John Delach

The article I am about to present was written by Denise Duffy Meehan for a publication called, Good Living. I have had an aviation love of Pan American’s Flying Boats and everything about them since I was a child. My godfather flew for Pan American starting as a flight engineer on the Boeing B-314s and retiring as a pilot flying the Boeing 747. Being paid to fly doesn’t get better than that.

One of the facts that enhances my attraction to these fabulous machines is how brief a period their careers spanned. The entire reason for their existence was due to the fact that when the routes across the Atlantic and the Pacific were first proposed, Pan American faced major gaps in land-based airports large enough to support these giants especially, runways long enough for take-offs and landings. By the end of World War II, these gaps had mostly disappeared and large land-planes were soon available to enter service.    

Port Washington isn’t exactly an international destination. Yet there was a time, some 50 years ago ( now 87 years) when this bay community was aviation’s eastern gateway to America.

It all began in 1937, when a fledging airline with grand ideas, Pan American World Airways, determined to conquer the North Atlantic, as it had the Pacific, the Caribbean and the eastern coast of South America to Brazil.

Port Washington was chosen as the eastern terminus of the circuitous route that included New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Ireland and finally, Southampton, England. Why it was chosen was a combination of geographical merit and available resources.

The airships that challenged “The Pond” were called flying boats because, in a sense, they were. As water-bound as tadpoles, (they were giant forerunners of today’s seaplanes) the boats required long stretches of smooth water to get aloft. So, the shelter of Port Washington’s Manhasset Bay and the expanse of the Sound beyond Plum Point gave Port Washington a leg up on other waterfront communities in the race for the international sea-airport.

But it was the seaplane facilities of the American Aeronautical Company, manufacturers of the Savoia Marchetti airplane that sealed the deal. The company had constructed a waterside facility in 1929 – operating it as a test base for its S-55 and S-56 aircraft (available for a mere $7,373 fly-a-way) and as a rental hanger / ramp called the New York Seaplane Airport. Pan Am purchased the 12-acre parcel in 1933, intending to use the large hanger for storage while continuing to lease space in the smaller buildings to private seaplane operators.

In 1936, this small hanger made a minor stand in aviation history by hosting two German flying boats exploring the airspace over the Atlantic. The Aclous and the Zepher were distinctive as they were the only aircraft of the class to be launched via catapult from a mothership, the “Westfalan.”

No doubt this German effort and other great aviation rivalries added to the zeal with which the Pan Am base was fitted for the U.S. Airline’s own surveys. (Survey was the official term used to describe the testing of heretofore uncharted air routes.) Announcements of the upgrade to over-ocean airbase was made April 2, 1937. On June 18, Pan Am’s first commercial passengers to be flown over the northern Atlantic were carried from Port Washington to Bermuda. In order to gain landing rights in Crown territories, the U.S. agreed to permit Imperial Airways, the British Precursor to BOAC and later British Airways to land in Port Washington.

Icing conditions forced the airlines to relocate Bermuda service to Baltimore the following November. Weekly service from Port Washington resumed April, 1938 and again in 1939. Rates to Bermuda in June of 1938 including air, hotel and meals were $172 per person for seven days and $262 for 16 days in Depression dollars, this translated into a tariff that only the patricians could afford.

When it came time to chart the vast ocean that until then only daredevils as Linberg, Wrong Way Corrigan and Beryl Markham had flown, it was predetermined that surveys would be done reciprocally. Pam Am would depart Port Washington on July 3, 1937 in its Clipper III, with Captain Harold Gray and a crew of seven aboard at the same time Imperial Airways “Caledonia” with Captain Wilcockson in command, left Southampton, England for Port.

All backers (Imperial was not only flying for the Crown but also France and Germany) would share their results and the unwritten rule was that all glory would get equal pay. So, even though the Pan Am boat reached European landfall on target and within six minutes of its estimated arrival time and Caledonia missed Newfoundland altogether and had to backtrack, arriving one and a half hours late, the press gave them equal standing.

While this example of one upmanship is dear to the hearts of the crew who flew her, other aspects of the 15-day, 7,000-mile Clipper III flight interest historians. Among them are the fact the first airline weather map made for the North Atlantic was utilized and the first “commercial’ aircraft siting of an ice berg was reported to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Even though Captain Gray responded to the Irish press that the trip “was a nice little joyride,” it was hardly a lark. Navigation prowness and extreme vigilance accounted for dead-on landfall at the River Shannon, but it was strong nerve that actually got the crew there.

Being the 11^th aircraft to succeed after 86 attempts to cross the Atlantic was less important than the other points the survey set out to prove. As one newspaper reporter put it, Pan Am proved that crossing the Atlantic was out of the realm of stunt flying and within the grasp of commercial aviation. And that grasp encompassed Port Washington. Fifteen hundred spectators turned out to greet the Clipper on her return home.