John Delach

On The Outside Looking In

Month: January, 2025

January 29, 2025

Demise of Pan American Flying Boats

It didn’t take long after the end of the war for Pan American to abandon its flying boat service in favor of a new generation of land planes, particularly the Douglas DC-4, the Lockheed Constellation and the Boeing Strato Cruiser.

Captain William M. Masland ended his book about his ten-year experience operating these “flying boats with wings” with a final chapter about the end of his career flying these unique airplanes. He gave the chapter a simple yet haunting title: Requiem.

In December of 1945, my crew and I waited in Lisbon for Joe Hart and his crew to bring us a ship for the return to New York. This would be winter time, long way round by way of Africa, South America and the West Indies. The route was by now well established, but I sent a message to New York asking them what schedule they wanted us to follow on the return passage.

“We  don’t care,” was the answer. The Atlantic Division had a new interest, land planes. The DC-4’s were operating and the Lockheed Constellations could be  expected any day. They’d forgotten all about the flying boats.

I soon discovered that the passengers and crew all wanted to be in New York for Christmas, so we flew for three days and most of three nights, stopping only for fuel, finally landing at Bowery Bay at two o’clock in the morning the day before Christmas. This marked the last flight of a Pan American boat into New York.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, courageous seafarers explored the watery world. In the twentieth century the great flying boats in similar fashion explored the atmosphere that surrounds the globe. Now the boats were finished, gone where the sailing clippers went.

The night watchman met us, no one else. No flags, no bands, no speeches, just the night watchman making his usual rounds. There never was a quieter end to a brave and glorious era.

American Export Airlines was the first airline to offer regularly scheduled landplane commercial flights across the North Atlantic. Using DC-4 aircraft, it began passenger services from New York and England via Gander on 24 October 1945. PAA started its own flights through Gander very shortly thereafter, also using DC-4s. By the start of the new year, it scheduled five DC-4s per week from London via Gander and two more from Lisbon via Gander and the Azores. A typical DC-4 flight New York-London with a stop at Gander was 17 ½ hours.

Pan American soon upgraded its fleet of aircraft. The first Constellations were delivered on 14 January 1946 and the first Stratocruisers in 1949. All of these flights also stopped at Gander.

The flying boats quickly faded. The last Boeing B-314 operating across the Pacific was the California Clipper withdrawn in 1946 and the last B-314s to go were those operating between Baltimore and Bermuda in late 1951.

In 1947, PAA moved all operations from LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal to the  New York International Airport in Idlewild, Queens on Jamacia Bay. Nick-named Idlewild, this facility was re-named after John F. Kennedy in 1964 after he had been assassinated.

The Marine Air Terminal fell on hard times after Pan Am left for JKF. Eventually, it was named a national historical landmark and it was refurbished by the Port of NY and NJ. Today, Delta operates their Boston and DC shuttles from this terminal.

Transatlantic flights continued to improve as newer and aircraft with longer ranges joined their fleets. The introduction of the Douglas DC-7 C Model in 1956 and that of the Lockheed L 1049 Super Constellation in 1955 finally enabled fights to by-pass Gandar. But the success of both these airliners was short lived as the Boeing 707 Jetliner entered Pan American’s trans-Atlantic service in 1958…and that is a whole new story for another time.

Important Notification:

Dear Reader, Unfortunately I must suspend On the Outside Looking In until March due to a medical issue that requires me to undergo a radiation regiment until then. I look forward to rejoining you once this regiment is behind me.

See you on the other side.             

2 Comments
January 22, 2025

The First Flight Around the World: Part Two

Bahrein, January 25, 1943: Having reached our destination, we awaited our orders. An army captain flying through gossiped, “Of course you know that you have to wait here until the Casablanca Conference is over. Then you are to fly Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin out east to meet the Generalissimo.” 

