Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
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When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor December 7th of 1941,
it suddenly changed the lives of millions of Americans, who found themselves drawn into the
largest war in human history. But the impact was more immediate for some than for others,
as there were thousands of soldiers, sailors, and civilians in the Pacific who, quite suddenly,
found themselves in the middle of a war zone. Not just in Hawaii, but in places like Wake Island,
Guam, and the Philippines. Ten such Americans were employees of Pan American Airways, who suddenly
found themselves stranded, thousands of miles away from home. And the epic journey to return for the
Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper, is a nearly forgotten story that deserves to be remembered.
Pan American Airways began flying in 1927, operating air mail, and passenger service
from the US throughout the Caribbean. They flew to port cities where airplanes at the time could
only land on water, and so made use of flying boats, primarily the eight-seat Sikorsky S-38.
Under the direction of the airline's visionary founder, Juan Trippe, Pan American Airways
expanded to include routes across the Americas. And in larger float planes like the Sikorsky S-40,
and S-42, established air mail, and passenger routes to Europe, and then in the Pacific.
In 1939, Pan American received the first of a new class of aircraft designed for the airline.
The Boeing 314 clipper was designed to carry more passengers a longer distance.
These massive flying boats had a range of over 3,600 miles, and a top speed of 210 miles per
hour. A trip from San Francisco to Honolulu took 19 hours. The Boeing 314 clipper was designed for
luxury, with five and six course meals prepared in a full galley by chefs from five-star hotels,
served by white glove stewards on silver service. They used several refueling
stations throughout the Pacific, and built luxury hotels there for the overnight stays.
These were the first commercial air routes that made cross ocean air travel accessible, but they
were a service for the rich. A one-way trip from San Francisco to Hong Kong cost 760 dollars in
1939, the equivalent of roughly 13,000 today. Boeing produced 12 of these elegant aircraft,
nine were purchased by Pan American, and three went to the British Overseas Airline Corporation.
In 1941, the Pacific Clipper, the first of the improved 314-A models, went into service.
On December 2nd 1941, the plane with 12 passengers and 10 crew, led by veteran Captain Robert Ford,
left San Francisco on a scheduled route to Auckland, New Zealand.
After stops in San Pedro California, Honolulu, Tiny Canton Island, Fiji, and New Caledonia,
they were approaching their destination early in the morning of December 7th,
when the radio operator, John Poindexter, who had been called into service the last minute when the
scheduled radio men had gotten ill, received a coded message that stunned passengers and crew.
The Japanese navy had attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States was at war.
While that would be a concern under any circumstances, for the crew of
the Pacific Clipper it was even more of a concern. Because their route back
home was now blocked…by the Japanese. They could not go home the way they had come.
After a week of waiting for messages from Pan Am headquarters in New York,
they finally received instructions. They were to try and make it back to the United States
the long way, by flying around the world, to the west. It was a daunting prospect. The proposed
trip was over thirty thousand miles. They were across oceans, and territories they had never
seen, and for which they did not have maps and charts. They would have to scrounge the supplies,
and equipment they needed. And they would do this in the midst of a world erupting into war,
where it was not clear where the enemy was, and old alliances could shift in a moment.
They didn't even have money, they'd only been given enough for the original route.
A sympathetic banker in Australia, advanced them 500 dollars for the trip.
Their first job was to return to New Caledonia, their last stop on the Auckland trip to evacuate
the Pan American employees there, and take them to Australia. They then left on their
epic journey. Their first stop was Darwin, one of the northernmost cities in Australia,
still a remote frontier town. They had to refuel by hand, filling nearly five and a half thousand
gallons of aircraft fuel by carrying five gallon jerry cans to the top of the plane.
