1941 CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF the GLOBE BY PAN AM'S "PACIFIC CLIPPER"
The Round The World Saga of the "Pacific Clipper"
John A. Marshall
Engines: Four (4) 1,600 hp (1,192 kW) Wright R-2600 Twin Cyclone (1,192 kw), 14
cylinder, air-cooled, radial engines.
Wing Span: 152 ft. (46.33 m.)
Length: 106 ft (32.31 m.)
Max T.O. Weight: 84,000 lb. (38,102 kg.)
Max
level speed: 199 mph (320 km/h)
Cruising speed: 184 mph (296 km/h)
Range: 5,200 miles (8369 km)
First flight: June 7, 1938
Ceiling: 19,600
feet
Accommodation: 10 crew, 74 passengers
December 7, 1941
The first blush of dawn tinged the eastern sky and sent its rosy fingers
creeping onto the flight deck of the huge triple-tailed flying boat as she
cruised high above the South Pacific. Six days out of her home
port
of
San Francisco,
the Boeing 314 was part of Pan American Airways' growing new service that linked
the far corners of the Pacific
Ocean.
With veteran captain Robert Ford in command, the Pacific Clipper, carrying 12
passengers and a crew of ten was just a few hours from landing in the harbor at
Auckland, New Zealand.
The calm serenity of the flight deck early on this spring morning was suddenly
shattered by the crackling of the radio. Radio Operator John Poindexter clamped
the headset to his ears as he deciphered the coded message. His eyes widened as
he quickly wrote the characters on the pad in front of him.
Pearl Harbor
had been attacked by Japanese war planes and had suffered heavy losses; the
United States
was at war. The stunned crew looked at each other as the implications of the
message began to dawn. They realized that their route back to California
was irrevocably cut, and there was no going back. Ford ordered radio silence,
and then posted lookouts in the navigator's blister; two hours later, the
Pacific Clipper touched down smoothly on the waters of
Auckland harbor.
Their odyssey was just beginning.
The crew haunted the overwhelmed communications room at the
US
Embassy in
Auckland
every day for a week waiting for a message from Pan Am headquarters in
New York.
Finally they received word -- they were to try and make it back to the
United States
the long way: around the world westbound. For Ford and his crew, it was a
daunting assignment. Facing a journey of over 30,000 miles, over oceans and
lands that none of them had ever seen, they would have to do all their own
planning and servicing, scrounging whatever supplies and equipment they needed;
all this in the face of an erupting World War in which political alliances and
loyalties in may parts of the world were uncertain at best. Their first
assignment was to return to
Noumea,
back the way they had come over a week earlier. They were to pick up the Pan
American station personnel there, and then deliver them to safety in
Australia.
Late on the evening of December 16th, the blacked out flying boat lifted off
from
Auckland
harbor and headed northwest through the night toward
Noumea.
They maintained radio silence, landing in the harbor just as the sun was coming
up. Ford went ashore and sought out the Pan Am Station Manager. "Round up all
your people," he said. "I want them all at the dock in an hour. They can have
one small bag apiece."
The crew set to work fueling the airplane, and exactly two hours later, fully
fueled and carrying a barrel of engine oil, the Clipper took off and pointed her
nose south for Australia.
It was late in the afternoon when the dark green smudge of the
Queensland
coast appeared in the windscreen, and Ford began a gentle descent for landing in
the harbor at
Gladstone.
After offloading their bewildered passengers, the crew set about seeing to their
primary responsibility, the Pacific Clipper. Captain Ford recounted, "I was
wondering how we were going to pay for everything we were going to need on this
trip. We had money enough for a trip to
Auckland
and back to
San Francisco,
but this was a different story. In
Gladstone
a young man who was a banker came up to me and out of the blue said, 'How are
you fixed for money?' 'Well, we're broke!' I said. He said, 'I'll probably be
shot for this,' but he went down to his bank on a Saturday morning, opened the
vault and handed me five hundred American dollars. Since Rod Brown, our
navigator, was the only one with a lock box and a key we put him in charge of
the money. That $500 financed the rest of the trip all the way to
New York."
