How Pearl Harbor forced the world's first around-the-world commercial flight

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Retropolis

How Pearl Harbor forced the world’s first around-the-world commercial flight



Pan Am's Pacific Clipper, a Boeing 314, in an undated archive photograph. It was flown around the globe to avoid World War II after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. (H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images)

By Dave Kindy
Today at 7:00 a.m. EST

Jack Poindexter walked briskly into the Liberty House department store on King Street in downtown Honolulu. It was Dec. 2, 1941, and palm trees swayed to the gentle rhythm of the trade winds that sunny Tuesday morning.

The chief flight radio officer on Pan Am Flight NC18602 needed a spare shirt. He had left California unexpectedly the day before as a stand-in for an ill radio man onboard the Pacific Clipper, a large flying boat — essentially a seaplane on steroids.

Poindexter had no clean clothes for the flight, which still had to make another stop in Auckland, New Zealand, and was not scheduled to return to San Francisco until Dec. 10. He had only a few dollars in his wallet, so this extra shirt was going to have to last him until then. Little did he know it would be the only change of clothing he would have for more than a month.

The return flight from New Zealand to San Francisco via Honolulu was interrupted by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — “A date which will live in infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt termed it. That event, 80 years ago Tuesday, propelled the United States into war and forced the Pacific Clipper’s crew of 12 to make a dangerous — and historic — detour from their scheduled flight plan.

[80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor brings end to victim-identification program]

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“Flying around the world with no charts is astounding,” said F. Robert van der Linden, curator of Air Transportation and Special Purpose Aircraft at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “They didn’t get lost and they had only one engine problem, which they fixed. These planes were beautiful, but they were hard to fly.”

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An illustration from the August 1942 True Comics story on Pan Am's global flight after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Pilot Robert Ford was forced to fly around the world, with stops as needed, to escape and avoid World War II. (True Comics)

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“It happened at a time when both oceans had been crossed before,” van der Linden said. “And it was not the first around-the-world flight. Several pilots had done it before. But those were all planned trips with maps and coordinates worked out in advance. What you have here is a commercial airliner with a commercial airliner crew doing this completely unplanned journey while under threat of being shot down.”

The Pacific Clipper’s record for the longest commercial flight by mileage still stands today.

Dave Kindy is a journalist, freelance writer and book reviewer who lives in Plymouth, Mass. He writes about history, culture and other topics for Smithsonian, Air & Space, Military History, World War II, Aviation History and other publications.

[Liberal In Texas]

1. Interesting piece of history on the day marking 80 years since the Pearl Harbor attack. n/t

They were quite the ships. It would have been an amazing experience to take a trip in one.



She survived WW2. According to wikipedia: After the war it was sold to Universal Airlines but was damaged in a storm and ultimately salvaged for parts.