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A blog about antiques and history (formerly 'Not Yet Published')

   [8]26/12/2020 by [9]Scheong

The Long Way Back: The Farthest Flight of the Pacific Clipper

   Imagine this – It’s December! You’ve booked yourself an international
   flight to the Far East to enjoy a balmy, sandy Christmas in the sun!
   You board the plane and take off across the Pacific headed for
   Southeast Asia, and settle in for several hours of relaxation,
   conversation and sightseeing over the ocean.

   Before you’ve even reached your destination – your entire world is
   turned upside-down! Reports come in over the radio that suddenly, the
   whole world is at war! You can’t fly back, you can’t go on ahead, you
   have no idea where the plane is even going to land, and you could be
   shot down at any minute!

   This is the terrifying tale of the Pacific Clipper, one of the
   long-haul luxury passenger seaplanes operated by Pan-American Airways
   in the 1930s and 40s, and the record-breaking flight that it took
   around the world in December, 1941, as the South Pacific exploded into
   war beneath its wings.

   What Was the Pacific Clipper?

   Introduced in 1938, the Boeing 314 Clipper was, in the late 1930s, the
   most modern of commercial, long-haul passenger aircraft being sold
   around the world at the time. Only twelve were ever constructed. Nine
   went to Pan-American Airways, and the remaining three went to BOAC –
   the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

   The Boeing 314 was a large aircraft for the day, but even it wasn’t
   able to cover the entire width of the Pacific Ocean in a single,
   uninterrupted flight. Instead, the accepted practice of the day was to
   “island-hop” around the world, providing long-distance travel to the
   paying public by flying from one airbase to another, completing
   long-haul flights in stages. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t exactly
   glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t cheap!…But it beat the hell out of
   trying to cover the same distance by ocean liner!
   PAA’s ‘California Clipper’ in 1940

   The Pan-Am clippers came with most of the stuff that modern aircraft
   come with: Lavatories, seats that could convert to lie-flat beds,
   delicious food, and full steward service! However, they differed in
   many other ways:

   First – journey-times were much longer. From California to Hawaii took
   up to 19 hours! Second – Passenger-volumes were much-reduced – The
   average pre-war Pan-Am clipper barely carried more than 70 passengers.
   Third – the Pan-Am clippers were all seaplanes, or “flying boats” –
   they had no landing-gear – instead, the planes took off and landed on
   flat bodies of water – large rivers, lakes, or along the coastline
   during calm weather.

   Last but not least – tickets were expensive! A one-way flight from
   California to Hong Kong was $760 – around $14,000USD in modern prices!

   Piloting a Pan-Am clipper was very different from flying a modern
   aircraft. Because the planes could only take off and land on water,
   pilots had to be extremely skilled, not only in flying, landing,
   taxiing and take-off – but they also had to know a lot more about
   weather, sea-conditions, how to spot a safe stretch of water, and how
   to read the windspeeds and directions accurately enough to know when,
   where and how to make a safe water-landing! These days, most pilots
   hope to only make one water-landing in their entire lives, if ever have
   to – but for Pan-Am clipper pilots, it was literally a daily
   occurrence!

   In an age when long-haul passenger-flights were limited and the
   industry was only, quite literally, getting off the ground – flying was
   far more dangerous than it is today. Engine-failures and
   emergency-landings happened much more frequently, and a full-service
   crew flew with the aircraft at all times to tackle all kinds of
   mechanical incidents that could happen during flight. The crew of the
   Boeing 314 Flying Boat was 11 in number: The captain, first officer,
   second officer, third officer, fourth officer, two flight-engineers,
   two radio-operators, the purser, and his assistant.

   It was one of these fantastical flying machines – a Boeing 314 – which
   came to be known as the ‘Pacific Clipper’.

   Pan-American Airways named all its early aircraft, just like how
   steamship-lines at the time named all their ships. And just like how
   shipping lines followed naming conventions (Cunard named all ships
   “-ia” – Carpathia, Lusitania, Muretania, Berengaria, etc, and White
   Star named all their ships “-ic” – Titanic, Olympic, Atlantic, etc),
   Pan-Am also followed similar conventions: All their aircraft were
   called “clippers”, a reference to clipper sailing ships, which were
   famed for their speed. The names were typically related to the plane’s
   assigned route.