Ford planned to take off and head straight northwest, across the Queensland
desert for Darwin, and then fly across the Timor Sea to the Dutch East Indies
(now Indonesia), hoping that Java and Sumatra remained in friendly hands. The
next day, as they droned into the tropical morning the coastal jungle gradually
gave way to great arid stretches of grassland and sand dunes. Spinnifex and gum
trees covered the landscape to the horizon. During the entire flight to
Darwin
the crew didn't see a river big enough to set down the big flying boat should
anything go wrong. Any emergency would force them to belly land the airplane
onto the desert, and their flight would be over.
They approached the harbor at
Darwin
late in the afternoon. Massive thunderheads stretched across the horizon, and
continuous flashes of lightning lit up the cockpit. The northernmost city in
Australia,
Darwin
was closest to the conflict that was spreading southward like a brushfire. A
rough frontier town in the most remote and primitive of the Australian
territories, it was like something out of a wild west movie. After they had
landed, the Pacific Clipper crew was offered a place to shower and change; much
to their amusement their "locker room" turned out to be an Australian Army
brothel.
Ford and his crew set about fueling the airplane. It was a lengthy, tiresome
job. The fuel was stored in five gallon jerry cans, each one had to be hauled up
over the wing and emptied into the tanks; it was past
midnight
before they were finished. They managed a few hours of fitful sleep before
takeoff, but Ford was anxious to be underway. News of the progress of the
Japanese forces was sketchy at best. They were fairly certain that most of the
Dutch East Indies
was still in friendly hands, but they could not dally.
Early the next morning they took off for
Surabaya,
fourteen hundred miles to the west across the
Timor Sea.
The sun rose as they droned on across the flat turquoise sea, soon they raised
the eastern islands of the great archipelago of east Java. Rude thatch-roofed
huts dotted the beaches; the islands were carpeted with the lush green jungle
of the tropics.
Surabaya
lay at the closed end of a large bay in the
Bali Sea.
The second largest city on the
island
of
Java,
it was guarded by a British garrison and a squadron of
Bristol
Beaufort fighters. As the Pacific Clipper approached the city, a single
fighter rose to meet them; moments later it was joined by more. The recognition
signals that Ford had received in
Australia
proved to be inaccurate, and the big Boeing was a sight unfamiliar to the
British pilots. The crew tensed as the fighters drew closer. Because of a quirk
in the radio systems, they could hear the British pilots, but the pilots could
not hear the Clipper. There was much discussion among them as to whether
the flying boat should be shot down or allowed to land. At last the crew heard
the British controller grant permission for them to land, and then add, "If they
do anything suspicious, shoot them ot of the sky!" With great relief, they
commenced a very careful approach.
As they neared the harbor, Ford could see that it was filled with warships, so
he set the Clipper down in the smooth water just outside the harbor entrance.
"We turned around to head back," Ford said. "There was a launch that had come
out to meet us, but instead of giving us a tow or a line, they stayed off about
a mile and kept waving us on. Finally when we got further into the harbor they
came closer. It turned out that we had landed right in the middle of a
minefield, and they weren't about to come near us until they saw that we were
through it!"
When they disembarked the crew of the Pacific Clipper received an unpleasant
surprise; they were told that they would be unable to refuel with 100 octane
aviation gas. What little there was severely rationed, and was reserved for the
military. There was automobile gas in abundance however, and Ford was welcome to
whatever he needed. He had no choice. The next leg of their journey would
be many hours over the
Indian Ocean,
and there was no hope of refueling elsewhere. The flight engineers, Swede Roth
and Jocko Parish, formulated a plan that they hoped would work. They transferred
all their remaining aviation fuel to the two fuselage tanks, and filled the
remaining tanks to the limit with the lower octane automobile gas.
"We took off from
Surabaya
on the 100 octane, climbed a couple of thousand feet, and pulled back the power
to cool off the engines," said Ford. "Then we switched to the automobile gas and
held our breaths. The engines almost jumped out of their mounts, but they ran.
We figured it was either that or leave the airplane to the Japs."
They flew northwesterly across the Sunda Straits, paralleling the coast of
Sumatra.
