Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  He went all out to celebrate this new member’s introduction to the Pan American fleet. He hired Ethel Murchie, a society designer specializing in airplane interiors, to install dark-stained walnut paneling over soundproofed walls as well as finished silver fixtures, blue carpets, reading lights, cigarette lighters, card tables, call buttons at each seat to summon the steward, a “ladies’ lounge,” drapes of gray silk, and Queen Anne–style chairs to achieve an “effect of cool spaciousness,” in the words of one journalist. When Sikorsky first saw Mrs. Murchie’s efforts, he realized he was living inside the “blue-lit airplane” dream he’d had when he was eleven.

  Trippe was ecstatic about the plane. As a boy, he’d often traveled on Cunard liners, and his ancestors (from the more respectable side, that is) were Marylanders: Since Baltimore had built the original clipper ships in the nineteenth century, Trippe decided to dub his new airliners “Clippers” in their honor, thus instituting a long Pan American tradition (and trademark). This first S-40 was named the American Clipper, and it would be followed by the Caribbean Clipper and the Southern Clipper.

  In keeping with the nautical theme, Trippe borrowed a number of maritime customs to reassure his clientele that what Cunard was to the waves, Pan American was to the clouds. Speed was calculated not in miles per hour, but in knots; time was denoted by “bells” and the crews’ shifts were renamed “watches.” Pilots’ uniforms now resembled those worn by ships’ officers—navy-blue serge with gold wings pinned to the breast, and rank indicated in stars (the gold rings on the cuffs and embroidery on the hat would come later). Captains were given the powers of a naval captain and enjoyed full control over their vessel as master and commander. Even a new elite rank would soon be introduced: Master of Ocean Aircraft.1

  Using the term Ocean was a deliberate choice on Trippe’s part. Pan American’s S-40s made flying a seagoing enterprise—the Caribbean Sea—but he aspired to an oceangoing one. To take on Eckener in the Atlantic, he needed bigger, more powerful airplanes. The S-40s may have been the largest commercial planes of their time, but months before the American Clipper even arrived in Miami to begin operations, Trippe was already looking past them to the future.

  He wanted true transatlantic planes, and on June 26, about two weeks before Eckener embarked on his first Arctic flight, Trippe sent a letter to six major aircraft manufacturers asking them to draw up plans for Pan American’s next airplane. The specifications were for “a high-speed multi-motored flying boat having a cruising range of 2,500 miles against 30-mile headwinds, and providing accommodations for a crew of four, together with at least 300 pounds of airmail.” Of the six, four replied to say that such a plane was an impossibility. The two that didn’t were Sikorsky and the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore.2 Sikorsky, of course, had long had the inside track with Trippe, making him the favorite.

  On November 19, the very day the American Clipper was scheduled for its first commercial flight, Lindbergh was in Miami. There, he had two jobs: first, to captain the American Clipper on what would be one of the most important flights of the era; and second, to discuss with Sikorsky the shape and specifications of Trippe’s ideal ocean aircraft.

  * * *

  —

  LINDBERGH WOULD HAVE plenty of time to do both at once because the American Clipper would be embarking on the longest passenger airplane flight across open water in the world. Until now, the Pan American route from Miami to Panama (the ultimate destination) had been an arduous one requiring multiple planes, many short hops, and numerous overnight stays: From Miami, one flew to Havana, then to the Yucatán Peninsula, then Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and finally, Panama. The S-40 had the range to skip most of that. Travelers would henceforth depart Miami, head for Havana and then Kingston, Jamaica; from there, it was a straight shot of 660 miles over water to Barranquilla on the Colombian coast and thence to Panama. One journalist trilled that “you will breakfast in the West Indies, lunch in South America, and dine in Central America.” Less romantically, Trippe saw it as an “Atlantic Prep School,” a laboratory for the conquest of the Atlantic.

  When Lindbergh arrived in Miami, he was put through his paces by Priester, whose iron law stated that no pilot could take command of a new airplane without having first practiced ten takeoffs and landings. Lindbergh, the greatest aviator in the world but also knowing what Priester was like when rules were flouted, good-naturedly performed the maneuvers in quick succession and was given the go-ahead to take the American Clipper on its maiden flight.