   There was the Atlantic Clipper, the China Clipper, the Caribbean
   Clipper, the Honolulu Clipper…and the subject of this posting: The
   Pacific Clipper.

   The Farthest Flight of the Pacific Clipper

   It is December 2nd, 1941. Off the coast of sunny San Francisco, the
   Pacific Clipper is preparing for a routine flight across the Pacific
   towards Auckland, New Zealand. There are twenty-three people on board:
   Twelve passengers, and eleven crew. The pilot is Capt. Robert Ford, a
   Pan-Am veteran, well-used to the rigors of long-haul passenger-aircraft
   flights.

   With a range of 5,000 miles, the Pacific Clipper was never able to make
   the flight from California to New Zealand nonstop, and it was accepted
   that the plane would land several times during the trip to drop off and
   collect mail, passengers, food, drinks, trash, and most importantly –
   fuel! When Captain Ford fired up the engines and took to the skies,
   nobody on board could’ve imagined what lay ahead.
   Pre-war Honolulu in the 1930s

   The aircraft’s first stop was San Pedro, California, then out across
   the ocean. It landed in Honolulu, Hawaii, then Kanton Island near
   Kiribati, then Fiji, and then finally, New Caledonia. In the preceding
   days, it had covered over 6,000 miles! The final leg of the journey was
   still ahead: Auckland, a mere 1,200 miles away – well within the limits
   of the Pacific Clipper’s operational range.

   As the plane took off from New Caledonia and flew southeast towards
   Auckland, wireless operator John Poindexter was relaxing at his
   station, his headphones strapped onto his head as the aircraft hummed
   around him. Right now, he was probably thinking about his wife – the
   same wife that he had advised, he would be home early for – and to keep
   dinner for him on the kitchen table.

   That was before one of the two radio-operators on the flight pulled out
   sick, and Poindexter stepped in to replace him. Had he known what was
   about to happen, Poindexter would’ve told his wife not to bother about
   dinner, because he was going to be home late.

   Very late.

   Halfway through their current leg, the radio suddenly crackled to life,
   and Poindexter scribbled down a message in Morse Code. Ripping it off
   his pad, he hurried to tell the rest of the crew what had just come in
   over the airwaves.

   It was December 7th, 1941. A date which would live in infamy.
   Poindexter had just found out about the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl
   Harbor in Hawaii.

   As the pilot, his co-pilot, the stewards, navigator, flight engineers
   and radio-operators all looked at the message, they suddenly realised
   what a horrible position they were all in!

   While they could safely make it to New Zealand, offload their
   passengers, cargo and mail, refuel and take-off again – it was
   immediately obvious that there was no way that they could ever go
   home…or at least…not in the conventional way.

   Under normal circumstances, the plane would’ve flown northeast towards
   Hawaii, where it would land, refuel, and then continue on back to the
   mainland United States. With Japanese aircraft, warships and aircraft
   carriers between the South Pacific and Hawaii, however, such a route
   was impossible – an aircraft bearing American markings would almost
   certainly be shot out of the sky if it was discovered by Japanese
   surface vessels.

   With Hawaii on high alert, landing and refueling there, even if they
   managed to evade the Japanese, would be next to impossible. Unable to
   make the journey back to California without at least one stopover,
   getting back home seemed impossible!

   Landing in New Zealand

   The first leg of this epic adventure was relatively easy – landing. Two
   hours after receiving the world-changing news that the naval base at
   Pearl Harbor had been blasted by the Japanese, Captain Ford and his
   crew executed a landing off the coast of New Zealand, taxiing up to
   Auckland and tying off. Passengers and cargo were offloaded and the
   plane was prepared for…well…they weren’t exactly sure what for…but they
   wanted to be prepared at the very least!

