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00:07Previously on Across the Pacific...
00:10Igor Sikorsky started experimenting with amphibious aircraft
00:15that can land on water and also have the capability
00:18of dropping wheels and landing on land.
00:21This was an airplane that could land almost anywhere,
00:23in rivers and swamps and open sea.
00:26The S-38 became the first real American success.
00:33Andre, something's wrong.
00:35They should be here by now.
00:37We're going in.
00:39The next thing I know, the lights went out.
00:45If a plane could crash 300 miles off course on a journey of 90 miles,
00:52how could he ever cross the oceans?
00:54Andre, something has to be done about navigation.
00:57Without radio navigation, Pan Am could go nowhere over open water.
01:02We're going to need a direction finder.
01:05In the early days, the entire airline industry,
01:08it was built by the post office.
01:10If you looked at the key players for this first foreign airmail contract,
01:14you've got Richard Hoyt, who is quite experienced and quite wealthy.
01:17You've got Hap Arnold and then his successor, John Montgomery.
01:20And then you've got 28-year-old Juan Tripp,
01:23but he ends up outmaneuvering the two of them
01:25to ultimately become the head of Pan Am.
01:28Juan Tripp was Pan American.
01:30Imperious, aloof, arrogant, and visionary.
01:35The funny thing about Tripp, it wasn't about making money.
01:39It was really about conquering the world.
01:46The young people that the world ran since the world ran into the world.
01:48The smell of God...
01:49The head of the world ran out,
01:51the spark of the mountain.
01:53Well, the unbelief was a little bit,
01:54and it was really about conquering the world.
01:55It was all for the killing of the people that were not ill
01:56to live for the world.
01:57The energy of my life was a little bit,
01:59and it was little bit more than never.
02:00It was really about god with it.
02:01It was really about an hour and a half.
02:32By late 1927, Pan Am president Juan Tripp was right where he wanted to be.
02:39Having landed America's first foreign airmail route from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba,
02:45he now had the inside track on all future international air routes from the United States.
02:51The world was his for the taking.
02:54But Tripp soon discovered the international arena posed even greater challenges
02:59than the cutthroat world of domestic aviation in which he had failed.
03:04On the international airways, America does not face small, independent airlines.
03:09Our competitors are great national air transport systems
03:13with the power and the prestige of their governments behind them.
03:15Many Western European governments were investing lavishly in state-run airlines
03:22that were really empowered to be kind of a single government-operated carrier.
03:27They received levels of government support that were far higher than anything
03:32the U.S. aviation industry was getting.
03:35The dilemma that Tripp faced was that foreign competition had government support,
03:41so that if he was going to crack that market, he was going to need support from his own government.
03:47But for much of the 1920s, Republican presidents had taken a hands-off approach to aviation,
03:54leaving America's fledgling airlines to flounder.
03:57Meanwhile, their European counterparts soared.
04:02We saw them spread their wings over the trade routes in Europe, Asia and Africa,
04:06with the French and the German companies even making their way across the Atlantic to South America.
04:12And while all this was underway, America did nothing.
04:16By the late 1920s, the success of European and in particular German airlines in Latin America
04:24was causing alarm in the U.S. government.
04:26It seemed an obvious impingement on the Monroe Doctrine,
04:31the idea that goes back to James Monroe, our fifth president.
04:35The Monroe Doctrine is essentially the principle that the United States has a kind of quasi-sovereignty
04:41over what goes on in the Western Hemisphere,
04:43and that Europe should remain hands-off when it comes to Latin America.
04:48James Monroe argued that the Western Hemisphere should be closed to further colonization by European powers,
04:55but also that the United States should maintain economic dominance in Latin America.
05:01And here, European airlines, backed by their governments, were flourishing.
05:05That's a wake-up call for the United States to begin to aggressively pursue air routes of their own.
05:11The biggest threat to U.S. supremacy in the region was an airline known as SCADA.
05:17Based in Colombia, it was largely controlled by German pilots, managers, and investors.
05:23Under the leadership of its suave Austrian director, Peter Paul von Bauer,
05:28SCADA had begun offering airmail and passenger service in the early 1920s,
05:34when most U.S. airlines were struggling to get airborne.
05:38By the late 20s, von Bauer was pushing hard to extend SCADA's service throughout the Caribbean,
05:45including a stop near the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal.
05:49The prospect of German aircraft flying over a waterway so vital to American interests
05:55sent a chill through Washington.
