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00:07Gentlemen, we have a problem.
00:10When the air route across the Atlantic was blocked...
00:13What are we going to do with all these big boats if we have no ocean to cross?
00:15...he saw another option.
00:17Here's what we'll do.
00:19We'll fly from California to China.
00:22Across the Pacific.
00:23Right across the middle.
00:25About Vong.
00:26No airline had ever taken such a risk.
00:29There was a huge number of people that thought this was just an absolute folly.
00:34We can make this work.
00:36Good afternoon, everyone, from the rim of the Pacific Ocean.
00:40The occasion of this broadcast is the inauguration of the first Trans-Pacific Air Mail Service by Pan American Airways China Clipper.
00:47The departure of the China Clipper was probably the most hyped, most anticipated, most publicized event of that era.
00:54In a sense, it was akin to the rocket launches of the 60s.
00:59The China Clipper in front of us...
01:01Everybody was tuned to their radios.
01:03Everybody that could was out there looking.
01:05Part of the mystique of this event, I think, was the implied danger of the journey itself.
01:13There's 2,400 miles that you've got to go, and there is nothing, nothing but water.
01:23You're aiming at a tiny speck of land in the middle of a vast trackless ocean.
01:30It was a great adventure that could possibly end disastrously. Nobody knew it.
01:35Behind the adventure were hundreds of men and women, from the famous to the unknown.
01:42Like the NASA engineers and astronauts who would later put a man on the moon, these earlier aviation pioneers were trying to achieve the impossible in less than a decade.
01:53Bill, it's a go.
01:57They had begun in 1927 with a single, 90-mile airmail route.
02:02Now, just eight years later, they stood at the water's edge, poised to vault a vast and dangerous ocean.
02:10China Clipper, are you ready?
02:13China Clipper
03:26His countryman Roland Garros crossed the Mediterranean in 1913.
03:33And World War I was no sooner over than the press turned its attention to the next aviation milestone.
03:40The U.S. Navy's attempt to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
03:43Among those following the attempt was 20-year-old Juan Tripp, fresh out of the Naval Air Corps and now back in school at Yale.
03:52Even with a string of ships to guide them over the long leg to the Azores, two of the three Navy seaplanes came down at sea.
04:01The third took 11 days to reach Lisbon.
04:05Yet Tripp remained sanguine.
04:12The successful crossing, he wrote in a college magazine, showed that a flight across the ocean is a perfectly safe and sane commercial proposition.
04:20He would spend the next 16 years pursuing that goal.
04:26The funny thing about Tripp, it wasn't about making money.
04:29It was really about conquering the world.
04:32Tripp would go on to become one of the most influential airline executives of the 20th century, the head of Pan American World Airways.
04:43One Tripp was Pan American, imperious, aloof, arrogant, and visionary.
04:51Tripp's achievement, it's enormous. Aviation is the way it is today because of him.
04:57But Tripp did not do it alone.
05:00Among his key collaborators were Charles Lindbergh, whose solo flight across the Atlantic electrified the world.
05:06Igor Sikorsky, a brilliant airplane designer who had fled Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
05:15And an unheralded young engineer named Hugo Luteritz, who thought radio might have a role to play in aviation.
05:24Four men, each with his own dream.
05:28But when they joined forces, they would help transform the nascent aviation industry.
05:33Tripp looked at aviation in the 1920s and said, yeah, it looks like this now.
05:39But he never wavered in his belief that with the help of people like Lindbergh, Sikorsky, and Luteritz,
05:46he could grab it and mold it and reshape it into something fundamentally different.
05:55Tripp had a vision, but he also had a tenacity to go with his vision.
05:59He had this great assurance that he could make this happen.
06:11On a rainy morning in May 1927, hundreds of aviation enthusiasts gathered at a Long Island airfield
06:18to watch a little-known pilot named Charles Lindbergh take off on his attempt to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
06:25Lindbergh was the latest contestant for a $25,000 prize for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris.
06:37Six men had already died in the attempt, but the aviators kept coming.
06:42Most of the groups competing for the Orteague prize were doing it with multi-engine aircraft,
06:52large ground crews, enormous amounts of equipment.
06:56Others had at least two, but usually three, even four people aboard to relieve them when you get tired at the controls
07:04because the flight would be a matter of a day and a half.
07:09And the safe thinking said that you need more than one person to do that.
07:14Lindbergh rejected that way of thinking.
07:18He was flying a single-engine aircraft, and he was also flying alone.
07:24He was dubbed the Flying Fool.
07:30Everybody thought that he was going to take off from Long Island, vanish into the fog, and never be heard from again.
07:41And, of course, he proved them all wrong.
07:45After 33 and a half hours in the air, Lindbergh arrived over Paris in darkness, with Le Bourget field lit up below.
07:55He finally lands to tumultuous applause and this just surge of humanity.
08:06Paris went collectively nuts for Lindbergh, and the rest of the world quickly followed suit.
08:15When Lindbergh arrived back in New York, not only was there a huge crowd waiting for him at the dock,
08:22but the harbor itself was teeming with ships.
08:27He was given a ticker tape parade that apparently exceeded anything before or since in New York City.
