china clipper maiden voyage

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Martin M-130 Flying Boat: China Clipper ‘s Trans-Pacific Flights

It was Friday, November 22, 1935. Crowds were gathered along the shores of San Francisco Bay to witness an epoch-making event–the first commercial airmail flight across the Pacific to Asia. Although it was a working weekday, a holiday mood prevailed as an estimated 20,000 people made their way to the Pan American Airways operating base at Alameda, where the inauguration ceremonies were about to begin.

On the shore’s edge, near the marine ramp, a raised platform held numerous dignitaries, out to sanctify the occasion with the laudatory prose of their speeches. The chief guest was U.S. Postmaster General James A. Farley, but others were also due to speak, including California Governor Frank Merriam and Pan Am President Juan Trippe. A radio hookup stood ready to broadcast the proceedings to the world.

Just offshore, only a few yards from the speaker’s dais, nose and cockpit looming over the speaker’s platform like a giant eavesdropper, floated the China Clipper –Martin M-130 flying boat, one of the most advanced aircraft of its day.

All the press, hoopla and publicity was designed to celebrate Pan Am’s triumph and also lift some of the gloom from a Depression-plagued public. Earlier, Postmaster Farley had made a great show of ‘loading’ the sacks of mail into the plane himself. To underscore the great progress that had been made since the 19th century, a horse-drawn Concord coach rattled up to deposit the final sacks of letters. All told, there were 58 sacks in the cargo, totaling some 110,865 pieces of mail that weighed 1,837 pounds.

After a round of speeches, and the reading of a letter from President Franklin Roosevelt. The China Clipper made its way beyond a protective breakwater and onto the broad bay. Its audience was not confined to Alameda; an estimated 150,000 people watched from San Francisco, the Marin Headlands and other points around the bay.

With veteran pilot Edwin Musick at the controls, China Clipper ‘s quartet of engines revved up. When the ‘all clear’ signal was given, China Clipper plowed bay waters into a foam-flecked wake before lifting off at 3:46 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. The giant aircraft made its way toward the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge then under construction. A swarm of smaller planes followed in escort, little knowing a crisis loomed ahead.

Within seconds, Captain Musick realized China Clipper was in danger. The bridge’s roadbed wasn’t yet built, but the suspension cables that linked the towers had wires dangling below them like metal fringe. ‘It had been our intention to fly over the bridge,’ second engineering officer Victor Wright recalled years later, ‘but Musick quickly saw that with the engine cowl flaps open he wouldn’t be able to get up enough speed to clear the wires, so he nosed the Clipper down at the last moment and went under the bridge cables, threading his way through dangling construction wires. We all ducked and held our breath until we were in the clear.’

The crisis averted, China Clipper headed out into the Pacific, its ultimate destination Manila, the Philippines. Gaping crowds marveled, thrilled at the aerial drama they had just witnessed. Later local newspapers played down the incident, declaring the nose dive had been a planned ‘part of the program.’

After island-hopping stops at Hawaii, Midway Island, Wake Island and Guam, China Clipper successfully completed its inaugural run by landing in Manila, November 29, 1935. The journey had taken 59 hours and 48 minutes flying time, and had traversed 8,210 miles. With this one historic flight, the world had become smaller; the China Clipper took 6 1/2 days to do what would take 21 days in the fastest passenger ship.

China Clipper ‘s trans-Pacific flight was the product of one man’s vision, Pan Am President Juan Trippe. This was a man with a mission, and the mission was to blaze a network of international air routes that would gird the glob. But Trippe needed an instrument to put his idea into effect, and that tool was Pan American Airways.

Founded by Trippe in 1927, the company was truly ‘Pan American’ as it extended service throughout Latin America and forged pioneering links between the United States and its neighbors to the south. By 1931, a scant four years after Pan Am’s birth, Trippe’s ambitions already extended beyond the Western Hemisphere.

Blocked by political problems from developing service across the Atlantic to Europe, Trippe turned his attention to the Pacific instead. On June 26, 1931, Trippe and his chief engineer, Andre Priester, issued what amounted to a challenge to the aircraft industry–they wanted a large, long-range seaplane capable of transoceanic flight.

The Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore, Md., took up the gauntlet. Determined to succeed, Martin and his engineers huddled and sweat over hundreds of sketches, mulling over everything from wing design to color schemes for passenger cabins. Martin’s proposals were deemed satisfactory, and Pan Am placed an order for three flying boats late in 1932. The result of all this trepidation, inspirations and perspiration was the Martin M-130.

Now that he had airplanes in the works, Trippe’s next step was to find a feasible route across the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific is immense, and the Pan Am president knew that well over 8,000 miles separated the west cost of the United States from China and other potentially lucrative markets.

Trippe realized they had two basic route options: The ‘great circle’ or island-hopping. The great circle route–partly blazed by famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh in 1931–would run up the west coast of Alaska, arc across the Aleutian chain of islands, and then hop across to the edges of Siberia before dropping down to China and the Philippines.

There were drawbacks to the great circle. Meteorological conditions in the far north could be harsh, and the Aleutians were plagued by thick fogs. But above all, the Soviet government refused to grant landing rights in Siberia.

Trippe decided on a bolder course. He would strike out directly across the Pacific, island-hopping as he went. Among the advantages to this plan was the fact that the United States owned Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and other Pacific islands that were ready-made way stations.

In 1934, Trippe caused a commotion among his board of directors by prematurely announcing, ‘We are now ready to fly the Pacific.’ In December of that year, the first China Clipper emerged from the Baltimore factory. Extensive testing proved the soundness of her design, and she was delivered in October 1935.

The China Clipper and her two sister ships were giants by anyone’s definition, measuring 130 feet from wingtip to wingtip and 91 feet from nose to tail. Four Pratt and Whitney 830-hp engines provided the power needed to lift the airplane’s 52,850-pound gross weight, and once they hit their stride, an air-speed of 130 mph could be attained.