05:57The memory of war with Germany was very fresh in Americans' minds,
06:02and so U.S. military officials were extremely worried.
06:07And yet, they could not foresaw the establishment of commercial aviation
06:12in the Caribbean region forever.
06:15Von Bauer kept pressing his case,
06:18circulating a petition among U.S. corporate executives doing business in Colombia.
06:23A number of American businessmen who were in Latin America actually supported it,
06:30because airmail and air services would obviously benefit them.
06:34In November 1927, with pressure building for a decision,
06:39the State Department convened a special committee with representatives from the Army,
06:43Navy, Post Office, and the Treasury and Commerce Departments.
06:47Secretary of State Francis Kellogg chaired the meeting.
06:52The reason I've called you all here today is to get your thoughts on von Bauer and the SCADA business.
06:57Kellogg was particularly concerned about von Bauer's petition,
07:00which had been signed by virtually every American company doing business in Latin America.
07:05Gulp Oil, General Electric, DuPont.
07:10Frankly, it will be very difficult for us to refuse this request
07:13unless there is an American company ready to offer similar service.
07:17They needed to find another carrier that could serve that purpose,
07:22and therefore they could say no thank you to SCADA.
07:26Assistant Secretary of State Francis White asked if an American-owned company
07:31already operating in the Caribbean might be persuaded to help.
07:35To extend service to Central and South America.
07:37It's not that easy, Francis.
07:38Why not?
07:39Under current U.S. law, the Post Office is required to award all mail contracts to the lowest bidder.
07:45Why is that a problem?
07:47These European airlines in South America,
07:49they're backed by the treasuries of their country.
07:52France alone has put up almost $4 million.
07:55With that kind of financial backing,
07:58European companies would be able to bid low enough
08:01to win whatever new airmail routes the Post Office advertised.
08:05American companies will never have a chance.
08:07That's unacceptable.
08:09We've got to have Americans operating down there.
08:12The United States really didn't have an aviation presence in Latin America.
08:16We needed to get one, and we needed to get one fast.
08:20So, to guarantee U.S. presence in Latin America,
08:23we have to change the law to favor American companies.
08:28By the time the meeting adjourned, the committee had unanimously agreed.
08:32It was imperative to establish a U.S.-owned airline in Latin America as soon as possible.
08:38The meeting was really a turning point in American political and economic history.
08:42From then on, an American airline doing business in Latin America could be assured
08:47that it could get basically whatever it wanted from the federal government
08:50in terms of financial and diplomatic backing.
08:53Only one American airline was in a position to capitalize on this new government largesse,
09:00Pan Am, which had begun carrying mail to Cuba one month earlier.
09:05Juan Tripp wasted no time.
09:08The week after the aviation committee meeting, he was on a train for Washington.
09:12Joining him was John Hambleton, Pan Am's handsome, charming, Harvard-educated vice president,
09:20a decorated World War I fighter pilot.
09:22Tripp used people in many ways, and one of them was to put somebody like Hambleton forward
09:29in any sort of negotiation or meeting while he himself stayed in the background.
09:34Relying on Tripp's Yale connections to open doors, Hambleton met with Francis White at the State Department,
09:42Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, and officials in the War and Treasury Departments.
09:47In order for us to expand overseas, we're going to need to build all that ourselves.
09:51Meanwhile, Tripp met with Assistant Postmaster General Irving Glover,
09:55urging him to set the air mail rate high enough to make international service profitable.
10:00Dollar a mile is as far as I'm willing to go.
10:03Our investors will never go for that.
10:05You need to make it worth our while financially to expand beyond the borders of the United States.
10:10Early the next year, Congress passed the Foreign Air Mail Act,
10:14promising payments of up to $2 a mile for each overseas mail flight,
10:19regardless of how much mail the plane carried.
10:22These were exactly the terms Tripp had proposed.
10:26And that formula virtually guaranteed a profit to the successful bidder.
10:30The law also removed the requirement that each air mail contract be awarded to the lowest bidder.
10:37It doesn't have to go to the lowest bidder, but to the bidder who actually could serve the best interest of the country.
10:44And so that was a fundamental change.
10:46It basically enabled the United States government to choose which airline it wanted.
10:50Before long, the Aviation Committee, chaired by Tripp's fellow Yale alum, Frances White, was openly aiding Pan Am.
11:00The government had not simply acted to keep SCADTA and other foreign airlines out of Latin America.
11:06It had selected one airline that would be its representative in the region.
