The New York World Telegram described the flight as the “greatest achievement in the history of aviation since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.”
An editorial in New York’s Herald Tribune stated: “The feat is one of which the pilot and crew and the Pan American World Airways may well be proud….Its significance will not be missed on either side of the Atlantic.”
Capt. Ford’s post-flight report praised his fellow crew members. He also pointed out that “the underlying credit for success of the whole operation should, of course, be given to the training that all hands have received in the organization of routine methods of handling practically every exigency that can arise in the course of long flights. The standard interchange of pilots, navigators, meteorologists, communications experts, engine and airplane mechanics provided in the standard Clipper crew, gave us experts in every operation required. Every man simply fell into the routine for which he was trained and everything went like clockwork every mile of the way.”
The Pacific Clipper had nearly flown around the globe, but since it was not to return to its home base at San Francisco its flight was not officially considered a complete round-the-world flight. While it was en route, most of the 314s had been transferred to the Navy, including the Honolulu, Yankee, Atlantic, Dixie and American Clippers. The Army Air Forces retained the Capetown, Anzac and California and designated them as C-98s. The remaining Boeing Clippers went to BOAC.
The Dixie Clipper made history in January 1943, when it flew President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Casablanca, Morocco, in accordance with orders specified in Special Mission 71. Piloted by Capt. Howard M. Cone Jr., the B-314 carried President Roosevelt to a conference with Prime Minister Winston Churchill at which they decided to demand the unconditional surrender of Axis forces. Afterward, it was the Anzac Clipper that finally became the first seaplane to completely circumnavigate the globe. But like the Pacific Clipper’s trip, the flight did not go as originally planned.
Capt. Charles S. “Chili” Vaughn flew the Anzac from New York to Bahrain on the Persian Gulf and turned the plane over to Capt. William M. Masland, who had arrived there in the Capetown Clipper. Masland, flying in accordance with Special Mission 72, was to meet three secret passengers in Trincomalee, Ceylon, and transport them in the Anzac Clipper to Australia for a secret meeting with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. But intelligence reports indicated that the Japanese might have learned of the meeting and the trip was canceled. However, Maj. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer and two members of his staff were then ordered to go to Perth, Australia, so Masland flew them there, where he picked up a Pan Am employee and 26 U.S. naval officers and was expected to return to New York the way he had come.
But Masland decided to continue eastward. He flew to Brisbane, New Caledonia, Fiji, Canton Island and
Pearl Harbor to San Francisco, then to New York. The Anzac Clipper had thus completed an authentic globe-girdling flight of more than 30,000 miles, crossing the equator four times in the process. On Christmas Eve 1945, 2 1/2 years after his history-making world flight, Masland landed a B-314 in Bowery Bay, the final landing of a Pan Am flying boat at its New York sea terminal. He summarized the end of that flight in his memoirs, Through the Back Doors of the World in a Ship That Had Wings: “The night watchman met us, no one else. No flags, no bands, no speeches, just the night watchman making his usual rounds. There never was a quieter end to a brave and glorious era.”
Pan Am’s Clipper service in the Pacific ended a few weeks later on 9 April 1946, when a B-314, the American Clipper, landed at San Francisco. Only one B-314 had been lost during World War II, though not due to enemy action. That accident occurred when the pilot of the Yankee Clipper made a low turn too close to the water and the aircraft crashed in the Tagus River off Lisbon, Portugal, on 22 February 1943. Twenty-four people died, and well-known singer Jane Froman was badly injured. The cause of the accident was determined to be pilot error. The remaining 314s, after being acquired by charter operators, were eventually salvaged for parts, scrapped or destroyed.
The rapid wartime advances made in long-range, land-based four-engine transports such as the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, Douglas DC-4 (C-54) Skymaster and Lockheed L-49 (C-69) Constellation helped contribute to the 314’s quick demise. Of the dozen B-314s produced between 1938 and 1941, today none survive intact, but a few pieces of one aircraft are on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Photos and scale models of Pan Am’s Sikorsky, Martin and Boeing seaplanes on display in several museums around the world are all that remain to remind us of a fascinating period in aviation history.
Wake Island. Aerial photo taken from a PBY patrol plane on 25 May 1941, looking west along the northern side of Wake, with Peale Island in the center and right middle distance and Wilkes Island in the left distance. Official