  With four passengers on board, including Sikorsky, who’d paid full fare (Trippe was not one for freebies), the S-40 set off for Havana. Soon afterward, Lindbergh left his copilot in charge and came back for the first of many conversations with Sikorsky. Usually meeting over lunch on the plane or dinner at their hotel, Lindbergh and Sikorsky sketched out on the backs of menus the plane they were already calling the S-42.

  The S-42 was to be “the next step” Sikorsky, Lindbergh, and Trippe had agreed on after the intermediate-stage S-40. The aeronautics revolution of the late 1920s was by now paying rich dividends, and the time was right to move to a true 1930s airplane. Sikorsky and Lindbergh went back and forth on every point, giving a little here and sticking a little there. Lindbergh still preferred a landplane but conceded that only seaplanes had the capabilities required, so Sikorsky won that battle. But in return, Lindbergh insisted, he wanted the ugly outriggers to vanish, the plane should have as few struts as feasibly possible, and external wiring must be kept to a minimum to improve streamlining. The wing-loading ratio, both agreed, must be higher, and range should be about twelve hundred miles to allow for direct, nonstop Miami-Panama service.

  The American Clipper arrived in Panama on time. Lindbergh and Sikorsky talked more on the way home—the former even allowed Sikorsky to pilot occasionally, but not too often, for as a colleague said, “Igor flies like a professor with a textbook in his hand”—and waited to see what Trippe would make of their handiwork.3

  * * *

  —

  THE BOSS WAS both pleased and disappointed. The S-42 certainly would make a wonderful addition to the Caribbean and South American fleet, but it was not, frankly, the transoceanic carrier of his dreams, the truly breakthrough airplane he needed to beat Eckener. It was a next step, but he wanted a longer stride.

  Sikorsky was delighted when Trippe nevertheless told him he would order at least three of them at $242,000 each once preliminary design work was completed the following year but shocked him (and Lindbergh) with the news that he would also be ordering three Martin M-130s at $417,000 per plane. (To put those figures into context, at that time a domestic airliner usually cost about $78,000.)4

  Trippe explained to a confused Sikorsky why he was accepting offers from both applicants to his June letter. Put simply, he needed the Martins for the Atlantic route. That part was true, but as always with Trippe, the layers of truth were multiple and nebulous.

  In this case, Frederick Rentschler at United had purchased the Sikorsky Aviation Corporation in July 1929, shortly before the stock market crash. United was still financially weak, but it would eventually strengthen and rouse its alliance with Zeppelin from dormancy. Trippe feared that Rentschler, once he got back on his feet, could cripple Pan American by slow-walking or even canceling his S-42 order at a critical moment. Hence Trippe had to cover his bets by contracting out to an independent manufacturer.5

  Glenn Martin was very independent. Like Trippe, Lindbergh, Priester, and Sikorsky, he was highly idiosyncratic, a man who never quite fit in, an island unto himself. In Martin’s case, his closeted homosexuality—in media reports, cagey euphemisms like “never married,” “shy bachelor,” “monastic,” “women alarmed him,” “feminine intuitiveness,” and “lives with his mother” allowed sophisticates to read between the lines—made him shrink from public exposure even as his brilliance and spectacular appetite for risk attrac
ted the spotlight.

  Born in 1886 in Iowa, and now in his late forties, the long-legged, thin, and bespectacled Martin was fascinated by kites as a boy—he turned a profit selling them for a quarter to the local kids—and built his first working airplane in 1909 out of bamboo and silk strung together with wire. Propelled by a four-cylinder engine, the aircraft covered a hundred feet at an altitude of two feet. Three years later, he became an early barnstormer, notching up various records and competing in aerial races. By the Great War, he was in the bomber business and employed 150 men in his factory, but the post-1918 slowdown hit him hard. In 1929, with the aviation craze in full swing, he moved his plant to Baltimore and looked around for orders.