11:10From then on, Pan Am was effectively a chosen instrument of the United States in the realm of aviation.
11:17That spring, the post office advertised the new Canal Zone route,
11:22and a month later, awarded the contract to the only bidder,
11:26guaranteeing Pan Am more than $1 million in additional revenues each year.
11:31The upper-class Stetinius family might still have misgivings about the young man wooing Elizabeth,
11:38but there was no denying now that Juan Tripp had a business.
11:43In June 1928, Juan and Betty were married at the Stetinius Estate on Long Island,
11:49the 800 guests arriving by private yacht and chartered buses from the city.
11:54In Betty, Tripp had found a partner whose sparkling personality offset his reserve.
12:01She was a very warm-hearted woman who always left people thinking that they were the most important person in the world
12:09because of the attention that she lavished on them.
12:16My mother was a real silent but extremely important partner for Dad.
12:21She remembered everybody's name.
12:23He was hopeless remembering names.
12:24Juan Tripp wouldn't give the time of day to anyone who was not immediately important to him and his business.
12:34Dad was not a people person.
12:36He commanded huge respect because he was quietly just very sure of himself.
12:42But my mother was great with people.
12:44While he was quiet and silent and stubborn, she was effusive and responsive.
12:50She really was Juan Tripp's better half.
12:57Sincerely, JTT, and so on and so forth. Make sure it goes out in today's mail.
13:00With no time for a honeymoon, Tripp was back at work the following Monday.
13:05Rising passengers, we need to expand the Havana line.
13:07Driving his staff at a grueling pace.
13:10Oh, yes, let's add a 1 p.m. and add a return flight as well.
13:13There were new schedules to be drawn up and new bids to prepare.
13:17We need one of the S-38s for that run.
13:19Contact Sikorsky's office and have it delivered.
13:22There was equipment to be bought and new routes to map.
13:26He would keep secretaries at work until midnight in his office,
13:31typing up correspondence for the next day without so much as a thank you.
13:36He could be kind of a cold fish and he could certainly be distant.
13:39So the staff was shocked when, a few days before Christmas in 1928,
13:45Tripp sent out for refreshments, handed out bonus checks,
13:48and then began to speak to no one in particular.
13:52As we conclude our first full year, I'd like to say a few words about our future.
14:02We're going down the west coast of South America and up the east coast.
14:08After that, we'll cross the Atlantic and then the Pacific.
14:13We're going around the world.
14:14Far-fetched as it sounded, their shy, taciturn boss had shared his dream with them.
14:31The dream began to take shape just a month later,
14:35when Charles Lindbergh arrived in Miami to open the new airmail route to the Canal Zone.
14:4050,000 people jammed the roads,
14:43hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous aviator as he piloted the S-38,
14:48the latest creation of Russian-born designer Igor Sikorsky.
14:52Lindbergh's association with Pan Am added tremendous prestige
14:57to what was a very small and struggling operation.
15:01Here was the world's greatest hero, now a part of Tripp's airline.
15:06And Tripp shamelessly used that image of Lindbergh every place.
15:11Lindbergh's prestige rubbed off on Sikorsky, too,
15:14because, of course, Pan Am was using Sikorsky equipment,
15:18and Lindbergh was very much involved in that process.
15:22This was one of the happier times for my grandfather
15:26to have a successful design,
15:29actually pioneering these routes in conjunction with Lindbergh.
15:33It was really this pretty amazing,
15:38fateful collision of these great minds.
15:42After making seven flights over Miami,
15:46Lindbergh headed south to Panama.
15:49Thousands of people just came at every stop along the way.
15:53It was perfect for Juan Tripp, perfect for Lindbergh,
15:56and perfect for Igor Sikorsky.
15:58Seven months later, Juan and Betty Tripp joined Lindbergh
16:02and his new bride, Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
16:06aboard the S-38 for a triumphant tour of the Caribbean.
16:10They visited many of the countries
16:12to which Tripp hoped to be offering air service soon.
16:15And with Lindbergh at his side,
16:17and the press following their every move,
16:20the tour bestowed a priceless air of legitimacy
16:23on two-year-old Pan Am.
16:24Just the fact of having him at the helm
16:27of these pioneering Pan American airplanes
16:30gave Pan Am immense credibility.
16:33But as bright as Pan Am's future now looked,
16:37the airline was still missing one essential thing,
16:41a navigation system for guiding its plane safely
16:44over its growing network of routes.
16:48Radio engineer Hugo Luteritz was determined to create one.
