China Clipper

by Robert Gandt

  Heading the list of the Princess’s troubles were her engines. Turboprop engine technology was still in its infancy. The Princess was powered by Bristol Proteus turboprops, which had been advertised to produce 3,500 horsepower, but which, in fact, delivered only about 2,500 horsepower. The arrangement of engines and propellers was an engineering nightmare. The inboard and center engines were mounted in coupled pairs and drove eight-bladed, contra-rotating propellers. The outer engines were singly mounted and turned four-bladed propellers.

  The Princess was a behemoth by any standard. With a wing span of 219 feet 6 inches, she had a design maximum weight of 345,000 pounds. It was intended that she have a maximum range of 6,040 miles at a cruising speed of 358 miles per hour. Her two decks and several cabins were to accommodate one hundred passengers in luxury or up to 220 in an economy configuration.

  The Princess never overcame her problems, nor did she find interested buyers. After a hundred flight hours, the project was abandoned in 1954. All three aircraft were scrapped. A hugely expensive failure, the Princess was the last flying boat built for airline use.2

  In the history of might-have-beens, one flying boat ranks as the most spectacular of them all. The Hughes H-4 Hercules, the largest aircraft in terms of wing span ever constructed, remains the leviathan of flying machines.

  The Hercules had its origins in the fertile mind of an American industrialist, Henry J. Kaiser. The United States in 1942 was faced with the prospect of transporting thousands of men and millions of tons of material across the Atlantic, which had become a U-boat hunting ground. Kaiser, a man who favored direct solutions, proposed a bold idea: He would overfly the submarines. Kaiser wanted to build a fleet of giant flying boats and, moreover, he would build them with materials not listed as critical to the war effort.

  Though his proposal drew a barrage of skepticism, Henry Kaiser was not a man to be taken lightly. Already he had mobilized the American shipbuilding industry into feats never thought possible. Under his direction, a new 10,000-ton Liberty ship was entering service every forty-six days.3

  Kaiser was given his chance. But after the War Production Board gave him the go-ahead, Kaiser the shipbuilder recruited a partner who could supply the aeronautical expertise. And so did Howard Hughes’s name become linked with the Hercules, and thus did the eccentric entrepreneur become responsible for the construction of the world’s biggest aircraft.

  Eventually Kaiser, who had overextended himself, dropped out. Engineering problems and the snowballing costs of the project eliminated all but one model of the giant flying boat. Despite cutbacks by the government, despite congressional accusations of misspent federal funds, and despite the end of the war and the vanished need for his giant flying boat, Hughes persevered with an obsessive tenacity.

  Not until 2 November 1947 was the H-4, as it was now called, ready for testing. The events of that day have become an item of aviation legend. After demonstrating the water-handling characteristics of the big aircraft to the press, Hughes disembarked the reporters, then taxied back out to the open water. During what was supposed to be a high-speed taxi test, Hughes took off in the Hercules, flew for a mile at an altitude of seventy feet, then settled back into the harbor. It was the first and only flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules.4

  What was the historical significance of the Hughes flying boat? It had never been considered for commercial use, nor would it have been a suitable airliner. The big aircraft is remembered primarily as an intriguing but extravagant sinkhole for taxpayers’ dollars. The grand scale of the H-4, as it turned out, represented the ultimate dimensions of the flying boat. No larger or more ambitious oceangoing aircraft was ever attempted.

  How good a flying boat might she have been? Why was she never flown again? The puzzle of the Hughes flying boat remains a fascinating mystery. The answers lie sealed forever in the enigmatic mind of her builder.

  One of the last true believers in the flying boat was Glenn Martin, builder of the China Clipper. Still seething over his treatment by Juan Trippe, Martin continued to dream of constructing a fleet of giant commercial flying boats. In the absence of airline orders, he had found a willing customer in the U.S. Navy.

  The Mars XPB2M-1 was ordered by the navy in 1938. The big, four-engined flying boat, built as a patrol bomber but converted before its maiden flight to a transport, was the first of the highly successful navy Mars series. To Glenn Martin, it was to be the forerunner of a new lineage of commercial flying boats, the Martin 170 series.

