The Era of the Pacific Flying Boats

Juan Trippe was an entrepreneur in every sense of the word – he had started the company in 1927 with borrowed aircraft, and had continued to operate profitably and grow throughout the worst of the depression.

For his Pacific operation he wanted something grandiose, something that would enthral the public; flying boats were the state-of-the-art in aviation at the time but in order to cross a vast ocean and carry passengers at a profit, a special aircraft would have to be designed and built – the result was the Martin M-130 flying boat. The first was called the China Clipper.

The Martin weighed over 23 tonnes, carried 14 passengers and sold for $US400,000. It had a range of 2,500 nautical miles (say Sydney to Timor) against a 20 knot headwind as Pan Am had specified, and it cruised at 125 knots, or about a quarter of the speed of today’s international jet airliners.

The first transpacific flight was made in 1935 – this was the ‘proving flight’ for the China Clipper, and it carried mail from San Francisco, Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam and onto Manila.

A chartered steamship, the North Haven, had sailed out to prepare Midway, Wake and Guam for the scheduled services. The ship’s hold and decks were crammed with tonnes of supplies and construction materials, including diesel generators, water distillation plants, motor launches, tractors, dynamite, food, and 250,000 gallons of aviation gasoline. Each stop would require hotels for passengers, accommodation for island staff, and radio beacons. Wake Island had been completely uninhabited, and devoid of bird life; PanAm even imported canaries to cheer the place up.

Passenger services commenced in 1936. It was a leisurely way to travel, though comparatively expensive – a single fare from Manila to San Francisco was marginally under $US1 ,000. If you had been one of those passengers embarking on such a journey, your itinerary would have been as follows: an early morning departure from Manila, arriving at Guam at dusk the same day for an overnight stopover at a hotel or luxury guest house. This would then be repeated each day, thus progressing on to Wake, Midway, and Honolulu; the final leg (and the longest)

was flown overnight with a morning arrival in San Francisco. Passengers had the option of leaving the aircraft and staying on any of the islands for an extended period – of course most chose Hawaii. On the final night flight, passengers retired to berths and shoes left outside were found newly polished in the morning.

Navigation was rudimentary to say the least. Apart from radio beacons installed on the islands, the crews used celestial sightings,radio fixes from passing ships and drift flares dropped from the flying boat.

To occupy their time on each of the sectors, passengers could sleep, read, play chess, bridge and backgammon, watch movies (which required the setting up of screen and projector),or, simply socialise in the spacious lounge.

It was no coincidence that there were many nautical terms used by PanAm. Juan Trippeadmired the ocean liner system and decided to incorporate many of the same terms for his flying boat service. Thus, terms such as ‘captain’, ‘first officer’, ‘engineer’, ‘steward’, and ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ were introduced into aviation. Each of the PanAm aircraft were called ‘clippers’ (and still are), and were always ‘cast off’ from their moorings.

The service proved highly successful and was later extended to include Hong Kong. PanAm however realised that in order to expand in the Pacific and other areas, a larger flying boat would be required. They approached Boeing with their new specifications and after some hesitation, Boeing went ahead and produced the 8-134. This aircraft dwarfed the Martin; it weighed 42 tonnes, could cruise at 155 knots and carry 30 passengers over a longer sector.

After the aircraft’s successful inauguration of a transatlantic flight (New York/the Azores/Lisbon/Marseilles), the aircraft also commenced scheduled services between San Francisco and Auckland, via Honolulu, Canton Island and Noumea in 1940.

Passenger services ceased in the Pacific when America was drawn into World War II in December of 1941.

It was the war that marked an end to the flying boat era on an international scale. Larger and faster land based aircraft had been developed and thousands of aerodromes built with long concrete all weather runways.

However, after the war there were still pilots loyal to the flying boats.

One of these pilots, Captain Brian Monckton, formed Trans Oceanic Airways using ex-RAAF Sunderlands and operated scheduled services from Rose Bay in Sydney to Lord Howe Island. Lord Howe had enjoyed a limited, but essential, tourist industry prior to the war; then, passengers and provisions had been precariously transferred from ships to launches, often in strong swells, outside the island’s shallow lagoon. The flying boats could land in the lagoon, and their frequency of service was warmly welcomed by the local inhabitants.

At about the same time another pilot, Captain Stewart Middlemiss, had formed Barrier Reef Airways in Queensland, utilising war surplus Catalinas.