16:51Likewise.
16:52How's the hair?
16:53Ah, still a bit gimpy, but much better.
16:56Still recovering from injuries sustained
16:58in the fatal crash of a Pan Am mail plane
17:00called the General Machado,
17:02he had left RCA to become Pan Am's communications director.
17:08Now, working with fellow engineer Ferris Selinger,
17:12he began building a radio navigation system
17:14by fashioning a wooden frame four feet square.
17:17And he wraps wire round and round and round and round all four sides.
17:24This would be what radio engineers called a loop antenna.
17:28The length of wire matched to the radio frequencies Luteritz had found most reliable.
17:34And then he goes and he buys a pie plate in the five and ten cents store,
17:38and that becomes his compass rose.
17:40We calibrated it to 360 degrees and nailed it to a stand underneath the loop.
17:46When attached to a radio receiver, the result was a direction finder,
17:51capable of pinpointing planes anywhere along their route between Key West and Havana.
17:56At about the time Luteritz was doing this work,
18:02the U.S. Department of Commerce was developing a system of radio beacons
18:06that sent out signals pilots could follow into American airports.
18:11What Luteritz did at the beginning was the reverse of what the Department of Commerce was doing.
18:16He had the loop on the ground and had the airplane transmit a signal.
18:20And by using that loop antenna, he could determine which direction the airplane was
18:26from the ground station in Key West.
18:28I felt strongly that at this early stage,
18:31it was no good to have the pilot doing his navigating in the air.
18:34You have a little engine fluctuation,
18:36and by the time you get back to navigation, you're way off course.
18:39Better to have the calculations done by someone sitting comfortably in a chair on the ground.
18:44But to take advantage of this tool,
18:47Luteritz needed the cooperation of Pan Am's pilots.
18:49If there's one thing the crash of the General Machado taught us,
18:54it's that radio will play a crucial role in the future of aviation.
18:58Had Sullinger had any way to communicate with the aircraft,
19:03when Fat changed course, he could have told us we were heading further out into the Gulf,
19:07we could have rerouted and landed safely.
19:10Nobody would have died.
19:12Even after the crash of the General Machado, it was a tough sell.
19:16Many of the early pilots were resistant to any form of instrument flying.
19:21They didn't necessarily trust the equipment,
19:24especially equipment that could be unreliable like the radio.
19:28What Hugo and I are going to do is design a system that allows us to track you by radio.
19:35And in fact, they were threatened by the navigation
19:40because the pilots were used to operating on their own,
19:44and now someone was looking over their shoulder and saying,
19:46oh, you're off course.
19:48If you wander off because of weather, wind, visibility,
19:53we will be able to stay in contact with you.
19:55The pilots did not like the fact that they were being controlled from the ground.
20:01This was a problem from day one.
20:05Luteritz found only one pilot willing to cooperate.
20:09I'll give it a go.
20:10His name was Ed Musick.
20:14To calibrate his navigation system,
20:17Luteritz painted a yellow cross on the roof of the airport office.
20:21Musick flew out a few miles and lined up a series of landmarks with the cross.
20:25Keep an eye out for that cigar factory, Alfonso.
20:27Sollinger would then hold down the plane's radio telegraph key,
20:32allowing Luteritz to take a bearing on the plane.
20:36From this data, Luteritz fashioned a navigational grid,
20:39dividing the Key West Havana flight path into a checkerboard of five mile squares.
20:45All we had to do was determine the direction of the signal,
20:48and we could tell if the plane was east or west of course.
20:51From there, they would send a Morse code signal to the airplane.
20:55We would send them a dot for every five miles off course they were to the east,
21:00a dash for every five miles off course to the west.
21:03And then the pilot could steer back towards the course line.
21:08It's not high technology, but nothing in aviation was high technology,
21:12at least not by our standards.
21:14At the time, it actually was pretty high tech.
21:17Just having the radios was extremely high tech.
21:20Pan Am was the first airline that even was thinking about using it for communication.
21:26So to use it for navigation was really out of the box.
21:29And it worked pretty good.
21:32Meanwhile, Tripp had set his sights on the next foreign airmail route,
21:36from Cuba to the Dominican Republic and beyond.
21:39A Dominican airline formed by American pilot Basil Rowe was already operating over much of this route.
21:47But while Rowe awaited the post office's decision,
21:51confident his foothold would win the day,
21:54Tripp was meeting with assistant postmaster Irving Glover.