He rattled on while the crew sat mouths open and eyes popping. The First Officer and I did what we could to keep the crew busy and it wasn’t until almost two weeks later that we finally received orders to embark for Ceylon. As we approached our destination, Trincomalee, we managed to make our approach in dirty weather. Visibility was only one mile, less in rainsqualls. We found the pass to China Bay and half-mile beyond it the R.A.F. moorings in Malay Cove. And that was that. In the lounge, I discovered there had been a sudden and complete change in military thinking. General Wedemeyer and two aides on their way east would now be our passengers. Disappointed, but greatly relieved that the plan to put Roosevelt and Churchill on the same plane through unfriendly skies across a wide and little frequented ocean had been scrapped.

Our next destination was the northwestern coast of Australia. We knew our airplane was overweight by one ton. I took a deep breath and opened the throttles. The engines responded with a smooth, even roar. We raced across the bay toward a low spot in the hills. We put all our blue chips on the table and the clipper lifted off easily. We were airborne at eight-fifty, local time, two minutes early. It was now the sixteenth of February and the weather remained cloudy forcing us to continue navigating by dead reckoning until well after sunset. Two hours later the upper clouds vanished allowing the navigators to shoot three stars for a fix.

This first fix in ten hours of dead reckoning showed a navigational error of thirty miles. Not perfect, but not bad, an average error of three miles every hour. I took a two-hour break before re-assuming command just before day break. We were in a slow decent and an hour and a half later we leveled off at one thousand feet. It was now broad daylight and the last of the clouds had vanished. A half-hour later land came up out of the horizon ahead of us. And the automatic pilot tracked us directly over the Fraser Lighthouse, the marker for our arrival.

After one circuit of Exmouth Gulf, we located a fueling tender and landed four minutes later. Colonel Arnold came aboard in a foul mood. His relationship with PAA had soured and I sensed that he decided to blame us for the president’s cancellation. He flew with us on a short hop to Perth where we picked up twenty-six homeward bound U.S. Naval officers. Arnold left us there together with General Wedemeyer and I never saw either of them again.

We left Perth in the late afternoon so as to make a daylight landing in Brisbane where we began the long road home. After leaving Australia, we first stopped at the beautiful harbor in Noumea, New Caledonia where we slept on cots. From Noumea, we were forced to stay south of the equator for the next two days before heading Northwest for Pearl Harbor. Remember, this was early 1943 and the Japanese still controlled most of the Central Pacific including Wake and Guam.

Our route took us by way of Fiji and Canton Island with an overnight stop at each. The next morning, we decided to postpone our flight to Honolulu to tackle the repairs needed to restore the engines that had given us trouble back to working order. It was a beautiful night and we were soon airborne. The sun was three hours up when we landed at Pearl Harbor after a flight of fourteen hours. That night at dinner in the Moana Hotel, our entire passenger list came trooping into the dining room in good spirits, dropped a lei around my neck, and presented me with a handsome pen-and-pencil set, a generous thing to do.

After our first attempt to fly to San Francisco was aborted because of engine problems, we corrected the issues and left Pearl Harbor the next day. On arrival, fog was the problem, but I followed the letdown we devised eight years before for the China Clipper to deal with the fog. We flew south overhead the Oakland beacon before letting down. When about over the San Mateo Bridge, turned back and had the whole bay ahead of us to land where the fog was the thinnest and the steam traffic was nil.

We checked into the St, Francis Hotel, two to a room. The next day provided the first chance  for the crew to let their loved ones know they were still alive and almost home. The lineup of crew members at the telegraph desk was overwhelming. I moved on to take care of other business., leaving the hot blood of youth to pour out its affection via Western Union.

Next afternoon, we set off for New York and home with “just one more river to Cross.”

Our flight across the continent in a seaplane would be as long a flight as we had attempted, more than twenty hours. There was no help to be had from the westerly winds that night; the high-pressure saw to that. The ship would be heavy at departure, too heavy to top the cloud-covered Sierras. Well, all right, then, go under the clouds.

