Imagine this – It’s December! You’ve booked yourself an international flight to the Far East to enjoy a balmy, sandy Christmas in the sun! You board the plane and take off across the Pacific headed for Southeast Asia, and settle in for several hours of relaxation, conversation and sightseeing over the ocean.
Before you’ve even reached your destination – your entire world is turned upside-down! Reports come in over the radio that suddenly, the whole world is at war! You can’t fly back, you can’t go on ahead, you have no idea where the plane is even going to land, and you could be shot down at any minute!
This is the terrifying tale of the Pacific Clipper, one of the long-haul luxury passenger seaplanes operated by Pan-American Airways in the 1930s and 40s, and the record-breaking flight that it took around the world in December, 1941, as the South Pacific exploded into war beneath its wings.
What Was the Pacific Clipper?
Introduced in 1938, the Boeing 314 Clipper was, in the late 1930s, the most modern of commercial, long-haul passenger aircraft being sold around the world at the time. Only twelve were ever constructed. Nine went to Pan-American Airways, and the remaining three went to BOAC – the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
The Boeing 314 was a large aircraft for the day, but even it wasn’t able to cover the entire width of the Pacific Ocean in a single, uninterrupted flight. Instead, the accepted practice of the day was to “island-hop” around the world, providing long-distance travel to the paying public by flying from one airbase to another, completing long-haul flights in stages. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t exactly glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t cheap!…But it beat the hell out of trying to cover the same distance by ocean liner!
The Pan-Am clippers came with most of the stuff that modern aircraft come with: Lavatories, seats that could convert to lie-flat beds, delicious food, and full steward service! However, they differed in many other ways:
First – journey-times were much longer. From California to Hawaii took up to 19 hours! Second – Passenger-volumes were much-reduced – The average pre-war Pan-Am clipper barely carried more than 70 passengers. Third – the Pan-Am clippers were all seaplanes, or “flying boats” – they had no landing-gear – instead, the planes took off and landed on flat bodies of water – large rivers, lakes, or along the coastline during calm weather.
Last but not least – tickets were expensive! A one-way flight from California to Hong Kong was $760 – around $14,000USD in modern prices!
Piloting a Pan-Am clipper was very different from flying a modern aircraft. Because the planes could only take off and land on water, pilots had to be extremely skilled, not only in flying, landing, taxiing and take-off – but they also had to know a lot more about weather, sea-conditions, how to spot a safe stretch of water, and how to read the windspeeds and directions accurately enough to know when, where and how to make a safe water-landing! These days, most pilots hope to only make one water-landing in their entire lives, if they ever have to – but for Pan-Am clipper pilots, it was literally a daily occurrence!
In an age when long-haul passenger-flights were limited and the industry was only, quite literally, getting off the ground – flying was far more dangerous than it is today. Engine-failures and emergency-landings happened much more frequently, and a full-service crew flew with the aircraft at all times to tackle all kinds of mechanical incidents that could happen during flight. The crew of the Boeing 314 Flying Boat was 11 in number: The captain, first officer, second officer, third officer, fourth officer, two flight-engineers, two radio-operators, the purser, and his assistant.
It was one of these fantastical flying machines – a Boeing 314 – which came to be known as the ‘Pacific Clipper’.
Pan-American Airways named all its early aircraft, just like how steamship-lines at the time named all their ships. And just like how shipping lines followed naming conventions (Cunard named all ships “-ia” – Carpathia, Lusitania, Muretania, Berengaria, etc, and White Star named all their ships “-ic” – Titanic, Olympic, Atlantic, etc), Pan-Am also followed similar conventions: All their aircraft were called “clippers”, a reference to clipper sailing ships, which were famed for their speed. The names were typically related to the plane’s assigned route.
There was the Atlantic Clipper, the China Clipper, the Caribbean Clipper, the Honolulu Clipper…and the subject of this posting: The Pacific Clipper.
The Farthest Flight of the Pacific Clipper
It is December 2nd, 1941. Off the coast of sunny San Francisco, the Pacific Clipper is preparing for a routine flight across the Pacific towards Auckland, New Zealand. There are twenty-three people on board: Twelve passengers, and eleven crew. The pilot is Capt. Robert Ford, a Pan-Am veteran, well-used to the rigors of long-haul passenger-aircraft flights.