21:57But many of the people behind West Indy are Dominicans.
22:00We don't know where their loyalties lie.
22:02Arguing that the nation's interests would best be served by an all-American company.
22:07He realized early on that all these battles were going to be won in Washington,
22:12not out in the boondocks where some daredevil pilot ran an airline.
22:17Pan Am won the route.
22:20While we had been developing an airline in the West Indies, Rowe said ruefully,
22:24our competitors had been busy on the much more important job of developing a lobby in Washington.
22:31Over the next two years, Pan Am's network of routes continued to snake southward.
22:36Helped in part by the post office.
22:40Glover let him see the bids of competitors.
22:46Step out for a moment.
22:50People would say it was collusion today between a business and the government, and it certainly was.
22:57Thank you for explaining Pan Am's position.
22:59They actually became a bit of a co-conspirator with Tripp so that he had an inside window into the competition in a way that others did not have.
23:09One reason, of course, for the relentless expansion of Pan Am was the continued support of the U.S. government.
23:15But we should also give credit to Tripp because he negotiated like nobody's business.
23:20He knew every trick in the book.
23:22To win the new air mail route to Mexico City, Tripp quietly bought a Mexican airline,
23:28knowing that Mexico would allow only a local company to carry mail within the country's borders.
23:33He gets to Latin America, and he runs into the Grace Steamship Company.
23:38Well, they're bigger than he is.
23:39What does he do?
23:41Tripp formed a Pan Am-Grace partnership known as Panagra to pursue air routes down the west coast of South America to Peru and beyond.
23:50When SCADA threatened to block Pan Am by denying landing rights in Colombia,
23:56Pan Am's lawyers worked with the State Department to draft America's first international air agreement,
24:03signed just in time for Tripp to bid on the new air mail route to Chile.
24:07Pan Am's business was international, not domestic.
24:11And so every new route required wrangling with a foreign government.
24:16Latin American governments were not always so eager to allow a U.S. airline to come in and fly in their countries.
24:24So it was really important that the State Department was giving so much diplomatic support to Pan Am.
24:31When a competitor threatened to underbid for the route to Peru and Chile,
24:35Tripp arranged for a letter of welcome to be delivered from Peru's president
24:39to newly elected American president Herbert Hoover during his goodwill tour of Latin America.
24:46You go right ahead with your plans, Hoover told Tripp's emissary.
24:50We'll make sure you get your airline.
24:52And so now Tripp had all of the western coast of South America.
24:57Tripp next turned his attention to South America's east coast.
25:01Here, he faced stiff competition from the New York, Rio, and Buenos Aires line, or NERBA,
25:07which was already operating over much of this territory.
25:10And so when the foreign airmail contracts were being awarded for that part of the world,
25:15they thought, hey, we have an inside track.
25:17But NERBA had spent heavily to establish the service,
25:21without having enough airmail revenue to cover the cost.
25:24We could use a little more time on the east coast bid.
25:27January give you enough time?
25:29That'd be fine.
25:30Tripp persuaded the post office to delay putting the airmail route out for bid,
25:35hoping his rival would spend itself into bankruptcy.
25:39Hit hard by the 1929 stock market crash,
25:43the NERBA board sold out to Pan Am for the bargain price of $2 million.
25:48When Tripp offered NERBA founder Ralph O'Neill a job managing Pan Am's new east coast division,
25:55O'Neill bitterly declined.
25:57You can steal my house, but you can't ask me to run it for you, he said.
26:02They were nice young men who thought they would like to run an international airline,
26:06but they really didn't know what it was all about.
26:08He managed to capture the Caribbean, all of Mexico, all of South America.
26:16He had bought out all of his competitors, one by one, as they failed.
26:20In less than three years, this 31-year-old executive had turned a single 90-mile airmail route
26:27into the most far-flung airline in the world,
26:31with 21,000 miles of routes through 29 countries.
26:36But Tripp was just getting started.
26:38Tripp wants to do more than haul the mail.
26:43He also wants to carry passengers,
26:46and he knows that that's going to require larger equipment.
26:49He realizes that more S-38s are not going to be the way
26:54that commercial air travel is going to succeed.
26:57The growth is going to be in bigger planes.
27:00The bigger the airplane, the more passengers you can carry.
27:03So he turns to Igor, even while the S-38s are still rolling off the line,
27:08and says, I need a 40-passenger ship, it's got to go half again as far.
27:13We need this plane in a year.