Chasing the setting sun, they started across the vast expanse of ocean. They had
no aviation charts or maps for this part of the world; the only navigational
information available to the crew was the latitude and longitude of their
destination at Trincomalee, on the
island
of
Ceylon
(now
Sri Lanka).
Using this data, and drawing from memory, Rod Brown was creating his own
Mercator maps of
South Asia.
Ford was not only worried about finding the harbor, he was very concerned
about missing
Ceylon altogether.
He envisioned the Clipper droning on over
India,
lost and low on fuel, unable to find a body of water on which to land.
As they neared the island they could see a cloud bank ahead. Ford said, "There
was some low scud, so we descended. We wanted the maximum available visibility
to permit picking up landfall at the earliest moment -- we didn't want to miss
the island. All of a sudden there it was, right in front of us, a Jap submarine!
We could see the crew running for the deck gun. Let me tell you we were
pretty busy getting back into the scud again!"
Ford jammed the throttles of the Clipper forward to climb power, the engines
complaining bitterly. Their 150 mph speed soon had them well out of range of the
sub's guns, and the crew heaved a sigh of relief. It would be difficult to
determine who was the more surprised; the Japanese submarine commander or the
crew of the Clipper, startled out of their reverie after the long flight.
It was another hour until they reached the island, and the Boeing finally
touched water in the harbor at Trincomalee. The British Forces stationed there
were anxious to hear what Ford and his crew had to report from the war
zone to the east, and the crew was duly summoned to a military meeting.
Presiding was a pompous Royal Navy Commodore who informed Ford in no uncertain
terms that he doubted Ford would know a submarine if it ran over him. Ford felt
the hackles rise on the back of his neck. He realized that he could not afford
to make an enemy of the British military, the fate of the Pacific Clipper
rested too heavily in their hands. He swallowed hard and said nothing.
It was Christmas Eve when they began the takeoff from
Ceylon
and turned the ship again to the northwest. The heavily loaded Boeing struggled
for altitude, laboring through the leaden humid air. Suddenly there was a
frightening bang as the number three engine let go. It shuddered in its
mount, and as they peered through the windscreen the crew could see gushes of
black oil pouring back over the wing. Ford quickly shut the engine down, and
wheeled the Clipper over into a 180 degree turn, heading back to Trincomalee
Less than an hour after takeoff the Pacific Clipper was back on the waters of
Trincomalee harbor. The repairs to the engine took the rest of Christmas Eve and
all Christmas Day. One of the engine's eighteen cylinders had failed, wrenching
itself loose from its mount, and while the repair was not particularly complex,
it was tedious and time-consuming. Finally early in the morning of December
26th, they took off from
Ceylon
for the second time. All day passed as they crossed the lush carpet of the
Indian sub continent, and then cut across the northeastern corner of the
Arabian Sea
to their landing in Karachi,
touching down in mid-afternoon.
The following day, bathed and refreshed, they took off and flew westward across
the
Gulf
of
Oman
toward Arabia.
After just a bit over eight routine hours of flying, they landed in Bahrain,
where there was a British garrison.
Another frustration presented itself the following morning as they were planning
the next leg of their journey. They had planned to fly straight west across the
Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea into Africa, a flight that would not have been
much longer than the leg they had just completed from Karachi.
"When we were preparing to leave
Bahrain
we were warned by the British authorities not to fly across
Arabia,"
said Ford. "The Saudis had apparently already caught some British fliers who had
been forced down there. The natives had dug a hole, buried them in it up to
their necks, and just left them."
They took off into the grey morning and climbed through a solid overcast. They
broke out of the clouds into the dazzling sunshine, and the carpet of
clouds below stretched westward to the horizon. "We flew north for about twenty
minutes," Ford said, "then we turned west and headed straight across
Saudi Arabia.
We then flew for several hours before there was a break in the clouds below us,
and damned if we weren't smack over the Mosque at
Mecca!
I could see the people pouring out of it, it was just like kicking an anthill.
They were probably firing at us, but at least they didn't have any
anti-aircraft."
The Pacific Clipper crossed the
Red Sea
and the coast of
Africa
in the early afternoon with the Saharan sun streaming in the cockpit windows.
