Jupiter Rising

CXLIV

Crossing the Pacific presented all the challenges that early crossings of the Atlantic had presented, albeit on a grander scale. There were no navigational waypoints. There was virtually no weather information, except in radii a few hundred miles across from California, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. Storms could come boiling out of the vast mare incognitum of the Pacific.  High-altitude Pacific weather patterns and air currents were complete mysteries. And the Japanese, who collected weather data in the Western Pacific, absolutely refused to share it with the United States.  

Not so Pacific

Hugo Leuteritz designed more powerful Direction Finder technology for Pan Am that involved wrapping miles of wire around a series of high poles, and Pan Am had the ungainly devices installed across its planned Pacific route.  But nobody could forget that most of the pilots who had attempted Pacific crossings had either turned back or disappeared. Right up until the morning of the first transpacific hop, Juan Trippe was uncharacteristically timorous about the whole idea. The naysayers’ chorus was loud, and included government officials, members of the general public, and, perhaps most critically, members of his own Board of Directors.  

 

An Adcock antenna array

Some part of the concern was the state of the equipment. Although it had worked on the Latin American routes, nobody had really tested Leuteritz’s new design at ranges equivalent to Pacific distances, or in those conditions, so although the new DF (he called it an “Adcock” after an earlier, less grandiose, but similar British design) worked “theoretically,” the only way to test it with certainty was to test it in flight.  

 

Hugo Leuteritz, Juan Trippe’s electronics wizard

Another crucial piece of untested equipment was the flying boat itself. Although Trippe had wanted the M-130 to make the Alameda-to-Honolulu survey flight, word came from Glenn Martin in Baltimore that the new ship would not be ready for at least another four months. With Matson Lines trying to set up a competing route and with Donald Douglas and Harold Gatty in New Zealand trying to develop that connection as well, Juan Trippe had little choice but to turn to the well-established S-42 as his only real alternative.

The Pan American S-42B Pan American Clipper  en route to Alameda, passing the uncompleted San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

The second S-42 to roll off the production line was sent back for a major refit. The first major modification to the plane was that its interiors were stripped down to the bare metal walls of the fuselage. Two canvas camp beds for spelling the crew replaced the fancy teak and the plush upholstery. Extra fuel tanks, bladders, and piping were installed in order to give the plane sufficient range for the hop --- 3,000 miles, giving her a 600-mile cushion. 800 horsepower Pratt & Whitney engines replaced the standard 660 hp powerplants of the S-42. Her wingspan was lengthened to 118’ 4.”

Ed Musick and one of his rare, blazing smiles

Rechristened the S-42B and renamed the Pan American Clipper, the new design underwent extensive flight testing. The crew became intimately familiar with cruising with dead lean fuel mixtures, flying with multiple engine losses, and hand-pumping fuel from tank to tank to maintain proper flight balance.

Fred Noonan was Pan American’s Chief Navigator in the mid-1930s. A notorious drinker, Fred later left Pan Am to work privately with Amelia Earhart. They vanished over the Pacific on July 2, 1937

The Pan Am crew frequently had brushes with what would later be called The Twilight Zone. The S-42B’s longest test flight took it well out over the mid-Atlantic. Night flying, Ed Musick uttered a rare exclamation. What was a lighthouse doing out in the middle of the ocean?  There it was, winking regularly at them. His puzzled co-pilot checked the charts. No, according to the charts there was nothing there. Concerned that they were disastrously off course they tested their navigation instruments. No trouble there. Finally, Ed Musick called Fred Noonan to the bridge. It was Navigator Noonan who, after some time, finally identified the unknown blinking light. It was Jupiter rising. Low to the horizon, occulted by waves and by thicker air, the planet was imitating a flashing beacon. It was just as well that Musick didn’t take a bearing on it, else the ship would have disappeared under the wavetops.  

Relieved that he wasn’t going crazy, Ed Musick turned for home, returning to Miami after a seventeen hour 3,000 mile round-trip flight. It was the longest airplane flight on record to that time, and it proved that the S-42B had the chops to fly to Honolulu.

The Pan American Clipper lands at Alameda, 1935