We did, wriggling through the San Bernadino pass under the cloud deck and clearing the trees, or whatever it is that passes for vegetation in those parts, by a positive figure, and that covered that problem, with the whole night ahead of us for coping with the next. We aimed for Atlanta by way of Fort Worth. From Atlanta, we could either continue to New York or turn south for Miami and clear skies. At mid-watch I turned the ship over to Austen and climbed into my berth in the aft crew quarters. When Mc Goven woke me, I asked him how we were doing.

“Ten minutes ahead,” he answered. “The winds are a bit better than forecast.”

I went forward to the flight deck. Tonight, the engines all sang in harmony. We had a half-hour to go to Atlanta. Time to make a decision. I sat down at my desk and over a cup of coffee went through the radio messages It still came out the same, everything north of Charleston was subject to overcast and fog, everything south, sunshine.

Prudence said, “Play it safe. Go to Miami, wait for the front to clear New York and fly home tomorrow.”

But conscience said, “You have flown into unknown places with worse weather. You know the Jersey coast. Go home and quit stalling.”

The first officer entered the flight deck, a questioning look on his face.

“We’ll carry on to New York, Mr. Austen. I’ll relieve you on the hour.”

Hours later it began to turn light in the east. Near Baltimore we peeled off the airway and headed east across the pine barrens of Jersey groping our way down through the layers of cloud that looked like torn and dirty laundry. We found the ocean somewhere north of Cape May, returned to the beach, and followed the line of the surf. We flew toward New York harbor passing Wildwood, Ocean City, the steel pier at Atlantic City, which called for a short climb to clear it. Then Ocean Grove, Asbury Park, and finally, Sandy Hook. The ceiling here was higher. We came up the East River over the bridges, not under, and landed in Bowery Bay at nine twenty in the morning, double daylight-saving time.

Ed Mc Vitty stood on the dock to greet us, a broad smile on his face.

“They took it for a joke when you sent us the message from Honolulu saying you’d be here this morning when the offices open but I told them to have the beaching cradle on the railway by nine. It’s ready for you now.”

“Sorry to be twenty-minutes late, Ed. We had a problem in San Francisco getting security data.”

“Never mind, Bill. If you didn’t make it when the office opened, at least you’re in good time for the coffee break.”

And so ended that voyage, the long way around the world, crossing the equator four times, through unfriendly skies, thirty thousand miles in all.    

1 Comment
January 15, 2025

The First Flight Around the World: Part One

Dear Reader

I just finished the best book I ever found on the history of Pan American’s flying boats. The book is sort of an auto-biography of the author’s experience flying these boats with wings from 1935 to 1945. His name was William M. Masland, who graduated through the ranks from mechanic in 1935 to Captain in 1943. He retired in 1966 making his way from Flying Boats to Boeing 707s. He died in 1986 at 79.  

He used his vast experience flying these boats in missions that surveyed both the Pacific route from San Francisco to Manila and Hong Kong with overnight stops at Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island and Guam. Pan American had to build all of the facilities on Miday, Wake and Guam to accommodate and feed their passengers and crews in first class style and service the clippers. He also flew across the Atlantic part of the PAA crew dispatched to survey the routes and stopping points for flights to Southampton such as Newfoundland, Iceland and Shannon, Ireland.

Ultimately, he became the captain who first flew around the world in 1943.

Unfortunately, since Masland was an engineer by background, he titled his book: “Through the Back Doors of the World in a Ship that Had Wings,” a title only an engineer could love. In researching this book, I discovered it had been published privately by Masland in 1985 with a price of $14.50

Needless to say, that price is long gone as are most copies of his book. Mary Ann gave me the book for Christmas and paid the exorbitant price of $91. Since then, I have found several copies for sale with prices ranging from $70 to $160.

Outrageous-without a doubt and, if you have enough of an interest in flying boats, the Pan American Historical Foundation Collection may fulfill your curiosity.

When we went to war in December of 1941, the Government requisitioned PAA’s fleet of Boeing’s B-317 Flying Boats.(*) But Uncle Sam was wise enough not to dismantle the airlines infrastructure, its flight crews or their operational staff. This included the airline’s superb navigation academy and their existing global network that was readily adoptable to military needs.

