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She was without a 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-Am World Airlines China Clipper lifted out of the water of Alemeda, California with a cargo of air-mail 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 befit of the press and newsreel cameras had ti e scrubbed and pilot Edwin Musick realized he could to get over the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge then still under construction so he dramatically flew under the span. It was a risky start bt 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, and Guam. Setting down in Manila Bay her cargo of 110,000 pieces of mail was cause for national celebration. The Clipper was soon in regular scheduled service and carrying passengers.
Pan-Am President Juan Trippe following flight progress on maps and a globe.
The flight was a long time coming. It was the vision Pan-Am founder and President Juan Trippe, a swashbuckling Wall Street investor turned aviation entrepreneur. After earlier forays into the infant industry, Tripp founded the Aviation Corporation of America which opened Latin American air mail service with a flight from Key West to Havana in 1917 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 into operation. With planes like the Sikorsky S-42 which made Trans-Atlantic service feasible. With well-established routes to South America, Africa, and Europe Pan-Am was the unofficial U.S, flag carrier. Trippe turned his gaze East.
But Asia was far Away and regular service would require new, larger, and more powerful aircraft. Trippe commissioned a new plane from the Glen 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 Pratt & Whitney radial engines. The planes could accommodate 36 day or 18 overnight sleeper passengers and carry a flight crew of 7 plus cabin attendants for passenger service. Three of them were built for Pan-Am.
The China Clipper was the first one built and was test flown on December 30, 1934. It was delivered to the airline fleet on October 9, 1935. Her sister ships were the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper.
Meanwhile Tripe sent Musick, now Pan-Am's senior captain on two flights in a Sikorsky @-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 the 10 world records for long-distance and flying boats. He was also by far the most experienced pilot in world having racked up nearly two million trans-oceanic air miles.
Captain Edwin Musick was the most experienced global pilot and had personally scouted and laid out the routes of the China Clipper.
With the route laid out, Musick was the easy choice for senior captain on the inaugural flight. 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 the Hawaii Clipper. Connecting service from Manila to Hong Kong began in 1937 using S-42 with the Clipper class Martins taking over that leg a year later. All three Martins flew these routes but in the public's eye they were all China Clippers.
Public fascination with the Clipper was so high that Warner Bros/First National Pictures rushed into production a film aptly named China Clipper staring Pat O'Brien as a thinly disguised Trippe who was single-minded and ruthless in his aim to establish trans-Pacific service no matter the cost. The turgid melodrama was noted as an early non-gangster role for Humphey Bogart as a safety conscious pilot at odds with his boss but saved the day by flying the plane safely through a storm and into a mail contract. The movie used newsreel and stock footage of the real Clipper including a clip of Edwin Musick flying under the bridge.
The China Clipper was featured in other films including the 1937 comedy Fly-Away Baby and the 1939 adventure Secret Service of the Air and was referenced in others. Much later Alec Baldwin portrayed Trippe in the bio-flick of his rival Howard Hughes in The Aviator. She also figured in radio serial and popular pulp fiction.
The China Clipper and her sister aircraft and two crew of that inaugural flight all met disastrous ends, a reminder of how dangerous long distance air travel still was in even the most advanced planes.
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 month later in July the Hawaii Clipper disappeared between Guam and Manila with the loss of nine crew and six passengers and Amelia Erhart's twin engine plane vanished somewhere over the Pacific with navigator Fred Noonan on board.
The Philippine Clipper survived a Japanese air raid on Wake Island, an event depicted in the 1942 moral boosting film Wake Island. Pressed into war-time service with 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 as 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 Janero. The plan was attempting to touch down at Port of Spain, Trinidad with an inexperienced pilot at the controls under the supervision of a veteran captain. After aborting one approach the pilot misjudged his altitude and came in nose down hundreds of yard short of his designated landing zone. The plane's hull smashed on impact, took water, and quickly sank. All 28 on board were killed.
I'm surprised the History Channel has not had a breathless Curse of the China Clipper feature, or maybe it has. But no mystery curse or cover-up conspiracy is needed--aviation was still that dangerous over vast distances and violent storms.
Trippe would go on to lead Pan-Am for decades introducing more innovations like the Boing 747, the 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 the world's premier airline a decade later.
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