08:34A crowd estimated at 4 million people turned out to greet him.
08:39Which was greater than the population of Manhattan.
08:42Just amazing.
08:43But amidst the hoopla, Lindbergh took time out to meet with an unemployed airline executive named Juan Tripp,
08:51whom he'd met during his days as an airmail pilot.
08:54Tripp goes to meet with Lindbergh, and he manages to talk to him for a few minutes, probably as pilot to pilot.
09:00Hello, Charles.
09:01Congratulations on the flight.
09:03It's a great day for aviation.
09:04And Lindbergh complains that everybody's all over him.
09:06He doesn't know what to do.
09:08May I make a suggestion?
09:09Of course.
09:10He actually counsels Lindbergh, don't do anything until you've thought through all the possibilities.
09:16Don't even negotiate with me.
09:17And Tripp advises him to get a lawyer, because Tripp had a proposition for him.
09:23Tripp's first airline had gone bust.
09:26He'd been fired from his second.
09:27But a week later, when they met again, the 28-year-old businessman calmly laid out his plans for the new airline he was about to form.
09:37We think that that's the next step towards an airline that can span the world.
09:41The world.
09:42Tripp was a big young man, slightly heavy but tall.
09:47And he carried himself and behaved like a much older man.
09:52It would be an international airline, flying first to the Caribbean, then to South America, and finally across the oceans.
10:00But, Juan, I just crossed the Atlantic.
10:02For a plane carrying mail and passengers, it's thousands of miles between stops.
10:06How do you intend to do that?
10:07By the time we're ready to take on the oceans, there'll be a whole new generation of planes.
10:12Dad had this aura of confidence.
10:15He would present his argument, let it sink in, and then be quiet.
10:20What would Mr. Lindbergh's role be in this new airline?
10:24Tripp is offering Lindbergh at this point a contract and $10,000 a year to be paid by an airline that doesn't even exist yet.
10:31But he's a pilot.
10:33He wants to explore the world as a pilot.
10:36And Tripp is offering him the world.
10:38Sounds intriguing.
10:40I think what Lindbergh sees in Tripp is a kindred spirit.
10:43They're both passionate about the possibility of aviation.
10:47He was looking at him and saying, here, come with me.
10:51Let's build this together.
10:53By the end of the meeting, Lindbergh had agreed to work as a technical advisor to the new airline.
10:59Send us your proposal.
11:00It was a huge coup for Tripp, one that would pay many dividends as he pursued his lifelong ambition.
11:08Tripp had been hooked on aviation since the age of 10, when his father, a New York investment banker, took him to see a demonstration flight by Wilbur Wright.
11:17Wilbur Wright took off in Manhattan, flew south along the Hudson River, and then around the Statue of Liberty and back.
11:29And literally hundreds of thousands of people lined the shoreline.
11:35The flight around the Statue of Liberty was a huge event in terms of the number of people who, for the first time, saw someone fly.
11:45It would surely have captured Juan Tripp's 10-year-old imagination.
11:51And it stayed with him for the rest of his life.
11:53Tripp still had flight on his mind when he arrived at Yale in the fall of 1917, just months after America had entered World War I.
12:07A lot of his classmates, particularly the upperclassmen, were already very interested in aviation.
12:11And a lot of these young boys went off to Europe and flew for the Allies.
12:18Tripp followed their lead, quitting Yale to train as a Navy pilot.
12:22But the war ended just as he was about to ship out.
12:27Back at school, he was active in the Yale Flying Club, played football, and rode crew.
12:34He was very proud of being an oarsman, being a football player, and through both of those sports, he met a great number of people,
12:41and they became lifelong friends and important to him in life.
12:45People like the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Rockefellers, the big names in American finance,
12:51the guys that had made the huge fortunes.
12:54They became great friends and actually supported Juan Tripp.
12:57Throughout his career, they got caught up in the sense of passion of what the airline industry could become.
13:03After graduation, Tripp went to work on Wall Street.
13:07He sold bonds, which didn't excite him.
13:10In fact, it drove him nuts.
13:12He called them the dullest years of his life.
13:14Finally walked out the door, determined that, for better or worse, he would make his future in aviation.
13:21Tripp had no idea what a struggle it would be.
13:25World War I and the demands of aerial combat had led to bigger, faster, and more durable planes.
13:31But it wasn't clear what they'd be good for in peacetime.
13:36A lot of these airplanes are simply sold off to the public.
13:40They're bought up by people who go off barnstorming, taking people on thrill rides.
13:47Others used their war surplus planes to provide entertainment at air shows.
13:52After World War I, aviation quickly developed a reputation as a kind of carnival sideshow.
14:01You paid money to sit in bleachers and get your tonsils sunburned by staring up at these daredevils who were performing these acrobatics.
14:10And frankly, one of the reasons why people went was they wanted to see people risk their necks.
14:16And sometimes they were not disappointed.
14:18The United States government was also pioneering airmail during this period.
14:28The incredibly dangerous job of flying the mail across mountains, through storms, through snow and sleet, and yes, even gloom of night.
14:40I remember being there at the start of the first night airmail flight in 1925.