The spacious fuselage could accommodate up to 32 passengers, and with the exception of fabric covering for the wing trailing edge, the airplane boasted an all-metal construction. The hull was double-bottomed, and to provide lateral stability on the water, stubby sea wings protruded from under the fuselage, connected to the great main wings by struts. The sea wings were a more efficient substitute for the drag-inducing wingtip floats that kept earlier seaplanes from tipping over on the water.

Meanwhile, Pan Am’s trailblazing Pacific leaps were being planned with infinite care. The first leg of the journey would also be the most daunting: 2,400 miles of open ocean between the California coast and Hawaii. After that, the distances were also great but less formidable: Honolulu to Midway Island, 1,260 miles; Midway to Wake Island, 1,320 miles; Wake to Guam, 1,500 miles; Guam to Manila, 1,600 miles and, finally, Manila to Hong Kong, 600 miles.

Manila was Pan Am’s first air terminus, not the British crown colony of Hong Kong, because His Majesty’s government refused Trippe landing rights. In fact, one of their own carriers, Imperial Airways, had plans to develop the territory, and the British were not about to let an impudent Yankee in.

But Juan Trippe was an old hand at overcoming obstacles. He simply entered into negotiations with the Portuguese for landing rights at nearby Macao. When Lisbon granted these rights in 1936, the British reluctantly allowed Pan Am to use Hong Kong as well.

To achieve its objectives, Pan Am chartered an merchant steamer New Haven and loaded it with 6,000 tons of supplies. Two complete villages, seagoing motor launches, diesel generators, water distillations units, and many other items went into its gaping hold. The passenger roster included 44 airline technicians and a 74-man construction crew.

The New Haven hoisted anchor and left San Francisco on March 27, 1935, bound for Honolulu and points west. The first major landing was at Midway, then New Haven proceeded to Wake Island; Guam was to be prepared separately from the Philippine end of the route.

Once the island bases were well underway, Trippe moved on to the next phase–survey flights. Trippe turned to another flying boat, the Sikorsky S-42, to begin the surveys at once. The S-42 was a graceful craft, the workhorse of Pan Am’s Latin American system, but the airplane had only a 750-mile range, too short for the vast Pacific. Trippe modified an S-42 Sikorsky flying boat, the Pan American Clipper , with added fuel tanks, boosting its range to nearly 3,000 miles.

Survey flights began in April 1935, under the command of chief pilot Edwin Musick. The navigator was Fred Noonan, who was destined to be lost with aviatrix Amelia Earhart in 1937. The surveys, which lasted some five months, were a success and proved Trippe was on the right track. Nothing was left to chance; on one return flight to San Francisco, the crew experimented with flying blind in a hooded cockpit to test the instruments.

By November 1935, Pan American Airways had invested $925,000 in developing a Pacific route, a considerable outlay for the time. But all the effort was rewarded when China Clipper lifted off on the historic first flight. In recognition of its pioneering feats, Pan American was awarded the Collier Trophy in 1936.

By mid-1936, the China Clipper was joined by the two other M-130s, Hawaiian (later Hawaii ) Clipper and Philippine Clipper . For all their justly deserved fame, only three Martin M-130s were ever built, perhaps because they were enormously expensive. Each fully equipped Martin cost $417,000 at a time when the largest contemporary land-plane, the Douglas DC-2, rang in at $78,000 apiece.

Flying the U.S. mail was all very well, and the government FAM-14 contract rate of $2 a mile added revenue to Pan Am’s coffers. Still, Trippe wanted to carry passengers almost from day one. He soon got his wish. On October 21, 1936, just under a year since China Clipper ‘s groundbreaking jaunt, Hawaiian Clipper started the world’s first transoceanic scheduled passenger flight across the Pacific to Manila. There were only seven passengers on this maiden run, but Trippe was vindicated. In the spring of 1937, regular mail-and-passenger service began to Hong Kong and Macao.

Through published memoirs and reams of Pan American Airways publicity material, it is easy to reconstruct a ‘typical’ Pacific crossing in the late 1930s. For our purposes, we will assume the year is 1939, and the aircraft is the China Clipper herself.

To begin with, your typical passenger–let us say a businessman– would arrive in San Francisco. Pam Am pamphlets dwell on luxury, and our businessman would have to be well-heeled as well as adventurous. The one-way fare from San Francisco to Manila was $799, roughly $10,000 in today’s money and twice the supersonic Concorde’s tariff. The fare to Hong Kong was a whopping $950 one-way, and certainly out of the reach of most Depression-era pocketbooks.

Passengers would be driven across the newly completed Bay Bridge, or would perhaps take a ferry, to reach the Alameda Airport. Once at the airport, travelers would check their luggage, but other routines were a far cry from today’s computerized departures. Pan Am’s pamphlets warn that 55 pounds is the baggage limit, with no exceptions and the passengers will also be weighed. This was crucial, particularly on the San Francisco-Hawaii leg, because added pounds gulped precious fuel.

Not surprisingly, a nautical flavor clung to the Clippers. At the sound of first bell, the captain and his seven-man crew would board the M-130 as she lay beside a floating pier; they would be dressed in double-breasted dark-blue tunics and white caps, all suggestive of the Navy.

Actual takeoffs would be at 3 p.m., and as the China Clipper winged across the Pacific, it would encounter an almost purple twilight. Taking a Clipper, rhapsodized the airline, is to’sail beyond the sunset and the paths of Western stars in a modern way that would have thrilled Ulysses.’

The first lap of the journey would take our businessman to Honolulu, Hawaii, some 2,400 from the California mainland. This was the longest stretch, some 18 hours of largely overnight flight.

Passengers moved about the cabin freely, their every wish catered to by white-uniformed attendants. Publicity photos showed men and women playing cards, backgammon and checkers while seated in comfy wicker chairs. Oddly, nothing seems to be bolted down; seat belts are nowhere to be seen.