(*Back in the day, the common abbreviation for Pan American was PAA. The current abbreviation, Pan Am, came later during the jet era.)

During the war, PAA flew special missions for Uncle and a new mission, S.M. Seventy-Two was assigned to Capt. Masland. On January 7, 1943. A Colonel Milton Arnold wanted to meet Masland the following day at his Pentagon office. Masland took the overnight train from New York’s Penn Station and arrived at Arnold’s office with two other PAA officials.

Masland explained, “The colonel was a trim, military figure, as polished and effective as a pair of chrome molly pliers.” He came right to the point. “We want you to take a cargo from Ceylon to Australia. There’s a R.A.F. seaplane base there at Trincomalee on the northeast coast of Ceylon. You would make a refueling stop at Cocos Island, about halfway to Australia, then continue on to a landing at Port Hedland on Australia’s north coast. Can you, do it?”

He looked at the three of us. The other two looked at me. A major obstacle is nobody seemed to know if the Japanese controlled Cocos Island. It turned out the colonel didn’t know the status of Cocos Island either. I asked him, “Can you give us twenty-four hours to make an answer?”

He hesitated a moment then said, “Very well. Twenty-four hours. I expect to hear from you at this time tomorrow.”

Somehow the three of us found seats on the next train for New York even though this was wartime. It was then that I discovered that our proposed cargo was actually three people, three Very Important People, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin who would all be attending a conference in Casablanca, Morocco from January 14 to 24, 1943. The plan was to transport them to Australia where they would continue the summit with Chiang Kai-shek.

On return to PAA’s operational HQ located at the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia (then still referred to as North Beach), I examined charts and records of wind, weather and geography and made as many calculations as I could think of. The answer was that the flight from Ceylon to Australia could be successfully completed without making a stop at Cocos Island. I so advised Col. Arnold the next day.

He replied, “Very well, I’ll be in your office in North Beach at noon, tomorrow” and hung up.

At precisely noon, Colonel Arnold stepped into the office. He led off by announcing, “I want a plane to arrive in Bahrein by January twenty-fifth to be ready to depart the next day for Australia by way of Ceylon, without fail.”

They wouldn’t dare. I thought, just wouldn’t dare to plan to send the president of the United States on a mission as crazy as this one. But they did.

We left New York on the fourteenth with a full crew plus two mechanics. It was a daylight flight, with an overnight stop in Miami while the army loaded the ship. From Miami, we made our way to Port of Spain them to Belem and Natal Brazil before crossing the South Atlantic, destination Lake Tanganyika or Fish Lake, as we aviators called it, located in what was then the Belgian Congo. From there it was an eight-hour flight to Lagos and we ran the engines in high-speed cruise that was good for them as they purred like contented kittens for the first time on this voyage. Next was a direct flight to Khartoum, a flight of fifteen hours.

We left in late afternoon and takeoff was awful. The temperature was over 90 degrees and the available wind, a little more than ten-knots. It took a run of 4,600 feet to free the hull from the surface of the lake allowing us to become airborne. We flew over night and after midnight, it seemed we were flying over a world that apparently belonged to no one but ourselves.

Nearing our destination, the BOAC base, we turned down a stream toward the landing area just as the sky began to lighten in the east. The station manager, a Mr. Fenton, was efficient in meeting our needs and promptly refueling the ship. An American army jeep met me and took me to an army camp in Wadi Saida where a Lt. Cammeron provided all of the information that we would need to enter Bahrein, the major destination for our outbound flight. All that information wrong.

We were up by 4 am the next morning, breakfast at 4:30 and we were off the water of Gordons Tree by five-fifty-nine, one minute earlier than planned. The sun came up twenty minutes later and we laid a course that would take us directly across the Red Sea and the Arabian Desert to Bahrein on the Persian Gulf. Communications were failing so I had Mr. Martin, our radio operator send a simple message to Bahrein: ETA GINNS 1225Z   MASLAND.