   Unsure of what else to do, the crew made their way to the American
   Embassy in Auckland. Here, they managed to contact Pan-American Airways
   Headquarters…in New York…and waited for further instructions.

   With facilities in Hawaii put out of action, the harbor inoperable and
   any aircraft-fuel being needed for military aircraft, flying back to
   California was all but impossible.

   In the week that it took for headquarters to make up its mind on the
   crew’s next move, the Pacific was erupting into war around them. The
   Philippine Clipper at Wake Island had managed to evacuate all Pan-Am
   employees and a lucky few civilians, taking to the air as Japanese
   forces rolled in, riddling the aircraft with gunfire as it fought to
   get out of range. In Hong Kong, another Pan-Am flying boat had been
   blown up at its dock before it even had a chance to leave.

   Knowing that time was running out and that their options were dwindling
   rapidly, it was eight days before Captain Ford and his crew found out
   what they were expected to do.

   Finally, on the 15th of December, a cypher-telegram was dispatched from
   New York to the U.S. Embassy, Auckland, New Zealand. It instructed
   Captain Ford to strip the Pacific Clipper of all identifying marks,
   fuel-up, and to get home by whatever means were necessary. During the
   trip, radio silence was to be observed at all times, to prevent the
   aircraft from being detected by the Japanese, and to land in New York
   when it arrived back in American waters.

   When he found out what he was expected to do, Captain Ford probably
   thought that it would’ve been better if he’d kept his mouth shut! There
   was no way the aircraft could fly that far without stopping several
   times for fuel. There was no way that they’d have enough food,
   equipment or supplies to last that long! They didn’t even have any
   money, and because Captain Ford only flew the Pacific routes – he had
   no maps or navigational charts to guide him across Eurasia, Africa, or
   the Atlantic Ocean! They were entirely on their own, with orders to
   make it home by any means necessary.

   After refueling the aircraft, Ford and his passengers and crew took off
   once more, to an uncertain fate.

   It was the 16th of December when they left New Zealand, and their first
   stop was one of their previous legs – New Caledonia. Here, Ford had
   been ordered to land, refuel, and take on evacuees – the staff of the
   Pan-Am facility that operated out of the New Caledonian capital –
   Noumea. Fearing that the island could be captured by the Japanese at
   any minute, Ford told the Pan-Am staff that they had exactly one hour
   to grab whatever they could, and flee. This wouldn’t be easy – each
   passenger was only allowed one bag each!

   While the Pan-Am staff scrambled to pack their bags and secure their
   essentials, the plane was refueled. With everybody safely aboard, the
   plane took off once more, this time flying west.

   The only other major landmass in the region that had not yet been taken
   by the Japanese was the Commonwealth of Australia – the Pacific
   Clipper’s next stop. It landed off the Queensland coast near the town
   of Gladstone, where once again – it started to refuel. While the
   ground-staff prepared the clipper for its next leg, the crew offloaded
   the Pan-Am employees from Noumea, judging Australia to be far enough
   away from Japanese aggression to be a safe evacuation-point.

   While this was going on, Ford had to tackle another issue that hadn’t
   been an issue before last week!…money!

   With each flight, the crew was provided with enough funds to cover
   their expenditures – food, fuel, and any necessary repairs – from
   California to New Zealand…but Pan-Am in New York had not been able to
   send them any extra funds for their long-haul flight around the world!

   Wondering what to do, Captain Ford was suddenly approached by a young
   man, who identified himself as a local banker. The aircraft had enough
   food and fuel to last the trip – but what about money?

   “We’re broke!” Ford recalled saying, and explained how they had only
   been given enough funds to support them there and back – not for
   halfway around the world!

   “I’ll probably be shot for this”, the banker replied, but he went to
   his local branch, unlocked the vault in the back, and returned with
   $500 cash-money – American dollars! A not-inconsiderable sum in 1941!

