"The Girl"

XCIV

Pan Am’s first aircraft --- even if it was only leased for a few hours --- was the Fairchild FC-2. The Fairchild FC-2 was built by Fairchild Aviation of Jamaica, New York. The company later relocated to Farmingdale, out on Long Island. 

An FC-2. Pan American’s and NASA's (then NACA) first aircraft ever

Sherman Fairchild

The FC-2 was just one iteration of a line of sturdy little floatplanes devised by Sherman Fairchild, the company’s founder. Fairchild invented the FC series as an aerial platform for his favorite hobby, photography. 

Fairchild owned 70 different companies over the years, ranging from aircraft to electronics, to cameras. He held scores of patents, and he invented the variable-speed camera shutter. He also invented the metric camera used by NASA for lunar photography.

The FCs were utility aircraft, able to take off and land on rivers, streams, lakes and even fair-sized ponds. They could also be fitted with wheels and skis. 

The FCs could carry four passengers or 850 pounds of cargo, plus the pilot. It is a testament to their sturdiness that they (especially the FC-2) were widely used for bush piloting over remote areas. The Royal Canadian Air Force used them in the Northern Territories, Admiral Richard E. Byrd used an FC-2 for Arctic surveying, pilots in the Australian Outback preferred them, and they were widely used for frequent short-distance flights in areas like South America and the Caribbean.  Their heyday ranged from about 1926 to 1936.

The fuselage of the FCs was about 31 feet long, and their wingspan was 44 feet. They could attain a top speed of about 120 miles per hour and they had a range of about 700 miles. There was nothing glamorous about the FCs, but they were sturdy little workhorses. About 200 were built, and some still fly today.  

Canadian-born Cy Caldwell was a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War. After the war he emigrated to the U.S., barnstormed a bit, and then flew for several nascent airlines. His tenure with Pan Am lasted about an hour-and-a-half, but he was the airline's first operational pilot. He also wrote excellent books on aviation history

Pan American met the FC-2 fortuitously. The brand-new airline was facing a business disaster on October 19, 1927. Contracted to deliver the mail from Key West to Havana, it found itself without any planes that morning (its expected delivery of three Fokker Trimotors was delayed). 

At literally the last minute, Juan Trippe paid West Indian Aerial Express (WIAE) pilot Cy Caldwell $150 (a small fortune in those days) to take the long route via Havana from Key West to Santo Domingo, where he was supposed to deliver WIAE’s newest plane, La Niña. Caldwell briefly stopped in Cuba to offload Pan Am’s mail cargo, and then flew off, having played a small but crucial role in aviation history. 

Pan Am eventually acquired WIAE, but La Niña was no longer flying at that point. Pan Am acquired a small fleet of FC-2s when it absorbed NYRBA. NYRBA used the FCs as short-range shuttle craft. Pan Am named its new FCs (or kept their existing names), but even Juan Trippe didn’t dare call them “Clippers.” 

The Fairchild factory in Farmingdale, New York turned out over 800 F-105 Republic "Thunderchiefs" ("Thuds" or "Wild Weasels") in the 1950s and 1960s. The heaviest fighter aircraft ever built, it also suffered the highest loss rate in combat in Vietnam, due not to any inherent flaw in the aircraft, but to the "first in, last out" strategy of the Air Force, which essentially guaranteed that the planes and their pilots would be targets of opportunity for the enemy