Before retiring to their sleeping berths that first evening, voyagers would assemble at the dining lounge for a meal complete with fine china, silverware and white tablecloths. The next morning China Clipper would land in Hawaii, but before they knew it passengers would be off to the next stop, Midway Island, some 1,320 miles due west.

Midway is actually two knobs of land, Sand Island and Eastern Island, both surrounded by a coral reef Pan American built while based there, including a hotel, powerhouse, and refrigeration plant. If on schedule, the Clippers would spend an afternoon and one night at Midway–ample time, says the literature, to sample the island’s great golf course.

The China Clipper would next head to Wake Island, crossing the International Date Line en route and losing a day. Barely 3 1/2 miles long and one mile wide, Wake is a tiny arc of sand that noses above the ocean’s surface. Surrounded by a coral barrier reef, Wake’s chain of three islets encloses a shallow lagoon noted for its sky-blue color and teeming fish life.

For all its picturesque qualities, Wake was the hardest for Pan Am to colonize and develop. Before service was started, coral heads had to be blasted out of the lagoon to make it safe for landings. The job took five months and consumed five tons of dynamite. Since the sand would not support vegetation, several tons of topsoil had to be imported from Guam. But most of all, Wake hand no fresh water, and wells produced only salt water. Distillation plants had to be shipped in.

If that was not bad enough, Wake was swarming with rats–descendants of rodents left behind by passing ships. Pan Am personnel fought a seesaw battle with the pests; one China Clipper flight had air rifles to use against them.

If Pan Am publicity is to be credited, passengers stopping at Wake could beachcomb for colorful Japanese fishing floats–an innocent remark, but ominous in light of future history. Japan had a mandated island in the Pacific, and the militarists in Tokyo were suspicious about Pan Am’s string of island bases, feeling that they could easily be converted for military use. Japanese newspapers printed unofficial protests that deemed the Pan Am installations an ‘unfriendly act.’ The Japanese fishing floats were symbols of an aggressive presence, one that might do anything to further its aims.

Once Wake was left behind–by this time, it is the fourth day–our businessman’s destination was Guam. Guam was lush and green, and had a friendly Polynesian native population under the U.S. flag. Finally, the China Clipper would proceed to Manila, capital of the Philippines–a U.S. possession at the time, America’s outpost in the Far East.

The Pan Am Philippine base was at Cavite, on Manila Bay. Many years after the Clipper era, Pan Am mechanic Rafael Francisco recalled that maintaining a Martin M-0130 on the water had unique problems: ‘When a wrench or hammer dropped into the water, I had to strip to my trunks to dive after the object.’

Manila would be the end of the line for may passengers, about six days after leaving the United States–a long time, but again, far faster than the 21 days it took the fastest steamship. Others, though, would continue on to Hong Kong, about five hours and 600 miles from the Philippine capital.

The Pan Am literature describes China with a blend of wide-eyed naiveté, Kiplingesque colonialism and unconscious racism. The airline waxes poetic about the ‘unchanging oriental’ in a fabulous land, and evokes Marco Polo. But nary a word is spoken about the bloody Sino-Japanese war that was raging at the time.

Once the San Francisco-Hong Kong route was firmly established, Trippe made plans to extend service from Hawaii to Auckland, New Zealand. Once in New Zealand, passengers could make connections to go to Australia. It naturally fell to the chief pilot, Edwin Musick, to begin survey flights for the venture, but his S-42, the Samoan Clipper , was blown up with the loss of all hands near Pago Pago. It was a major tragedy, but eventually the Hawaii-New Zealand service was established in 1940.

Of the three-ship fleet of Martin M-130s, the China Clipper was the most famous, in large part due to its notable 1935 first flight. Even Hollywood had gotten into the act; a fictionalized retelling of its Pacific conquest appeared in a 1936 movies called China Clipper ; starring Humphrey Bogart and Pat O’Brien.

China Clipper carried all sorts of cargo during its illustrious career. The giant flying boat flew orchids and other tropical plants to San Francisco’s 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island. Some flights were literally milk runs; Pan Am workers on Wake and Midway thirsted for milk, so the China Clipper would bring in a large supply packed in ice.

All sorts of people took the China Clipper ; ranging from the ordinary businessman to the world-famous. Major General Clair Chennault flew in it three times while he was organizing his famous Flying Tigers group against the Japanese in China. Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff also took the China Clipper , and so did Japanese diplomat Saburo Kurusu. Kurusu was probably the most ‘infamous’ passenger, at least to World War II Americans, for he was one of those who entered into last-minute negotiations with Washington in November 1941, shortly before war broke out.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, brought the golden age of Pacific flying boats to an abrupt end. Pearl Harbor took Pan American Airways by surprise; it was still operating regularly scheduled peacetime runs at the time of the attack. Wake Island was marked for special Japanese attention, and a devastating air raid blasted its facilities to shreds.

It just so happened that the Philippine Clipper was moored at Wake during the attack, and was brutally machine-gunned, although not destroyed. Peppered with 97 bullets, the gallant M-130 managed to evacuate Pan Am personnel from the stricken island. Unfortunately, nine of Pan Am’s complement of 66 employees were killed in the raid.

Midway also suffered air attacks, as did Hong Kong. An S-42, the Hong Kong Clipper , was burned to the waterline as it lay moored in the British crown colony. Pan Am’s growing trans-Pacific branches were pruned to a stump in December, 1941–but that’stump’ was the vital California-Hawaii run. Pan Am placed itself at the disposal of the U.S. government, and did sterling service throughout the war.

Fate was not so kind to the Martin 130s. The Hawaii Clipper was lost without a trace east of the Philippines in 1938, with nine crew members and six passengers aboard. The Philippine Clipper crashed into a northern California mountain in 1943. But the most famous Clipper of all, the China Clipper , was transferred to the Caribbean before disaster stuck it, too. On the evening of January 8, 1945, China Clipper stuck an obstacle in the water at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. The double hull ruptured and the airplane sank. Of the 30 people aboard, 23 were killed, including nine members of the 12-man crew.

