China Clipper

by Robert Gandt

  The Rohrbach flying boats, though innovative in design and ambitious in purpose, were overshadowed by the more successful Dornier designs. They proved to be unsuitable for the long transatlantic operations and from 1929 were relegated to DLH’s Baltic services.

  The ambitious Germans were extending their wings. German flyers and flying boats were operating in European waters, across the South Atlantic, and into Latin America. In Colombia, an airline called SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aéreos) was founded by German nationals and directed by an Austrian named Peter Paul von Bauer.

  It was inevitable that a German-speaking airline, operating in the heart of the Americas, would draw the attention of a suspicious United States—and its flag carrier, Pan American Airways.

  *The X stood for “experiment” rather than “ten.”

  9

  The Latins

  With fourteen Commodore flying boats and eight S-38s acquired from NYRBA, Pan American gobbled up its competitors. Each new, lesser-financed and under-represented airline that opened routes in Central and South America became fair game for Pan American.

  The presence of the German-owned SCADTA, operating in the region of the Panama Canal, not only caused alarm in Washington, it alerted Juan Trippe to a new takeover opportunity. In a clandestine series of negotiations, Pan American contrived to buy out the controlling interest in SCADTA. Though SCADTA continued to operate for another ten years, the facts of its true ownership remained a secret. Pan American was thus allowed to continue its expansion unopposed into South America.1

  Another airline enterprise, West Indian Aerial Express, was begun by a barnstorming pilot named Basil Rowe in mid-1927. It had been WIAX’s Fairchild FC-2, La Niña, flown by Cy Caldwell, that saved the day for Juan Trippe, flying Pan American’s first official mail flight from Key West to Havana on 19 October 1927. Rowe and Caldwell would live to regret their samaritan act.

  As WIAX developed its route system across the Caribbean, flying between San Juan, Santo Domingo, Port-au-Prince, and the Virgin Islands, they found themselves in a bidding competition for FAM 6 (Foreign Air Mail Route Six). Because of their already-established route network and demonstrated expertise, Basil Rowe had no doubt that WIAX would receive the contract. “The only other bidder,” he recalled, “was the air line which I had helped to midwife with the now-lost Fairchild. [The FC-2 floatplane, La Niña, with which Cy Caldwell flew Pan Am’s first flight, was destroyed in a severe hurricane that struck San Juan in September 1928.] When the bids were opened, they were both identical, but our competitor was awarded the contract for flying the mail over the routes I had pioneered. We realized too late that while we had been developing an air line in the West Indies, our competitors had been busy on the much more important job of developing a lobby in Washington.”

  It was a familiar pattern. Trippe had won again, not in the steamy backwaters of the Caribbean where the airplanes were flown and the mail delivered, but in the hospitable lobbies of Washington. The coup de grace for WIAX came on 22 December 1928. WIAX and all its assets were absorbed by Pan American.2

  When the U.S. Post Office advertised on 2 January 1929 for bids on FAM 8, from Brownsville, Texas, to Mexico City, via Tampico, Pan American again entered a bid at the top rate of $2.00 per mile. Again, Pan American won the contract. This time Trippe went after an American-founded airline called Compañía Mexicana de Aviación (C.M.A.), whose origins dated back to 1921. C.M.A.’s Fairchild FC-2s and Ford Trimotors were, by 1929, serving routes between Mexico City, Tampico, Tuxpan, and Yucatan.

  On 23 January 1929, with the freshly awarded contract for FAM 8 in his hand, Juan Trippe bought out all the stock of C.M.A. from its founder, George Rihl. Since the purchase was by an exchange of stock, another principal C.M.A. stockholder, Sherman Fairchild, who had already acquired a large block of stock from the WIAX buy-out, was able to add to his already substantial holdings in Pan American.

  With the acquisition of C.M.A., Pan American gained an uncontested network of Central American air routes and, via this new gateway, access to South America. The shortest and most desirable route to Buenos Aires, however, was down the west coast of the continent. A major obstacle along this route was the W. R. Grace Corporation, an American trading company with powerful political connections in the South American republics. Grace was in the shipping business, as well as banking and warehouses, and had no intention of allowing an upstart airline on its turf.

