Politically, as well, the stars were aligning against Trippe. He had few friends in the Roosevelt administration. The influential Ickes, among others, considered him an “unscrupulous person who cajoles and buys his way. He has made quite an unsavory record in the South American countries.”10 Trippe’s past was returning to haunt him.
In this instance, the cozy gentleman’s agreement between Pan American and Imperial for exclusive landing rights on either side of the Atlantic was prompting dark, terrifying whispers that Trippe could be charged with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act for locking out potential competitors.
After several panicked phone calls from Trippe, Woods Humphery, loyal to the last, informed the Air Ministry that he could not allow Trippe to risk prosecution and released him from the longstanding exclusivity agreement. Then he dutifully resigned, after which Imperial Airways was reorganized under new management to form a single state airline, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), which had negligible interest in a route to New York.11
The threat of an antitrust suit proved a blessing in disguise. As of February 1939, Trippe was relieved, at last, from the reciprocity deal that had chained him to Imperial for so long. The path across the Atlantic was free, and finally, too, the first of the Atlantic Boeing 314s was christened as Yankee Clipper on March 3 by Eleanor Roosevelt at Anacostia Naval Air Station with a gold-rimmed bottle filled not with Champagne but, according to Trippe’s PR man, William Van Dusen, with waters from the world’s seven seas—a rather unlikely story. At the ceremony, a beaming Trippe announced to a national radio audience that the Yankee Clipper, the first of a fleet, would “carry the American flag across aviation’s last frontier—the Atlantic Ocean—to link the old world with the new.”12
He announced that May 20, 1939—the twelfth anniversary of the transatlantic Lindbergh flight—would be the day the Yankee Clipper would stride into history as herald of the eternal dominion of Pan American.
* * *
—
AT THE TIME, Trippe’s airline served 54,072 route miles in forty-seven countries with 126 airliners, 145 ground radio stations, and over 5,000 employees. But rather less well advertised were its chaotic finances—not as dreadful as Zeppelin’s, perhaps, but dreadful nonetheless.13
The bills were coming due for the huge Boeing 314 order, plus ones for other planes, and the vainglorious Pacific expansion remained an unplumbable sinkhole. In 1938 alone, the route to Asia lost $1.155 million, and as a consequence the year ended with Pan American squeaking net profits of just $46,672. Trippe’s working capital (defined as current assets minus current liabilities)—basically, the funds needed to continue daily operations—had collapsed to negative $1.3 million. It was getting to the point where Pan American would find it difficult to pay wages. Worse, Trippe had loaded up the airline with debt: no less than $6 million.14
Trippe was sailing perilously close to the shoals of bankruptcy, but he seemed sanguine about the possibility of shipwreck. His view was that he was solidifying a strategic position that would pay off in the next year or two, so what did a few tactical defeats here and there matter?
His board did not see it the same way, but Trippe didn’t care. As master of the house, he had long selected its members to make it a toothless entity that allowed him carte blanche. He rarely even bothered to inform the board of major decisions until after they’d been put in motion, and no one had complained because everyone was making money and Trippe was an acknowledged genius whose vision and judgment were not to be questioned.
Nevertheless, Trippe’s board appointees always had a purpose. In the early days, its members were rich and well-connected friends of his with an interest in aviation; then came the former government officials who smoothed his path to the top; after that there were former and sometimes aggrieved competitors who were appeased with lucrative seats. Whenever Pan American needed loans or financing, bankers suddenly popped up in the boardroom, and if Trippe wanted to forge an industry alliance to face off against Congress, the heads of large transportation concerns (steamships, railroads) were invited to join. Once an individual had exhausted his utility, he was replaced by someone better suited to serving Trippe’s ends.
The exception was Pan American’s most useless director, Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney, now forty years old, who had known Trippe since their Yale days and stuck with him since the very beginning. He had survived owing to his inoffensive, unthreatening impotence and his willingness to rubber-stamp any proposal Trippe presented to him.