Yet nothing could erase the Martin M-130’s achievement, or its place in aviation history. The Pacific flying boat era lasted less than a decade, but the aircraft blazed trails for others to follow.

This article was written by Eric Niderost and originally published in the March 2000 issue of Aviation History .

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Across the Pacific

The Incredible Story of Pan American Airways

Watch Trailer

Across the Pacific is a three-hour documentary series about one of the great milestones in aviation history: the 1935 crossing of the Pacific Ocean by a Pan American Airways flying boat known as the China Clipper.

The  China Clipper’s  take-off from San Francisco Bay in November 1935 was one of the most-anticipated, most-listened-to events in history to that point. Broadcast live over nine radio networks reaching millions of listeners on four continents, it was a forerunner of the rocket launches from Cape Canaveral a quarter century later. People everywhere sensed this was a pivotal moment in human history, for if the Pacific could be crossed, there would be no place on earth that could not be reached by airplane. The world would suddenly be smaller.

But as with the space program, the real drama in this story is not in the flight itself; it’s in the effort it took to reach this point. The Clipper’s  maiden voyage was the culmination of eight years of explosive innovation and growth, involving hundreds of men and women, both famous and unknown. Like the NASA engineers and astronauts who would later put a man on the moon in less than a decade, these earlier aviation pioneers built new aircraft, invented new technologies and overcame innumerable obstacles. They had begun in 1927 with a single, 90-mile airmail route. Now they stood at the water’s edge, poised to vault the 8,700 miles of the mighty Pacific.

The Characters

Pan Am’s young chief executive, Juan Trippe, whose vision, business acumen and political instincts allowed him to build the world’s largest airline by age 35. Starting in 1927 with a single airmail route from Key West to Havana, by 1935 he had grown Pan American Airways into a global powerhouse spanning oceans and continents.

Charles Lindbergh, an unknown airmail pilot whose 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic

Ocean electrified the world and, overnight, made him the world’s most famous aviator.  Hired by Juan Trippe as a technical advisor to the fledgling Pan Am, his celebrity brought instant credibility to the airline as it struggled to overcome aeronautical and political challenges to its growth.

Igor Sikorsky, the Russian émigré who designed many of the flying boats that underpinned Pan

Am’s meteoric rise in the 1920s and ’30s. These classic aquatic aircraft played a critical role

in the early days of commercial flight, allowing air service to international destinations years before terrestrial aiports became commonplace.

And an unsung radio engineer named Hugo Leuteritz, who invented the navigation systems that guided Pan Am’s planes safely to their destinations across thousands of miles of trackless ocean. Leuteritz, before almost anyone else, realized the secret lay in radio – a technology that would prove to be the foundation of aerial navigation from the 1920s until today..

How did they do it – and how did it change the world? That is the story of this series: Across the Pacific is built around four fascinating characters:

Special Thanks

American Public Television

Pan Am Historical Foundation

Virginia Public Media

FUNDING THAT MADE THIS PROJECT POSSIBLE

National Endowment for the Humanities

Margaret C. Zockoll

Jim Zockoll and family

The Ambrose Monell Foundation

The Freeman Foundation

Wyncote Foundation

Thomas W. Haas Foundatio n

Official website of Mond Ortiz, Your Filipino Aviation Enthusiast.

Pan Am China Clipper, the very first transpacific flight to Manila

Aviation history in the Philippines began as early as the 1920s; however, it was in the 1930s when the first transpacific flight happened, not by Philippine Airlines , but by Pan American Airlines, or Pan Am. A Martin M130 named “China Clipper” by Pan Am became the first transpacific flight from the United States to Manila. This is perhaps the very first international long haul passenger flight to ever arrive in Manila.

Before I talk about this historic arrival in Manila, allow me to share a little about the Martin M130 flying boat, the plane designated as the “China Clipper” by Pan Am.

Martin M130 “China Clipper”

The Pan American Airways China Clipper, commonly known as the Martin M-130, was a large flying boat that flew during the 1930s. The plane was particularly developed for transpacific travel, and it took off on November 20, 1935.

With a range of 2,400 miles and a peak speed of roughly 150 mph, the China Clipper was a breakthrough aircraft at the time. It was also outfitted with cutting-edge navigation and communication systems, making it one of the most sophisticated aircraft of its day.

• Crew:  six-nine (Captain, First Officer, Junior Flight Officer, Engineering Officer, Assistant Engineering Officer, Radio Operator, Navigation Officer, plus cabin stewards)
• Capacity:  36 day, 18 night passengers
• Length:  90 ft 10.5 in (27.7 m)
• Wingspan:  130 ft 0 in (39.7 m)
• Height:  24 ft 7 in (7.5 m)
• Max takeoff weight:  52,252 lb (23,701 kg)
• Powerplant:  4 × Pratt & Whitney R-1830-S2A5G Twin Wasp 14-cylinder radial engines, 830 hp each later 950 hp with hydromatic propellers
• Maximum speed:  180 mph (290 km/h, 160 kn)
• Cruise speed:  130 mph (209 km/h, 110 kn)
• Range:  3,200 mi (5,150 km, 2,800 nmi)
• Service ceiling:  10,000 ft (3,048 m)

The aircraft was also designed to be able to take off and land on water, and it was equipped with retractable landing gear for this purpose.

The Pan Am China Clipper arriving in Manila

The China Clipper conducted its historic maiden flight from Alameda, California, to Manila, Philippines, on November 22, 1935. Captain Edwin Musick flew the voyage, which was the first commercial trans-Pacific journey by an airplane . The flight took more than 36 hours, including stops in Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam before arriving in Manila.

