The Day That Musick Died

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1937 turned out to be a watershed year for aviation. Just ten years after Lindbergh’s amazing transatlantic flight had begun a worldwide craze for all things aeronautical, the flaming destruction of the Hindenburg in May and the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in July marked a kind of Childhood’s End for air travel. Competitive flying still went on and records were still made to be broken, but the public’s excitement about flying began to wane. 

In part, it was because flying had become commonplace, but in equal part it was because the world had grown darker. Though most Americans still believed that the United States could stay safe behind its oceanic moats and that the problems wracking Europe and Asia were strictly their own, thinking Americans began to recognize that the spread of Fascism would involve the United States one way or another, and soon. Even Americans who chose to remain willfully ignorant couldn’t avoid the increasingly bleak headlines that were beginning to take the attention of even small town newspapers and radio shows. 

 

1938 was to drive home these lessons in painful ways. The old year had closed with the Panay Incident and not very long into the new year another disaster claimed another American hero. 

Since the original March 1937 survey flight of the Samoan Clipper nee Pan American Clipper II via Kingman Reef, FAM 14 had been unused. Juan Trippe, realizing the shortcomings of using Kingman and the tanker North Star as an open-ocean staging stop had been in negotiations to develop Canton Island (Abariringa or Mary’s Island or Mary Balcout’s Isle) a Pacific atoll in the Phoenix Islands as a staging stop for the Clippers. Canton would have been another Wake. 

The U.S. Government was leery of allowing Pan American to develop Canton, largely because the American claim to the island was shaky at best. The Phoenix Islands were recognized as British territory, and the American claim to Canton was based solely upon the fact that a joint American-New Zealand scientific expedition had visited Canton in June 1937 to observe a total solar eclipse. Given that half the expedition was manned by subjects of the British Commonwealth, the U.S. claim seemed even more evanescent. And the British seemed set on holding Canton, having sent the H.M.S. Wellington to enforce their claim. The British exchanged shots with the U.S.S. Avocet in the lagoon at Canton. Unwilling to go to war with Great Britain over a mere spit of coral rock, Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested joint suzerainty over the island, but the details were not worked out until 1939; development of the flying boat facilities on Canton just had to wait. 

Canton Island as seen from space, 2008

While the U.S. and the U.K. squabbled, FAM 14 service was suspended, but it quickly became clear that unless Pan Am used the route they would lose the route. The first “official” (mail-carrying) run from Oakland to Auckland was scheduled to arrive there on Christmas Eve 1937. 

The flight went off without a hitch, despite Musick’s well-known disdain for Pago Pago Harbor and Kingman Reef. Aboard was mail from the U.S. mainland and from the Orient, the M-130s having carried it to Honolulu for transshipment by the S-42B. 

Excitement in Auckland was at a fever pitch. The Samoan Clipper had brought the Kiwis their first airmail.  The excitement grew the next day, when the Imperial Airways Short flying boat Centaurus arrived in Auckland Harbor on its own survey flight and moored near the Samoan Clipper.  The crews of the two flying boats celebrated together and were celebrated together. After several boozy Yuletide days aided by a weather delay, the Samoan Clipper lifted off for its return flight home early in the morning of January the second 1938. The flying boat was carrying 25,000 pieces of mail. It made Pago Pago in under 13 hours, arriving on New Year’s Day (having crossed the International Date Line) and flew on to Kingman Reef on January 2^nd , before landing in Honolulu on January the third.

One of the 25,000 pieces of mail successfully delivered by the Samoan Clipper on its first regular flight

It was a flawless flight, and after a week off, the S-42B was scheduled to set out on what was to become its regular weekly journey to New Zealand. Musick was in his accustomed place at the controls as the Samoan Clipper went up “on the step” in Pearl Harbor and headed southwest again.

She made Kingman Reef with no problem and then flew on to Pago Pago, where she set down on January 11, 1938 in the jackknife-shaped harbor that Ed mistrusted so much. Taking on cargo and fuel, the Samoan Clipper took to the air at 5:37 A.M.

At 6:08 Ed Musick was on the radio to Pago Pago. He announced that he had an oil leak in the right outboard engine, that he had shut it down, and that he had feathered the prop. He did not declare an emergency, but he announced his intention to return to Pago Pago. 

