Panafrica

Last week, for better or for worse, the Army took over the Pan American Airways' ferry service to and across Africa. Thus ended a row which has raged hind-scenes for months between Pan Am's tough, ambitious, globe-minded President Juan Trippe and the Air Transport Command's equally tough and determined Major General Harold Lee ("Bombardment") George.

Panafrica originated after the meeting of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill off Newfoundland last year. The row originated when airline-hungry Juan Trippe discovered that the Army wanted him to pioneer the service (at Government expense), then turn it over to the military.

In spite of his protests Juan Trippe got a contract good only until Nov. 1, 1942. This contract covered the delivery of Army planes to combat theaters. Another, covering passenger and freight for transport over the same routes, expires Dec. 15, and the Army will take over that service, too.

Record Time. Up & down the route flew trim, pink-cheeked Frank Gledhill, Pan Am boss of the project. He surveyed, estimated equipment, conferred with Army supervisor, Major General Robert Olds, and arranged for help from the British. Twelve hundred men were recruited in the U.S. They were shot for typhoid, yellow fever, tetanus and cholera, then bundled off to Africa.

At first Pan Am's men lived in mud huts with thatched roofs. Then 44-ton prefabricated houses of plywood came in, with refrigerators and air conditioners, a million feet of lumber and 5,000 bundles of structural steel. These materials were not merely for comfort. The oppressive tropic heat had weakened the strongest. Thirty percent had come down with malaria. Then airline doctors oiled the nearest swamps, had sewers dug, made the men wear long-sleeved and long-legged clothing at night. The malaria rate was cut to less than 1%.

For Americans who had come chiefly for adventure, the lure of Africa turned out to be made up of scorpions, snakes, flies, mosquitoes. A blistering sun drew steam from the dank, jungle-covered earth. Small black natives could have an American fined $10 by the local British court for inferring that they needed a bath. They asked for a "dash" (tip) every Saturday, whether their work had been good or bad.

Airfields in the Jungle. Traffic men, used to the modernistic airports of Long Island, Miami, Brownsville and Rio, learned to pacify passengers landed at a west-coast mud hut. Baggage was hurried from seaplane to land plane on the kinky heads of black carriers. Along the carrier path three traffic men stationed themselves to see that the natives did not walk off into the brush with the baggage. To hurry the languid, Expediter Ray Colcord brandished an unloaded pistol.

By air, sea and by primitive roads came road scrapers, diesel engines, trucks, reels of cable, baggage trucks, drums of paint and oil. Employing 7,000 natives along the route, Pan Am put up concrete blockhouses, used camels to lay out permanent runways of native mud bricks. On payday natives lined up and touched the end of a pencil with which an accountant signed their names.

Up & down the route black men and white labored and fought against the wilderness, against the strength-sapping heat, against disease, sometimes against each other--rival tribesmen assigned to the same job drew knives. Americans howled in protest when a local government tried to tax their cigarets and food. Pan Am officials wrangled with Army control officers over how to run the line. But in spite of friction, accidents, mosquitoes and soggy, yeastless bread, the men fought hard to put the route through.

Hardship & Ingenuity. The Axis bombed Fort Lamy, capital of the Chad Territory. The damage was repaired, but the Fighting French thereafter fired so indiscriminately on approaching planes that for many weeks Pan Am pilots landed at another airport.

By midwinter the fields were in an advanced state, machine shops were working full time under Chief Engineer James Weesner. But parts still did not arrive when needed. Every trick was used to keep as many planes in the air as possible. In one hour the landing gear would be stripped from an incoming plane and attached to a plane ready for departure.

A transport crashed on a dry river 125 miles off the route in the Sudan. Five mechanics under thoroughgoing Floyd Anderson were flown in. Food and water were delivered by air. When other demands prevented continued deliveries, the mechanics caught rain water in buckets, shot gazelles for meat and kept tinkering with the plane. Heavy rains began to fill the river. The mechanics hitched a rope to the plane's nose and got natives to tug it up the bank. A month after the accident the plane roared down a makeshift runway and took off, leaving natives agog.

Except for the company of white women, recreation at the bases was sufficient. For $50 a man could buy a horse, feed and the services of a groom for a year. At Accra the swimming was good. By arrangement with movie companies, films were arrested in their flight to Cairo long enough for a showing at each base.

Profit & Loss. Pan Am's expeditionary force could be well satisfied with its job, though Pan Am was ill satisfied with the result. The Army has profited by Pan Am experience and Pan Am by U.S. money. For months Brigadier General Shepler Fitzgerald's wing of the Air Transport Command has been learning airline transport technique, has all but officially militarized the entire operation. Pan Am employes were offered commissions and technical enlisted status to stay on the job. Many accepted; many others stayed with Juan Trippe, who may yet come out of World War II with many a profitable, war-built route for post-war operation.

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