With a range of 5,000 miles, the Pacific Clipper was never able to make the flight from California to New Zealand nonstop, and it was accepted that the plane would land several times during the trip to drop off and collect mail, passengers, food, drinks, trash, and most importantly – fuel! When Captain Ford fired up the engines and took to the skies, nobody on board could’ve imagined what lay ahead.
The aircraft’s first stop was San Pedro, California, then out across the ocean. It landed in Honolulu, Hawaii, then Kanton Island near Kiribati, then Fiji, and then finally, New Caledonia. In the preceding days, it had covered over 6,000 miles! The final leg of the journey was still ahead: Auckland, a mere 1,200 miles away – well within the limits of the Pacific Clipper’s operational range.
As the plane took off from New Caledonia and flew southeast towards Auckland, wireless operator John Poindexter was relaxing at his station, his headphones strapped onto his head as the aircraft hummed around him. Right now, he was probably thinking about his wife – the same wife that he had advised, he would be home early for – and to keep dinner for him on the kitchen table.
That was before one of the two radio-operators on the flight pulled out sick, and Poindexter stepped in to replace him. Had he known what was about to happen, Poindexter would’ve told his wife not to bother about dinner, because he was going to be home late.
Very late.
Halfway through their current leg, the radio suddenly crackled to life, and Poindexter scribbled down a message in Morse Code. Ripping it off his pad, he hurried to tell the rest of the crew what had just come in over the airwaves.
It was December 7th, 1941. A date which would live in infamy. Poindexter had just found out about the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
As the pilot, his co-pilot, the stewards, navigator, flight engineers and radio-operators all looked at the message, they suddenly realised what a horrible position they were all in!
While they could safely make it to New Zealand, offload their passengers, cargo and mail, refuel and take-off again – it was immediately obvious that there was no way that they could ever go home…or at least…not in the conventional way.
Under normal circumstances, the plane would’ve flown northeast towards Hawaii, where it would land, refuel, and then continue on back to the mainland United States. With Japanese aircraft, warships and aircraft carriers between the South Pacific and Hawaii, however, such a route was impossible – an aircraft bearing American markings would almost certainly be shot out of the sky if it was discovered by Japanese surface vessels.
With Hawaii on high alert, landing and refueling there, even if they managed to evade the Japanese, would be next to impossible. Unable to make the journey back to California without at least one stopover, getting back home seemed impossible!
Landing in New Zealand
The first leg of this epic adventure was relatively easy – landing. Two hours after receiving the world-changing news that the naval base at Pearl Harbor had been blasted by the Japanese, Captain Ford and his crew executed a landing off the coast of New Zealand, taxiing up to Auckland and tying off. Passengers and cargo were offloaded and the plane was prepared for…well…they weren’t exactly sure what for…but they wanted to be prepared at the very least!
Unsure of what else to do, the crew made their way to the American Embassy in Auckland. Here, they managed to contact Pan-American Airways Headquarters…in New York…and waited for further instructions.
With facilities in Hawaii put out of action, the harbor inoperable and any aircraft-fuel being needed for military aircraft, flying back to California was all but impossible.
In the week that it took for headquarters to make up its mind on the crew’s next move, the Pacific was erupting into war around them. The Philippine Clipper at Wake Island had managed to evacuate all Pan-Am employees and a lucky few civilians, taking to the air as Japanese forces rolled in, riddling the aircraft with gunfire as it fought to get out of range. In Hong Kong, another Pan-Am flying boat had been blown up at its dock before it even had a chance to leave.
Knowing that time was running out and that their options were dwindling rapidly, it was eight days before Captain Ford and his crew found out what they were expected to do.
Finally, on the 15th of December, a cypher-telegram was dispatched from New York to the U.S. Embassy, Auckland, New Zealand. It instructed Captain Ford to strip the Pacific Clipper of all identifying marks, fuel-up, and to get home by whatever means were necessary. During the trip, radio silence was to be observed at all times, to prevent the aircraft from being detected by the Japanese, and to land in New York when it arrived back in American waters.
When he found out what he was expected to do, Captain Ford probably thought that it would’ve been better if he’d kept his mouth shut! There was no way the aircraft could fly that far without stopping several times for fuel. There was no way that they’d have enough food, equipment or supplies to last that long! They didn’t even have any money, and because Captain Ford only flew the Pacific routes – he had no maps or navigational charts to guide him across Eurasia, Africa, or the Atlantic Ocean! They were entirely on their own, with orders to make it home by any means necessary.