The land below was a dingy yellowish brown, with nothing but rolling sand dunes
and stark rocky outcroppings. The only sign of human habitation was an
occasional hut; every so often they flew over small clusters of men tending
livestock who stopped and shielded their eyes from the sun, staring up at the
strange bird that made such a noise. The crew's prayers for the continued good
health of the four Wright Cyclones became more and more fervent. Should they
have to make an emergency landing here they would be in dire straits indeed.
Later in the afternoon they raised the
Nile
River,
and Ford turned the ship to follow it to the confluence of the White and Blue
Niles, just
below
Khartoum.
They landed in the river, and after they were moored the crew went ashore to be
greeted by the now familiar hospitality of the Royal Air Force. Ford's plan was
to continue southwest to
Leopoldville
in the Belgian
Congo
and begin their
South Atlantic
crossing there. He had no desire to set out across the
Sahara;
a forced landing in that vast trackless wasteland would not only render the
aircraft forever immobile, but the crew would surely perish in the harshness of
the desert.
Early the next morning they took off from the
Nile
for
Leopoldville.
This was to be a particularly long overland flight, and they wanted to leave
plenty of daylight for the arrival. They would land on the
Congo River
at
Leopoldville,
and from there would strike out across the
South Atlantic
for
South America.
The endless brown of the
Sudan
gave way to rolling green hills, and then rocky crests that stretched across
their path. They flew over native villages, and great gatherings of wildlife.
Herds of Wildebeest, hundreds of thousands strong, stampeded in panic as the
Clipper roared overhead. The grassland soon turned to jungle, and they crossed
several small rivers, which they tried to match to their maps. Suddenly
ahead they saw a large river, much bigger and wider than others they had
crossed, and off to their right was a good-sized town. The river had to be the
mighty
Congo,
and the town was Bumba, the largest settlement on the river at that point. From
their maps they saw that they could turn and follow the river downstream to
Leopoldville.
They had five hundred miles to fly.
Late in the afternoon they raised the Congolese capital of
Leopoldville.
Ford set the Boeing down gently onto the river, and immediately realized the
strength of the current. He powered the ship into the mooring, and the crew
finally stepped ashore. It was like stepping into a sauna. The heat was the most
oppressive they had yet encountered; it descended on them like a cloak, sapping
what energy they had left.
A pleasant surprise awaited them however, when two familiar faces greeted them
at the dock. A
Pan
American
Airport
Manager and a Radio Officer had been dispatched to meet them, and Ford was
handed a cold beer. "That was one of the high points of the whole trip," he
said.
After a night ashore they went to the airplane the next morning prepared for the
long over-water leg that would take them back to the western hemisphere. The
terrible heat and humidity had not abated a bit when the hatches were finally
secured and they swung the Clipper into the river channel for the takeoff. The
airplane was loaded to the gunnels with fuel, plus the drum of oil that had come
aboard at
Noumea.
It was, to put it mildly, just a bit overloaded. They headed downstream into
the wind, going with the six-knot current. Just beyond the limits of the town
the river changed from a placid down stream current into a cataract of rushing
rapids; pillars of rocks broke the water into a tumbling maelstrom. Ford held
the engines at takeoff power, and the crew held their breath while the airplane
gathered speed on the glassy river. The heat and humidity, and their tremendous
gross weight were all factors working against them as they struggled to get the
machine off the water before the cataracts. Ford rocked the hull with the
elevators, trying to get the Boeing up on the step. Just before they would enter
the rapids and face certain destruction, the hull lifted free. The Pacific
Clipper was flying, but just barely. Their troubles were far from over, however.
Just beyond the cataracts they entered the steep gorges; it was as though they
were flying into a canyon. With her wings bowed, the Clipper staggered, clawing
for every inch of altitude.
The engines had been at take-off power for nearly five minutes and the their temperatures were rapidly climbing above the red line; how much more abuse could they take? With agonizing slowness the big Boeing began to climb, foot by perilous foot. At last they were clear of the walls of the gorge, and Ford felt he could pull the throttles back to climb power. He turned the airplane toward the west and the Atlantic. The crew, silent, listened intently to the beat of the engines. They roared without a miss, and as the airplane finally settled down at their cruising altitude Ford decided they could safely head for Brazil, over three thousand miles to the west.