  Trippe’s tactic was to establish local, token airlines in both Peru and Chile. With this toehold, and with his Central American routes and exclusive U.S. foreign airmail contracts, he effectively managed to thwart Grace’s ambitions in the airline business. The two parties commenced negotiations and, on 21 February 1929, agreed to form a new airline, Pan American–Grace Airways. In March, Panagra, as the company was soon called, was duly awarded FAM 9. The new airline’s mail contract gave them authority over the entire 4,500-mile route from Cristobal, Panama, down the western shore of South America, across the Andes to Montevideo and, as Trippe had hoped, to the crown jewel of South America, Buenos Aires.3

  Now the Pan American network—and that of its affiliates—encircled all of Central and South America. Little of this spectacular growth could be attributed to individual route development by Pan American. By acquisition, by annexation, by overwhelming economic pressure backed by benevolent government support, Pan American established its hegemony in Latin America. The fifteen land planes acquired from C. M. A. brought Pan American’s fleet to ninety-seven aircraft, with another seventeen in Panagra colors. By the end of 1930 Pan American had the largest route system of any airline in the Western Hemisphere.4

  In 1927 Trippe hired a small, bald-headed Dutchman named Andre Priester. In his homeland Priester had worked at KLM under the much-respected Dr. Albert Plesman. In 1925, chafing under the slowness of promotion in the Netherlands, he and his wife came to America. His countryman, Tony Fokker, found him a position with a short-lived airline operated by Philadelphia Rapid Transit. When that came to an end, he made ends meet by working in Detroit at the Ford factory. And then came a telegram from Juan Trippe.

  During the next few years, Andre Priester would place his indelible stamp on the life and times of Pan American Airways. The little Dutchman imbued the airline with a tradition of conservative, hard-nosed, by-the-book, meticulously planned operations.

  Priester was assigned the duties of chief engineer, but his role swelled to embrace all of Pan American’s flight operations. He made himself directly responsible for the design specifications and acquisition of new aircraft. He hired and fired air and ground staff. He reported directly to Trippe, who rarely interfered with Priester’s activities.

  Whereas Trippe, the patrician and aloof head of the airline, was seldom seen by the rank and file, Priester was highly visible. He would appear everywhere, inspecting, snooping, running a finger along a surface, searching out untidiness.

  It was Priester who introduced to the barnstorming, anything-goes, fly-for-the-hell-of-it airline business a new principle: standardization. He wrote manuals and procedures and checklists. He dictated that there would be one and only one standard way—the Pan American way—to fly, dispatch, and maintain their airplanes.

  Pilots, being individualists, resisted such autocratic ways. They joked about Priester’s bald-headed, gnome-like appearance. They mimicked his thick, nearly indecipherable accent.

  Priester personally hired his pilots. One airman, Bill Masland, remembered going to Priester’s office on the fifty-eighth floor of the Chrysler Building in New York. “I could make out little of the man behind the desk: a dark outline and a pair of unblinking yellow eyes, no more. I waited for him to speak. He uttered not a word. So, after an interval of silence, I launched into my carefully prepared presentation. . .”

  That was Priester’s style. He would listen in icy silence while the young man squirmed. “I vant that you should talk,” he would eventually tell the applicants. If he like
d what he heard, he would hire them.

  Pilot applicants were required to have not only a commercial pilot’s license, but an aircraft and engine mechanic’s license, and a second-class radiotelegraph operator’s license. New pilots found themselves assigned for several months to the shops as apprentice mechanics before being allowed into Pan American’s cockpits.

  Priester issued to his crews a document headed “Safety First.” “Always bear in mind the comfort of your passengers,” the manual directed. “Handle your aircraft and regulate your flight as to accomplish maximum comfort for them and to inspire their confidence in yourself, your aircraft and in air transportation.”

