The "North Wind"

CLXXVIII

A string of oaths filled the cabin air as Pago Pago Harbor appeared out of the low-lying clouds beneath the Pan American Clipper II. Ed Musick was outraged. The harbor was long and narrow and bent like a fishhook. It was hemmed by a coral reef. And the whole place was surrounded by high mountains.  How the hell was he supposed to land a twenty-ton flying boat in that harbor?

Pago Pago Harbor. Note the fringe of coral heads marked on the map. The steep hills around the harbor are represented by topographic lines

The flight had been checkered with such outbursts. After leaving Honolulu they had winged south toward Kingman Reef, there to rendezvous with the supply / fuel / radio ship North Wind. From high up, Ed and the crew took stock of Kingman, which was essentially a drowned version of Wake Island. The fringing reef stood out as a lighter ring around the coral rock body of the island, an off-shaped ring that enclosed --- or should have enclosed --- a lagoon. But Kingman was an ancient place and the relentless Pacific Ocean had worn the rock ring down to the point where most of it was submerged, lying several feet below the surface of the ocean. The stretch of Kingman that was unsubmerged was tiny, a strip of rock upon which nothing lived and nothing grew, perhaps a place where tired seabirds might roost a while and hunt for fish in the living waters that covered the coral.    

Kingman Reef. The changes in water color and the breakers mark the location of the fringing reef

None of the crew could believe it. This was their staging stop? There wasn’t enough room to construct a hut on the reef, much less anything else. At best, Kingman was a fuel dump site. They could see barrels of aviation fuel standing on the reef in the shadow of the supply ship. There wasn’t even a radio tower. The Pan American Clipper II was being led to the location by the North Wind’s radio signals.

S.S. North Wind

Ed Musick brought the S-42B in for a comfortable landing. There was some cloud cover, but it was a pleasant enough day here in the middle of nowhere.

The miniscule dimensions of Kingman Reef can be seen in this photo. Three people can stand abreast on the unsubmerged area of the atoll

“We’re f ------ lucky we didn’t have any technical problems on the way here. You couldn’t leave a toolbox on that rock,” he told his Navigator Harry Canaday. “Plus, you lose radio contact or go off course out here by a couple of miles and you’re fish food. Who the hell can see that at any distance?” he said, meaning Kingman Reef. 

“Forget about night flights,” the First Officer and Co-Pilot Frank Briggs muttered. 

“Hell, we’re lucky it’s a nice day. During a storm the whole damned reef is probably submerged,” the Purser, Ivan Parker said.

The Pan American Clipper II refueling at sea at Kingman Reef

It was a nice day. There was a steady tropical breeze and a light chop on the water that spanked rhythmically against the hull of the ship. Crewmen from the North Wind ferried the Pan Am flight crew over to the big ship in order to pay their respects to the Skipper. “Don’t worry,” the Captain of the North Wind told the Captain of the Pan American Clipper II. “We are staying on station until you come back this way.”  

“I damn well hope so,” Ed Musick responded. He was furious, not at the Captain of the North Wind, but at the Skygod-in-Chief sitting atop his tower in New York. It was a 1,075 mile flight between Honolulu and here --- wherever here was --- and another 1,600 miles south to Pago Pago. That added up to 2,700 miles, the longest hop in the Pan Am schedule. To call Kingman Reef a “stop” was just hardly not an out-and-out lie; for other than the fact that they weren’t airborne, the visit to the reef was every bit as stressful and laborious as the long distance hop that had brought them here.

The wreck on Kingman Reef

The crew bunked down on the rocking North Wind overnight, and the galley fed them assiduously.  By morning, Ed and the crew were rested but not much happier. At least their fuel-odor headaches had ended.

Before lifting off, Ed did take a few moments to stand on Kingman Reef alone. He found the vast openness of it all horribly oppressive. His shoes crunched on the stony ground. The ceaseless wind at his back threatened to push him into the sea. The blazing lightness of the sky that hung vast and blue above Kingman made him dizzy, and the ceaseless roar of the waves, and their fearsome nearness struck him like a hammer blow all at once: This place was no place for man.  

“Let’s get the hell away from here,” he announced to the crew when he re-entered his cockpit, that one place on earth he knew so well.

A colony of giant clams and corals on Kingman Reef

Ed didn’t like it at all. The crew was going to have to push on, getting increasingly tired and jumpy. Napping would be difficult at best. They had flown here with the windows open, the sound of the engines unmuffled, and they would have to fly on with the windows open since refueling had once again filled the hull of the flying boat with fumes.

Here came the anxious start, the sluggish, fully-laden water taxiing. Ed prayed there were no unseen coral heads waiting to tear the duralumin hull apart. Then, air beneath the keel. At least they were away from Kingman Reef. Ed took a deep beath and exhaled. He tasted gasoline.

What the @%&#! were they thinking upstairs in the Chrysler Building, anyway?  

Sunset at Kingman Reef