  Powered by four Wright Cyclone R-3350-18 engines of 2,200 horsepower each, the Mars had a 200-foot wing span, a length of 120 feet three inches, and, in her initial production model, a maximum gross weight of 145,000 pounds. In the JRM-2 version, her gross weight was increased to 165,000 pounds. The JRM-2 had an advertised cruise speed of 173 miles per hour.5

  The prototype Mars, dubbed the “Old Lady,” broke the international seaplane record in 1942, flying a closed course of 4,600 miles and staying in the air almost a day and a half.6 By war’s end the prototype Mars had delivered over three million pounds of cargo in the Pacific. In 1945 the navy contracted for twenty JRM-1s, an order subsequently cut back in the postwar budget constraints to five JRM-1s and one improved model, the JRM-2, equipped with the new Pratt and Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines, each delivering 3,000 horsepower. The JRM production aircraft were nearly identical in appearance to the “Old Lady,” with the exception of their high, single vertical stabilizer and rudder, replacing the canted, twin fins of the prototype.

  The big Mars boats enjoyed much success. Several new records were established, including a 4,738-mile nonstop flight from Honolulu to Chicago in 1948, and a flight that same year from NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, to Cleveland, Ohio, carrying a payload of 68,327 pounds. On 19 May 1949, the Marshall Mars, a JRM-1, carried 301 men of a carrier group plus a crew of seven from Alameda to San Diego, a flying boat passenger record.7

  None were lost to the usual hazards of flying boat operations—waterborne accidents, night landings, submerged objects. In fifteen years of service the Mars boats logged more than 87,000 accident-free hours and carried over 200,000 passengers a total of nearly twelve million miles.8

  These were impressive statistics—for flying boats. How successful a commercial airliner would the Mars have been? The costs of maintaining such a fleet would have bankrupted any airline. The accounting departments of the world’s airlines had already closed their files on the flying boat.

  Appendixes

  A

  Line Drawings

  All line drawings are 1:300 scale. They are produced by J. P. Wood.

  DoX

  Sikorsky S-40

  Laté 300

  Sikorsky S-42

  Laté 521

  Martin M-130 China Clipper

  Shorts S-23

  Sikorsky VS-44A

  BV 222 Wiking

  Boeing 314

  Martin Mars

  Laté 631

  Saunders-Roe

  Saunders-Roe

  B

  Charts

  Manufacturers’ and government ministries’ claims about commercial airliners’ range, capacity, and speed require skeptical analysis. Advertised cruise speeds tend to reflect more optimism than reality. Seldom did actual long-range cruising airspeeds of the over-ocean boats match the advertised figures.

  Statistics for range and passenger capacity can be misleading. The B-314, for example, boasted a passenger capacity of over seventy, but she could carry no more than twenty-four when fueled for an Atlantic crossing. The capacious interior of the Latécoère 631, designed for only forty-six passengers, was furnished with lounges and sleeping quarters. With more spartan furnishings, she could have accommodated eighty travelers. Though the Do X was designed with a capacity for over a hundred passengers, the big German boat never saw commercial service.

  Chart A. Maximum Passenger Capacity.

  Chart B. Maximum Takeoff Weight in Pounds.

  Chart C. Cruise
Speed in MPH.

  Chart D. Still-Air Range in Statute Miles.

  Notes

  CHAPTER ONE. MUSICK

  1.Robert L. Gandt, “The China Clipper: Transpacific Pioneer,” Clipper, November 1985.

  2.The Musick profile was drawn, in part, from Captain Lodi Speaking, 190–94, by Marius Lodeesen, and from recollections to the author by Lodeesen and Horace Brock.

  CHAPTER TWO. CURTISS AND COMPANY

  1.Scharff and Taylor, Over Land and Sea, 19.

  2.Knott, The American Flying Boat, 3. The five charter members of the Aerial Experiment Association were Curtiss, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, Lt. T. Selfridge (U.S. Army), F. W. Baldwin, and J. A. D. McCurdy.

  3.A cloud has surrounded Curtiss’s name because of the insinuation, without basis in fact, that he pirated the Wright brothers’ inventions. Many biographies of the Wrights, including the film The Winds of Kitty Hawk (1978), depict the brothers as heroes wronged by Curtiss and his AEA colleagues.

  4.Aerial Experiment Association Bulletin, 19 August 1909.

  5.Wragg, Boats of the Air, 15–16.

  6.Knott, American Flying Boat, 10. The idea of the “step” that enabled the flying boat to “unstick” has been variously attributed to both Holden Richardson and Glenn Curtiss. Curtiss, in any case, patented the device in 1915.