14:44The plane was a frail, temperamental wartime DH-4, in whose box-like nose a Liberty engine clattered away, carried a hatful of mail and a few hours' gas.
14:57The lone pilot had no blind flying instruments, and few safety aids except for his parachutes.
15:07Ahead of him were no marked airways, no chained airports, no radio beams to guide him.
15:14And his weather service was a head cocked aloft in a prayer.
15:17Of the first 40 pilots hired by the mail service, something like three-quarters of them were dead within eight years.
15:28So people definitely associated the airplane with death by the 1920s.
15:36Aviation is exciting, it's thrilling, but it does not make you want to get in an airplane yourself.
15:42It really wasn't a serious proposition in terms of transportation.
15:48Yet a few people, including young Juan Tripp, had an unshakable faith in the future of flight.
15:55Tripp saw beyond the hullabaloo and the spectacle of aviation.
15:59Somehow he sensed there was a great commercial future to this, the transport of passengers.
16:04Leaving Wall Street behind, Tripp formed a company called Long Island Airways.
16:09And this is the first time he goes to the well with his wealthy friends from Yale.
16:14Tripp bought seven war surplus seaplanes for $3,500,
16:19and began offering New York socialites rides to their summer homes in the Hamptons and down to Atlantic City.
16:26Interestingly, when he started that service, he hired other people to be the pilots.
16:32Pilots was somebody you hired like chauffeurs, and he wanted to be seen as something different.
16:39So almost from the beginning, Tripp saw that his role would be on the business side of aviation.
16:46In May 1925, Tripp met the younger sister of one of his fraternity brothers, a 20-year-old brunette named Elizabeth Stettinius.
16:55Invited to spend the weekend at the Stettinius home on Long Island, Tripp brought his golf clubs.
17:03Dad was an avid golfer, a very good golfer.
17:06My mother was a pretty good golfer herself.
17:09And they got to the third hole, so the story goes.
17:12And Dad hit first and hit a nice long drive, as he always did.
17:16And my mother came up to her tees, and she just whacked one.
17:19And he just turned and said, wow, she hits a hell of a ball.
17:24Juan and Betty would see a lot of each other over the next few years.
17:29But Betty's father, a partner at J.P. Morgan & Company, would not give his blessing to the match
17:36until Tripp abandoned his crazy flying schemes and found a real career.
17:42Aviation was for reckless young men who liked to walk on wings and barnstorm and crash airplanes.
17:48And here Tripp was trying to put on a business basis something that wasn't a business.
17:54The Stettinius family were convinced that he was a nice guy.
17:59If he would go into a reasonable occupation, undoubtedly he would be very successful.
18:04But they saw this young man as being close to a lunatic in terms of trying to earn a respectable living.
18:10Tripp's prospects, for marriage and career, dimmed further when Long Island Airways went on a business after two summers.
18:19His was a common experience in the 1920s.
18:23Commercial aviation in the United States was a struggle.
18:27There wasn't much of a market and passengers were few and far between.
18:32These little airlines were starting up all over the place and going bankrupt almost as fast as they started.
18:38There was no stable way to make a living in the air in the 1920s until the government begins to delegate mail contracts to the airlines.
18:51The turnaround in aviation's fortunes came when Congress passed the Air Mail Act of 1925.
18:58A lot of people don't realize that in the early days, the entire airline industry, it was built by the post office.
19:06Instead of operating its own planes to deliver the mail, the post office would turn over the job to commercial carriers, awarding contracts for specific routes.
19:15And that suddenly made it a money making business.
19:19What this did for the airlines was to give them a reliable source of income.
19:25And this was just what Tripp was looking for.
19:27So he goes back to some of his wealthy friends from Yale and asks them to back him in another enterprise to secure the air mail contract from Boston to New York.
19:36Facing formidable competition from a group headed by Governor John Trumbull of Connecticut, Tripp engineered a merger into a company called Colonial Air Transport.
19:48Colonial won the New York Boston route and named Tripp its managing director, a decision the board would soon regret.
19:56Instead of delivering the mail in single engine planes, as its government contract required, Tripp ordered much larger tri-motor planes, made by Dutch designer Tony Fokker.
20:10So he's figuring, if I can get a bigger plane, I can accommodate passengers and I can accommodate the mail.
20:17Tripp was already thinking of international travel, particularly to Latin America.
20:21He went on a junket to Cuba in a Fokker trimotor piloted by Fokker himself.
20:27Before they even delivered the first air mail packages, he's already all the way down to Cuba thinking about the possibilities of this future airline.
20:36Is that who you want, running your business?
20:39When the company struggled to make money on the short New York-Boston route, Tripp got into a dispute with the board over how much to bid for a longer route to Chicago.
20:48When the question was put to a stockholder vote, he lost.
20:53So he was out.
20:55They gave him back his investment and told him to take his Fokker trimotors with him.
20:59This setback only reinforced the Stettinius family's misgivings about the young man pursuing Elizabeth.
21:05They saw Tripp as somebody who had only failures behind him. He was 26 years old and obviously going nowhere.
21:12And they shipped her off to Europe, which is what you did with young girls at that time if you wanted to break up a romance.
