"China Clipper Day"

CLIII

November 22, 1935 was one of those California days when sunshine poured down like honey from an impossibly blue sky marked here and there with fleecy white clouds no bigger than a man’s hand. Along the Alameda coast, a pleasant breeze sprang up with the sun making the day enjoyably cool. 

With a touch of Wild West elan, a Wells Fargo stagecoach delivers symbolic mail to the China Clipper just before liftoff

A holiday crowd had been gathering since the evening before, and now it numbered more than 150,000. They were there for one purpose: To participate in history. They gaped, they pointed, they “aaahed” and they “ooohed” at the immense silver-white flying boat in the bay, waves spanking smartly against its gleaming hull. The very name on her bows spoke of exotic faraway adventures: China Clipper.

  

Public Relations had done Pan American Airways proud, salting the newspapers up and down the Pacific coast with Clipper stories for the entire ten days prior. Denizens of The White City By The Bay had been wandering down to the Pan Am facility all that time, hoping to catch a sight of the China Clipper making speed runs across the water or lifting gracefully into the sky. Occasionally, people could see the crew in their near-naval dress uniforms conferring about something. Special clearance was required to get close to the plane, and so for most observers the whole process seemed remote and mysterious, but irresistibly exciting. 

The local municipalities played their parts as well. Alameda, San Francisco, Oakland, and other, smaller towns nearby declared November 22, 1935 to be “China Clipper Day,” feted the crew, and gave VIP treatment to the Pan American executives who appeared in their midst. Parades were held with the crump of tubas and the whump of bass drums. Speeches were made from hastily-erected podiums draped in red, white and blue bunting. Autograph hunters and nosy questioners were peremptorily shooed away from the Captain and his crew --- the strong silent type --- and had to content themselves with remarks from reedy-looking local politicians and Juan Trippe’s advance men, all of whom spoke of America, progress, and greatness. It might have been the Fourth of July.

Among the scores of collectibles that grew up around the China Clipper were a series of collector cards showing the M-130 docked, lifting off, and flying. Most of them are now exceptionally rare

Pan Am had made certain that the launch of the China Clipper was a international event. Two domestic networks carried the China Clipper Day festivities live. Radio connections were set up with Europe and Asia, South America and Australia.  Finally, at 2:45 P.M., the official ceremony began.

 

Postmaster General James Farley, his face stretched into something that might have been a smile or a grimace, took his place before the big microphone. 

By way of introducing Farley, a Master of Ceremonies explained that for the generation a century before, San Francisco had been the great port to which ships came and went “across the perilous Pacific.” He praised Pan American Airways as “the standard-bearer for America’s commerce with the Orient.”

Juan Trippe smiled. It all sounded wonderful. It should have. He’d written it himself. 

Lastly and a little lamely, the emcee praised the United States Post Office and “Big Jim” Farley, who’d made today possible. 

Farley uttered a few remarks of his own and read a telegram from “that air-minded sailor” the President, whose absence he noted --- “Even at this distance I thrill to the wonder of it all!” --- but who, he assured listeners, was among them this very day. 

“A person or letter,” Farley explained to his breathless worldwide audience, “will arrive in China within six days of leaving New York . . . an epoch-making achievement which rivals the vivid imagination of Jules Verne.”

The emcee took back the microphone, describing for listeners the sight of the China Clipper. “What a thrilling sight she is!” he exulted. “So confident! So sturdy! Her great engines ready to speed her on her way!”

       

It was now Juan Trippe’s turn, and he outdid himself: 

“The first scheduled air service over a major ocean route is being started under the auspices of the American Government, by an American company, operating aircraft both designed and built in the United States of America,and in the charge of American captains and crews.” 

He grandly invited the crew to take their places aboard. Like everything else this day, the crew had been picked to evoke reactions from the crowd. It was the same crew that had flown the Pan American Clipper to Honolulu on April 17^th, Captain Edwin Musick, First Officer R.O.D. “Rod” Sullivan, Navigator Fred Noonan, Second Officer Harry Canaday, Engineering Officer Vic Wright, and Radio Office Wilson Jarboe, Jr.   

These seven men --- Pan Am’s prime crew --- were about to do the undone again. As they marched aboard in formation, Ed Musick trailing, the band struck up The Star Spangled Banner.

As the National Anthem ended, the breathless voice of the emcee could be heard again:

---  . . . This is San Francisco! Over.

--- San Francisco, this is Manila. Over.

--- Manila, this is San Francisco, Come in. Over.

 

--- San Francisco, we have President Manuel Quezon on the line. Over.

--- Go ahead, Mr. President Quezon.

And in a ghostly voice, interrupted by static, the tubercular whisper of the new President of the Philippines crackled down out of the ionosphere

--- Hello San Francisco! Hello! I wonder at these far-reaching facilities! What opportunities for commerce! For international understanding! For peace! 