After refueling the aircraft, Ford and his passengers and crew took off once more, to an uncertain fate.
It was the 16th of December when they left New Zealand, and their first stop was one of their previous legs – New Caledonia. Here, Ford had been ordered to land, refuel, and take on evacuees – the staff of the Pan-Am facility that operated out of the New Caledonian capital – Noumea. Fearing that the island could be captured by the Japanese at any minute, Ford told the Pan-Am staff that they had exactly one hour to grab whatever they could, and flee. This wouldn’t be easy – each passenger was only allowed one bag each!
While the Pan-Am staff scrambled to pack their bags and secure their essentials, the plane was refueled. With everybody safely aboard, the plane took off once more, this time flying west.
The only other major landmass in the region that had not yet been taken by the Japanese was the Commonwealth of Australia – the Pacific Clipper’s next stop. It landed off the Queensland coast near the town of Gladstone, where once again – it started to refuel. While the ground-staff prepared the clipper for its next leg, the crew offloaded the Pan-Am employees from Noumea, judging Australia to be far enough away from Japanese aggression to be a safe evacuation-point.
While this was going on, Ford had to tackle another issue that hadn’t been an issue before last week!…money!
With each flight, the crew was provided with enough funds to cover their expenditures – food, fuel, and any necessary repairs – from California to New Zealand…but Pan-Am in New York had not been able to send them any extra funds for their long-haul flight around the world!
Wondering what to do, Captain Ford was suddenly approached by a young man, who identified himself as a local banker. The aircraft had enough food and fuel to last the trip – but what about money?
“We’re broke!” Ford recalled saying, and explained how they had only been given enough funds to support them there and back – not for halfway around the world!
“I’ll probably be shot for this”, the banker replied, but he went to his local branch, unlocked the vault in the back, and returned with $500 cash-money – American dollars! A not-inconsiderable sum in 1941!
Accepting the cash without another word, Ford handed it to Rod Brown, the aircraft’s navigator – the only person on board with access to the plane’s strongbox. The funds were deposited, and the aircraft prepared to take flight again.
The Pacific Clipper continued its journey westwards, flying across the Australian interior. Being a seaplane, the Pacific Clipper could only take off or land on water – and Australia being one of the driest countries on earth – there ain’t much water around! Certainly not enough to land a commercial aircraft in!
The afternoon of the 17th saw the Pacific Clipper landing in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. The weather was atrocious and the plane came down in the midst of a tropical thunderstorm. Although it was the capital of the Northern Territory, Darwin was hardly a bustling metropolis! The crew were stunned to discover just how small Darwin was – little more than a large, country town. Even in 2020, Darwin’s population is still barely 150,000 people!
Despite this, Darwin was still an important military base, with an airfield, army-base, aircraft facilities, and a naval base in the deep-water harbour nearby. Darwin was such an army town that the crew found that their refreshment station was actually the local brothel!
While in Darwin, Captain Ford and his navigator, Rod Brown, had to decide what on earth they were going to do next. Australia was likely to be the last friendly nation that they would be able to land in, before they had to strike out on their own and try and make it home across the rest of the world. There would be no way to know where they could land, find fuel, repair the engines if they malfunctioned, could receive medical care, or even communicate with Pan-Am headquarters in New York, if they had to!
Leaving Australia…
After freshening up, the crew had to refuel the aircraft…again. 5,000 gallons of aircraft fuel had to be poured into the tanks before they could take off – not with pumps or hoses or anything as sophisticated as that!…Oh no.
It had to be done by hand.
1,000 5gal. jerry-cans of fuel had to be literally manhandled up the side of the aircraft and poured into the tanks over the wings, passed down, refilled, and then passed back up again! All this in the raging North-Australian heat! It was past midnight before the job was done, and the crew were exhausted! They allowed themselves a few hours’ sleep, and then took off again the moment it was light.
Lifting off from Darwin on the morning of the 18th, Captain Ford and his crew flew north to Surabaya in Java, then part of the Dutch East Indies.
