Merchant Aerial

(See front cover)

The Lindberghs, Charles Augustus & Anne. spent last week flying their red-bodied, white-winged Lockheed monoplane around Labrador. From Cartwright, where they were guests of Hudson's Bay Co., they jaunted inland 25 mi. to Muskrat Falls, returned via Melville Lake. Another day they pushed up the coast 150 mi. until they found themselves in a soupy fog, then sat down at Hopedale. Mrs. Lindbergh exclaimed over the "wild picture of indescribable beauty" presented by Labrador's inland landscape. But, as nearly everyone knows, the Lindberghs were not on a sightseeing trip. They were in Labrador, en route to Greenland and probably Iceland, to help Pan American Airways decide whether or not it wants to try building an airline along that route to Europe.

Scouts. Col. Lindbergh, technical adviser to Pan American, had the job of inspecting prospective landing places, charting the upper air, studying the effects of the Magnetic Pole and Northern Lights on his plane's radio and direction-finder. In the latter chore--radio testing--he had the valuable help of his wife who has a "better sending fist" than Lindbergh himself. She holds a radio operator's license, can transmit 20 words per minute.

After making aerial studies of the mouth of Labrador's Northwest River as a seaplane base possibly superior to Cartwright, the Lindberghs hurdled Davis Strait 400 mi. to Godthaab on the west coast of Greenland. There they met the S. S. Jellinge, a 3,500-ton Danish tramp chartered by Pan American, outfitted as a floating laboratory, sent north from Philadelphia last month. Its research staff is headed by Pan American's Major Robert A. Logan, Canadian War ace who bombed the headquarters of Germany's Prince Rupprecht before the famed Richthofen shot him down. Ten years ago Major Logan surveyed the Greenland coast by air for the Canadian Government. The Jellinge carries a Fairchild seaplane as relief and supply ship for the Lindberghs.

When Col. Lindbergh points his Lockheed over Greenland's inland ice; when he takes the heavier, slower Fairchild, gets a radio bearing from the Jellinge and tries his hand at drilling through a fog wall into port--such exciting ventures will be the climax of an infinitely painstaking job which Pan American inherited a year ago. At that time the company hired an adventurous young British scientist named Harold George Watkins who previously had headed the British Arctic Air Route Expedition in Greenland for a purpose similar to Pan American's. Explorer Watkins took charge of a Pan American East Greenland Expedition with a base camp about 80 mi. north of Angmagsalik. Meanwhile the University of Michigan Pan American Airways West Greenland Expedition, commanded by Dr. Ralph Belknap, worked out of three bases. Last August Watkins was drowned when his kayak capsized but his party carried on under his aide, John R. Rymill. Using no aircraft except sounding balloons (Lindbergh will do the aerial job) both these expeditions have made exhaustive weather studies which will be completed this summer. Early reports have come drifting into Pan American's Manhattan office. Some preliminary findings:

>> Greenland storms behave like those experienced by Pan American in the tropical south but are less severe.

>> Greenland's coastal fogs are thick but generally localized in a 20-mi. area, permitting use of alternative ports.

>> Planes can land safely on the inland ice so long as bright sunlight makes ripple-shadows on the surface. But on hazy days pilots must beware, as ice and sky merge, leaving no horizon.

>> Some types of the Aurora interfere badly with radio. For ten days at a stretch the two expeditions in Greenland could not raise each other.

>> Cold air from the centre of Greenland goes "coasting" out along the ice surface to cascade down on either shore. There it takes warmth from the sea, rises and flows back at a higher elevation. Thus a plane crossing Greenland in either direction might be spanked along by tailwinds all the way if the pilot knew his air currents.