  7.Wragg, Boats of the Air, 35–36.

  8.Scharff and Taylor, Over Land and Sea, 239.

  9.Wragg, Boats of the Air, 47. The first downing of an enemy aircraft by a U.S.-built airplane occurred before the United States’ entry into the war.

  CHAPTER THREE. EXTENDED RANGE

  1.Wragg, Boats of the Air, 33.

  2.Beaty, The Water Jump, 9.

  3.Knott, American Flying Boat, 56–57.

  CHAPTER FOUR. BOATS FOR HIRE

  1.“Airlines Observe 75th Anniversary,” Air Line Pilot, January 1989, 37.

  2.Stroud, Civil Marine Aircraft, 9.

  3.Stroud, Civil Marine Aircraft, 14. The five known Aeromarine Type 75s in airline use were named Columbus, Santa Maria, Pinta, Gov. Cordeux, and Ponce de Leon.

  4.Davies, History of the World’s Airlines, 43.

  5.The Aeromarine advertising excerpts are from brochures of Aeromarine West Indies Airways and Aeromarine Airways, Inc., preserved by Don Thomas in Nostalgia PanAmericana (Dunedin, Florida: 1987).

  6.Jablonski, Sea Wings, 17.

  7.Stroud, European Transport Aircraft Since 1910, 151.

  8.Angelucci, World Encyclopedia of Civil Aircraft, 112–13.

  CHAPTER FIVE. TRIPPE

  1.Bender and Altschul, The Chosen Instrument, 131.

  2.Ibid., 141. Trippe’s unsigned piece about the NC boats was his first contribution to the Graphic. In the next month he was elected to the editorial board of the magazine and the following year became the editor in chief.

  3.Daley, An American Saga, 9–10.

  4.Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, 69.

  5.Ibid., 77. For the rest of his life, Trippe would look back with bitterness on the affair at Colonial. Had it gone his way, he always believed, he would have presided over the country’s most powerful domestic airway system.

  6.Ibid., 83. The initial investors in ACA included several former Colonial shareholders as well as various relatives and flying chums of Trippe, Whitney, and Hambleton.

  7.In Pan American lore the story of the first Key West–Havana flight, including the amount of Caldwell’s payment, has several versions, most of them apocryphal. Cy Caldwell, who was never on Pan Am’s pilot roster, nonetheless entered company history as the man who “saved” the airline.

  CHAPTER SIX. NYRBA

  1.Wagner, Reuben Fleet, 121.

  2.O’Neill, Dream of Eagles, 127, 131. In his book about NYRBA, O’Neill refers to Moffett as “Admiral Bill Moffett” and cites Moffett’s willingness to bend navy rules in favor of O’Neill’s airline venture.

  3.Ibid., 126–27. Of Moffett’s roster of twenty-six navy flying boat pilots, only three were officers and the others were chief petty officers.

  4.Ibid., 143–77.

  5.Jablonski, Edward, Sea Wings, 35. Holden Richardson, veteran of the Nancy boat days and present at the conception of nearly every navy flying boat design initiative, had come to be regarded in the Bureau of Aeronautics as “elder statesman” in all matters of flying boat construction.

  6.Wagner, Reuben Fleet, 117. While the Martin company produced their versions of the Consolidated Admiral, Consolidated’s engineers, led by “Mac” Laddon, were working on a follow-up, advanced design, the XP2Y-1. On 26 May 1931 Consolidated received the navy’s go-ahead to produce a prototype, and after that they were never again, as Reuben Fleet said, “sucking hind teat” on the flying boat business.

  7.Jablonski, Sea Wings, 35.

  8.Ralph O’Neill never forgot the christening incident, nor did he forgive Juan Trippe. In 1973 he wrote in Dream of Eagles, 203, “My stomach felt heavy as lead. I had witnessed an unbelievable masquerade that would remain engraved in my memory for the rest of my life.”

  9.Wragg, David, Boats of the Air, 117.

  10.O’Neill, Dream of Eagles, 306. The “shameless bureaucrat” O’Neill excoriated in his speech to the NYRBA board of directors was Postmaster General Walter Brown. Brown, O’Neill believed, had colluded with Juan Trippe to force a sellout of NYRBA to Pan Am.

  11.Wagner, Reuben Fleet, 129.