27:15If there was anybody Tripp could have asked that would have been able to make that kind of a leap
27:22in the space of a year, it was clearly Sikorsky.
27:26As a very young man in Russia, he had designed and built the world's largest air transport,
27:31the Ilya Mormets.
27:32So he, more than anybody else, is qualified to respond to one Tripp's request.
27:38Sikorsky responded to Tripp's tight timetable by basing his next plane,
27:42the S-40, on what he already knew.
27:45I felt that the best thing to do would be to build on the success of the S-38.
27:51So, as you can see...
27:53He takes the S-38 design, stretches the wings out, adds two more engines,
27:59makes a bigger fuselage.
28:00It's a giant S-38, ungainly by all measures.
28:07And I've added two...
28:08Lindbergh could not conceal his disappointment with the design.
28:12He thought it was retro.
28:14It wasn't modern enough.
28:15It wasn't sleek enough.
28:16This plane had lots of struts, each one representing drag, loss of range, loss of speed.
28:24All of those struts and wires and cables are holding the ship together,
28:28but they're slowing the plane down in flight.
28:31The engines hang from the wings like bottles hanging in a wine rack.
28:35And that's drag, too.
28:38I can just imagine Lindbergh like, really?
28:42Igor, it'll be like flying a forest through the air.
28:45You're right about resistance, Colonel.
28:47But I've designed it this way for a reason.
28:50This I know we could do.
28:52The S-38 has given us experience.
28:54Sikorsik himself talked about the art of the possible.
28:57And what was possible at that time required these braces and struts and things
29:02that made it look like a flying pterodactyl.
29:04And we believe that this should be the next step.
29:07After that, we will design the plane that you've suggested.
29:10It was a stopgap measure.
29:12Get a bigger plane out there.
29:15All right.
29:16But no more than two planes.
29:18When can we expect delivery?
29:20We can have the first plane ready for you by October.
29:22By ordering the S-40, which was truly the first great American flying boat, Tripp established
29:29himself not just as a buyer of airplanes for his airline, but he actually instigated the
29:35development and the design of it.
29:36He actually was one of the first to go to the aircraft manufacturers with specifications
29:42of what he wanted from them.
29:44He doesn't say, what do you have for me, but what I need from you.
29:48This was a whole new thing in the aviation business.
29:52No other airline, to my knowledge, caused a transport to be built for their purposes.
29:57Built at the new Sikorsky plant in Stratford, Connecticut, the S-40 was christened by Mrs.
30:04Herbert Hoover on Columbus Day, 1931, and went into service on Pan Am's South American routes.
30:12It was not a fast plane.
30:14It wasn't tremendously efficient, but it could fly 40 people from Miami down to Rio de Janeiro
30:20in six days.
30:22It changed everything.
30:24It could carry enough passengers to make money.
30:28Tripp named the plane the American Clipper, in memory of the swift sailing ships that had
30:34carried American goods overseas in the early 19th century.
30:38Tripp, from the very beginning, was oriented towards the Navy, and when he started envisioning
30:44planes of his own, he wanted to call them Clippers.
30:46He loved the whole idea of the Clipper ships, which once were the fastest things around the
30:51oceans.
30:52From then on, all new Pan Am planes would carry the Clipper name, and all their crews would
30:58dress in blue or white uniforms reminiscent of naval officers.
31:01The nautical theme carried over to the plane's interior, with life rings hanging on paneled
31:09walls.
31:10It was the captain and the first officer, not the pilot and the co-pilot, who were behind
31:15the controls.
31:16And the flight attendants of today were called the stewards as aboard a ship.
31:21Uniformed attendants would call out, all aboard.
31:25Bells chimed out the hours, just like you were on a ship.
31:29The S-40 introduced a level of luxury that had never, of course, been seen in any type
31:34of aircraft before.
31:36Passengers sat in padded armchairs.
31:39There were backgammon tables, a smoking lounge in the rear of the plane, and linen tablecloth
31:45set with heavy silverware.
31:47Pan Am was one of the first airlines to offer meals in flight.
31:51And they were hot meals, because Tripp realized that planes couldn't go very far if you couldn't
31:57feed the passengers.
32:01The elegantly appointed Clippers became an icon of popular culture in the 1930s, so alluring
32:07that crowds gathered at Pan Am's Dinner Key Terminal in Miami, just to watch the planes
32:13take off and land.
32:14Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Americans have a kind of love affair with aviation, not because
32:23they're traveling on airlines.