In 1950, Barrier Reef Airways merged with Ansett Airways, and in 1953 the combined company (now calling itself Ansett Flying Boat Services), purchased the liquidated Trans Oceanic Airways and commenced operations to Lord Howe Island.

Two Sandringham flying boats were purchased and set a remarkable record for reliability and punctuality. To the Lord Howe Islanders, this service was an absolute lifeline, bringing tourists, foodstuffs, perishables, mail and other essential cargo. Occasionally the flying boats were chartered for specialist tasks. One of these was to the New Zealand Government to operate ‘ChristmasService’ between Wellington and Chatham Island, an atoll inhabited by New Zealanders and situated about 400 nautical miles south east of Wellington. Each year, children returning home from boarding school and Chatham Islanders wishing to go to the mainland to celebrate the season were Accommodated by this service. Fortunately, the island was graced with an enclosed lagoon which protected the flying boat from the treacherous ocean swells in that part of the world. Another charter was to the Cinerama Film Company, who set out on an eight week tour to make the film Cinerama South Sea Islands. For a while the flying boat was based at ‘land-locked Queenstown in New Zealand’s South Island and moored at Lake Wakatipu.

On July 3, 1963, one of the Sandringhams, Pacific Chieftain, was moored at Lord Howe for an overnight stop, when a violent storm with winds up to 80 knots struck. The flying boat was wrenched from its moorings and pounded to an irretrievable wreck on the island’s rocky shore. Six months later, a military version Sunderland was purchased from New Zealand and, after a further ten month’s conversion to civil configuration and an expenditure of $A200,000, the replacement flying boat was launched and christened The Islander.

During this time, services to Lord Howe continued with the remaining Sandringham, Beachcomber, which performed with such reliability that it amazed even its most loyal supporters. However, it nearly suffered the same fate as Pacific Chieftain eleven years later. In June, 1974, another gale struck Lord Howe while the flying boat was moored in the lagoon; the relentless winds tore the flying boat from its moorings and lifted it up onto the beach in front of Moseley Park. Local residents and the Army assisted Ansett NSW chief engineer, Ron Bush, in pulling the fly- ing boat further up the beach, away from immediate danger, in an exhausting ordeal lasting eighteen hours.

The fore cabins had filled with sea water and the starboard wing and float were extensively damaged. Even so, the flying boat was pronounced salvageable and a team of aircraft sheet metal workers were flown to the island and temporary repairs completed: Beachcomber was subsequently ferried back to Rose Bay where a complete repair scheme was carried out, andPan American World Airways Martin M-130 ‘China Clipper’ ushered in a new era of transoceanic air travel during the pre-WW2 period. Seen here departing San Francisco, the big Martin took six days to reach Manila with overnight stops at Honolulu, Midway, Wake and Guam. it was duly placed back in service.

The era of the flying boats was nearly at a close, however.

The last service conducted by Ansett Airlines of NSW took place on September 10, 1974. Thereafter, the flying boats were modified for ferry flights to the Caribbean destined for service with Antilles Air Boats.

Qantas used Catalinasto service their Pacific islands routes during the postwar years. VH-EAW is seen here at Lord Howe Island in 1948, this aircraft was unfortunately destroyed by a bomb at Rose Bay the following year.

Unfortunately their fate was not to provide the specialist air cruising flights that Antilles had set out to operate due to a cruel twist of fate. Antilles was unable to get both VH-BRC (Beachcomber) and BRF (Islander) onto the US register due to their conversion from military Sunderland to civilian airline Sandringham having been undertaken in Australia by Ansett. As far as the FA A were concerned, Ansett was not an approved modification centre at that time and such a conversion had to have been done by Shorts in Belfast for US registration to be available. Faced with this insurmountable problem, Antilles folded and both boats began a long downhill run towards the end of their flying careers.

As the nineties start though, both boats may well have beaten the ignominious fate of their sisters. Beachcomber now resides fully restored in Ansett period livery at the Southampton Hall of Aviation Museum while at the time of writing Islander remains in the ownership of flying boat enthusiast Charles Halton. She is presently at Chatham in the UK. Meanwhile the Shorts-backed Flying Boat Foundation is still endeavouring to eventually get her to Australia where she would perform specialist nostalgia charter flights before finally being placed in the aviation museum to commemorate the role that flying boats played in the wartime defence of our nation and to the development of the civil air routes throughout the southern Pacific.