The straitlaced Trippe considered Sonny, heir to not just one of America’s great fortunes but three (Payne, Vanderbilt, and Whitney), to be nothing but an amusing, charming playboy. When he wasn’t fending off paternity suits or carousing with the Crusaders (a young men’s anti-temperance group), he financed movies, with Gone with the Wind to his credit—perhaps explaining the presence of so many tie-in copies of Margaret Mitchell’s book in Pan American’s onboard libraries—and collected art.
But he was always there when Trippe needed him: He’d put in $25,000 without a moment’s thought when Trippe suggested they merge Eastern with Colonial Air Transport, put in double everyone else’s stake when Trippe formed Aviation Corporation of America, and, while recovering from a blistering hangover with his head in his hands, murmured, “I’ll take a million of that” when Trippe went around the table asking to raise $3 million for expansion in 1934.
But Trippe had underestimated Sonny, a sharper businessman than his fun-loving persona implied. Over time, Whitney had accumulated 154,432 shares (more than 10 percent of the company) in Pan American, while his cousin Jock held 56,400 more. Trippe, conversely, had begun with 25 percent of Pan American, but in recent years had sold off large portions to invest in real estate, leaving him with just 7,056 shares in his own name.15
Not even a man as wealthy as Sonny was immune to continued losses, and Pan American’s falling stock price was costing him money. Trippe was getting too big for his boots, and Sonny wanted some accountability and more transparency. The Pacific had been a disaster, Trippe’s Eckener fixation and his obsession with the Atlantic had wasted millions of dollars over the years, and for the first time, Pan American had not declared a dividend. It was time to kill the king.
On March 14, 1939, Trippe entered the boardroom on the fifty-eighth floor of the Chrysler Building, assuming that this would be yet another walkover meeting. The Yankee Clipper had arrived about ten days earlier and the Atlantic service was due to begin in a couple of months, so as far as Trippe was concerned, Pan American had turned a corner and, like a victorious Caesar returning from the wars in Gaul and Germania, he was due the accolade of a triumph and a crowning with laurels.
He received instead a knife in the back, wielded by his Brutus. Trippe, a man with few of them, realized too late that Sonny was not really his friend, more a business acquaintance who happened to be friendly. As Whitney had once said, Trippe and he “didn’t live in the same community”: Despite his every effort to blend in, to join the right clubs, and to camouflage his embarrassing background, Trippe was not really One of Us after all. It was now his turn to be dispensed with as ruthlessly as Trippe himself had done to others who became surplus to his requirements, like Sikorsky and Martin.
In the meeting, Trippe, much to his surprise, was faced with seven stony-faced men. The execution took just a few minutes. Sonny and Jock ordered a vote, secured “Ayes” from at least three of the others, and assumed control of Pan American. Trippe was removed from his position as chief executive, with Sonny taking his place, and demoted to president, a relatively powerless position in which he would have to report to Sonny as chairman. Major decisions would henceforth be taken by a stronger, more activist executive committee. Following Trippe’s practice of keeping secrets, the coup occupied just a single line in the minutes and no record was taken of who voted for and against. With but 7,056 shares in his own company,
Trippe had become a hired manager with a tiny salary of $17,500.
For the newspapers, Trippe claimed that he had resigned and voluntarily allowed Whitney to take over, and Sonny was gentlemanly enough not to humiliate him further with a public contradiction. In private, it was a different story. Trippe was obliged to vacate his vast, opulent office and move his famous three-foot globe and rolltop desk down the hall to what had once been a secretary’s room. He kept his door open, though, so that he could watch which of his former loyalists made pilgrimages to their new master. And he took notes.
Trippe had no intention of ending his days as Whitney’s lackey, as he suspected that Sonny would not last long, not with his variety of interests and calls on his time. Like it or not, Whitney needed him and his expertise; he had no hope of running an international airline by himself. It would just take a little time, though it would take longer than Trippe expected, for Whitney was serious about turning Pan American around. He even disbanded his polo team.