The China Clipper’s arrival in Manila was a big occasion that was received with considerable enthusiasm and hoopla. The Philippine President, Manuel L. Quezon, was among the dignitaries there to greet the plane and its passengers. A sizable audience came to see this historic occasion welcomed the China Clipper as well.

The landing of the China Clipper in Manila signaled the start of a new era in air travel, paving the way for the growth of commercial air travel across the Pacific. The aircraft’s performance prompted Pan American Airways to expand its Pacific route network, and it also motivated other airlines to launch their own trans-Pacific flights.

However, the China Clipper period was short-lived, since the Pacific War and the development of long-range land aircraft rendered the flying boat obsolete. Nonetheless, the China Clipper and its groundbreaking voyage to Manila will be recognized as a watershed event in aviation history.

In 1946, Philippine Air Lines, now Philippine Airlines ( PAL ) launched its first transpacific flight from Manila to Oakland California, making it the first Asian airline to cross the Pacific ocean.

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China Clipper

• Photos & Videos

Film Details

• Articles & Reviews

Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, ray enright, pat o'brien, beverly roberts, ross alexander, humphrey bogart, marie wilson, photos & videos, technical specs.

When importer Dave Logan's late arrival in Shanghai ruins a business deal, he realizes there is enormous potential for a commercial air service. Even though his wife, Jean, who calls herself Skippy, and his boss, Jim Horn, do their best to discourage him, he joins war buddies Dad Brunn, an airplane designer, and pilot Tom Collins, who start an air passenger line between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Undeterred when the airline fails, they start a second airline in Key West, Florida, to deliver mail throughout the Caribbean, and Hap Stuart, another pilot buddy, signs up. Finally, Dave's obsession with the airline drives Skippy away. Over the years, the company keeps expanding, always battling opposition from regulatory agencies and financial backers. Determined to start a trans-Pacific airline, Dave drives his men so hard that some of the pilots, including Hap, quit because of the stress. Eventually, Skippy has a change of heart and to prove it, she gets a job with Dave's company and works by his side day and night. Hap comes back too, impressed by Dave's new benefits plan for pilots. Finally everything is ready for the maiden Pacific voyage of the China Clipper. Dad sees his plane take off, but the overwork has taken its toll and he dies shortly after. Dad's death hits Dave hard. When the China Clipper hits a terrible storm off the China coast, he decides to cancel the flight, even though it means missing the deadline, but he's too late. Hap, the plane's pilot, has already taken off. Luckily, they land safely in China with five minutes to spare, and Skippy and Dave discuss a second honeymoon.

Joseph Crehan

Joseph king.

Addison Richards

Ruth robinson.

Henry B. Walthall

Carlyle moore jr., lyle moraine.

Dennis Moore

Wayne Morris

Alexander cross.

William Wright

Kenneth harlan.

Marjorie Weaver

Milburn Stone

Hal k. dawson, thomas pogue.

Gordon Elliot

Jack hatfield.

Henry Stephenson

Ted thompson, lou edelman, arthur edeson, leo f. forbstein, fred jackman, norman reilly raine, william j. van dusen, jack l. warner.

Henry B. Walthall collapsed on the set while filming and died shortly thereafter.

Henry B. Walthall, who plays "Dad" in the film, collapsed on the set and died shortly thereafter. The film was made with the cooperation of Pan American Airlines and is loosely based on the history of that company, which used the name "Clipper Ships" for its planes. Modern sources add the following credits: Pilot, Paul Mantz; Aerial photography, Elmer Dyer and H. F. Koenekamp.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1936

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AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE

Moments and Milestones: Birth of the Clippers

George C. Larson

Glenn L. Martin made his reputation building big bombers for the air forces of the world. In 1933, he won the Collier Trophy for his spectacular B-10, renowned for being speedier than the fighters of its day. Juan Trippe made his reputation building Pan American World Airways into an airline that, for a time, was the United States’ unofficial flag carrier. Trippe and his group of investors initially aimed their expansion south toward Latin America because they were able to maneuver business and politics to their advantage there. But Trippe’s real objective was the lucrative transatlantic routes, which the British government and the steamship operators were blocking.

Pan Am had bought Sikorsky’s S-40, an awkward, strut-braced contraption of an airplane that the airline’s technical advisor, legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh, openly mocked. Trippe wanted a much bigger airplane, which could span both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and two giants of the industry stepped up: Glenn Martin and Igor Sikorsky. Pan Am’s chief engineer, André Priester, wrote the demanding specification. The required range was 2,500 miles against 30-mile headwinds. Trippe split the order evenly, taking three from Martin and three from Sikorsky.

Sikorsky offered the S-42, an improvement over its predecessor, certainly, but able to cross the Pacific to Hawaii only if its interior were stripped and crammed with fuel tanks. Although Martin was late delivering the M-130, which was priced at a staggering $417,000 (at a time when a Douglas DC-2 went for $78,000), it was worth the wait: The M-130 was the airplane that would open the Pacific for Pan Am. And in October 1935, just 75 years ago, Pan Am accepted delivery of its first one, named the China Clipper . On November 22, the airplane left Alameda, California, on the first scheduled airmail run across the Pacific, landing in Manila, the Philippines, on November 29 some 8,000 miles later.

The trans-Pacific run was a formidable trip, the first leg, 2,400 miles to Hawaii, being the longest. Then came Midway, Wake, Guam, Manila, and Hong Kong. The passengers enjoyed lavish quarters and equally lavish treatment by the onboard staff. The M-130 could carry 32 passengers; crews were uniformed in the manner of staff on an oceanliner, and meals were served in a dining room.

Martin knew that if he delivered only the three M-130s Trippe ordered, he’d lose money, but he wanted to break into the commercial aircraft business, and Douglas Aircraft Company had a lock on it. Martin may have expected to have a leg up on any competition when Trippe was ready for his next generation of giant flying boats. He was to be bitterly disappointed.

