The Macao Connection

CLXVII

Despite its name, the China Clipper, ironically, did not fly to China. The reason was politics. Despite the fact that Pan American Airways had acquired a large stake in the China National Airways Corporation (CNAC) in order to provide air passenger service within China, the Chinese Nationalist government refused to allow Pan American (or any other foreign airline) to acquire landing rights in China. In large part this was due to legitimate Chinese fears that the steadily-encroaching Japanese Empire (which controlled Manchuria and growing areas on northern and coastal China) would demand landing rights and then use those rights to expand its spheres of influence within Nationalist territory. In part it was due to ancient Chinese chauvinism toward Westerners. In any case, the terminus of the route of the China Clipper was Manila.

A street in Macao circa 1935

Juan Trippe spent most of 1936 trying to change that. Although he could not budge the Chinese Nationalist government (and wouldn’t deal with the Chinese Communists), there were two available mainland ports of call in China, namely British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macao.

Macau today

The British, who had proven intractable in the Atlantic proved to be just as intractable in the Pacific. Citing the onerous Provision H, Great Britain refused to allow the China Clippers access to Hong Kong as long as Great Britain did not have an equivalent British flying boat operating in the region.

 

Hong Kong circa 1935

Provision H had kept Pan American out of the Atlantic Ferry business for years, but Trippe, with his characteristic deviousness, saw a way to open the Pacific route to Hong Kong with a slick crowbar. For one thing, Germany and Russia were already operating an overland Chinese air route (Eurasian Air) from Berlin across Central Asia and northern China to Peking. The existence of Eurasian Air gravely troubled the British leaders of Hong Kong.

Map of Hong Kong and Macau

For a second thing, although Portugal, a close ally of Great Britain, tended to follow the British lead in Asia, Portuguese politicians proved amenable to allowing Pan American Airways to establish its Chinese hub in Macao, just across the Pearl River from Hong Kong. Macao, older, shabbier and poorer than Hong Kong needed the economic stimulus that the airline would bring. Macao planned on being competitive.

Hong Kong today

And so, to the horror of Hong Kong’s business leaders, both European and Asian, the Portuguese granted the China Clippers landing rights in Macao just within teasing sight of Hong Kong.

A British Shorts flying boat and the Pan American Clipper II in the bay between Hong Kong and Macao. The Martin M-130s rarely flew to China themselves. Passengers on the Sunchasers were generally put aboard S42-Bs at Manila for the 660 mile flight to Hong Kong

Juan Trippe built an entire infrastructure in Macao at the cost of roughly a million dollars. A mooring dock went up for the flying boats, and a Pan American hotel. A huge Adcock Array way constructed. Staff was appointed to run the Macao operation. 

Jardine Matheson, founded in Hong Kong in 1832, was the largest hong or foreign trading corporation in the world at one point, dealing in all sorts of legal and illicit oriental commodities. Even today, “Jardines” is one of the 200 largest corporations in the world

As the Macao facilities rose, Hong Kong’s leadership petitioned 10 Downing Street to grant Hong Kong some kind --- any kind --- of exception to Provision H.  

This intricate jade carving represents daily life in old China

Money talked. The British Government in London suddenly --- and surprisingly --- announced that the Short flying boats of Imperial Airways, never having flown the China routes, were the effective equivalents of Pan Am’s Martin M-130s.

Macao was a popular setting for romantic adventure films

Hong Kong immediately granted landing rights to Pan American Airways.   

The Philippine Clipper landing at Hong Kong

Juan Trippe was thrilled. His expensive con had worked. In truth, he’d had no intention of using seedy Macao as a Pan American landing site if he could have at all helped it. Overnight the virtually complete Macao facilities were abandoned, only to be rebuilt in greater splendor across the bay.

Kai Tak Jetty at Hong Kong

The Portuguese, utterly cheated, were outraged. Juan Trippe didn’t care. He’d neatly outmaneuvered the British Empire --- and he’d acquired the Pearl of the Orient for Pan Am.   

In a twist of grand irony, the landing facilities at Hong Kong were incomplete when Pan American Airways first instituted its mainland China service in 1937; as a result, the first Pan Am flights to China landed at the mothballed facility at Macao. Nothing about the arrangement made anyone happy. After Hong Kong came on line Macao was ignored. Note that the cachet of the envelope shows the route to Hong Kong

Headwinds

CLXVI

Despite the China Clipper’s worldwide reputation, Ed Musick was never entirely comfortable with the big M-130. He would never grow comfortable with any of them. As Pan American Airways’ Chief Pilot, first Master of Ocean Flying Boats, and the only Skygod of the line (Lindbergh was out of the picture) Ed’s word was law around the big boats, and his word was often “scrub” or, alternately, “abort.” 

Musick never openly criticized the M-130, at least not after it rolled out of the Martin factory, so eighty years on it is difficult to determine whether he disliked the plane, whether it had serial problems, or whether he was just being overly cautious with the only China Clipper yet to take to the air, but if Ed saw anything --- literally anything --- that made him uneasy, he cancelled the flight. If an indicator twitched or jumped spasmodically as the power was switched on, the flight was off. If the mechanics reported the slightest irregularity with any system however minor, the flight was off until the whole system was broken down and reworked. If the ground crews took too long to service the plane Ed assumed there were problems on the ground, and the flight was off. 

The same rule applied in the air. The engines tended to run a little hot on the M-130s. If the temperature climbed just a degree over what Ed considered normal, he turned back. If the engines gave the slightest wheeze, Ed turned back.  An odd sound onboard, an off beat anywhere, a glitch in any system, and Ed turned back. If fuel consumption was a shade too high, Ed turned back. Everything might be “Within Normal Limits” by the book, but if they weren’t “Within Normal Limits” according to Ed, he turned back. And he drove this habit into other pilots’ heads with a jackhammer. He wasn’t the only Pan American Airways Captain to fly the China Clippers, but he set the standard. As far as the public was concerned, Ed Musick was inseparable from the China Clipper. 

Still, the China Clipper made only two complete round-trip flights to Manila and back in the first ninety days of its operation. Newspapers, the public, and even some Pan American board members began to wonder why. The airline certainly couldn’t continue to fly successfully with such a poor record of performance. Pan Am stock, which had been at an all-time high in November 1935 began to slide as 1936 progressed. 

Part of the problem arose because Pan Am insisted on Press coverage for each China Clipper flight. The airline thus made it impossible not to draw attention to itself every time the plane turned back. Neither Juan Trippe nor Andre Priester, to their credit, ever questioned Ed Musick’s judgement regarding the China Clipper, but other people wondered if “Meticulous Musick” was a shade too meticulous. Whether this impacted Ed’s subsequent decisionmaking is a great unknown.

Not all the flights were cancelled or aborted for minor reasons. During one Alameda-to-Honolulu hop in December 1935 the China Clipper faced headwinds far greater than those that had drained the S-42B Pan American Clipper dry of fuel in April 1935. At one point in the flight, the China Clipper --- bigger, stronger, and with greater fuel capacity than the S-42B --- saw its ground speed drop to zero. Essentially, the plane was battling with all its might to hover over one spot in the ocean (the crew later reported that they felt that the plane was being pushed backward in midair). Under such conditions the crew had no choice but to abort. 

That inaugural winter season of 1935-36 presented the China Clipper with bad flying conditions anyway. Given that there were no meteorological records for the transpacific route (the China Clipper’s observations were the baseline from which all future records would be developed) caution became and remained the sensible watchword among the Pan American family.   

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.