  “Bumby [sic] air is psychologically disturbing to passengers and should be avoided whenever practicable.” The manual gave specific instructions about how to do this:

  a.by flying above clouds when they are sufficiently broken to permit glimpses of land and water.

  b.by not flying in clouds.

  c.by flying at high altitudes when smooth air can be found.

  d.by flying over the water when air is rough over land, provided a too great deviation from the regular course, or too great increase of time required for the flight does not result.

  We give rain squalls and local disturbances a wide berth when practicable.5

  Priester had a love-hate relationship with his pilots. In his office he kept a picture of every crew member on the roster. Whenever an incident involved a pilot, Priester could associate a face with the name. He sent Christmas cards to each one, usually with a subtle company message. One year, Horace Brock received such a card. “Rather obscurely on the card could be found two little numbers, perhaps .87 in the upper right-hand corner and .55 in the upper left. For the many pilots with some aeronautical training, the meanings were obvious. The upper right referred to propeller efficiency, and the upper left to specific fuel consumption, efficiencies not yet attainable.”6

  Priester’s zeal for perfection approached a religious attitude. He forbade smoking and drinking on Pan American aircraft, even for the passengers. He would fire a pilot for smoking in public, or a mechanic for possessing a dirty tool box.

  With his dictatorial style, he was the quintessential airline boss. He was a man passionately devoted to duty, and he demanded a similar devotion from his people. He saw himself as father, mentor, disciplinarian, director. He was the counterpart of France’s legendary airline chief, Didier Daurat, whom Antoine de Saint-Exupéry portrayed as the tough, uncompromising Rivière in his novel, Night Flight. “Love the men under your orders,” said Rivière, perhaps speaking for Andre Priester, “—but do not let them know it.”7

  In Juan Trippe’s view of his airline as the “chosen instrument,” Pan American was to be an airborne maritime service. It flew the American flag and represented American interests around the globe. Its spirit and traditions would be naval and nautical. Its seagoing aircraft were to be called clippers, after the fast, full-rigged sailing vessels of the nineteenth century. Speed was measured in knots. Periods of airborne duty were called watches. The men who commanded Pan American’s clippers were given the title of captain. Copilots were first officers. Instead of the typical flyers’ attire of riding breeches, leather jacket, and silk scarf, Pan American pilots wore black, naval-style uniforms and white officer’s caps. A discipline and protocol worthy of the merchant marine was established. For those airmen who would eventually command the great ocean-crossing clippers that Trippe and Priester had in mind, an even loftier title was created: Master of Ocean Flying Boats.

  In 1928 Priester recruited to Pan American a young radio technician named Hugo Leuteritz. Leuteritz, who at the time was under contract to RCA to develop an aerial transmitter, was given the task of devising an airborne navigation system for Pan American’s aircraft. Aerial navigation in 1928 amounted to no more than guesswork. Pilots depended exclusively on surface references for finding their way, and when visual contact with the earth was lost, so was the hapless aviator.

  Leuteritz’s interest in aerial navigation became a personal matter. One day in 1928, during a flight between Havana and Key West aboard one of Pan American’s two Fokker F-7s, he was experimenting with an airborne radio. The pilot of the Fokker became lost, missed his Florida landfall and was forced to ditch the land plane in the Gulf of Mexico. The aircraft and one passenger sank at sea. Leuteritz received a fractured pelvis and shoulder. Upon emerging from the hospital, he said to Priester, “We better do something about navigation.”8

  Trippe’s greatest recruiting coup came in 1929. A year and a half earlier, a young American flyer had electrified the world with his single-handed conquest of the Atlantic. Since then Charles Lindbergh had been deluged with offers to appear in motion pictures, endorse an assortment of commercial products, and tour the lecture circuit. He declined them all. Lindbergh’s abiding interest was the advancement of aviation.

  Pan American lost no time in making overtures to Lindbergh. Already the Lone Eagle had signed a contract with Clement Keys of Transcontinental Air Transport (which ultimately became the modern TWA), becoming chairman of TAT’s technical committee. The domestic routes he surveyed and organized became advertised as the “Lindbergh Line.”

