Kingman Reef

CLXXI

The globe was the key. Juan Trippe’s Malby globe, at three feet around, was his most useful tool. As soon as the word came from his New Zealand contacts that the island nation would allow Pan American access to the islands, Juan began to develop the infrastructure he needed to do so. 

Before he did anything else, Trippe hired Harold Gatty to be the regional Vice-President of the new operation. The Prince of Navigators was already deeply invested in New Zealand, having in 1934 co-founded (with Donald Douglas) South Seas Commercial. The airline had a few small inter-island routes (Gatty had a fondness for Fiji) but hadn’t effectively expanded either to New Zealand, Australia, or Gatty’s homeland, Tasmania. 

Gatty knew he didn’t have the resources to be truly competitive in the region and so he was thrilled to sell his company to Pan American for a relative song but an important role in development of the southern route.

Once Trippe had a business entity in place, no matter how tenuously, he began to survey the route. His first step was to consult the big globe in his office.

He remembered a few random place names from the time he had searched for mid-Pacific steppingstones. What Juan Trippe wanted was to discover another Wake Island in the southwestern Pacific.  

What he found instead was Kingman Reef. Kingman Reef (also known by the unwelcoming name of Danger Reef) was (and is) a coral atoll, just like Wake. But unlike Wake, Kingman is semisubmerged, with a flooded lagoon that renders it only one-tenth the size of already tiny Wake. Kingman had no space at all for facilities. At best, a lighter loaded with supplies and fuel could be anchored in its lee. This meant that any flying boat that used Kingman as a stop would have to make what was essentially an open-ocean landing (and departure) in uncomfortable proximity to the sunken reef. 

Kingman Reef hardly pokes above the water at high tide.

A map of Kingman Reef, showing the relevant features of the sunken coral atoll

Despite its barren appearance above the tide line, Kingman Reef boasts an unspoiled coral reef that supports a highly diverse ecosystem. (Photo courtesy of National Geographic)

 

Kingman Reef was hardly Juan Trippe’s first choice for a landfall, but Juan couldn’t see any way around using it, at least for the survey flight he had already planned, He knew it would be impossible to pull any of the Sunchasers out of service for the test flight, and the Boeing 314s that represented the next generation of flying boat were still under construction. 

Instead of delaying the whole project, he decided to do exactly what he had done in the mid-Pacific: Outfit a stripped-down S-42B with extra gas tanks and have Ed Musick and his picked crew hop from Honolulu to Kingman to Pago Pago to Auckland. The new route, FAM 14, would carry no passengers, only mail. 

The first survey flight took place in March 1937. The aircraft, originally named Pan American Clipper II, was renamed Samoan Clipper on subsequent flights.