Air Mail
The Overlook
By Tom Clavin
“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is usually a place from which one can see in many if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). All support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!
For whatever reason, I’ve always been intrigued by the U.S. Mail. Through wars, depressions, extreme weather, and other calamities, it has managed to get letters and packages to their destinations. When I learned that this week was the 88th anniversary of a U.S. Mail milestone, I could not resist. (By the way, sorry I missed last week’s column while being off on a book tour.)
The China Clipper was the first of three four-engine flying boats built for Pan American Airways and was used to inaugurate the first commercial transpacific airmail service from San Francisco to Manila. Built at a cost of $417,000 by the Glenn Martin Company in Baltimore, it was delivered to Pan Am on October 9, 1935. It was one of the largest airplanes of its time.
On November 22, it took off from Alameda, California, on a mission to deliver the first airmail cargo across the Pacific Ocean. Although its initial flight plan called for the China Clipper to fly over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (still under construction at the time), upon takeoff the pilot realized the plane would not clear the structure and was forced to fly narrowly under instead. On November 29, the airplane reached its destination, Manila, after traveling via Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam. It delivered over 110,000 pieces of mail. The crew for this flight included Edwin Musick as pilot and Fred Noonan as navigator.
Aviation aficionados might recognize the Noonan name. He was an American flight navigator, sea captain, and aviation pioneer, who first charted many commercial airline routes across the Pacific Ocean during the 1930s. Noonan was the navigator for Amelia Earhart when they disappeared somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. during one of the last legs of their attempted pioneering round-the-world flight.
Considerable effort was put into preparing for the inaugural China Clipper voyage. In San Francisco the celebrations for the trans-Pacific airmail flight included fireworks while a band played a Sousa march. Eleven days prior Musick had flown the China Clipper from the Glenn Martin factory to California for the first-ever event. Ships docked in the bay to observe the takeoff sounded their whistles and sirens in tribute. It was estimated that up to a hundred thousand people watched from the various shores of San Francisco Bay. Several speeches were made by various public figures after which there was a ceremonial loading of the numerous mail bags. Musick's sailing orders were publicly delivered by his boss, Juan Trippe, the head of Pan Am, while the entire event was broadcast by CBS and NBC radio and also transmitted on seven foreign networks.
The relatively short range of the aircraft meant that hotel, catering, docking, repair, and road and radio facilities had to be put in place at the intermediate stops along the route, particularly on the virtually uninhabited islands of Wake and Midway. Nearly a half-million miles were flown along this route before any paying passengers were carried. All stops were chosen on the basis that were links in an “all-American” flag route -- countries friendly with the United States.
On the very first airmail flight, there we no passengers, only crew members aboard. The payload of 111,000 pieces of mail weighed approximately 2,000 pounds, making it the largest mail shipment ever taken on board an airplane. Prior to the clipper’s departure, the post office, which anticipated only a third of the final total volume, continued to bring in more plane loads of mail from across the country. In San Francisco some 100 postal clerks were kept busy preparing the tens of thousands of letters in preparation for their delivery aboard the China Clipper. The payload of mail was nearly all “philatelic,” consisting of envelopes prepared by collectors who wanted an example of mail flown on the “first flight.” All the furnishings on board intended for passengers were removed to make room for the many dozens of mail pouches.
The China Clipper arrived in Manila on November 29, 1935, eight thousand miles away from San Francisco. Not counting the hold-over time spent in the several ports along the route, the actual flying time of the aircraft was 59 hours and 48 minutes. The same voyage by the fastest steamship of the time would have taken more than two weeks.
Following the inaugural flight over the Pacific Ocean, the China Clipper's sister ships, the Philippine Clipper and Hawaii Clipper, also of the same model, carried mail and cargo back and forth across the Pacific. By October 1936, points along the route were finally ready to accommodate passenger service.
The China Clipper remained in Pan Am service until January 8, 1945, when it was destroyed in a crash in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Flight 161 had started in Miami bound for Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo, making its first stop to refuel at Puerto Rico before flying on to Port-of-Spain. After one missed approach, on the second approach to land it came down too low and hit the water at a high speed and nose-down a mile-and-a-quarter short of its intended landing area. The impact broke the hull in two which quickly flooded and sank. Twenty-three passengers and crew were killed. There were seven survivors including the captain and the first officer, who was flying the plane from the left seat when it crashed.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including The Last Hill (with Bob Drury) and The Last Outlaws, which was published earlier this month by St. Martin’s Press. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.