21:19So here he's out of a job, no future and no girlfriend.
21:25My dearest Betts, I can't tell you how much I miss you or how lost I feel with you on the ocean going farther and farther away from me every minute.
21:34I miss you more and more each day with a sort of dull pain that takes all the joy out of life.
21:43The letters show a very human side to both of them and also this deep affection between the two of them.
21:50My dearest Juan, how will I ever bear being away from you for even a week to say nothing of the months I'll be abroad.
21:58I just couldn't stand it if I didn't realize you're going to miss me too.
22:05If it wasn't for the picture I have of you on a little table beside my bed, I'd be absolutely sunk.
22:13Betty's departure only increased Tripp's resolve to make a success in aviation.
22:18He was discouraged often, but he was never discouraged to the point that he gave up hope in the future of aviation.
22:29Then came the event that changed everything.
22:33Up in the sky.
22:37After his triumphant return to New York, Lindbergh embarked on an aerial tour of the country.
22:42The American people poured out their adoration in poems, paintings, knickknacks, songs.
22:53Even a popular dance step renamed the Lindy Hop.
22:58The scope of this Lindbergh mania was just extraordinary.
23:04It also signaled a new day for aviation.
23:07Lindbergh's flight in 1927 is that moment for aviation, when it goes from being daredevil stuff to being, this is serious, this is the future.
23:21For all that they'd called him the flying fool, he was an incredibly sober, careful person.
23:29Lindbergh's successful flight had been due not to luck, but to his obsessive pursuit of a unique strategy.
23:40Lindbergh's plan was to maximize fuel and minimize all other weight.
23:45There's even a story about him trimming out the unnecessary parts of the map that he was taking with him.
23:51He made being a pilot boring, which is terrible if you're trying to stage an air show, but it's essential if you're running an airline and trying to convince people to put their lives in your hands.
24:06People started to think, well, if Lindbergh can cross the Atlantic on one engine, then maybe it's safe for me to fly a shorter distance over land in a multiple engine plane.
24:18Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic catalyzed what became known as the Lindbergh boom.
24:25Not just wealthy people, but even small individuals wanted to own an aviation stock, so it looked like there was a real business there to invest in.
24:36Sensing his opportunity, Trip, a two-time failure as a domestic airline executive, formed a new company and turned his attention to the international air mail routes the post office would soon begin awarding.
24:53His first target was a 90-mile route from Key West Florida to Havana, Cuba.
25:00But two other companies had their eyes on the same prize.
25:03Major Henry Hap Arnold of the Army Air Service had founded a company called Pan American Airways,
25:10now being run by former military officer John Montgomery and his partner Richard Bevier.
25:18Also in the running was noted aviation financier Richard Hoyt, a partner in the Wall Street investment firm Hayden Stone.
25:27Trip joined forces with Hoyt and set out to engineer a merger with Pan Am.
25:33Well, we like the position we're in. General Arnold's stature gives us the inside track on the route.
25:39But the post office isn't going to award this route to anyone unless we consolidate.
25:43That's not what we're hearing.
25:45Gentlemen, why don't you come take a spin on my yacht? You can hear it from Glover himself.
25:50Under pressure from assistant postmaster Irving Glover, the three groups agreed to work out a merger.
25:55And the post office awarded the Key West Havana airmail contract to Pan Am.
26:02But service must begin three months later, on October 19th.
26:08As the merger negotiations dragged on that summer, Trip sent updates to Betty in Paris.
26:15The letters expressed this frustration about what was going on in the founding of the company,
26:20all the arguments that are going on, the ups and downs.
26:22When I wrote you last Thursday, everything looked rosy.
26:28This morning, the deal is off.
26:33Don't be discouraged, dear.
26:36I know you'll beat the game.
26:38I just feel it in my bones.
26:40At one point in September or October, Hayden Stone pulled out totally and the whole financing fell apart.
26:47Darling, I don't want this to come between us.
26:50Perhaps it might be better to acquire a little more experience in a business with a more assured future.
26:55He was writing to her saying, I'm going to go do something else.
26:59Maybe I have to go back to Wall Street.
27:02What do you mean starting again? Do you mean in some field other than aviation?
27:06He said on a couple of occasions, I can't make it go.
27:12And she would come back and say, you can't quit.
27:15You're going to make it work. I have such confidence in you.
27:19Instead of quitting, Trip redoubled his efforts.
27:22Dear Dick, Trip was a fantastic negotiator. Even at the age of 28, he just kept on and on and on with whatever he had that you didn't have.
27:34One thing you should consider is no airline can deliver mail to Cuba without landing rights.
27:39What he had in this case was a trump card, exclusive landing rights in Cuba, secured from President Gerardo Machado during that junket that so angered his bosses at Colonial.
27:50How would you see this merger working?
27:54This will take some time to sort out, but there will be roles for all of us.
28:00When the three groups finally agreed to the terms of the merger, the company named Juan Trip its president and general manager.
28:08If you looked at the key players for this first foreign airmail contract, you've got Richard Hoyt, who is quite experienced and quite wealthy.
28:15You've got Hap Arnold and then his successor, John Montgomery.