32:26Most Americans would not travel on a plane in their lifetime.
32:29Only a tiny minority of Americans could afford to fly themselves, but aviation was phenomenally
32:37popular in American culture.
32:40Even just regular commercial flights were a form of public spectacle, and people would
32:45come out to airports and watch.
32:48The S-40 gave Pan Am the plane it needed to serve all of South America.
32:52Four engines, a range of 900 miles, and a seating capacity of 40 passengers, five times as many
33:00as the S-38.
33:03To fill those seats, Tripp launched an advertising campaign to persuade people that airplanes were
33:09not just for business travel.
33:12Pan Am became one of the first American airlines to promote air tourism as a whole new form of
33:18travel.
33:18Up to this point, the South American tourism industry had relied entirely on ships.
33:25Yes, it might take you days to get there, but you traveled in luxury, you traveled in style.
33:32Aviation's big advantage was speed.
33:36You can get to the destination faster.
33:39Tripp did an extraordinarily smart thing.
33:42He sold speed, but he also sold luxury, comfort, a sense of the same refined elegance that ship
33:53travelers enjoyed, transplanted into the cabins of his airliners.
34:00The promotional department of Pan American hired artists to create posters, for instance,
34:04that have these great colorful images of these faraway destinations with this beautiful airplane
34:09up in the corner.
34:10With the Pan Am posters of the late 20s and the early 30s, you see the Pan Am flying boat
34:17with the buildings of Old Havana to one side.
34:22And more often than not, down there on the ocean, you see an ocean liner, as if to say,
34:28yes, you could take a ship, but wouldn't you really rather take a Pan Am flying boat and
34:34travel in the most luxurious modern style?
34:38But Tripp's most brilliant promotional stroke was to collaborate with RKO Radio Pictures on
34:48a Hollywood musical.
34:52Flying Down to Rio is remembered today principally for one thing.
34:56A couple of contract players named Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were the second
35:03couple in the film.
35:07And this was their first on-screen pairing.
35:12Flying Down to Rio is this very kind of frothy, you know, kind of typical Depression-era spectacle
35:18of a musical, replete with women walking on the wings of the plane and dancing.
35:22But the film also was a wonderful illustration of the way that Hollywood and the airlines
35:29collaborated to promote American interests abroad in the 1930s.
35:33The man behind the movie was Marion C. Cooper, the production chief at RKO Radio Pictures.
35:42A former World War I pilot and a member of the Pan Am board, Cooper was committed to changing
35:48the way people felt about flight.
35:51So in the midst of producing what would be his most famous picture, he launched a series
35:56of aviation-themed films, including one starring a young Catherine Hepburn as a pilot reminiscent
36:03of Amelia Earhart.
36:05And in 1932, he wired Tripp to suggest that Pan Am work with his studio on a musical about
36:12the linking of North and South America by air.
36:16In Flying Down to Rio, Tripp and Cooper used film to help America's new president launch a
36:23foreign policy designed to remake Uncle Sam's image in Latin America.
36:29Throughout the teens and 20s, the United States had militarily intervened in Latin American
36:34countries many times.
36:37Older people remembered the War of 1898.
36:40They remembered that the United States had intervened in Panama, in the Dominican Republic,
36:47in Nicaragua.
36:48So there's still a lot of suspicion of the United States in Latin America.
36:54When Franklin Roosevelt took office in early 1933, he was determined to inaugurate a new
37:01approach to South America.
37:03I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.
37:09The good neighbor policy was built on the idea of a partnership between the U.S. and Latin
37:15American countries.
37:16The United States would still be the dominant power in the hemisphere, but its dominance would
37:21not be based on military might.
37:23We're not going to go back to the bad old big stick days.
37:26We're going to be much more diplomatic, much more commercially oriented.
37:30In one of its advertisements, Pan Am described itself as the good neighbor who calls every day.
37:36In that sense, Pan Am fit in with the new look of American diplomacy in Latin America.
37:43Flying Down to Rio, premiering in December 1933, was designed to underscore Roosevelt's new good
37:53neighbor policy.
37:54It was built around the idea that Rio de Janeiro is a bustling, exotic city that would be a thrilling place to visit.
38:08Those shadows are here again.
38:10It featured villains who were European executives meddling in the affairs of Latin America.
38:16That contingency will not arise.
38:19Steps will be taken.
38:21Can you legally marry people?
38:23Well, yes, if they're fools enough to ask for it.
38:25Fine.