   Accepting the cash without another word, Ford handed it to Rod Brown,
   the aircraft’s navigator – the only person on board with access to the
   plane’s strongbox. The funds were deposited, and the aircraft prepared
   to take flight again.
   Darwin in the 1930s. A sight like this would’ve been very similar to
   what the crew of the Pacific Clipper would’ve seen when they landed in
   the harbour on the 17th of December, 1941

   The Pacific Clipper continued its journey westwards, flying across the
   Australian interior. Being a seaplane, the Pacific Clipper could only
   take off or land on water – and Australia being one of the driest
   countries on earth – there ain’t much water around! Certainly not
   enough to land a commercial aircraft in!

   The afternoon of the 17th saw the Pacific Clipper landing in Darwin,
   the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. The weather was
   atrocious and the plane came down in the midst of a tropical
   thunderstorm. Although it was the capital of the Northern Territory,
   Darwin was hardly a bustling metropolis! The crew were stunned to
   discover just how small Darwin was – little more than a large, country
   town. Even in 2020, Darwin’s population is still barely 150,000 people!
   A colour photograph of Darwin, ca. 1935

   Despite this, Darwin was still an important military base, with an
   airfield, army-base, aircraft facilities, and a naval base in the
   deep-water harbour nearby. Darwin was such an army town that the crew
   found that their refreshment station was actually the local brothel!

   While in Darwin, Captain Ford and his navigator, Rod Brown, had to
   decide what on earth they were going to do next. Australia was likely
   to be the last friendly nation that they would be able to land in,
   before they had to strike out on their own and try and make it home
   across the rest of the world. There would be no way to know where they
   could land, find fuel, repair the engines if they malfunctioned, could
   receive medical care, or even communicate with Pan-Am headquarters in
   New York, if they had to!

   Leaving Australia…

   After freshening up, the crew had to refuel the aircraft…again. 5,000
   gallons of aircraft fuel had to be poured into the tanks before they
   could take off – not with pumps or hoses or anything as sophisticated
   as that!…Oh no.

   It had to be done by hand.

   1,000 5gal. jerry-cans of fuel had to be literally manhandled up the
   side of the aircraft and poured into the tanks over the wings, passed
   down, refilled, and then passed back up again! All this in the raging
   North-Australian heat! It was past midnight before the job was done,
   and the crew were exhausted! They allowed themselves a few hours’
   sleep, and then took off again the moment it was light.

   Lifting off from Darwin on the morning of the 18th, Captain Ford and
   his crew flew north to Surabaya in Java, then part of the Dutch East
   Indies.

   Desperate to hold the island by any means necessary, British and Dutch
   forces were understandably on-edge when they saw an unidentified
   aircraft entering Javan airspace. Unable to make radio-contact, the
   Pacific Clipper was almost taken out by friendly fire! When it finally
   was allowed to land – the local authorities refused to give them any
   aircraft fuel! They insisted that their limited stock was for military
   uses only – but – they didn’t want to be seen as being unsympathetic –
   there was a war on, after all!…and they graciously informed Captain
   Ford that he was welcome to help himself to as much gasoline as he
   could load onto the aircraft! It’s not like anybody was going for a
   relaxing, Sunday drive right now, so there was more than enough petrol
   to spare! Even enough to fuel a commercial airliner!

   The lower-quality automobile fuel had never been used in an airplane
   before, and Ford was skeptical about whether it would even operate
   properly at high altitudes! But he had no choice – it was either take
   the lower-grade fuel – or run out of fuel entirely, and crash in the
   ocean!

   Erring on the side of caution, Ford ordered his flight engineers to
   siphon the remaining aircraft fuel into one tank, and fill the other
   tanks with the lower-grade gasoline. The plane would take off using
   aircraft fuel, but would carry out the next leg of its journey using
   the automobile fuel.

   Once the plane was airborne, Ford switched the feed-valves on the
   tanks, shutting off the aviation fuel and switching on the pumps for
   the lower-grade petrol – the engines gurgled and spluttered and smoke
   started pumping out, but once they’d gotten over the initial shock of
   the change in their diet – they started firing once more.