The Samoan Clipper and the Centaurus in Auckland Harbor, Christmas Day 1937

Although he was barely a half hour out of Pago Pago, Ed Musick stayed in the air for more than two hours burning fuel and considering an emergency landing off Apia, the capital of Samoa proper (then a dependency of New Zealand). Why he chose not to land off Apia is not certain. But, likewise, he did not want to risk an emergency landing in Pago Pago Harbor while loaded with fuel and cargo. He knew the fully-weighted Samoan Clipper would use up the entire stretch of the harbor and pile up on the rocks at the shoreline if he tried to bring her in as she was.

About 8:35 A.M. on January 11, 1938, Pago Pago time, fishermen reported seeing a flash like heat lightning in the sky. The Samoan Clipper never arrived at Pago Pago. 

Given the political atmosphere of the day, and since it was only a month after the loss of the Panay, the immediate cause of the loss of the plane was blamed on Japanese sabotage. 

Within hours, the U.S.S. Avocet discovered a large amount of floating wreckage and an oil and fuel slick coating the ocean. Among the items found were uniform jackets. Of the seven men aboard --- Captain Cecil G. Sellers, Second Officer P.S. Brunk, Navigator F.J. MacLean, Flight Engineer J.W. Stickrod, Flight Mechanic J.A. Brooks, Radio Operator T.D. Findley, and Ed Musick himself --- nothing was reported found.

An investigation, though it did not completely rule out the idea of sabotage, focused on a much more likely culprit --- the vapors released during a fuel dump. As Ed had found during the Auckland survey flight of 1937, a fuel dump in flight allowed the vented gasoline to flow aft in the plane’s slipstream causing both liquid fuel and potentially explosive fumes to pass too close to the S-42B’s hot engine exhausts. Ed himself had recommended banning such fuel dumps on S-42B passenger flights and the FAA had followed his advice. 

The Auckland flights were not passenger flights, and apparently something severe had occurred on board around 8:30, severe enough so that Ed Musick chose to risk life and limb with a fuel dump in order to make a fast landing. “Meticulous Musick” had gambled and lost. 

After Musick's death, Pan American Airways announced that its Honolulu-to-Auckland service would be suspended until the advent of the Boeing 314. Musick and his crew were eulogized from a thousand pulpits and in a thousand hangars and barrooms. New Zealand, to whom Ed Musick had become an imported national hero, dipped its flags.

Musick Point Memorial Air Radio Station was a government-run navigation and weather station at the head of Musick Point in Auckland, NZ. Already under construction when the crew of the Samoan Clipper died, the station was named in Ed’s honor. It opened in 1940 and was fully operational by 1942. During World War II it was exceptionally busy, acting as both a maritime and aeronautical control tower for military and civilian traffic, broadcasting weather and sea condition updates around the clock, and providing an early warning system against possible Japanese attacks. It broadcast on three channels, ZLD marine radio, ZLF aviation radio, and ZLXA emergency radio. Although the station closed in 1993, interested New Zealanders have worked to preserve it as a museum to the early days of flight in their nation, and as a memorial to Ed Musick and his crew  

In June 1937, the U.S.S. Avocet acted as Guard Ship for the Solar Eclipse Expedition to Canton Island. It was the U.S. Government’s intention to claim the island for America and Pan Am’s intention to develop the atoll as a staging stop for the New Zealand run. A shooting war began when the H.M.S. Wellington attempted to drive off the Avocet and its expeditionary party with a shot across its bow and the Avocet returned fire. Ultimately, the island was jointly managed by Britain and the United States. During World War II, Canton Island became a staging area for Allied attacks against Japan in the South Pacific. Though shelled by Japanese forces, the U.S. and Britain held the island throughout the war

The U.S.S. Avocet   (foreground) is famed as the first American ship to fire on and bring down a Japanese plane during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Her alert crew opened fire on the approaching Japanese air group at 7:45 A.M. long minutes before most captains and crews had an inkling that an attack was under way. During the attack itself it provided covering fire for the battleship U.S.S. Nevada  (background) which successfully beached itself rather than being sunk in the channel and blocking shipping. After the attack ended, the busy little minesweeper rescued men from the harbor