The crew felt revived with new energy, and in spite of their fatigue, they were
excitedly optimistic. Against all odds they had crossed southern
Asia
and breasted the African continent. Their airplane was performing better than
they had any right to expect, and after their next long ocean leg they would be
back in the hemisphere from which they had begun their journey nearly a month
before. The interior of the airplane that had been home to them for so many days
was beginning to wear rather thin. They were sick of the endless hours spent
droning westward, tired of the apprehension of the unknown and frustrated by the
lack of any real meaningful news about what was happening in a world besieged by
war. They just wanted to get home.
After being airborne over twenty hours, they landed in the harbor at
Natal
just before
noon.
While they were waiting for the necessary immigration formalities to be
completed, the Brazilian authorities insisted that the crew disembark while the
interior of the airplane was sprayed for yellow fever. Two men in rubber suits
and masks boarded and fumigated the airplane.
Late that same afternoon they took off for
Trinidad,
following the Brazilian coast as it curved around to the northwest. It wasn't
until after they had departed that the crew made an unpleasant discovery. Most
of their personal papers and money were missing, along with a military chart
that had been entrusted to Navigator Rod Brown by the
US
military attache in
Leopoldville,
obviously stolen by the Brazilian "fumigators."
The sun set as they crossed the mouth of the Amazon, nearly a hundred miles wide
where it joins the sea Across the
Guineas
in the dark they droned, and finally at
3 AM
the following morning they landed at Trinidad.
There was a Pan Am station at
Port of Spain,
and they happily delivered themselves and their weary charge into friendly
hands.
The final leg to
New York
was almost anti-climactic. Just before six on the bitter morning of January 6th,
the control officer in the Marine Terminal at La Guardia was startled to hear
his radio crackle into life with the message, "Pacific Clipper, inbound from
Auckland, New Zealand, Captain Ford reporting. Overhead in five minutes."
In a final bit of i rony, after over thirty thousand miles and two hundred hours
of flying on their epic journey, the Pacific Clipper had to circle for nearly an
hour, because no landings were permitted in the harbor until official
sunrise. They finally touched down just before seven, the spray from their
landing freezing as it hit the hull. No matter -- the Pacific Clipper had made
it home.
The significance of the flight is best illustrated by the records that were set
by Ford and his crew. It was the first round-the-world flight by a commercial
airliner, as well as the longest continuous flight by a commercial plane, and
was the first circumnavigation following a route near the Equator (they crossed
the Equator four times.) They touched all but two of the world's seven
continents, flew 31,500 miles in 209 hours and made 18 stops
under the flags of 12 different nations. They also made the longest non-stop
flight in Pan American's history, a 3,583 mile crossing of the
South Atlantic
from
Africa
to
Brazil.
As the war progressed, it became clear that neither the Army nor the Navy
was equipped or experienced enough to undertake the tremendous amount of long
distance air transport work required. Pan American Airways was one of the few
airlines in the country with the personnel and expertise to supplement the
military air forces. Captain Bob Ford and most of his crew spent the war flying
contract missions for the
US
Armed Forces. After the war Ford continued flying for Pan American, which was
actively expanding its routes across the Pacific and around the world. He left
the airline in 1952 to pursue other aviation interests.
The Crew of Pacific Clipper: Captain Robert Ford First Officer John H. Mack
Second Officer/Navigator Roderick N. Brown Third Officer James G. Henriksen
Fourth Officer John D. Steers First Engineer Homans K. "Swede" Roth Second
Engineer John B. "Jocko" Parish First Radio Officer John Poindexter* Second
Radio Officer Oscar Hendrickson Purser Barney Sawicki Asst Purser Verne
C. Edwards.
* Poindexter was originally scheduled to accompany the Pacific Clipper as far as
Los Angeles, and
then return to
San Francisco;
he had even asked his wife to hold dinner that evening. In
Los Angeles,
however, the regularly scheduled Radio Officer suddenly became ill, and
Poindexter had to make the trip himself. His one shirt was washed in every port
that the Pacific Clipper visited.
This article originally appeared in the August 1999 Issue of
"Air and Space Magazine"