The executive committee, of which Trippe was a member (as were radio expert Leuteritz, Priester, Van Dusen, and George Rihl, the former dirty-tricks man in South America), was summoned to meet every Monday and Friday at 10:30 A.M. sharp to report to Whitney in his office, which had been redecorated with captain’s chairs, a glass-topped table, and cheerful curtains in a pointed jab at its former occupant’s secretiveness.
Until then, it had always been Trippe who spoke and others who nodded their agreement, but now he lived up to his Yale nickname, “Mummy,” and rarely spoke a word. Whitney took to interrogating the executives on their activities, which didn’t sit well with Trippe, of course, and he sullenly glared at anyone who confided too much.
Once, Leuteritz, proud of some recent success in Colombia, made the mistake of boasting about it to Whitney, only to be pulled aside later by Rihl, who asked him, “Why did you give Whitney all the details? Didn’t you see Trippe’s face?” Rihl himself changed sides with amoral alacrity, and when he was upbraided for his treachery by Trippe, he told him where to go. Trippe sputtered, “I’m your boss,” at which Rihl sneered, “The hell you are.”16
For the grand launch of the Yankee Clipper on May 20, however, Trippe was nothing but smiles. At 1:08 P.M., the Yankee Clipper took off on its first scheduled commercial (i.e., nonpassenger) flight to Europe. Captain Arthur LaPorte spoke on two-way radio with Trippe and a few other worthies, and listened to a congratulatory telegram from Roosevelt, before heading into the distance carrying 1,804 pounds of mail. He landed in the Azores for a few hours to refuel before successfully making it to Lisbon and thence on to France. On May 27, LaPorte returned home, completing the Atlantic round-trip.
On July 8, the Yankee Clipper took off at 8:30 A.M., this time bound for Southampton in England. Carrying twenty-two passengers, nearly all newspaper editors and publishers, it was an uneventful flight, the only remarkable thing being that, at last, Trippe had achieved his dream: regular passenger service across the Atlantic.17 The term clipper would soon become redolent of Pan American glamour: Trippe’s planes would grace the covers of Time (at least three times) and Life (twice) and were mentioned in The Philadelphia Story. Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo would even escape from Casablanca to Lisbon to take “the Clipper to America.”18
Trippe would not be able to savor his Pyrrhic victory over Eckener for long. The outbreak of war less than three months later would force Pan American to halt the flights. But Trippe still had one more battle to fight.
* * *
—
FOR THE AIRSHIP, the end was pitiful. On the same day, September 1, as the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, the second Graf Zeppelin was deflated and hung up inside its hangar to join its retired predecessor, the conqueror of the globe, as a temporary, and depressing, museum piece. In the coming months, the airship would be stripped of its engines, electrics, control-car navigation, and gas cells, leaving but a carcass. There was talk of dismantling the hangar and even the Graf Zeppelins themselves.
On March 1, 1940, Göring himself came to Frankfurt to make the final decision about the two airships. Captain Pruss, formerly of the Hindenburg and now director of Zeppelin operations at Frankfurt airport, and Dr. Issel of the DZR board were on hand to greet the air minister and his entourage of thirteen generals. Göring and General Erhard Milch, his deputy, were taken on a tour of LZ-130. The air minister was not impressed.
When Issel mentioned that it was a pity that the Reichsminister had not yet taken an airship flight, Göring good-humoredly replied, “No, you won’t get me into that, the thing burns.” Issel then pointed out that only the Hindenburg had ever come to grief, but Göring dismissed the argument: “No, the thing is rubbish.” The visit went downhill from there.
The party entered the skeletonized airship, with Göring making a joke about falling through the open girders. He asked Pruss for his views on airship travel to South America, and the captain proudly claimed that the Hindenburg had made the run in three days. Göring snorted and stated that after the war airplanes would be able to do it in eight hours.
Inspecting the crew cabins, what was left of the passenger rooms, and the public areas, Göring kept saying they were “rubbish.” When he saw the fuel tanks, Göring asked about the risk of explosion. There was none at all with diesel fuel, Pruss assured him, but Göring wasn’t having it: “A match would be enough, then the whole thing would burn.”