28:17And then you've got 28-year-old Juan Trip, but he ends up outmaneuvering the two of them to ultimately become the head of Pan Am.
28:26But with the October 19th deadline looming, there was no time to celebrate.
28:32This merger actually comes together on October 13th, 1927.
28:37They've got six days now to consummate this particular airmail contract.
28:40That date of October 19th sat out there as a major problem.
28:45If he doesn't make that flight, he's got nothing.
28:49He had his Fokker trimotors in place, but the runway in Key West was flooded.
28:54He's got men down there trying to tamp down the Key West airport, which it turns out is practically a swamp.
29:04It's full of holes.
29:06Every time they would grade it and make it almost serviceable, the rains would come and wash it away again.
29:11And the clock is ticking away.
29:12In desperation, Trip had an idea.
29:20Operator, get me Key West.
29:22A seaplane could land off Key West and in the harbor at Havana.
29:26So now he has people scouring every city for miles around, begging for some pilot to come down to Key West and carry the mail to Havana.
29:34And finally, at the last moment, appeared this angel in disguise with a Fairchild float plane.
29:42For $200, the pilot was persuaded to add a stop to his planned route.
29:48They fling the mail bags on board and he takes off and an hour later lands in Havana and unloads the mail and keeps going.
29:56That's the shortest footnote in aviation history.
29:59His name is Cy Caldwell.
30:00That's the one mention of him you'll ever see.
30:04Hello and goodbye, Cy Caldwell.
30:07But he saved Pan Am.
30:09Nine days later, a Fokker tri-motor began regular air mail service to Havana, where it was christened the General Machado, after the Cuban president.
30:19Dad sent this wonderful telegram to my mother.
30:23Business completely settled, departing Florida Saturday, returning two weeks to meet your boat.
30:31And when she saw the words, first flight's successful, she broke down into tears, just happiness and joy.
30:37Sailing Mauritania, November 19th, counting the hours. Love, Betts.
30:47Even with the Havana service underway, Trip realized he had a problem.
30:54Land planes like Fokker tri-motors would encounter more swampy runways as he worked his way south.
31:01Seeking a more adaptable plane, he reached out to a Russian aircraft designer now working on Long Island.
31:10His name was Igor Sikorsky.
31:13In Russia, Sikorsky had been an aviation legend, building four-engine bombers for the Russian army in World War I.
31:20But after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Sikorsky's close ties to the military made him a target of the Bolsheviks.
31:31He was now an enemy of the people.
31:34Warned he was on a list of people to be executed, Sikorsky fled.
31:39He actually escaped with his life and only with his life.
31:43He was advised by friends, get away, come back when all this settles down.
31:51So he gathered up his plans and set his sights on America.
31:57But when he arrived in New York, Sikorsky discovered that America's glut of cheap war surplus planes left little demand for new aircraft.
32:06For four years, he supported himself by teaching math and astronomy in New York's tight-knit Russian immigrant community.
32:16Eventually, this group of Russian immigrants convinced him to get back into the aviation field.
32:24Nearly 30 workers, many of them out of a job anyways, threw their lot in with him.
32:29Sikorsky set up shop on a Long Island chicken farm and began building a large passenger plane.
32:38The chicken coop served as the machine shop, but with no hanger, the plane had to be built outside, weather permitting.
32:47The band of supporters all lived on the chicken farm, kind of in a communal fashion, and worked together as a team to build this transport.
32:56Funds were so short that discarded hospital bed frames, scrounged from the local dump, were built into the fuselage of Sikorsky's first American plane.
33:07As I look back at that time, I sometimes wondered that we had the courage to go on with such makeshift parts.
33:15But in fact, the airplane was very strong.
33:18Even so, Sikorsky found no buyers. There was simply no market for large passenger planes.
33:27By 1927, Sikorsky had designed nine American airplanes, all of them technically sound, but had few orders to show for it.
33:40His little company was struggling to survive.
33:46Worse, his effort to win the Orteague prize had ended tragically, when his S35 was unable to get airborne with its heavy load of fuel.
33:55Rene Funk and his co-pilot were able to scramble free.
34:03But seconds later, the plane burst into flames, trapping the other two crew members in the inferno.
34:09Sikorsky, of course, was devastated by this, the loss of life most especially, and his inability to make sure that the aircraft was robust and ready for the flight.
34:26I can only imagine the anguish that he would go through.
34:29It would be easy to think that now would be a good time to give it up.
34:36It's just not going to happen.
34:41But the excitement caused by Lindbergh's triumphant flight had given Sikorsky new hope.
34:48A rapid development in aviation appeared to be around the corner.
34:52So we determined to make one more effort to create a new plane.
34:55Sikorsky knew that many parts of the world, like Key West, still had no suitable runways.
35:03However, New York City, Boston, Havana, Chicago, L.A., all these major cities are all on big waterways.
35:14So he has an idea that that is really where commercial aviation is going to get its foothold.
35:21He started experimenting with amphibious aircraft.
35:28These are aircraft that can land on water and also have the capability of dropping wheels and landing on land.
35:36The fruit of Sikorsky's experiments was a plane called the S-38.