The next stop was on the east side of Java in the Dutch East Indies. They had no idea if the stop
had been taken by the advancing japanese. It hadn't, but it was almost as risky that it was
defended by the British, who were unfamiliar with the flying boat, and almost shot it down. Afraid
to land in a harbor full of warships, Captain Ford set them down on the ocean outside the harbor,
only later finding out that that part of the ocean had been mined. Finally recognized as friends,
officials denied them aircraft fuel, which was in short supply, and reserved for military aircraft.
They had to fill with lower octane automobile fuel. The crew pumped the remaining 100 octane
fuel into the two tanks on their fuselage, and used that to take off. Once at cruising altitude,
they switched to the automobile gasoline, and held their breath. The engine shuttered…but kept going.
Approaching their next stop in Salon, they dropped low out of a cloud bank to get their bearings.
They were stunned to have dropped down right above a Japanese submarine. There
was then a race as a startled submarine crew ran for their anti-aircraft guns,
and as the crew of the Pacific Clipper dashed to get back in the cloud bank! They narrowly escaped
the Japanese fire. After leaving Ceylon, one of the engines started spewing smoke. Limping back,
they spent Christmas of 1941 making repairs on a failed engine cylinder.
After stops on the west side of British India, and the Island of Bahrain, their next leg took
them over Arabia. It was risky territory, Saudi Arabia had aligned with the Allies as a
non-belligerent in the war, but British air crews that had crashed there had been killed by locals.
Flying along, they came through a break in the clouds to find
themselves above the Holy City of Mecca! A transgression that was only possible,
because the Saudis did not have anti-aircraft guns in the city.
The next leg took them to another British outpost in the Sudan, and then to the west
coast of Africa in the Belgian Congo. Flying over Africa was exceptionally dangerous,
as crash landing there would likely leave no hope of rescue. Landing in the Congo River,
they had to fight a strong current, but it was there that what Bob Ford described as, “One of the
high points of the whole trip” occurred, as two Pan American employees had been sent to meet them,
handing the crew members a cold beer. But there was excitement in the morning.
Heavily loaded with fuel, they tried to take off with the flow of the river. Lift was difficult in
the hot and humid air, the plane barely lifted off as it was fast approaching a waterfall.
Ford pushed the engines to the limit to get cruising altitude. After a grueling 20-hour
flight across the Atlantic, that was the longest non-stop flight to date in the airline's history,
they landed on the east coast of Brazil, finally back in the western hemisphere.
There, authorities made them vacate the planes so they could be sprayed for yellow fever.
The next day, they discovered that the men who had sprayed the plane had apparently
stolen all their money, and important papers. Their next stop, on the picturesque Caribbean
island of Trinidad at a Pan Am facility. The first they had seen since New Caledonia.
Finally, on January 6th at 6 a.m, they arrived over New York city. Ironically, after a trip of
more than 31,000 miles, Laguardia Airport made them circle for an hour, before they could land.
Pan American Airlines Boeing 314 clippers were pressed into service during the Second World War
ferrying men and supplies for the United States military, but still using Pan Am
crews. And Bob Ford continued in his role throughout the Second World War,
leaving the airline in 1952. He passed away in 1994, at the age of 88.
When Franklin D Roosevelt became the first US President to fly abroad for the Casablanca
conference with Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle in January of 1943, it was aboard a Pan
Am Clipper. But the time of the flying boat was coming to an end. During the Second World War,
concrete runways were built throughout the world to service heavy bombers. And after the war,
those runways were much safer than the always dangerous water landings, which required
specially trained crews. The last of the Pan American Boeing 314 Clippers was retired in 1946,
as Pan American shifted to land-based aircraft, like the Douglas DC-4,
and the Lockheed Constellation. And while the time of the flying boat was coming to an end,
it was certainly not before the epic journey of the Pacific Clipper. Her 31,000 mile
journey was the first time a commercial airliner circumnavigated the globe. They made 18 stops,
in countries represented by 12 different flags, touching down on five different continents.
It is a piece of aviation history that deserves to be remembered.
I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, five minutes of history,
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