When? If? Such preliminary facts and the final reports to follow, go to the 58th & 59th floors of Manhattan's Chrysler Building into which Pan American moved its offices last week. There they are coordinated by famed Explorer Vilbrmir Stefansson, Pan American consultant, who advocated commercial arctic flying ten years ago. The coordinated data are analyzed by Chief Engineer Priester who knows about ships, men and operations; by Communications Engineer Leuteritz who knows about radio and navigation. Finally it goes to a spacious, buff-papered office on the 58th floor from which French doors open upon a balcony overlooking downtown Manhattan and the harbor. At a table in the far corner of the room, with his back to an old roll-topped desk--his first piece of office furniture--sits the shy, swarthy young president of Pan American Airways, Juan Terry Trippe, 35. He will decide what Pan American is going to do about transoceanic air service.

That planes will fly between North America and Europe, carrying mail & cargo at first, passengers after the first year, President Trippe knows well. But what route? How soon? What sort of schedule?--are questions not even he can answer. Politics plays a heavy part since any transoceanic line requires entree to the ports of at least two nations, probably more. Moreover, Britain's Imperial Airways, Germany's Luft Hansa, France's Aeropostale, Holland's K. L. M., all have bid for a part in any prospective service. Since the surveying job is bigger than any single agency could afford, all interested parties have agreed to pool their findings. Thus into the pot go the charts made by Pan American, by the British Arctic Air Route Expedition and by Germany's Von Gronau in the north; and by Imperial Airways at Bermuda, Aeropostale at the Azores, where France got exclusive operating privileges from Portugal. Imperial, of course, has practically automatic concessions in Bermuda, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador. Pan American has secured exclusive operating concessions in Iceland. From Denmark it got exclusive rights to survey Greenland with a view toward ultimate operation.

While the transatlantic airline may be cooperative to an extent, President Trippe is determined that the U. S.-- meaning Pan American--shall be in the foreground of the picture, not left to fight its way against entrenched foreign competition as was the case in South America where France and Germany were flying for a full year before P. A. A. got in. Nevertheless, like a wise eagle that scouts before it screams, President Trippe makes no rash predictions. He has not even committed himself to the Greenland-Iceland route, which is only one of seven possible channels across the Atlantic. But he confidently states that "any trade route in the world can be flown with the equipment now at hand."

Clippers. Equipment means airplanes. The first two of six flying boats, larger than any aircraft heretofore constructed in the U. S., are now abuilding for Pan American. From the Sikorsky plant at Bridgeport, which will produce three of the boats, the first will emerge for flight tests this autumn. The Glenn L. Martin Co. in Baltimore, builder of the other three, is expected to have one ready next summer. Both types of machines, known to Pan American as "clippers," are four-engined monoplanes. On Pan American's present routes they could carry 50 passengers & cargo. With mail only, they could fly regularly, against 30 mi. head winds, the longest jumps over Atlantic or Pacific (Bermuda to Azores -- 2,000 mi.; San Francisco to Honolulu -- 2,400 mi.).

Foreign competitors may produce a ship to rival the clippers. But when President Trippe speaks of equipment he means it also to include experience. And there he feels Pan American has a large advantage over all others when an ocean is to be flown. For three years Pan American has flown ships over 600 mi. of the Caribbean from Kingston, Jamaica to Barranquilla, Colombia. In their 1,380 flights, no ship has missed either terminal by more than three miles. Out of sight of land for at least six hours, the pilots keep unerringly on course by means of radio equipment privately designed and built by Pan American. Roping South America and the Caribbean (where it serves 31 countries) and criss-crossing Alaska, Pan American planes fly 5,700,000 mi. a year over 25,500 mi. of scheduled routes with an efficiency record of 99.678%. The technical staff has complete case histories on in hurricanes, and has developed a procedure, notably over the Caribbean, in Alaska and across the Andes, for conditions as severe as might be expected on most transoceanic routes.

Pan American has carried 204,000 passengers, has had one nasty accident. A year ago last week one of its planes vanished in the snowswept Andes with seven passengers, two pilots. No trace of it has been found. Two other lives have been lost, both unnecessarily. On two occasions a Pan-American flying boat in distress alighted on water and, while the occupants were being rescued by another craft, one passenger dropped into the sea.