35:40This is a bizarre-looking airplane.
35:46It has a parasol wing that is attached to the rest of the aircraft only by struts and wires.
35:54It has a fuselage slung below that.
35:57And that started with a boat hull, the bottom of a boat with a long snout in the front.
36:01Between the two, attached to the struts, are two engines.
36:07And the tail surfaces are way back behind the aircraft, added on what looks like an afterthought with these tail booms.
36:16One critic called it a collection of airplane parts flying in formation.
36:21It's kind of an ugly duckling.
36:26But it worked.
36:28It was able to carry eight passengers.
36:32And even though it was ugly in many people's minds, it served the purpose.
36:38This was an airplane that could land almost anywhere in rivers and swamps and open sea.
36:45Turned out to be a superb airplane and versions of it are still flying today.
36:49Somehow, my grandfather knew he was on to something.
36:55And he didn't build one.
36:57He built ten.
36:59Before the ten came off the line, there was an order for ten more.
37:02The S-38 became the first real American success.
37:09And in fact, his most successful aircraft in his designing career.
37:15More than a hundred S-38s would ultimately be built at Sikorsky's new Long Island factory.
37:22Sold to explorers, corporate executives, and airlines around the world.
37:27The S-38 finally put Sikorsky's company on a firm financial footing.
37:34And it was the foundation of a long relationship with Juan Tripp,
37:39who would buy nearly 40 of the planes for Pan Am.
37:42It was a particularly useful airplane for Latin America,
37:46where you had bodies of water to cross, you had ports to land in,
37:50you had inland destinations where there were no airfields, only a little dirt runway.
37:54And the S-38 was suitable for all that.
37:57So it was a perfect plane for the time.
38:03While Sikorsky was developing his new plane,
38:06Pan Am was discovering the challenges of operating an airline in the tropics,
38:11without a communications system of its own.
38:14When a plane took off in Key West, they would send a telegram to Havana,
38:20saying the plane was on its way.
38:21Invariably, the telegram would get to Havana after the plane landed.
38:27These problems didn't sit well with Pan Am's chief engineer, Andre Priester.
38:32Priester was a little gnome-like man, a bald-headed Dutchman,
38:37who had immigrated to the United States in their early 20s.
38:40And he spoke imperfect English,
38:43and the pilots were always mocking the way he spoke.
38:45But the man had a vision of what aviation should be, could be.
38:51And he demanded perfection.
38:53He would fire people on the spot for being slovenly or disrespectful
38:57or being out of uniform.
38:59Priester was a nut about safety.
39:02He was a nut about cleanliness.
39:03He was a nut about so many small things, which made Pan Am what it was.
39:11Realizing the young airline would need a communications system to meet his high standards.
39:17Juan, we need radio down here right now.
39:20Priester summoned the engineer who'd been trying to interest Pan Am in radio.
39:24Yes, get that Luderitz fellow from the RCA.
39:28For three years, Hugo Luderitz had been trying to sell aviation executives
39:34on another emerging technology, radio.
39:37The first transatlantic radio message was 1901, the first flight 1903.
39:43These were two technologies starting out together.
39:46Nobody had any idea where or if they would go.
39:49Young men at the turn of the 20th century loved playing with radio.
39:55They would make their own radio sets.
39:58And it was just magical.
40:00They could hear something out of the air.
40:03I was an amateur radio man by the age of 13.
40:06I got one of these cardboard Quaker Oats oatmeal containers
40:10and wrapped wire around it to make a coil.
40:14That was my first radio set.
40:15He was as in love with radio as Tripp and the others were with airplanes and aviation.
40:23In 1919, Luderitz was hired by the brand new Radio Corporation of America.
40:30With broadcasting still a few years off, RCA put him to work doing basic research
40:36into the mysterious properties of radio waves.
40:40Then, in 1925, RCA asked Luderitz to investigate a potential new market.
40:47They said, look into this aviation thing.
40:51It might be interesting from a business point of view.
40:54So what I had to do was to go out and get the feel of the thing.
40:57Luderitz took to riding in the airmail planes, many of them biplanes still left over from World War I.
41:05He'd sit on top of the mailbags.
41:08And he realized very early on that the pilots were constantly lost.
41:12Whenever they ran into lousy weather, they didn't know where the hell they were.
41:14So they would come down and fly along a railroad track until they could read the sign on the station.
41:21That was navigation at the time.
41:26And he saw that radio could help them.
41:30They'd be in contact with their base, wherever that was,
41:34and then maybe there was some way to navigate via radio.
41:38For nearly a decade, ships had been using radios as beacons to find their way.
41:42But the radio sets of the day were enormous.
41:47No airplane existed that could lift them off the ground.
41:50I asked RCA for $25,000 to develop some lightweight radios for use on airplanes.
41:55RCA turned that down.
41:58They said aviation was not ready for spending that kind of money.
42:02So Luderitz built his own prototypes and offered them to the airlines.
42:07But he found no takers.
42:09Until the phone call from Pan Am.
42:13Luderitz arrived in Key West in July 1928.
42:17RCA had given him two months to test his belief that radio had a role to play in aviation.