  CHAPTER SEVEN. SIKORSKY

  1.Sikorsky, Igor, The Story of the Winged-S, 90–91.

  2.Ibid., 51.

  3.Ibid., 1–3.

  4.Ibid., 157.

  5.Ibid., 169–78.

  6.In an interview with Robert Daley (An American Saga, 93), Trippe recalled that Sikorsky pulled the airplane up into an overhead maneuver. “He looped me,” Trippe said. It was the only time the startled Trippe had ever looped in an airplane.

  7.Sikorsky, Winged-S, 185.

  CHAPTER EIGHT. TEUTONIC AMBITIONS

  1.Stroud, Civil Marine Aircraft, 31–32. The Gs I was en route to a planned demonstration tour of the Netherlands and Sweden when it caught the attention of the Allied Control Commission. Before it reached Stockholm, it was ordered destroyed and sunk off Kiel. A larger derivative, the Gs II, was designed by Dornier but never completed.

  2.Casey and Batchelor, Seaplanes and Flying Boats, 78. Count Locatelli’s transatlantic attempt of 1924 ended short of his destination. The Wal, despite an open-sea ditching, remained seaworthy, and Locatelli was rescued by the support ships of the U.S. Army’s round-the-world flight of Douglas World Cruiser floatplanes.

  3.Angelucci, Encyclopedia of Civil Aircraft, 114.

  4.Stroud, Civil Marine Aircraft, 34.

  5.Wragg, Boats of the Air, 124–25.

  6.Stroud, Civil Marine Aircraft, 39. A fourth Romar was built for the French Navy but was never completed due to an airframe corrosion problem.

  CHAPTER NINE. THE LATINS

  1.Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, 140.

  2.Rowe, Under My Wing, 118. Basil Rowe seemed to accept the takeover of his airline by Pan Am without particular bitterness. “Perhaps after all it was just as well,” he wrote. “Aviation, to develop into the vast industry that it is today, needed two kinds of men: businessmen to guide and develop the growth of the industry and the men who engineered, maintained, designed and flew the planes. I belonged to the latter; I was a pilot.” Rowe accepted a position as pilot with Pan Am and went on to become a senior, highly respected captain with that airline.

  3.(PAWA) Though the Pan Am and Grace partnership would always be an uneasy alliance marked by boardroom fighting and clashes of powerful personalities, Panagra would last for nearly forty years. The company was sold to Braniff in 1968.

  4.Turner, Pictorial History of Pan American World Airways, 34.

  5.Bender and Altschul, Chosen Instrument, 156.

  6.Brock, Flying the Oceans, 56.

  7.Saint-Exupéry, Airman’s Odyssey (Night Flight), 234.

  8.Bender and Altschul
, Chosen Instrument, 160. In an interview with the authors, 8 June 1978, Leuteritz recalled how Trippe lured him away from his secure job at RCA. At the time Pan Am had only two airplanes and the mail route between Key West and Havana. But Trippe declared with confidence, “We’ll be flying around the world.” Leuteritz believed him.

  9.Jablonski, Sea Wings, 44. Soon after the historic flight with Lindbergh, the much-respected John Hambleton lost his life in the crash of a private airplane.

  10.Ibid., 46.

  CHAPTER TEN. THE FLYING FOREST

  1.Delear, Igor Sikorsky, 143. Lindbergh recalled how Sikorsky sold him on the S-40. “He argued that we had to have a larger plane quickly and that time did not permit a radical departure from the previous design. He presented his case tactfully and quietly, yet forcefully, and eventually I came to see that he was right. Priester was even quicker to see that Igor was correct, that this approach would give us a plane of proven design in a short time and that a cleaner, faster plane would have to come later as a second step.”

  2.Ibid., 143. Lindbergh told Frank Delear that “the S-38 was a maintenance nightmare. As far as we could tell, those Russian engineers were not much interested in maintenance problems.”

  3.The S-40’s landing gear was “retractable” only in the sense of a water landing. Still exposed to the wind, it exacted a severe aerodynamic penalty. Eventually the gear and the railway car springs were removed from all three S-40s, and they became true flying boats.

  4.Sikorsky, Winged S., 190.

  5.Delear, Igor Sikorsky, 144–45.

  6.Daley, American Saga, 95.

  7.Delear, Igor Sikorsky, 150.