  Martin had a reputation for innovative designs. During the war, he’d drawn up plans for an armored bomber, a torpedo-armed plane for sinking ships, and an airplane that carried a motorcycle, to be used for scouting behind enemy lines after landing. He was also famous for thinking very big. As early as 1918, one of his bombers had a wingspan of seventy-one feet and carried nearly a ton of bombs, four machine guns, and a cannon. From there, they only got bigger.6

  So in 1931, when Trippe was calling around asking for a large flying boat, Glenn Martin seized his opportunity. He offered something that Sikorsky didn’t: a genuine leap forward. His planned M-130 dwarfed the S-42. With a length of 91 feet, a wingspan of 130, and a height of 25, the plane would deliver, Martin promised, 3,320 horsepower (520 more than the Sikorsky) and a takeoff weight of 52,250 pounds (nearly 30 percent more than the S-42).

  Most astoundingly, owing to the sheer volume of fuel on board, the M-130 would enjoy a maximum range of 3,200 miles, or more than two and a half times that of the S-42, already considered a long-range aircraft, and substantially greater than the 2,500 miles Trippe had so impossibly proposed. Of course, the range was an as yet theoretical figure, subject to significant dropoff once you added in forty-one passengers, but even so, the M-130 would be like nothing else on earth. At 3,200 miles, the Martin airplane was distantly approaching Zeppelin-airship numbers.

  The only downside? Martin was currently working on a new bomber, the B-10, one far in advance of anything else on the market. The proposed M-130 would benefit from B-10 technology, but Martin could not develop both simultaneously. He told Trippe that the very earliest he could foresee for delivery was sometime in late 1934, three years hence, but later was likelier.

  Since the first S-42 was also due for delivery in early 1934, Trippe was at an impasse. For the next few years, he would have to rely on the S-40s, which meant he was locked into the Caribbean and South America. In the meantime, rather than twiddle his thumbs, his task was to set up the future conditions of success by chivvying Imperial along so that they could launch Atlantic service simultaneously.

  He fed Woods Humphery details on the upcoming S-42 and M-130, but Major Robert Mayo, Imperial’s technical expert, laughed at Trippe’s claims of their payload, range, and capability. Those kinds of figures, he said, “could not possibly be achieved.” Instead, Imperial would build a flying boat of his own design, but when was left infuriatingly opaque.7

  All of which left Juan Trippe with $2 million worth of Sikorskys and Martins on order—and nowhere special to fly them when they came.

  The only bright spot was that Eckener wasn’t going anywhere, either.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THE AKRON had been christened in August 1931, technical problems and seemingly unending malfunctions in the navy’s mandated scout-plane trapeze kept it in its Ohio hangar until October, and even then the planes themselves weren’t due to arrive for nearly a year after that. Making do nevertheless, the airshipmen strove to put on a good show for the upcoming fleet exercises in March 1932.

  There were high hopes for the Akron. The exercises were to take place off Hawaii—fine hunting grounds for a long-range airship—and simulate an attack on Pearl Harbor by bombers launched from the “Japanese” carriers Lexington and Saratoga. Akron’s task would be to scout far ahead of the fleet and alert the friendly cruisers and battleships to the enemy’s location. Admiral Moffett, the head of the navy’s airship program, could only rub his hands with glee at the thought of teaching his carrier adversaries a lesson in humility.

  An excellent performance at Fleet Problem XIII, as the war games were called, would form a perfect backdrop to Hunsaker’s great coup: finally getting the Merchant Airship Bill before the House of Representatives for a vote, scheduled for July 16. If the Senate followed suit, then IZT, PZT, Goodyear, and Zeppelin would be able to establish Pacific and Atlantic routes in short order, notwithstanding Trippe’s perfidious acts of sabotage a year earlier.

  As always seemed to happen with airships at inconvenient moments, there was an accident. On February 22, Akron was being brought out of the hangar to begin its journey to the Pacific when a gust of wind tore its tail loose. No one was hurt, but the runaway airship hit the ground several times, breaking the tail fin. This happened right in front of four members of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, invited by Moffett to witness the beginning of a new era of American airships. For the next two months, Akron underwent repairs, missing Fleet Problem XIII.