Trippe did invite designs for a follow-on transport and awarded the contract for six aircraft to Boeing, whose 314 was even bigger and more powerful than the M-130, and had elegant compartments and spacious lounges. At the end of the 1930s, having applied his wiles and plied his political connections for a period of years, Trippe, by agreeing to some British and European conditions, finally concluded a deal to serve the Atlantic. The 314 began flying those routes in 1939, but with a war coming, Pan Am’s expansion plan had to change.

Pan American named the first Sikorsky S-40s and -42s “Clippers,” part of a constant effort to link the aircraft with the fast 19th century sailing vessels of that name, but it wasn’t until Martin’s M-130 China Clipper debuted that the phrase took off among the public. And it stuck: After that, all Clippers were China Clippers . And right up until the airline’s collapse in December 1991, its air crews used the call sign “Clipper” to identify their flights.

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George C. Larson | READ MORE

George C. Larson served as editor of Air & Space from 1985 to 2005. He is currently an inactive pilot, but holds a commercial pilot's license, with instrument and multi-engine ratings. He is between airplanes at this time, but has owned or operated a Grumman American AA-5B Tiger and a Mooney 201. He has been writing about aviation since 1972, when he joined the staff of Flying Magazine.

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1851: A Clipper Ship Begins a Record-Breaking Voyage

June 2, 1851

The clipper ship Flying Cloud, making her maiden voyage, departed from New York City at 2:00 p.m. Under the command of Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy, the vessel went on to establish a new sailing record for the fastest passage between that city and San Francisco. 

After leaving New York City, Flying Cloud made her way around South America’s Cape Horn and towards California. The ship arrived near the Farallones, a group of islands and sea stacks serving as the entry point for San Francisco, at 7:00 a.m. on August 31. 

With a pilot boat guiding her, Flying Cloud eventually sailed a little further and dropped anchor off North Beach in San Francisco at 11:30 a.m. – completing the trip from New York City in just over 89 days and 21 hours, and in the process breaking the previous record of 96 days and 15 hours set by the clipper Surprise earlier that year. The Daily Alta California newspaper reported that Flying Cloud’s arrival in San Francisco “created a considerable degree of excitement, and crowds rushed over to the North Beach to obtain a view of her.” (The above painting of Flying Cloud was created in 1913 by maritime artist Antonio Jacobsen.)

With an ever-increasing number of people journeying from the eastern half of the United States to the then-new state of California to settle there, it became all the more critical for clipper ships to travel between both coasts as quickly as possible. In getting the ship safely to San Francisco, Captain Creesy was aided immeasurably by his wife Ellen. It was due in large part to her skills as a navigator that Flying Cloud weathered everything from strong winds to stormy seas to reach San Francisco in record time. Three years after that voyage, the seafaring couple enabled Flying Cloud to better her own time on the New City-San Francisco run by 13 hours. 

Image Credit: Public Domain

For more information on Flying Cloud, please check out Flying Cloud (clipper) – Wikipedia

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Maiden Voyage, China Clipper, San Francisco, California 1935 Limited Edition Print by Clyde Sunderland - Secondary Market Art

Clyde Sunderland Art > Maiden Voyage, China Clipper, San Francisco, California 1935 Art Print

Maiden Voyage, China Clipper, San Francisco, California 1935 by Clyde Sunderland has recently been listed as available in the secondary art market. This limited edition print may be available for purchase. If you are interested in a price quote and purchase of this print, please contact us using the form provided and we will contact you regarding Clyde Sunderland's Maiden Voyage, China Clipper, San Francisco, California 1935 availability and current market price on the secondary market. This art piece is a hard to find print, but we can attempt to locate one available for sale for you. If you need an art appraisal, we do not currently perform these at this time. If you would like to speak with one of our secondary market art brokers about Maiden Voyage, China Clipper, San Francisco, California 1935 or any other limited edition art, please call 908-264-2807. Please note that we do not currently do appraisals. Please use the estimated market price to get a good idea of the limited edition print of Maiden Voyage, China Clipper, San Francisco, California 1935's current value. An image is provided only if we have access to one from a gallery and all images and photos are copyright by their respective copyright holders. *Market price in the secondary market is highly volatile. Estimated pricing is strictly an estimate.

Cutty Sark Voyages 1870-1922: Cutty Sark’s maiden voyage to China

The clipper Cutty Sark

Essential Information

18 Feb 2014

Cutty Sark was built for a single purpose – to transport tea from China to London as quickly as possible. She worked in the trade from 1870 to 1877

This is how 18-year old Able Seaman William Parker might have remembered her arrival in Shanghai on her maiden voyage in 1870.

William Parker: My name is William Parker and I was eighteen, the youngest of the crew, when I shipped aboard  Cutty Sark  on her maiden voyage – just eighteen. We left London on the eleventh of February 1870 and reached Shanghai on the last day of May.

We’d brought a general cargo out from London, mostly beer, wine and spirits for the Europeans and Americans living in Shanghai. There was no quayside in any of the Chinese ports and only a couple of tiny piers, so we anchored right there in the Huangpu river. We furled all the sails in a proper harbour stow, squared the yards to a nicety, hauled taut all the ropes, got the accommodation ladder over the side…. and before we knew it there were swarms and swarms of people all over the main deck. It took the local dockers just a day to unload everything from the hold into their small sampans and row the goods to the shore.

But not long after we’d moored,  a few of us were standing by the fo’c’s’le door, smoking our pipes, when one big Chinese man, with a young lady by his side, came up to us. “Every morning” he says “Breakfast time, sampan come alongside. Got eggs, sugar bread, everything got. All number one. Please write name in book.” And he produced a stubby pencil and a very mangy looking memorandum book for us each to open an account with him.

He told us his name was Ah Chang Loon, but this was too difficult for my crew mates to pronounce. He just shrugged his shoulders and said “Maskee, maskee”, which means Who cares? “You can call me what you like”.  So we decided to call him Johnson.

