Biggest Clipper

Complete and gleaming on the floor of the Sikorsky plant in Bridgeport, Conn. last week stood the biggest passenger airplane ever built in the U. S.

First of six new "clippers"' ordered by Pan American Airways, the 8-42 is a duralumin flying boat with four cowled engines set into the leading edge of its single wing. Its wingspan is 114 ft. 2 in., its length 76 ft. Tanks in the wings carry 1.250 gal. of fuel. With tanks full, a crew of five, 32 passengers, 1,000 Ib. of mail, the 8-42 will weigh 19 tons.

The wing is mounted on a single turret. This construction is expected to reduce vibration in the hull. The passengers' compartment is amidships. In the nose is the control compartment which seats two pilots side by side, mechanic and radio operator behind them. Each pilot has a set of flying instruments and controls before him, and neither sees the engine instruments which are mounted on the rear bulkhead under the eyes of the mechanic. At the mechanic's elbow is a lever with which he can instantly flood the motors with extinguishing chemicals.

The big clipper will be factory-tested as soon as the Housatonic River is free of ice. Pan American will test it from New York to Miami, will accept it when it proves itself able to fly 1,250 mi. nonstop at 150 m.p.h. with full complement of passengers, crew and mail. It will probably be slated for the run from Miami to Buenos Aires, which it is expected to cut from seven days to five. If so, it will become the world's biggest and fastest airplane in Regular over-water service.

Looping 32 foreign countries and with no domestic airmail contracts, Pan American rides serenely above the storm which has enmeshed other U.S. companies (see col. 2). Pan American has long dreamed of connecting with Britain's three-continent Imperial Airways by way of Bermuda and the Azores. That goal seemed one notch nearer last week with the 8-42 ready to fly, with two more clippers under construction at the Sikorsky plant and three more at the Glenn L. Martin plant in Baltimore.

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