  To help Hunsaker whip up support and divert attention from Akron’s woes, Eckener swung into action and with scant notice scheduled flights on the Graf Zeppelin between Friedrichshafen and Recife. He put a brave face on the effort, as he always did, but his plan to begin regular service to South America had been predicated on the assumption that by 1932 the Depression would have lifted—only it hadn’t, and Germany was in straits still more dire than even the year before.

  The truth lay in the numbers. The year 1931 had been a terrible one, with an average of just eleven passengers and 363 pounds of mail to and from Recife, but now those numbers fell to nine people and 262 pounds. On some trips, just seven or eight pounds of freight was shipped, meaning that Eckener was devoting a colossal airship and scores of crewmen to transporting packages that together weighed less than a carry-on bag across an ocean. On one of Trippe’s old Caribbean S-38s, it’s sobering to realize, nine passengers, 262 pounds of mail, and a couple of packages would have been counted as a full load—but at a minuscule fraction of the cost.8

  Trippe could only wonder how on earth Eckener was staying in business. The short answer is that he was receiving large amounts of cash from philatelists. He would arrange with the German Post Office to issue special sets of Zeppelin stamps, which were purchased by collectors at a significant markup. Eckener once mentioned that from stamps alone he’d made no less than $100,000 on the Germany–Brazil–United States triangle flight. The back-and-forth runs to South America earned far smaller but not inconsiderable amounts. Still, there was no getting around the fact that by 1932 Eckener was managing an international airship operation heavily reliant on the continuing interest of stamp collectors.9

  This was not, to put it mildly, a sustainable long-term business model, and Eckener covered up the South American flights’ dreadful figures. He stressed instead the Graf Zeppelin’s undoubted safety and regularity. The trick allowed Hunsaker the time to redouble his lobbying efforts, which paid off dividends in the July 16, 1932, vote. The troubled Merchant Airship Bill passed in the House with a margin of seventeen. This was a fairly narrow squeak and by no means the overwhelming vote of confidence the airshipmen had been hoping for, but it would serve.10

  The next step was the Senate, though as Hunsaker already knew, Trippe had lots of friends in that august body. But 1932 was a presidential election year, and the Democratic candidate Franklin Roosevelt was likely to prevail against Herbert Hoover. Hunsaker counted on the Democrats being more open than the Republicans to the kind of grand spending project and high-employment plan a home-grown airship industry would exemplify.

  When Roosevelt won a landslide victory in November, the Senate vote was scheduled for debate on March 2, 1933, two days before
Roosevelt’s inauguration. It was sure to go favorably, as many of Trippe’s pals had lost their seats, but early that morning Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana died of a heart attack and the vote was adjourned out of respect. Upon reconvening the following day, the Senate, faced with a crowded New Deal agenda, decided not to set back the calendar to take care of previous business and the Merchant Airship Bill vanished into the legislative ether.

  Through sheer luck—bad, in the case of poor Senator Walsh—Trippe had stopped Eckener and his allies in their tracks.11

  More bad news for the airshipmen was on the way. A month later, on the night of April 3–4, the Akron was making a routine flight along the New England coastline when a thunderstorm unexpectedly veered in its direction. Commander Frank McCord ordered Akron up and farther out to sea to avoid it, but the storm caught up.

  As lightning flashes filled the sky, McCord could see the altimeter reading eight hundred feet—safe enough—only to feel the ship rapidly descend, followed by a shuddering shock and the loss of all control over the lower rudder as it bruised the sea. A few moments later, an officer cried, “Stand by for crash!” and then the control car was submerged in the chilly water. A lack of life rafts brought death quickly to seventy-three of the seventy-six aboard, including Admiral Moffett.

  The Akron had set a new and unenviable record: Its loss had caused more fatalities than any other air vehicle in history.

  The only silver lining Arnstein and the design team at Goodyear-Zeppelin could see was that as a helium airship, the Akron had not caught on fire—an achievement of scant consequence when exposure and drowning had killed 96 percent of those aboard. Few in a grieving nation paid much attention to the distinction.12