The message in clear text represented a flagrant breech of regulations but I was determined that we be expected at our next port of call. My communication worked out and Bahrein was waiting for us. We landed and tied up at one of the BOAC moorings one day early of our January 24th due date.

Days passed and nothing happened  Meanwhile, an army captain flying through Bahrein dropped in to our lounge just before dinner. He gossiped: “Of course, you know you have to wait here until the Casablanca Conference is over. Then you are to fly Roosevelt. Churchill and Stalin out east to meet the Generalissimo.”

The crew sat stunned, mouths open and eyes popping. Of all the people in the Middle East, my crew did not know the details of our secret mission.

Continued in Part Two

Leave a comment
January 8, 2025

Second Addition to My Bucket List

I already published the first addition to my bucket, a list to visit the birthplace of Chicken Tenders at a restaurant in Manchester, NH called the Puritan. Hopefully, I can accomplish this next summer with our friends, Geoff and Judy Jones.

I discovered a second addition, almost a month later in the October 27th edition of The New York Times. The headline read, “To Ride These Rails, You Use Your Own Two Feet.” Written by Michael Harmon, he reported on his experience traveling by rail-bike in New York’s Catskills region along an abandoned railroad still in good condition; four mile out and four miles back.

The right-of-way begins and ends at an old station in the Catskill town of Phoenicia, once owned and operated by the Ulster & Delaware Railroad that ceased running passenger trains in 1954 and all other service in 1976.

Phoenicia is located in the southern Catskills nearby to Kingston, NY, Exit 19 on the Governor Thomas Dewey (NY State) Thruway. Phoenicia is located 20 miles northwest from Thruway exit on Route 28 a day trip from Long Island.

Michael Harmon wrote this for the NYT explaining his experience: “It’s always a thrill to pull out of a train station and feel yourself picking up speed, wheels click-clacking over the rails. It’s even more thrilling when your train has no roof or sides, is as low-slung as a Mazda Miata and comes with a warning to watch out for bears crossing your path.

“I was riding a rail bike, a pedal-powered contraption built to cruise along railroad tracks. Rail-biking opens the door to using existing rails recreationally, with no need to tear up the tracks. In 2015, a company called Rail Explorers started the country’s first rail-biking operation. Today, the company has seven locations and there are now more than dozen rail-biking outfitters running excursions in 16 states from Maine to California.

“My trip – an eight-mile round-trip pedal, much of it paralleling the Esopus Creek – departed from Phoenicia, home to Rail Explorer’s Catskills Division.

“The atmosphere (when we met) was surprisingly upbeat for 8 am on a gray, damp morning before, Sam Huang, our tour leader began a high-energy introduction and safety briefing. ‘These are the Rolls-Royces of rail bikes.’

“Our rides did look pretty slick with painted metal frames, adjustable seats with handles on either side  and even some very Rolls-Royce-built in umbrellas. After demonstrating the raised-fist ‘brake signal’ to alert riders behind you that you are stopping – and reminding us to watch out for wildlife, Mr. Huang let out with a spirited ‘All abord’ and we were dispatched to our assigned rail-bikes. I had booked a tandem rail-bike ($102) suitable for one or two people: Rail Explorers also offer quads ($178) for groups of two to four (the prices are per bike, regardless of the number of riders.”

“One by one, our convoy set off down the line boosted by an electric pedal-assist system that helps make the rail-bikes suitable for all ages and abilities. As I pedaled along, I took in the scenery, glad the crew had generously spaced out our departures from the station giving me the opportunity to have a few times when I felt I had the tracks and the scenery all to myself. Four miles in, we reached the halfway point, stepping off to stretch our legs while the crew turned our bikes around using a turntable.

“After I climbed back on for the return trip, I settled into a rhythm, marveling at the effort it must have taken in the 1860s to lay these tracks flanked by the river on one side and a rocky cliff on the other.”