Desperate to hold the island by any means necessary, British and Dutch forces were understandably on-edge when they saw an unidentified aircraft entering Javan airspace. Unable to make radio-contact, the Pacific Clipper was almost taken out by friendly fire! When it finally was allowed to land – the local authorities refused to give them any aircraft fuel! They insisted that their limited stock was for military uses only – but – they didn’t want to be seen as being unsympathetic – there was a war on, after all!…and they graciously informed Captain Ford that he was welcome to help himself to as much gasoline as he could load onto the aircraft! It’s not like anybody was going for a relaxing, Sunday drive right now, so there was more than enough petrol to spare! Even enough to fuel a commercial airliner!
The lower-quality automobile fuel had never been used in an airplane before, and Ford was skeptical about whether it would even operate properly at high altitudes! But he had no choice – it was either take the lower-grade fuel – or run out of fuel entirely, and crash in the ocean!
Erring on the side of caution, Ford ordered his flight engineers to siphon the remaining aircraft fuel into one tank, and fill the other tanks with the lower-grade gasoline. The plane would take off using aircraft fuel, but would carry out the next leg of its journey using the automobile fuel.
Once the plane was airborne, Ford switched the feed-valves on the tanks, shutting off the aviation fuel and switching on the pumps for the lower-grade petrol – the engines gurgled and spluttered and smoke started pumping out, but once they’d gotten over the initial shock of the change in their diet – they started firing once more.
Chasing the Sunset
Determined to put as much space between himself and the Japanese as possible, Captain Ford steered the Pacific Clipper westwards, and out across the Indian Ocean, and over waters which were, quite literally – uncharted! With no detailed maps, Ford, his navigator, co-pilot and the aircraft’s stewards were basically flying blind, only having the vaguest idea of where they were going. Navigator Brown had no navigational documents for this part of the world, and warned Ford that all they had to go on were rough bearings.
Ford decided that their next logical destination had to be a colony of the British Empire – somewhere that the Pacific Clipper would stand a greater chance of a friendly reception. To that end, the plane attempted to find the island of Ceylon – today – Sri Lanka – off the Indian coast.
Had they been traveling by sea, this would’ve been called an “all-red route” – a sea voyage which stopped only in “red” parts of the map – red being the colour of the British Empire. As they flew on, the crew of the Pacific Clipper encountered heavy cloud-cover. Unable to determine his position, Ford dropped the plane below the clouds to get his bearings – a decision he would immediately regret!
As he broke cloud-cover, Ford got the shock of his life when a Japanese submarine appeared below! The Japanese started manning their deck-guns and began firing at the Pacific Clipper and Ford had to quickly manipulate the controls to bring the aircraft back up into the clouds!
Sustaining no damage from the Japanese attack, the Pacific Clipper finally landed in Ceylon and the crew were welcomed by the local British military garrison, where they were invited to a meeting to give them whatever intelligence they could regarding the current state of the South Pacific.
After the aircraft had been refueled, it took off once more. It was now the 24th of December – Christmas Eve, and Captain Ford was about to get a very nasty Christmas present! They had barely flown more than a handful of miles when an explosion in one of the starboard engines made everybody jump! Peering out the window, Ford and his co-pilot were stunned to see smoke and oil gurgling from the #3 engine! Ford shut the engine down and spun the plane around back to Ceylon!
When they landed, Ford pulled the engine coverings off and discovered that one of the 18 cylinders had ruptured and worked itself loose from its mounting, causing the oil to leak out. Repairing the loosened mounting was not difficult…but it did take a long time, and it was Boxing Day before the plane could take off again.
Deciding to stick with their “British-Empire” strategy, Ford and his crew headed for Karachi, then part of British India (today part of Pakistan), and from there to the Kingdom of Bahrain, at the time, a British protectorate.
So far, so good.
Arriving in Bahrain, the crew once again made contact with the British military authorities stationed there, explained their situation, and their onward plans. Captain Ford was warned to avoid flying over Saudi-Arabia if at all possible, due to the potentially hostile reception he might receive – more than a few British aircraft had been shot down over Arabian airspace, and while the Pacific Clipper had, by this time, been stripped of all its identifying marks to avoid enemy attention, there was still a good chance that an unmarked, un-identifiable aircraft might still be targeted by hostile forces.