--- Thank you, Mr. President. We have Honolulu on the line.

Territorial Governor Joseph Poindexter read a prepared statement ending with,

--- How swiftly moves the history of the world today! 

The speechmaking gave the crew of the China Clipper time to prepare for liftoff. At an exchange of invisible signals, Juan Trippe stepped up to the microphone again. This time he was addressing his prime crew:

--- China Clipper come in!

--- Pan American Airways China Clipper here. Captain Edwin C. Musick reporting. 

--- What’s your status?

--- We’re a Go.

--- Alameda Station?

--- Go, Mr. Trippe.

--- Pearl City?

--- Go, Mr. Trippe.

--- Midway?

--- Gooneyville here sir. We’re go, sir.

--- Wake Island?

--- Go. PAAville is ready sir.

--- Guam?

--- Go.

 --- Manila?

--- Go. Standing by for orders.

Trippe turned to Farley, who gave his scripted assent. 

--- Captain Musick, this is J.T. Trippe. You have your sailing orders. You are to cast off and proceed to Manila in accordance therewith.

--- Aye, aye, Mr. Trippe. 

China Clipper over Alcatraz

Trippe fired a flare gun. An orange rocket blazed against a blue sky. And so the immense engines turned over, the props began to spin until they were translucent whirling discs, and the China Clipper got underway. As she began to move, the crowd cheered themselves hoarse, even more so when Ed Musick swooped the great plane under the span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge followed by a sparrowlike flock of fighter aircraft. She flew directly westward, chasing the sun.

Postmaster General “Big Jim” Farley and Juan Trippe handling mail bags destined for the China Clipper. Farley despised Trippe

It had not been a perfect day, though the imperfections had been carefully concealed from the public. That under-the-span liftoff was not in the script, and for a few terrifying breaths, Juan Trippe feared that the plane would crash headlong into the bridge. Even after the China Clipper cleared the bridge, Trippe worried. Was the big plane going to make any altitude or was she going to be a flying anvil like the Dornier Do-X? 

There was that possibility. Grover Loening, a member of Pan American's Board of Directors, and a designer of seaplanes and flying boats himself, had been actively critical of the Martin M-130 from the moment he had first seen the ship's blueprints. He felt that the wing was overloaded, that the design tended toward flight instability, and that the design was inherently dangerous. Glenn Martin dismissed his concerns as a form of sour grapes since Pan Am did not use Loening flying boats (though C.N.A.C. and several other lines in the Pan American Airways System did). But when the roll-out of the M-130 continued to be delayed, Loening charged that Martin had encountered insurmountable design difficulties and was buying time before he cancelled the project. The arrival of the M-130s seemed a fit final answer to Loening's accusations, but when Ed Musick raised concerns about the ship's engines and handling Loening's concerns were revivified. Somewhat ironically, the M-130 suffered from none of the disastrous faults Loening imagined, but during World War II another Martin airplane, the B-26 medium bomber, got a reputation as a widowmaker for its inherent characteristics, most of which Loening had prophesied for the M-130. Given Loening's and Musick's concerns the need for an extended breaking-in period was understandable. 

Then there was Big Jim Farley. The Postmaster General was literally in the mood for a donnybrook with Trippe as no man had been since the days of Ralph O’Neill and NYRBA. Trippe, perhaps wisely, refused to be alone with the fuming Postmaster General at any time during the run-up to China Clipper Day. Trippe had outwitted Farley at every turn, and being asked to participate in the China Clipper ceremonies had been like rubbing salt in the Irishman’s wounds. Farley never really forgave the President for forcing him to deal with Trippe on China Clipper Day, and his relationship with FDR began a slow spiral downward after 1935. 

There were other problems too. The night before the liftoff, two trespassers were found at the site of the Alameda Adcock array. There was some damage to the critical navigation equipment, fortunately quickly repaired.  Due to the size of the expected crowds, Pan Am had hired off-duty policemen as temporary security guards for its facilities, and the men were caught red-handed. They were turned over to the FBI, who described them as “two Japanese” bent on self-confessed sabotage. It may all have been true. Japan had no desire to see the China Clipper succeed. Whether the two men were acting under orders is not known. 

   

What was incontrovertible was a heavy block of wood run through with a railroad spike and anchored to the bottom of the bay with a length of chain. It was standard practice to clear a flying boat’s path of any floating obstructions, and the crude weapon was found precisely in the center of the China Clipper’s watery runway. If the ship had hit it, the spike would have torn a nightmarish gash in her hull during takeoff. Someone didn’t want the China Clipper to fly.

Three commemorative stamps marking the first flight of the China Clipper. The designs were personally approved by President Roosevelt

But fly she did. The flight marked in some sense a coda to the excitement of the Soaring Twenties, the time of barnstormers, air races, Lucky Lindy, Zeppelins, and now, at latest and last, the China Clipper.