In the dining room, he leaned outside a window to announce to the official photographer: “Just take a snapshot: the picture will become a [valuable] rarity.”
And with that, the air minister drew Pruss and Issel aside. He’d once had some sympathy for the airship, he said, but now, to be frank, he considered it valueless. He addressed the scarred Pruss personally: “I well understand that you are fighting for your cause, as you have suffered for it,” and shook his hand goodbye.
Then he descended to the hangar floor to chat with the workmen. Göring asked Rudolf Sauter, the chief engineer, whether he trusted the “thing.” When the ever-loyal Sauter said yes, Göring amusedly observed, “Well, you have my admiration,” before placing his hand tenderly on a parked Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, saying, “I prefer this.”19
A week later, the demolition of the Graf Zeppelins began. It took no fewer than 376 men exactly one month, two weeks, and four days to erase Count von Zeppelin’s gigantic inventions from existence. On May 6, the third anniversary of the death of the Hindenburg, the hangars at Frankfurt were unceremoniously flattened with dynamite.20
Göring wanted the deed done as quickly as possible. He had a war to run. Four days later, the invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands began.
* * *
—
MEANWHILE, BACK IN New York, Chairman Whitney, as Trippe had predicted, found that running an airline was not as easy as he’d thought and was rapidly losing interest in the whole affair. He delegated the responsibility of overseeing the executive committee to Thomas Morgan, a former chairman of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation and an experienced aviation hand, but Morgan could make neither head nor tail of the corporate records: Trippe, he said, “had everything so snarled up nobody could ever untangle it.” For years, Trippe had been writing policy with his right hand and executing it with his left, and nobody knew what either was doing. Anything important was locked inside Trippe’s head, and he was becoming less and less communicative.
Trippe’s position was strengthening by the day as Whitney’s weakened. Whitney’s fall was hastened by the staggering performance of Pan American in 1939, for which Sonny could take no credit. It was all down to the tough decisions Trippe had made during his years at the top that had finally paid off.
That year, Pan American’s route network added nearly ten thousand miles and net profits exploded from 1938’s $46,672 to nearly $2 million, making it the most successful year in the company’s history by an order of magnitude. West of Honolul
u remained a trouble area, partly owing to the ongoing Sino-Japanese War, but passenger numbers and mail from California to Hawaii were booming, cutting the loss of $1,150,000 in 1938 to a mere $200,000. Trippe had even managed to retire half the company debt while ordering another six Boeing 314s.21
On January 23, 1940, Trippe engineered a reverse coup by having the board vote on transferring the powers of chief executive officer from the chairman to him as president. Soon afterward, Whitney embarked on a long yachting vacation and never gave another thought to Pan American, having sold his stock at a huge profit.
The ax soon began swinging down upon the necks of the nobles on the executive committee who had so unwisely bent the knee to Whitney. Firings were never Trippe’s style; his preferred method was far more sadistic: loss of access. William Van Dusen, who had served his new master a little too eagerly, was henceforth kept at arm’s length, while George Rihl, who had signed his own death warrant by telling Trippe he didn’t work for him, was exiled to Brazil and soon pushed into retirement.
The men who had soldiered with Trippe since the beginning were severed from power and turned into consultants; no longer would they be able to issue orders to managers in the field as they thought fit. Thus, Priester, who’d risen to the rank of vice president in Whitney’s reign, kept his title but not Trippe’s favor. Leuteritz remained as chief communications engineer but, like Priester, was barred from Trippe’s office. He quit in disgust a few years later.
Lindbergh, had he thrown his weight behind Trippe, could probably have dissuaded Whitney from mounting his ouster during the palace coup. But he had remained neutral during the whole affair, confining himself to writing in his journal that “in many ways I am sorry to see [what happened], for I like Juan. I always felt he had great ability,” and thus he polished perhaps the sharpest serpent’s tooth.22
Empires of the Sky Page 59