   Chasing the Sunset

   Determined to put as much space between himself and the Japanese as
   possible, Captain Ford steered the Pacific Clipper westwards, and out
   across the Indian Ocean, and over waters which were, quite literally –
   uncharted! With no detailed maps, Ford, his navigator, co-pilot and the
   aircraft’s stewards were basically flying blind, only having the
   vaguest idea of where they were going. Navigator Brown had no
   navigational documents for this part of the world, and warned Ford that
   all they had to go on were rough bearings.

   Ford decided that their next logical destination had to be a colony of
   the British Empire – somewhere that the Pacific Clipper would stand a
   greater chance of a friendly reception. To that end, the plane
   attempted to find the island of Ceylon – today – Sri Lanka – off the
   Indian coast.

   Had they been traveling by sea, this would’ve been called an “all-red
   route” – a sea voyage which stopped only in “red” parts of the map –
   red being the colour of the British Empire. As they flew on, the crew
   of the Pacific Clipper encountered heavy cloud-cover. Unable to
   determine his position, Ford dropped the plane below the clouds to get
   his bearings – a decision he would immediately regret!

   As he broke cloud-cover, Ford got the shock of his life when a Japanese
   submarine appeared below! The Japanese started manning their deck-guns
   and began firing at the Pacific Clipper and Ford had to quickly
   manipulate the controls to bring the aircraft back up into the clouds!

   Sustaining no damage from the Japanese attack, the Pacific Clipper
   finally landed in Ceylon and the crew were welcomed by the local
   British military garrison, where they were invited to a meeting to give
   them whatever intelligence they could regarding the current state of
   the South Pacific.

   After the aircraft had been refueled, it took off once more. It was now
   the 24th of December – Christmas Eve, and Captain Ford was about to get
   a very nasty Christmas present! They had barely flown more than a
   handful of miles when an explosion in one of the starboard engines made
   everybody jump! Peering out the window, Ford and his co-pilot were
   stunned to see smoke and oil gurgling from the #3 engine! Ford shut the
   engine down and spun the plane around back to Ceylon!

   When they landed, Ford pulled the engine coverings off and discovered
   that one of the 18 cylinders had ruptured and worked itself loose from
   its mounting, causing the oil to leak out. Repairing the loosened
   mounting was not difficult…but it did take a long time, and it was
   Boxing Day before the plane could take off again.

   Deciding to stick with their “British-Empire” strategy, Ford and his
   crew headed for Karachi, then part of British India (today part of
   Pakistan), and from there to the Kingdom of Bahrain, at the time, a
   British protectorate.

   So far, so good.

   Arriving in Bahrain, the crew once again made contact with the British
   military authorities stationed there, explained their situation, and
   their onward plans. Captain Ford was warned to avoid flying over
   Saudi-Arabia if at all possible, due to the potentially hostile
   reception he might receive – more than a few British aircraft had been
   shot down over Arabian airspace, and while the Pacific Clipper had, by
   this time, been stripped of all its identifying marks to avoid enemy
   attention, there was still a good chance that an unmarked,
   un-identifiable aircraft might still be targeted by hostile forces.
   The Pacific Clipper in flight

   Captain Ford provisioned and refueled his plane, and they took off
   again. With fuel a precious commodity, Ford wasn’t in any position to
   take a ‘scenic route’ back to America, and so, ended up flying across
   Saudi-Arabia anyway! To protect against gunfire, the clipper remained
   in the clouds for the majority of the leg, only dipping down to check
   their bearings every few miles. They’d been in the air about 20 minutes
   when Ford took the plane down to check their progress. The crew got the
   shock of their lives when they realised that they were flying right
   across central Mecca! Fortunately, anti-aircraft installations did not
   exist in Mecca, and the Pacific Clipper flew on, unmolested.

   The aircraft’s next stop was Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan.
   Landing on the famous River Nile, Captain Ford and his crew were
   greeted by representatives of the British Royal Air Force, who helped
   them refuel the Pacific Clipper, provision it for the next leg of its
   epic journey, and wished them godspeed.

