John Delach

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 24^th 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