By the time I read Mr. Harmon’s piece and called the operator, it became clear that Rail Explorers’ 2024 season was coming to an end. I had to wait for the 2025 season that would begin in April so long as winter and the early spring run-off did not compromise the right-pf-way. I hope not and if, all goes well, I’ll share my experience next spring in this blog.              

Leave a comment
January 1, 2025

Two Additions to My Bucket List: Part One-Birthplace of Chicken Tenders

Happy New Year

Thanks to separate pieces in The New York Times, I have added two items to my bucket list. The first appeared in the Food Section of the paper’s October 3rd edition under the headline, “In the Birthplace of the Chicken Tender.”

Datelined Wednesday, October 2, 2024, from Manchester, NH, Peter Wells began his piece with, “Fifty Years ago, the breaded, fried chicken tender as we know it was invented here.

“At least, that’s what they say in Manchester. Such claims are usually impossible to prove, and the picture is clouded in this case because of the loose ways the term chicken tender gets thrown around.”

Wells explained, that non-purists will use the name, “chicken tenders to refer to any strip of boneless chicken.” To chicken farmers, tenders refer to the tenderloin, a muscle along the backbone that gets very little exercise, hence its tenderness. These floppies of white-meat didn’t begin to appear on menus until 1974.

“If you were born in the United States more that 50 years ago, you can probably remember a world without chicken tenders. If you grew up later, you can’t.

“Today the chicken tender is not just familiar. It is triumphant. It is a fixture of school lunches and kids’ menus, of all-night diners and gas stations. It can be found at airports, food courts and stadiums.”

In 1917, two Greek Americans immigrated to Manchester, NH; Arthur Pappas and Louis Canotas. They opened a candy store that they called Puritan that grew while they re-located several times over the years. “In 1974, Arthur’s children added a large sit-down restaurant behind the shop, the Puritan Backroom.”

A fry cook told one of the Pappas kids, Charlie, that he had a small piece of chicken he didn’t know what to do with that turned out to be the tenderloin. This piece of meat performs no task and, consequentially, is a tender piece of meat. Served alone, it’s also tasteless until Charlie hit upon a method for preparing it.

“Before it is fried, the meat soaks in a pineapple-juice marinade. It is also served with what the Puritan calls ‘duck sauce,’ a thinnish, yellow, sweetish liquid.”

Early on, Pappas’ tenders were outsold by his barbecued lamb, broiled chicken breasts and pizza. But something about the taste of fried white meat dipped in rejiggered duck sauce captured Manchester’s imagination. Word spread; sales climbed while imitators arose. Eventually, chicken tenders began to outsell everything else and became mandatory at birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and wedding receptions celebrated at the Puritan.

“The tender has other things going for it, too:

‘Some of the popularity of the tender is that it is a whole-muscle white meat that doesn’t have to be cut or portioned, and, when cooked, it makes a great hand-held item,’ said Terrence O’Keefe, the content director of agribusiness news at WATT Globad Media. The tender could, in other words, go from the box to the batter to the deep frier to the table in minutes.”

Chicken tenders served at The Puritan has evolved over the years. “Besides its classic chicken tenders in duck sauce, the restaurant now offers tenders in a spicy breading, coconut-clustered tenders, and a version made by drenching the original recipe Buffalo-wing sauce.

The Manchester city council agreed to issue a proclamation proclaiming Manchester, NH to be the capital of chicken tenders.

Not to be left behind by this amazing fact, a fact of which I was totally ignorant, I’ve added a trip to Manchester for lunch serving of the original tenders at the Puritan. My target date for fulfillment is a weekday next summer when we are spending time at Little House, our vacation home in Marlow, about an hour away from Manchester. The game-plan is to join our good friends, Geoff and Judy Jones at the Puritan. They will drive down from their vacation home in Denmark, ME, slightly more than an hour and one half from Manchester. The most important reason for making the trip to the Puritan is their dining room has a full bar! I sent the Jones’ the piece from the NYT and what I discovered about the Puritan’s bar and they signed on for a lunch next summer, God willing, and the Creek don’t rise. 

1 Comment