  During the summer of 1928 Lindbergh made a number of visits to Trippe’s office in New York to discuss Pan American’s plans for an international American airline. Lindbergh was intrigued by Trippe’s ideas, by the route and facility development the airline had in mind, and, particularly, by the futuristic airplanes scheduled to fly in Pan American colors. In January of 1929, Lindbergh signed a four-year contract as technical advisor to Pan American. His compensation would be $ 10,000 per year, plus options on ten thousand shares of Pan American stock at $15 per share, and another ten thousand shares at $30 per share. His duties included the surveying of new routes, flight-testing new machines, and contributing to the development of new aircraft.

  Lindbergh’s true value to Pan American was incalculable. No hero of the twentieth century had received the adulation that was showered on Lindbergh. Still in his twenties, he was regarded as an oracle in all matters related to aviation. The publicity that automatically attended his movements exceeded anything that could have been generated by a public relations department.

  On his 27th birthday, 4 February 1929, Lindbergh took off in an S-38, inaugurating FAM 5, Pan American’s new airmail route from Miami to Cristóbal, in the Canal Zone. The historic flight would include stops in Havana, Belize, and Managua, Nicaragua. Copilot for the journey was Pan American vice president John Hambleton, Trippe’s old friend and a Pan American cofounder.9

  Like all Lindbergh’s public appearances, the flight attracted huge crowds. Trippe came along as far as Havana. He told the assembly at the airport that the flight was “but a forerunner of air mail and passenger service that will go to Valparaiso [Chile] by April first.”

  In Belize Lindbergh renewed his warm relationship with the people of the British colony—he had landed there in the Spirit of St. Louis in December 1927 during his goodwill tour of the Caribbean. A crowd of two thousand people turned out to cheer when Lindbergh landed the Sikorsky at Gatun Lake in the Canal Zone. Airmail had come to Panama from the United States, a distance of nearly two thousand miles in twenty-one hours and twenty-seven minutes flying time.10

  Lindbergh’s next mission attracted even more attention. In September of 1929, acting as Pan American’s technical adviser, he inaugurated FAM 6, the new airmail route from Miami to Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana. That spring he had married Anne Morrow, daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. On the new trailblazing airmail flight, Lindbergh was accompanied by his twenty-three-year-old bride and by Juan and Betty Trippe. The trip extended into a 7,000-mile, three-week junket through Latin America.

  The press treated the journey like a royal procession. The expedition departed Miami amid circuslike fanfare, speeches, and a deluge of roses. Lindbergh, who had once been a full-time airmail pilot, wore a dark business suit. He carried his fl
ying helmet rolled up in his hand.

  They flew the workhorse of the Pan American fleet, the reliable S-38 amphibian. In addition to the two couples, the crew was augmented by a copilot and a radio operator.

  It was a hectic routine. Officially, the journey was an airmail flight. A schedule had to be kept. The air was often turbulent, the facilities usually primitive. In many ports of call the natives had never before seen an airplane. Waiting at every stop were adoring crowds eager for a glimpse of Lindbergh and anxious to inspect his shy young wife. There were government officials intent on delivering speeches. Admirers reached out to clasp the flyer’s hand. Dictators wanted to bask in the warm publicity that attended his arrival.

  For Trippe, each of the Latin republics was a marketplace. Pan American needed routes and facilities and concessions. While Lindbergh rode at the head of the processions and confronted the hungry press, Trippe put in long days in conferences with government officials.

  En route to Venezuela, Lindbergh reverted briefly to the airshowman he had once been. In order to take aerial photographs with an unobstructed view, he turned the controls over to the copilot and crawled forward into the bow of the amphibian. In full view of his horrified passengers, he climbed up through the hatch, onto the bow of the aircraft, into the slipstream. At 1,500 feet above the jungle, without a parachute, he crawled out on the bow of the S-38 and positioned himself where he could shoot his pictures. With the wind nearly tearing the clothes off his lanky frame, he crawled back by the same route. He climbed into the cabin and resumed flying the airplane.