   Exactly where to go next was a bit of a challenge. Flying to Europe was
   dangerous at best, unwise at worst. While they could probably head to
   somewhere like Gibraltar, Ford feared that the clipper’s engines,
   already taxed to breaking-point, would not survive the heat of the
   Sahara Desert – a forced landing there would be a death-sentence to
   everybody! This also meant that places like Casablanca, Spain or
   Portugal were out of range.

   Instead, the crew decided to fly to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo –
   it would at least be further west, and would take them one step closer
   to home.

   Landing on the river near Leopoldville, the plane was tied up at a
   jetty and the crew disembarked for their next rest-stop. Upon their
   arrival in town, they received the shock of their lives! Two Pan-Am
   employees – an airport manager, and a radio-operator – greeted them!
   Relieved to see colleagues again, the crew relaxed, had a meal,
   exchanged news…and thanks to the two Leopoldville employees – enjoyed
   something that none of the Pacific Clipper crew had had, probably since
   leaving Australia – a nice, cold beer!

   The crew rested in Leopoldville overnight while they planned the next
   leg of their journey. They also refueled the aircraft and prepared it
   for the next day’s flying – in fact, they prepared it so well, that
   come dawn, the plane was almost too heavy to take off! With tanks full
   of fuel and oil, cargo and crew, and with the soggy, humid air of the
   equator all around them, the Pacific Clipper narrowly avoided plunging
   off the edge of a waterfall as it lurched ungainly into the air once
   more!

   The Atlantic Crossing

   The next leg was one of the most dangerous – flying across the Atlantic
   to South America – a journey that took them nearly all day and night!
   When they finally landed in Natal on the Brazilian coastline, port
   authorities insisted that the aircraft – by then looking very battered,
   worn-out and worse-for-wear, due to it serving as the home for the ten
   crew-members for the past month – had to be fumigated for mosquitoes,
   which could carry deadly yellow fever. The crew disembarked the plane
   and started planning the next part of their journey while a team of
   fumigators boarded the aircraft and got to work.

   And boy, did they ever! When Captain Ford and his colleagues returned,
   the ‘fumigators’ had robbed them blind! Anything that wasn’t nailed
   down had been stripped off the aircraft! All their personal papers,
   most of their charts, maps, travel-documents, company papers, and most
   of their money had been stolen!…a fact they only discovered once they
   had already left Brazilian airspace!

   Finally back in the Americas and in familiar skies once more, Captain
   Ford flew towards the Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad & Tobago.
   This was the first place they’d landed in since leaving New Caledonia a
   month before, that had actual Pan-Am facilities, and Ford was relieved
   to be among friendly faces once more. The next leg was the last one –
   the final flight home to New York!

   Captain Ford and his colleagues were so eager to get home that they
   took off almost immediately. It was now the 5th of January, and New
   York was just a short jaunt away. They left Trinidad so early that when
   they arrived in New York, it wasn’t even daylight yet! As a result,
   when Captain Ford contacted La Guardia Airport Air-Traffic Control with
   the words: “This is the Pacific Clipper, inbound from Auckland, New
   Zealand! Overhead in five minutes!”, the air-traffic controller called
   back that the Pacific Clipper was not allowed to land!…for 50 minutes.
   Only when the sun rose near 7:00am, did the plane finally touch down in
   American waters once more!
   The incredible journey of the Pacific Clipper

   In the end, Captain Ford had made history! And in so many ways! Let’s
   count them, shall we?

   The first-ever round-the-world flight by a commercial airliner.

   The longest continuous flight made by a commercial airliner.

   The first circumnavigation of the world by following the equator.

   The longest nonstop flight in the entire history of Pan-American World
   Airways: 3,583 miles from Leopoldville to Natal.

   In the nearly four weeks it took them to get home, Ford and his crew
   had visited twelve nations on five continents, and had made eighteen
   landings! They had also made incredible history!
   The Pacific Clipper on its arrival at La Guardia Airport, New York. 6th
   of January, 1942

   Want to read more?

   Sources included…

   The History Guy YouTube Channel.

   [10]The Pan-Am Historical Foundation website.

   [11]The Navy Times website.

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