42:23It was the only nibble he had got so far.
42:27And he began to put his theories and his researches and his contraptions into practice.
42:32Flying between Key West and Havana, he searched for the radio frequencies that would best cut through the static of the tropics.
42:42I couldn't do the flying and the ground measurements at the same time, so I relied on the crew to do the air work.
42:46All the flight mechanic had to do was hold down the telegraph key at certain times.
42:52But I couldn't depend on the man in the air because he had other things to do.
42:56And to him, this radio business was secondary.
42:59So Luderitz sent for radio engineer Ferris Sullinger from New York.
43:06Aboard the plane, one of them would press the telegraph key, while the other would listen on the ground to identify the frequencies that came through best.
43:17After three or four flights across there, I said to Priester one night, Andre, you've been in aviation longer than I have, but it seems to me that something has to be done about navigation.
43:31What do you mean?
43:33The pilots think they're flying in a straight line, but they're not.
43:37Depending on wind conditions, we've made landfalls as far east as Matanzas.
43:42In other cases, we've wound up 60 or 70 miles down the coast west of Havana.
43:46Luderitz had put his finger on one of the challenges Pan Am would face as it ventured out from the security of the American shore.
43:55When you're flying over land, you actually can see features on the ground.
43:59And in fact, over land, we tend to navigate by flying, particularly at the time, from feature to feature.
44:05When you're flying over water, often the water looks the same, so you don't really have a good way of knowing exactly where you are.
44:13In 1928, pilots would use a compass to point their planes in the right direction.
44:20But if there was a wind, a crosswind, what would happen is the airplane would drift off the course.
44:27Cuba was a big enough target that the pilots could easily compensate.
44:30The pilots would hit Cuba, have to figure out where they were, and go either left or right along the coast to find Havana.
44:40But on the return trip, Luderitz realized the tiny target of Key West made the margin for error much smaller.
44:47And he said to the priest there, we have to come up with a method to communicate with our airplanes and help them get to wherever they want to go.
44:57And I think I can do that.
45:00We're going to need a direction finder.
45:02Early radio manufacturers often sold their sets with antennas in the shape of a loop, just as a way to save space.
45:11But engineers quickly discovered that the orientation of a loop had a profound effect on how well it picks up an incoming radio wave.
45:18If I rotate it so the wave is coming right at the edge of the loop, I'll get the maximum signal.
45:25Turn the loop 90 degrees, and the radio signal falls off to nothing.
45:30So by rotating the loop and listening to the strength of the signal, I can figure out what direction the wave is coming from.
45:38You can use that as a way to navigate.
45:39With Solinger's help, Luderitz set out to apply these principles to flight, using a loop antenna to take bearings on a radio signal from a plane, and thereby determine the plane's location.
45:58All right, listen up, guys.
46:00Luderitz next tried to sell Pan Am's pilots on the benefits of radio.
46:04I began flying with the airmail pilots three years ago, and I could tell immediately that radio could be helpful to help figure out where the hell you're going.
46:13I've designed a set of lightweight receivers and transmitters.
46:17But they were cool to the newfangled technology.
46:20And Solinger and I would love it if you fellows would help try them out.
46:24None more so than Robert Fatt.
46:26I've thrown better pieces of radio equipment off my planes than you can build.
46:29There was nothing really like this in aviation at the time, so when he tried to communicate that there was another way to navigate, it was actually hard for the pilots to relate to.
46:44A few weeks later, Fatt took off in the General Machado on a late afternoon flight from Havana to Key West.
46:51And my father was on board as the radio operator.
46:58The pilots in those days, they would go up to approximately 10,000 feet.
47:03And because it was only 90 miles in distance, they could see Sankey light normally.
47:12Visibility had been good when they left Havana.
47:14But 20 minutes into the flight, they ran into a thick haze.
47:20Fatt dropped to a lower altitude in search of clearer air.
47:24To no avail.
47:27Visibility poor.
47:30No sign of Key West yet. Stand by.
47:33Look at that side for Sankey light.
47:36An hour into the flight, they still hadn't spotted Key West.
47:40I used the radio transmitter to give the people on the ground a running account of everything we were doing.
47:48Things running smoothly.
47:50Have not sighted anything yet.
47:53Andre, something's wrong.
47:55They should be here by now.
47:57That's holding them up.
47:59Low visibility.
48:01You can't see anything.
48:02The receiver that had been in the aircraft was on the ground in Key West for repairs.
48:08He couldn't receive, but he could send.
48:12So the people in Key West were very aware that the plane was in trouble.
48:17You see anything out there?
48:22It normally took an hour and 15 minutes to fly back.
48:25But after an hour and 45 minutes, Fatt still saw nothing.
48:28Based on the winds measured at takeoff, the pilot decided he must be east of the Florida Keys.
48:35So he headed northwest, expecting to find them.
48:39Fatt turning northwest in search of Keys.
48:41Using Luteritz's loop antenna, Sollinger could tell that Fatt had turned in the wrong direction
48:48and was now headed out over the Gulf of Mexico.
48:50It turns out that the wind had actually blown them to the west, so when he turned to the west,
48:57they just got further away from land.