But every morning Johnson’s boat came alongside and we got bread, eggs and fruit. And sometimes a bottle of square o’ – Dutch gin – found its way into the fo’c’s’le. And sometimes there would be oysters at sixpence a hundred. They were small but delicious.

I was head over heels in love with Miss Johnson. She was a jolly girl and she and old Johnson were the crew of the sampan, so I saw her every day. It was rather unfortunate to discover later that she was not his daughter.

Our captain, Captain Moodie, was off every day speaking to the agents about our tea cargo as we all wanted to get loaded and away as fast as we could. But we had to wait, and we spent every day polishing the brass work, honing the deck or touching up the paint on the ship’s sides. We were one of a dozen British clippers in Shanghai that season and every man on them wanted their vessel to look the smartest. And to be the fastest. We were so confident in our brand new ship that we pulled together twenty pounds between us to bet against the crew of the Serica that we’d be back in London before them.

Before you can take a tea cargo on board though, you have to make sure the hold has been well ventilated – tea doesn’t care for moisture. And you have to be careful what you carry with it. There used to be a big trade in rhubarb from China, but as few as twenty chests of it can ruin a whole ship-full of tea. Same with silk – it holds the moisture – so you have to be careful of how you stow it. The weather was good so we could keep all three hatches open. Normally we would have whitewashed the hold too, but this was a new ship that had only taken a clean cargo, so we were spared that.

Because a tea cargo is so light, we needed new ballast to be loaded – clean river stones. You don’t want them to be too porous, again because of the moisture. Granite is the best.  And finally we saw the big sampans come down the river, very low in the water and almost sinking with the weight of tea chests.

There’s no body of men on earth who can fill a hold as full as a team of Chinese dockers. I wouldn’t normally bother to watch cargo being loaded, but this was a sight to behold.  First, they brought in boards to cover the ballast they carefully levelled.  They worked out exactly how many tea chests they could cram in using their measuring rods. Then chests came pouring in, along with sacks of small stones. It looked like chaos, but they were very methodical. First they brought in chests of the cheapest teas and arranged lines of them right down the middle of the ship from bow to stern. Then they used the small stones to fill in the gaps between the chests and the sides of the ship. Huge mallets knocked the chests into place. This was the lowest tier and the dockers then just added more and more tiers of chests. Every couple of tiers they laid more boards to give themselves a level surface and sometimes they would also add a layer of split bamboo matting. On the very uppermost layer, on the ’tween deck, they used canvas as well as a covering. This stopped any leaks from the main deck getting into the cargo. But a drop of water is about all that could have got in: she was packed solid. Of course you don’t want a cargo to move, or it can sink you. In three days the dockers had loaded over ten thousand chests, with another two thousand half chests filling up the smaller spaces.

Three days later we were ready to sail and took our leave of Mr Johnson and the person I now understood to be Mrs Johnson. We were the first ship to get away from Shanghai that year and 110 days later we were unloading the ship in London, in the East India Docks. And we won our bet –the Serica didn’t arrive for another 11 days. It’s sad to recall that, just a couple of years later, she was wrecked in the South China Sea and all hands, except one, were lost.

Announcer : This is just one of the many stories of  Cutty Sark  that you can explore on the ship. She is now permanently docked in Greenwich, just 20 minutes from the centre of London. Come on board and discover why she is one of the most famous ships in the world.

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Maiden Voyage of The “China Clipper” (Martin M-130) - San Francisco, Nov 1935 - Pan American Airways - Vintage Aviation Poster by Clyde Sunderland - Master Art Print 9in x 12in

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Enjoy a taste of Aloha with these beautiful Master Art Prints by Pacifica Island Art - printed in Maui, Hawaii. This print will look wonderful framed in the home, office or restaurant and is perfect for the Vintage Art Collector. - ABOUT THE ARTIST - Clyde Sunderland - Clyde Sunderland (1900-1989) One of the premier aerial photographers in the nation, Clyde Sunderland mapped much of the Western states and documented the rise in commercial aviation after World War II during his illustrious career as an aviation photographer. Sunderland photographed it all, from Amelia Earhart's inaugural voyage to Honolulu piloting the Lockheed Electra to the extraordinary maiden voyage of the China Clipper when the plane was forced to fly under the Oakland Bay Bridge because it was so laden with goods. Sunderland documented with passion and sensitivity the triumphs of the Golden Age of Aviation. Working as an aerial photographer for over 40 years, Clyde Sunderland headed the firm Sunderland Aerial Photographs based at Oakland International Airport until his retirement in 1966. Using Fairchild Precision cameras that weighed as much as 90 lbs. each, Sunderland shot three types of photographs: vertical photographs used for mapping an area, continuous strip photographs, and oblique photographs that captured a specific subject at an angle. Sunderland's photographs were reproduced on the covers of Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post and were featured in many books and periodicals including National Geographic. One of the earliest cameras used by Sunderland is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

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China’s newest aircraft carrier heads to sea for first time

C hina’s newest, largest and most-advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, took a big step to joining the world’s largest naval fleet on Wednesday as it set out from Shanghai for its first sea trials.

The naval assessment is expected to take place in the East China Sea, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) from the Jiangnan Shipyard where the carrier has been under construction for more than six years, according to Shanghai’s Maritime Safety Administration.

“The sea trials will primarily test the reliability and stability of the aircraft carrier’s propulsion and electrical systems,” read an announcement from the state-run Xinhua news agency on Wednesday.

The warship was launched in 2022 and has “completed its mooring trials, outfitting work and equipment adjustments” working up to the latest sea trials, Xinhua said.

With a displacement of 80,000 metric tons, the Fujian dwarfs the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) two active carriers, the 66,000-ton Shandong and the 60,000-ton Liaoning. Only the United States Navy operates bigger aircraft carriers than Fujian.

“The Fujian’s sea trials represent an important milestone for the PLAN, marking its entry into the small club of top-class carrier aviation-capable navies,” said John Bradford, a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs fellow.

