WWII Clipper's Hard Way Home
Source: Aviation History Magazine C.V. Glines 12 December 2018

the news from Pearl Harbor. A few minutes later, a message followed from Commander W. Scott Cunningham, the naval officer in charge on Wake, requesting that the plane return and prepare to make a long-range reconnaissance flight to search for the Japanese task force because the M-130 could fly farther out than his fighters could go. Hamilton immediately reversed course and ordered the crew to dump about 3,000 pounds of gasoline, to get down to the landing weight of 48,000 pounds.

    After the Clipper landed at Wake, it was quickly refueled and was preparing to make the patrol flight before escaping to Midway. Just before noon, a formation of 36 Japanese bombers attacked. Within 10 minutes the area was a shambles. Pan Am’s terminal and other facilities were destroyed and nine Pan Am employees were killed. The Clipper, floating helplessly in the lagoon, was strafed and riddled with 97 bullet holes “right up the fuselage without hitting a single vulnerable spot,” according to one report.

    As soon as the attackers left, Capt. Hamilton, a lieutenant in the Naval Air Reserve, loaded 70 American civilian passengers and Pan Am employees, one of them wounded, and headed for Midway without making the reconnaissance flight. Although it had been stripped of all extraneous equipment and cargo, the M-130 was still overloaded and barely airworthy. Hamilton made two unsuccessful takeoff attempts before the Clipper finally became airborne.

    He headed to Midway, a flight of 1,185 miles. About 40 miles from a landing at Pan Am’s blacked-out base there, Hamilton reported he saw two warships heading away from Midway and learned that the atoll had been shelled that afternoon. The Clipper was refueled and the next day headed for Pearl Harbor, which was reported safe for landing. On 10 December, he flew the Philippine Clipper under radio silence to Pan Am’s base on Treasure Island.

    Kai Tak Airport and harbor, where Pan Am’s Hong Kong Clipper, a Sikorsky S-42 with Capt. Fred S. Ralph in command, was being readied for an early morning departure to Manila on its regular schedule between the two cities. It was set on fire by incendiary bullets and burned to the water’s edge—Pan Am’s only Clipper casualty of the war due to enemy action. All of Pan Am’s bases in the Pacific suffered heavy losses during this brief period. In addition to the nine employees killed, 81 were captured and millions of dollars of equipment and facilities were destroyed.

    While all this bad news was being received in Auckland, Capt. Ford and his crew waited for instructions that were to come via the American embassy. The word finally came on 15 December. Ford was directed to return to the United States by any route that would avoid enemy interception, no matter how long it took. He and his crew would have to plot their own route, proceed without accurate charts, navigational aids or weather forecasts, land in unfamiliar harbors and locate fuel sources. From that time on, no one at Pan Am headquarters would know exactly where the Pacific Clipper was until it reported to LaGuardia tower.

    “We had begun a camouflage job on the Clipper,” John D. Steers, fourth officer on the plane, recalled, “and only half the American flag had been removed when the urgent message was received to disassemble two [spare] engines and load them. We were to return to Noumea, Caledonia, pick up 22 Pan Am employees, women, and children, and take them to Gladstone, Australia. We were then to proceed westward to New York. The engines were to be left as spares, one each at Karachi, India, and Bahrain, an island off the coast of Saudi Arabia.”

    From Noumea they headed to Gladstone, the first flight ever made between the two locations, then on to Port Darwin. Besides the crew, three Pan Am employees remained on board: a meteorologist from Honolulu who had been assigned to the Auckland base, an airport manager from a Middle Eastern port and a radio operator from Noumea. The route was not yet in a declared war zone, but as yet no one knew how far south the Japanese had actually pushed. However, the flight continued under complete radio silence to Surabaya, Java, in the Netherlands East Indies.

    Ford intended to stop only for fuel because, as Steers said, Java was by then “definitely a war zone.” “The American consul in Port Darwin was to have notified Surabaya of our coming,” Steers explained. “We had arranged to answer challenges from Surabaya on CW [continuous wave] frequencies. Our challenge was to be the letters B-E-A-M. Our answer was to be H-O-R-N. The Dutch never got the message from Port Darwin.” The Clipper used British call letters as suggested by British Overseas Airways Corporation — BOAC — but there were no answering transmissions.

    As the lumbering 140-mph Clipper approached the harbor at Surabaya, a patrolling snub-nosed Brewster F2A Buffalo fighter with British Royal Air Force markings got on its tail. The pilot reported the sighting to his ground station. John Poindexter, the Clipper’s radio operator, picked up transmissions between the fighter pilot and controller and later reported the following conversation had taken place:

Controller: “What is she?”

Pilot: “I don’t know, but she’s a big one. Might be German or Japanese. Wait. There’s part of an American flag on her side.”

Controller: “That doesn’t mean anything. Anyone can paint on an American flag.”

Pilot: “Then you’d better send up some more help.” Four more fighters were scrambled.

Controller: “Stay on her tail. If she gets even a little way off the normal course for landing, shoot her down.”

    “We were told later that one of them remarked they’d better call the ground station before they opened fire,” Steers said. “One of them peeled off and drew up on our tail. He asked, ‘Shall I let them have it?’ Then the ground station asked if we didn’t have some marks of identification. They hesitated and one of them came over the top. Then what remained of the U.S. flag was







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