48:59He's heading over the Gulf.
49:01Can't they vol?
49:03We can't, because the receiver is right here.
49:06He's acting up yesterday, and so we brought it back for repairs.
49:10We have no way of communicating with him.
49:13As Fatt continued scanning the horizon for any sign of land,
49:17Priester and the others continued to monitor the plane's radio transmissions in Key West.
49:24Afternoon turned to evening as the flight reached two hours.
49:29Two and a half.
49:31Three hours.
49:34Gas running low.
49:35Three and a half.
49:47We're going in.
49:49Hugo, we're going to make a water landing. Prepare the passengers.
49:53Okay.
49:56Spotted tanker. Attempting to make water landing alongside. Stand by for further updates.
50:01The next thing I know, the lights went out.
50:13They're down.
50:15They're in the water.
50:17Luteritz himself was not cold, and when he comes to, he's inside the cabin, which is filling up with water.
50:23So I managed to get a lungful of air and pull myself forward.
50:26And I felt something slide underneath me, so I pulled it along too.
50:31It turned out to be one of the passengers.
50:34Four of the five men aboard were rescued by a nearby tanker, but the second passenger drowned, and Luteritz was hospitalized with a fractured pelvis.
50:51One. I have bad news.
50:56The plane was lost, and news stories describing the crash dealt another blow to the public's confidence in aviation.
51:05There's a huge black eye for Pan Am, because here's an airplane that, on only a 90-mile trip, wound up 300 miles off course.
51:14After the crash of the General Machado, even Trip's confidence was shaken.
51:20If a plane could crash 300 miles off course on a journey of 90 miles, how could he ever cross the oceans?
51:30When you start thinking about going across the ocean, you're talking about going thousands of miles.
51:37You were never going to be able to do that unless you had a precise way to navigate.
51:40This accident, more than anything else, convinced Trip that he needed to solve the problem of navigation.
51:47And to solve that problem, he needed Hugo Luteritz.
51:53After sending Trip a report on his findings...
51:56It's very impressive.
51:57It would be an assay.
51:59Andre?
52:01Luteritz got an urgent call from Andre Priester.
52:04Trip wanted to see him.
52:05How's the hair?
52:06Ah, still a bit gimpy, but much better.
52:09Should be fully mended in about a month or so.
52:11Uh, I'll have a martini too as well, thanks.
52:16Andre told me what happened in Key West.
52:19I want you to join Pan American to head up communications.
52:23Juan, you only have a few airplanes and one airmail route.
52:27That's not enough to keep me busy.
52:29We'll have a whole fleet of planes soon enough.
52:31Next year we'll be flying to South America and after that we'll cross the Atlantic and then the Pacific.
52:38Trip offered him a full-time job.
52:41And his reaction was, I know what I can do.
52:45I don't know what you can do.
52:47Maybe I'd be better off staying with RCA.
52:48My father was not really convinced yet that long-distance aviation had a future.
52:56Andre will have nobody else but you.
52:59Well, I'd have to talk it over with Alice.
53:05And I'd have to give some notice.
53:09That'd be fine.
53:11A few days later, Luteritz secured a leave of absence from RCA to join Pan Am.
53:19And at that point, Trip's dream of conquering the world became possible.
53:24In Lindbergh, he had a world-famous aviator who could pioneer Pan Am's new routes, lending enormous credibility to the young airline.
53:32In Sikorsky, he had a partner who could build the kinds of planes he would need.
53:40In Luteritz, he had the man who could develop the technology to guide those planes safely to their destinations.
53:48And by securing the Key West Havana route, he had taken the first step toward conquering a continent.
53:55Next time, on Across the Pacific.
54:03The United States really didn't have an aviation presence in Latin America, and we needed to get one fast.
54:10So, to guarantee U.S. presence in Latin America, we have to change the law.
54:16The meeting was really a turning point in American political and economic history.
54:21Can January give you enough time?
54:22He realized early on that all these battles were going to be won in Washington, not out in the boondocks.
54:29Step out for a moment.
54:30People would say it was collusion today between a business and the government, and it certainly was.
54:37He managed to capture the Caribbean, all of South America.
54:42Trip was not willing to just sort of pick an airplane out of the catalog.
54:47And we can have this ready in a year.
54:48He actually instigated the development and the design of the aircraft.
54:52This was a whole new thing in the aviation business.
54:55These flying boats thrust America into the forefront of air transport.
55:00Trip thought, I don't want to just conquer Central and South America.
55:04I want to conquer the world.
55:06Dad had a vision of making Pan Am a global airline.
55:09So his focus from the beginning was to cross the oceans.
55:10To learn more about the people, stories and technologies behind Across the Pacific,
55:11please visit our website at www.acrossthepacific.com.
55:13To learn more about the people, stories and technologies behind Across the Pacific,
55:14please visit our website at www.acrossthepacific.com.
55:16To learn more about the people, stories and technologies behind Across the Pacific,
55:23please visit our website at www.acrossthepacific.net.
55:27To learn more about the people, stories and technologies behind Across the Pacific,
55:31please visit our website at www.acrossthepacific.com.
55:44www.acrossthepacific.com.