Musick In The Air

CLXXXIII

Ed Musick was happy to make it back to New York. The return flight of the Pan American Clipper II had been largely without incident, but he was glad to have gotten away from that impossible harbor at Pago Pago, from that utterly inadequate staging area at Kingman Reef, and from the Flying Gas Tank most of all. 

His report to Pan Am spelled it all out: The gasoline fumes, the dangerous landing conditions, the fuel leaking into the cabin during a fuel dump, the overheating engine, the necessity to turn off the electrical power. Pan Am immediately ran dye tests on the Pan American Clipper II and confirmed what Ed and his crew already knew, that during a fuel dump the vented gasoline streamed backward in the plane’s slipstream causing both liquid fuel and potentially explosive vapors to pass too close for comfort to the hot engine exhausts. Pan Am immediately banned S-42B fuel dumps on passenger flights and forwarded this recommendation to the FAA. 

When Ed heard that the Pan American Clipper II had been renamed Hong Kong Clipper and was slated to have its passenger interiors reinstalled before being assigned to the Manila-to-Hong Kong hop, he surely breathed a sigh of relief. Having proven that FAM 14 was possible if not efficacious in the Flying Gas Tank he must have hoped that one of the big M-130s would be assigned to cover it. Or maybe one of the Boeing 314s that were expected to arrive any day. For himself, he wanted to get back on the Orient Express, hopefully to be tapped soon for the prestigious Atlantic run which everyone knew now was coming.

Was he angry then, or just profoundly dismayed, when company scuttlebutt began circulating that the newly-named Hong Kong Clipper had been renamed again, this time as the Samoan Clipper?   

Upstairs on Lexington Avenue, Juan Trippe had cancelled the original plan to rip out her extra fuel capacity. Another S-42 could be assigned to Hong Kong (among the pilots the eventual Hong Kong Clipper was known as “Myrtle”).

Mr. Trippe, it was said, had decided to go ahead with the Auckland route despite all its shortcomings and Ed’s deep misgivings about the aircraft and the staging areas. In typical Juan Trippe fashion, he was already using his globe, push pins and string to map out a new route, this one through British-held Canton Island. Of course, he had no idea if the British would allow him landing rights there, but he would convince them. In the meantime, the Samoan Clipper could use the original survey route through Kingman Reef. And since Ed Musick was familiar with the route, he could command the Samoan Clipper.     

   

Of course, Juan Trippe said none of this to Ed Musick, delegating his Operations henchman Andre Priester to deliver the news to Ed. What, if anything, Ed said to Priester is not known --- both men were famous sphinxes. But Ed must have wondered if he’d made a mistake ignoring all the offers that had crossed his desk at home.