"The Flying Forest"

CII

Pan American Airways had barely gotten off the ground flying Trimotors, S-34s, S-36s, S-38s and Commodores inherited from its hostile takeover of NYRBA, when Juan Trippe approached Igor Sikorsky and asked him to design a plane built to specification for Pan Am. Like its predecessors, Trippe wanted a flying boat. Unlike its predecessors, Trippe wanted size, passenger and cargo capacity, and luxury. 

 

An S-40 over Dinner Key

Sikorsky, the master of “the art of the possible” designed the S-40. It was a larger and more capable four-engined descendant of the S-38 and the other flying boats Sikorsky had been developing all along. Nobody was entirely happy with the S-40. Juan Trippe had wanted something far more streamlined, but Sikorsky had convinced him that the cantilevered monoplane he was imagining couldn’t be built without trading off much of both payload and range. Aircraft design was evolving fast, but Trippe’s expectations, Sikorsky said, were just beyond the leading edge. Trippe settled for the S-40, but he only ordered three of the craft, assuming that more advanced planes were only months away. They were. 

The S-40. She was the first aircraft ever made-to-order for an airline

The S-40 had a length of 77′, a wingspan of 114′, a maximum range of 900 miles, and a maximum Speed of 137 miles per hour, though cruising speed was a more sedate 115 miles per hour. 

Charles Lindbergh took one look at the S-40 and called it “a flying forest.” Like all the earlier Sikorsky flying boats, the S-40 was basically a hull slung beneath a set of wings. With its maze of struts, spars, braces and wires, it resembled nothing so much as some strange reptilian creature peering out between stands of jungle growth. 

Passengers boarding an S-40

If her amphibian wheels seemed like an ugly afterthought, they were. Sikorsky had fitted the S-40 with wheels for overland flights (they could be removed for oceanic passages) and they were supported by train springs. 

Lindbergh made certain that the hull and the fittings were all made of the same alloys so as to avoid electrolysis while in contact with seawater and to reduce corrosion. He also wanted the flight deck repositioned. A difficulty with flying boats was spray from the propellers during takeoff, and the S-40’s impressive props were more than usually guilty of blinding the pilots.  

To make up for its ungainly appearance, the S-40 was finished within in teak paneling and broadloom carpeting. A separate smoking room was provided. Game tables were spotted around the main lounge. The passenger seats were all recliners.  

An S-40 cabin.  Note the teak, the portholes, and the life preserver, all reminiscent of seafaring

Passengers relaxing in the smoking cabin. Note the game table and the fire extinguisher on the wall. Note the little girl in the adjacent cabin

Passengers in an S-40 cabin enjoying a game of cards. Note the hathooks and the PAA logo on the table. Likely, the cards were also logoed. Pan American early on developed a pattern of product placement, logoing its blankets, pillows, seat covers, and other incidental fittings

Adding to the panache of the flying boat were the placement (for both aesthetic reasons and safety reasons) of life preservers in the cabins, each emblazoned with the name of the ship. Although the S-40 was not (as some sources report) the first of Pan Am’s craft to be called “Clippers” they were the first ships that required the crews to wear what was to become Pan Am’s standard maritime uniform. 

A Pan American Captain's hat of the 1930s. In emulating military style, Pan Am devised an entire series of cap and uniform devices and rating ribbons for its various crewmembers

For short flights of no more than 500 miles she could carry forty passengers. For longer flights that number was cut to 24. Either way, it was a quantum leap over the S-38’s eight seats. Properly configured, she could carry 11,000 pounds of cargo. 

The S-40 was not, and was never meant to be, a transoceanic ship. The three S-40s, American Clipper, Caribbean Clipper, and Southern Clipper were limited to the Latin American run.  

"The Flying Forest"

The first of the trio, American Clipper, was christened on Columbus Day, October 10, 1931, when Mrs Herbert Hoover broke a bottle of seawater against her hull, and Juan Trippe made a short speech. Did Mrs. Hoover remember? It was just two years and eight days after Trippe had stolen the microphone from Ralph O’Neill during the christening of NYRBA’s Rio de Janeiro. Somewhere, even as Trippe spoke, the Rio flew, and in PAA colors. Nobody who was there remembered seeing Ralph O’Neill at the ceremony for American Clipper. 

Rollout of the American Clipper at the Sikorsky works in Connecticut

Mrs. Herbert Hoover christens the American Clipper. In keeping with Prohibition strictures the bottle contained seawater

American Clipper in flight

It was almost anticlimactic. The new flying boat behaved magnificently, visiting Kingston, Jamaica and Barraquilla, Colombia en route to the Canal Zone from Miami. While refueling in Baranquilla, Lindbergh, who was piloting, was horrified to discover that the fueling dock’s gravity flow hoses were dumping more fuel into the harbor than into the plane’s wing. 

Instinct took over. “Stop smoking! Put out your cigarettes!” he shouted to the crowd on the dock. They did --- by tossing their lit butts off the dock into the gasoline-rainbowed water. Lindbergh waited for the flames. But they didn’t come. 

Ultimately, the three S-40s would fly an aggregate of more than 10,000,000 miles without a serious accident. They were retired in 1941, given to the Navy for the duration of World War II for use as trainers, but just after the war they were scrapped, having long outlived their useful lives.