The Fujian’s key feature is an electromagnetic catapult system that will enable it to launch larger and heavier aircraft than the Shandong and Liaoning, which use a ski-jump style launch method.

Analysts say the Fujian’s ability to launch larger warplanes carrying higher munitions loads to farther distances will give the carrier a greater combat range than its predecessors in the Chinese fleet, providing the PLAN with so-called “blue-water” capabilities.

“These sea trials mark the first major step in China’s developing the capacity to project sea-based air power into deep ocean areas,” said Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

Comparison to US carriers

The electromagnetic catapult system puts the Fujian on par with the US Navy’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, the only active carrier in the world with an electromagnetic catapult system. The US Navy’s 10 older carriers, the Nimitz class, rely on steam-powered catapults to launch aircraft.

All the US carriers, however, will retain two key advantages over the Fujian: power and size.

The US carriers are nuclear powered, giving them the ability to remain at sea for as long as crew provisions last, while the Fujian is powered by conventional fuel, meaning it must either make a port call or be met by a tanker at sea to refuel.

As for the US Navy’s size advantage over the Fujian, the Ford displaces 100,000 tons and the 10 Nimitz-class ships 87,000 metric tons. The larger US ships can take on more aircraft, around 75 compared to an expected complement of 60 on the Fujian, according to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Analysts have also noted that the US carriers have more catapults, a larger airway and more elevators to allow for quicker deployment of aircraft from the hangar deck below.

The US carriers “remain in an echelon of their own,” Bradford said.

Schuster said the current round of sea trials for Fujian are expected to last three to six days and would not include flight operations.

“Radars and communications equipment will get some testing, but the first sea trials always focus on hull integrity, propulsion and engineering since problems there prevent everything else from working well,” Schuster said.

In total, analysts expect the Fujian’s sea trials to take at least a year, with its commissioning likely to come next year or in 2026. A story on the website of the Chinese Defense Ministry in January noted the Liaoning underwent 10 sea trials and the Shandong nine before entering service.

When it joins the PLAN fleet, the Fujian will become the icon of what is now the world’s largest naval force,with more than 340 warships and counting as Chinese shipyards turn out new warships at a frenetic pace.

“It will be the most visible symbol of China’s growing naval power,” said Brian Hart, a fellow with the China Power Project at the CSIS.

Meanwhile, the announcement of a fourth carrier for the Chinese fleet could come soon, PLAN political commissar Yuan Huazhi said in March, according to a report in the state-run Global Times.

When that announcement is made, the answer as to whether China will have a nuclear-powered carrier will be answered, the report said.

The US Navy already has three new Ford-class carriers under construction, the future John F Kennedy, Enterprise and Doris Miller.

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Defense reporter at the Global Times covering weapons and military development.

The Fujian , China’s third aircraft carrier, also the first equipped with electromagnetic catapults, starts first sea trial session from the Jiangnan Shipyard, Shanghai, on May 1, 2024. Photo: Screenshot from China Central Television

The Fujian, China’s third aircraft carrier, also the first equipped with electromagnetic catapults, on Wednesday started its first ...

Australian billionaire says ‘Titanic’ replica will set sail in 2027—but first he has to build the ship

Want to be king of the world? The Titanic is set to sail once again.

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has noodled for years with the idea of building Titanic II : a full replica of the doomed luxury liner that sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Now he’s set a date for the successor’s first voyage.

“We are very pleased to announce that after unforeseen global delays, we have re-engaged with partners to bring the dream of Titanic II to life. Let the journey begin,” Palmer said in a statement. The ship is scheduled to set sail in June of 2027, although tickets are not yet available.

First, Blue Star Line, of which Palmer is CEO, has to build Titanic II.

That’s something the mining billionaire and politician has hoped to do for more than a decade. He first announced his plans to do so in 2012. Nothing happened. He made another announcement in 2017, but blamed the pandemic for scuttling those plans. Now, he says, construction will begin next year—and Blue Star is seeking proposals and construction plans from builders.

There will be some differences from the original, of course. Palmer has said he wants cutting-edge navigation equipment (the better to avoid those icebergs) and a lot more lifeboats than the Titanic featured in James Cameron’s film .

Otherwise, though, the plan is to make it as exact as possible, with grand staircases; 835 cabins over nine decks; and first, second, and third/steerage class cabins. Folks who opt for the budget option will be served stew and mash at communal tables, just as the original passengers were (though they can opt for other meal choices).

Palmer even says that depending on the weather, they’ll have delousing for third-class passengers, just as the original vessel did.

The ship will begin its voyage in Southampton, England, according to Blue Star Line’s website . From there, it will head to Cherbourg, France, before sailing to New York.

Palmer, who jokes that his wife has tried to talk him out of re-creating the Titanic, says he is funding the project himself and has already allocated “a couple of hundred million dollars” for the recreation, adding, ”and certainly there’s more available.”

“One of the problems we had with the Titanic is that you have to make it safe,” he told Rolling Stone . “You’ll remember, in the movie you had the guy in the crow’s nest saying “Iceberg!” That was because from the bridge, you couldn’t see over the bow. We can’t do that today. So we had to put a whole new deck in the Titanic. And it’s got a lot of the modern conveniences that you want. We’re going to make sure that in every room there’ll be a little panel that will tell you the history of the person who occupied your cabin. Did they survive, did they prevail? Everyone will get a costume so that they can come up to dinner, and it will be a real experience for them.”

By funding the construction of Titanic II, Palmer is also able to put his own stamp on the cruise line. Passengers, he says, will not be required to be vaccinated for COVID, and the ship, he says, will reflect traditional values instead of ‘woke’ ones.

“Titanic ll is something that can provide peace,” he said in the press release. “It can be a ship of peace between all countries of the world. Millions have dreamt of sailing on her, seeing her in port and experiencing her unique majesty. Titanic ll will be the ship where those dreams come true.”

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