Captain Ford provisioned and refueled his plane, and they took off again. With fuel a precious commodity, Ford wasn’t in any position to take a ‘scenic route’ back to America, and so, ended up flying across Saudi-Arabia anyway! To protect against gunfire, the clipper remained in the clouds for the majority of the leg, only dipping down to check their bearings every few miles. They’d been in the air about 20 minutes when Ford took the plane down to check their progress. The crew got the shock of their lives when they realised that they were flying right across central Mecca! Fortunately, anti-aircraft installations did not exist in Mecca, and the Pacific Clipper flew on, unmolested.
The aircraft’s next stop was Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan. Landing on the famous River Nile, Captain Ford and his crew were greeted by representatives of the British Royal Air Force, who helped them refuel the Pacific Clipper, provision it for the next leg of its epic journey, and wished them godspeed.
Exactly where to go next was a bit of a challenge. Flying to Europe was dangerous at best, unwise at worst. While they could probably head to somewhere like Gibraltar, Ford feared that the clipper’s engines, already taxed to breaking-point, would not survive the heat of the Sahara Desert – a forced landing there would be a death-sentence to everybody! This also meant that places like Casablanca, Spain or Portugal were out of range.
Instead, the crew decided to fly to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo – it would at least be further west, and would take them one step closer to home.
Landing on the river near Leopoldville, the plane was tied up at a jetty and the crew disembarked for their next rest-stop. Upon their arrival in town, they received the shock of their lives! Two Pan-Am employees – an airport manager, and a radio-operator – greeted them! Relieved to see colleagues again, the crew relaxed, had a meal, exchanged news…and thanks to the two Leopoldville employees – enjoyed something that none of the Pacific Clipper crew had had, probably since leaving Australia – a nice, cold beer!
The crew rested in Leopoldville overnight while they planned the next leg of their journey. They also refueled the aircraft and prepared it for the next day’s flying – in fact, they prepared it so well, that come dawn, the plane was almost too heavy to take off! With tanks full of fuel and oil, cargo and crew, and with the soggy, humid air of the equator all around them, the Pacific Clipper narrowly avoided plunging off the edge of a waterfall as it lurched ungainly into the air once more!
The Atlantic Crossing
The next leg was one of the most dangerous – flying across the Atlantic to South America – a journey that took them nearly all day and night! When they finally landed in Natal on the Brazilian coastline, port authorities insisted that the aircraft – by then looking very battered, worn-out and worse-for-wear, due to it serving as the home for the ten crew-members for the past month – had to be fumigated for mosquitoes, which could carry deadly yellow fever. The crew disembarked the plane and started planning the next part of their journey while a team of fumigators boarded the aircraft and got to work.
And boy, did they ever! When Captain Ford and his colleagues returned, the ‘fumigators’ had robbed them blind! Anything that wasn’t nailed down had been stripped off the aircraft! All their personal papers, most of their charts, maps, travel-documents, company papers, and most of their money had been stolen!…a fact they only discovered once they had already left Brazilian airspace!
Finally back in the Americas and in familiar skies once more, Captain Ford flew towards the Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad & Tobago. This was the first place they’d landed in since leaving New Caledonia a month before, that had actual Pan-Am facilities, and Ford was relieved to be among friendly faces once more. The next leg was the last one – the final flight home to New York!
Captain Ford and his colleagues were so eager to get home that they took off almost immediately. It was now the 5th of January, and New York was just a short jaunt away. They left Trinidad so early that when they arrived in New York, it wasn’t even daylight yet! As a result, when Captain Ford contacted La Guardia Airport Air-Traffic Control with the words: “This is the Pacific Clipper, inbound from Auckland, New Zealand! Overhead in five minutes!”, the air-traffic controller called back that the Pacific Clipper was not allowed to land!…for 50 minutes. Only when the sun rose near 7:00am, did the plane finally touch down in American waters once more!
In the end, Captain Ford had made history! And in so many ways! Let’s count them, shall we?
The first-ever round-the-world flight by a commercial airliner.
The longest continuous flight made by a commercial airliner.
The first circumnavigation of the world by following the equator.
The longest nonstop flight in the entire history of Pan-American World Airways: 3,583 miles from Leopoldville to Natal.
In the nearly four weeks it took them to get home, Ford and his crew had visited twelve nations on five continents, and had made eighteen landings! They had also made incredible history!
Want to read more?
Sources included…
The History Guy YouTube Channel.
The Pan-Am Historical Foundation website.