Trade Routes. Pan American regards itself as the U. S. merchant marine of the air. By agreement with domestic transport operators it stays outside the U. S. proper while they stay in. Pan American goes where foreign trade is, or where it can be developed. It carries the sample case, the estimate pad, the order book, the spare part. It gets heavy patronage from U. S. merchants in Brazil and Argentina, where Germany and France formerly enjoyed an enormous advantage by virtue of their seven-day shipments of merchandise and documents from Berlin and Paris, a schedule now equalled by P. A. A. planes to New York.

Last April Pan American got into the Orient where competition by the airlines of Great Britain, France, Germany & Holland is particularly hot. Pan American made a partnership deal with the Chinese Nationalist Government to operate its air lines. That, plus the 2,600-mi. Alaskan system acquired last September, gives P. A. A. a doubly strategic position for trans-Pacific operations.

Skipper. There is good reason for Juan Terry Trippe, chief of the world's biggest air transport system, to think in terms of trade routes, to call his airplanes "clippers," to have at his desk corner an enormous mariner's globe--not of much use since it is an antique and lacks the names of many places on P. A. A.'s lines. Salt water is in Juan Trippe's blood. His family settled on Maryland's sleepy Eastern shore in 1664. Great-great-grandfather John Trippe in 1804 sailed as third officer of the U. S. S. Vixen, got a Congressional Medal and a gold sword for battling the Barbary pirates. Great-grandfather John Trippe commanded the U. S. S. John Trippe, smallest sloop in the battle of Lake Erie. The present U. S. S. John Trippe sports two gold stars on its funnel for sinking two German submarines. Lately it patrolled Rum Row. Father Charles White Trippe was a Manhattan banker. He married Lucy A. Terry, whose family, somewhere along the line, had acquired Latin blood. That accounts for the historic "John" becoming Juan (named for a beloved Aunt Juanita). Also it accounts for Juan Trippe's swarthy skin. The combination has been anything but a handicap in President Trippe's dealings with South American politicos.

Juan Trippe is an anomalous combination of visionary and hard-headed businessman; genial socialite and phlegmatic plodder. At Hill School he was so silent and aloof he was nicknamed "Mummy." At Yale he played some football, some golf, chairmanned the Yale Graphic. He learned to fly in Naval aviation in 1918. qualified as a night bomber pilot, returned to Yale in 1919 to organize a campus flying society with Sumner Sewall, Maine's War ace. After taking his degree (Sheffield, 1920) he bought three battered "Jennies," flew them around the swank Hamptons for a while as Long Island Air ways. In 1926 Mr. Trippe, now thoroughly committed to aviation as a career, got Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Percy Rockefeller and William H. Vanderbilt to help him form Colonial Airways between New York and Boston, first contract airmail route in the U. S. (keystone of American Airways). They withdrew the next year and Messrs. Trippe & Whitney, with an able associate named John A. Hambleton (who died in a crash in 1929) got into the Pan American organization which was then being formed to start with a route between Key West and Havana. Mr. Trippe, 29, was president & general manager.

Since then Juan Trippe has almost literally thought of nothing except aviation and his company. Happily his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the late Morgan-Partner Edward R. Stettinius, knows the business thoroughly and enjoys it. (They have a year-old daughter, Betsy Stettinius.) He used to keep 12-hr, office hours, has lately relaxed enough to fly his amphibian home to Easthampton before dusk most days. Besides seeing his system grow to be the world's largest, President Trippe last year had the pleasant experience of seeing it make a little money. A $510,000 deficit was wiped out, with $188,000 left over. Of the company's $8,387,000 income, about $6,500,000 came from fat U. S. air mail contracts--a fact of which much is made by critics of the Post Office's air mail policy. In defense President Trippe points out that his company must develop and build all its own navigation facilities, such as the U. S. provides for domestic operators; and that it competes not against other privately-owned lines but against foreign government subsidies.

For all his love of flying and of his organization, President Trippe has never travelled his own lines beyond the Panama Canal. He has been too busy.

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