Clipper Cargo

CLXV

 

For the first eight months of their operation the China Clippers functioned only as cargo planes. The Martin Ocean Transports were brought on line in reverse order, the last-constructed first (’16, the China Clipper), followed by ’15 (the Philippine Clipper) and ’14 (the Hawaii Clipper*) last. 

This protracted roll-out gave the airline time to familiarize itself with the new planes and to make improvements to the original design (the most notable of which was an increase in engine horsepower to 950 each). The attenuated process gave the planes the chance to prove themselves (and prove the route) with a minimum of risk to the public. It also, intentionally or not, allowed Pan American to continue to dramatize the China Clippers, celebrating in print and on celluloid as each successive M-130 took to the air. 

The idea was to have one Clipper outbound while one was inbound, with one always readying for the next flight. 

Pan American even made much of the cargo flights. While some of the cargoes were prosaic (construction materials for Midway) or of trivial interest (iced cases of shrimp and cocktail sauce for the PAAville Hotel on Wake), and others were Classified (varied nonspecified items destined for use by the U.S. Navy), Pan Am exulted over a planeful of peeping chicks destined for a poultry farm in the Philippines, a Clipper full of bananas inbound from Manila to San Francisco, Hawaii pineapples sharing the hold with California oranges and Guamanian mangoes, evening gowns for a Debutante Cotillion in Honolulu, and endless tons of mail.   

There were occasional passengers, too, but no commercial ones. General Douglas MacArthur and his personal staff made several unannounced journeys to and from the Commonwealth of The Philippines to the U.S. mainland. Naval officers and men were given use of the Clippers. High-ranking Pan Am corporate officers flew the Clippers along the Orient Express route for business reasons. And the China Clippers were often used to transport Hawaiian workmen from Honolulu to Midway and back, or Guam to Midway. 

A Pan American dispatcher pricked the smallest of pinholes in the armor of segregation during one of these transport flights when a mainland Regional Manager traveling on company business objected vociferously to sharing the flight with “colored” Chamorros. The dispatcher stood his ground, arguing that the workmen, scheduled for a well-deserved furlough from the isolation of Wake, would not, could not and should not be bumped from the flight just because the Manager was unhappy with his travel arrangements. The dispute ultimately reached Juan Trippe’s offices, and Andre Priester decided that the Chamorros had priority over a Manager from another Region.** It was not much, it was a quickly-forgotten incident, but it was a bellwether of changes to come.

*Several sources state that the Hawaii Clipper was originally named the Hawaiian Clipper but this blogger has found no photographs with the latter name on the hull. 

**It should be noted that in 1936 Regional Managers from South America and elsewhere jumped at the chance to travel on the China Clippers whenever a plausible excuse made itself available. Whatever this business trip was, it was clearly not authorized by Juan Trippe as a high-priority matter, else the outcome would have been different. In the event, had Andre Priester bumped the Chamorros, it would have cut into their furlough as they would have had to wait a week for the next Clipper; the resulting upset might have caused labor problems and slowed progress on the Wake facilities which were still under construction at the time. Priester was being pragmatic, not especially ethical, but given the general attitudes of the day of whites toward non-whites, Priester’s decision is literally worth a footnote in history.