and also carrying passengers.
Pan Am President Juan Trippe charts out trans-oceanic routes for his flying boats. |
The
flight was a long time coming. It was the vision of Pan Am founder and President
Juan Trippe, a swashbuckling Wall
Street investor turned aviation
entrepreneur. After earlier forays into the infant industry, Trippe founded the Aviation Corporation of the Americas
which opened Latin American air mail
service with a flight from Key West to
Havana in 1927 with Musick at the
controls. He saw the future of international commercial aviation was
in flying boats and put Pan Am’s
resources into helping develop and put
them in operations. With planes like
the Sikorsky S-42 which made trans-Atlantic service feasible. With well-established routes to South America, Africa, and Europe,
which made Pan Am the unofficial United States flag carrier, Trippe
turned his gaze East.
But
Asia was far away and regular
service would require a new, larger, and more powerful aircraft. Trippe
commissioned a new plane from the Glenn
L. Martin Company of Baltimore,
Maryland. The builder designated the new planes as
the M-30 Martin Ocean Transports, all-metal flying boats with streamlined aerodynamics and four powerful
Pratt & Whitney radial engines. The planes could accommodate 36 day or 18 overnight sleeper passengers and carried a flight crew of 7 plus cabin
attendants for passenger service.
Three were built for Pan Am.
The
China Clipper was first built and was
test flown on December 30,
1934. It was delivered to the Pan Am
fleet on October 9, 1944. Her sister
ships were the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper.
Meanwhile
Trippe sent Musick, now Pan Am’s chief
pilot on two flights in a Sikorsky S-42 to scout routes to the Philippines
and from Manila to China. Musick was
then one of the most famous aviators in
the world holding more than 10 records
for long distance and flying
boats. He was also, by far, the most experienced pilot in the world
having racked up nearly 2 million trans-oceanic air miles.
Pan Am Chief Pilot Captain Edwin Musick, the most experienced aviator in the world, mapped out the Trans-Pacific route and flew the inaugural service of the China Clipper. |
With
the route laid out, Musick was the easy choice for senior captain on the inaugural flight of the China Clipper. The rest of
the crew were also respected veterans and included First Officer R.O.D. Sullivan and navigator Fred Noonan, later famed for doing the same duty on Amelia
Earhart’s doomed round the world
flight.
Weekly passenger flights across the Pacific
began in October 1936 with Hawaii Clipper. Connecting service from Manila to Hong Kong began in 1937 using S-42’s
with the Clipper class Martins taking
over that leg of the route a year later.
All three of the Martins flew these routes, but in the public’s eye they
were all the China Clipper.
A lobby card for Warner Bros. 1936 China Clipper starring Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Henry B. Walthall, Ross Alexander and, of course, The China Clipper herself. |
Public
fascination with the Clipper was so
high that Warner Bros./First National
Pictures rushed into production with a film China Clipper starring Pat O’Brian as a thinly disguised Trippe single
minded and ruthless in his aim to establish trans-Pacific service no matter
the cost. The turgid melodrama is noted for an early non-gangster role for Humphrey
Bogart as a safety conscious pilot
at odds with O’Brian who eventually saves the day by flying the plane safely
through a storm and into a mail contract. The film used much newsreel and stock footage
of the real China Clipper, including
dramatic footage of passing under the Bay bridge.
The
China Clipper was featured in other
films including 1937 comedy film Fly-Away Baby and the 1939 adventure
film Secret
Service of the Air and referenced in several others. Later Alec
Baldwin would play Juan Trippe in the bio-flick
of his rival Howard Hughes in The
Aviator starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
It also figured in radio serials and
popular pulp fiction.
The
China Clipper and her sister ships as
well as the famous pilot of that first flight all met disastrous ends, a reminder of how dangerous long distance air travel still was even in the most
advanced aircraft.
On
January 28, 1938 Musick and his crew of six died in the crash of the S-42 Samoan
Clipper near Pago Pago, American Samoa, on a cargo and survey
flight to Auckland, New Zealand. A few months later in July the Hawaii Clipper disappeared between Guam and Manila with the loss of nine crew and
six passengers.
The
Philippine Clipper survived a Japanese air raid on Wake Island, an event depicted in the 1942
film Wake
Island. Pressed into wartime
service for the Navy along with the China
Clipper, she was lost in January 1943 between Ukiah and Boonville,
California on a flight from Honolulu killing Pacific submarine force
commander Admiral Robert H. English
and 18 others.
That
left the original China Clipper the
sole survivor of the fleet. Released from Navy service she was
assigned to the inaugural flight of
Pan Am service between Miami and Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo via Rio de Janeiro. The plane
was attempting to touch down at Port of
Spain, Trinidad with an inexperienced
pilot at the controls but under the supervision
of a veteran pilot. After aborting one approach the pilot misjudged
his altitude and came in nose down
hundreds of yards short of his designated
landing zone. The plane hull smashed on impact, took
water and, quickly sank. All 28 on board
were killed.
Trippe
would go on to lead Pan Am for decades introducing new innovations like the Boing
747, workhorse of international
aviation. He died in 1981 at the age
of 81. Mercifully he did not live to see
the ignominious failure of what had
been one of the world’s premier airlines
a decade later.
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