38:26And the film ends symbolically with the Anglo leading man, played by Jean Raymond, and the
38:35Latina leading lady, played by Dolores Del Rio, marrying one another.
38:41It enacts the good neighbor policy as a literal romance between an American man and a Brazilian
38:47woman.
38:48North America and South America get married, on an airplane, and not just any airplane,
38:55a Pan American clipper.
38:57The political message was unmistakable.
39:01North and South America could live in harmony, with Pan Am's help.
39:07Flying down to Rio was also a powerful sales tool, reaching millions of moviegoers with precisely
39:14the messages Pan Am hoped to convey.
39:16Air travel is safe, air travel is reliable, air travel is elegant and quiet and smooth, and
39:25it's associated with these people who live exciting lives.
39:29It worked.
39:31Though the Depression-era numbers were still small, Pan Am flew nearly 50% more passenger
39:37miles the year after the movie's release than it had the year before.
39:41But even with all of Latin America firmly in his grasp, Tripp wasn't satisfied.
39:49Tripp thought, I don't want to just conquer Central and South America.
39:53Actually, I want to conquer the world.
39:55Dad had a vision of making Pan Am a global airline.
39:59So his focus from the beginning was to cross the oceans.
40:02For Tripp, Latin America had always been a laboratory where Pan Am could work out the challenges of long-distance flying.
40:12All the time he's thinking about the Atlantic, where the money is.
40:15The North Atlantic was the busiest trade route in the world.
40:21In 1925, more than a million steamship passengers made the voyage between Europe and North America,
40:28along with hundreds of millions of pounds of cargo.
40:32Tripp's plan was to skim off the cream of this traffic with the North Atlantic air route.
40:37Tripp, from the very beginning, as a businessman, was looking for competition that he could beat.
40:44Airlines flying over land faced stiff competition from trains, which could run all night and in bad weather.
40:52So how do you make money?
40:53How do you offer something which no one else can offer?
40:57And as Tripp saw it, the way to do that is over water.
41:00If you get 1% of the ship traffic in first-class passengers and first-class freight,
41:07he could make a lot of money and really nothing could stop him.
41:10It couldn't go wrong.
41:13In 1928, as Pan Am was just getting started in Key West,
41:19Tripp was already beginning to lay the groundwork for the ocean crossing,
41:23examining detailed maps of the North Atlantic.
41:26The maps revealed three logical routes to Europe.
41:30The Northern Route, via Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland.
41:38The Great Circle Route, via Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Ireland.
41:46And the Southern Route, via Bermuda, and the Azores to Portugal.
41:53The Northern Route offered the shortest distances over water, but could it be flown in winter?
41:58The other two routes both required over water flights of 1,900 miles or more,
42:05far beyond the capabilities of any current commercial plane carrying mail and passengers.
42:09But as far back as Yale, Tripp had been confident this great divide would one day be crossable.
42:18Tripp had this uncanny vision.
42:21He saw things that were not possible, that would not be possible for quite a while.
42:25But he clung to them and ultimately saw them happen, and in some cases made them happen.
42:30In June 1931, Tripp invited America's leading airplane manufacturers to submit designs for a multi-engine flying boat with the unheard-of range of 2,500 miles.
42:44Four of the manufacturers told him it was impossible.
42:48The plane he wanted simply couldn't be built.
42:50Well, Tripp didn't like the word impossible, and to some extent he was right.
42:55All he had to do was find a dreamer like himself, and a way would be found.
43:01Igor Sikorsky was one such dreamer.
43:04Always eager to build big, he would respond with a plane called the S-42.
43:09But another airplane designer also rose to the challenge.
43:15Glenn L. Martin.
43:17A former barnstormer, Martin had formed a company that had great success building bombers for the military.
43:24Martin proposed an even bigger craft called the M-130.
43:29We can have this ready in a year.
43:31In November 1932, Tripp ordered three planes each from the two manufacturers.
43:36Juan Tripp was not willing to just sort of pick an airplane out of the catalog.
43:42He would put forth very specific requirements.
43:47One of Tripp's biggest contributions to aviation is his push on technology,
43:53forcing these airplane manufacturers to push themselves in a way that they otherwise would not have.
44:00Charles Lindbergh told the press Sikorsky's S-42 would be ready by early 1934.
44:06The Martin M-130 later that year, the Atlantic crossing would not be far behind.
44:14Igor Sikorsky's new plane had actually begun to take shape a year earlier,
44:19as the S-40 was making its maiden voyage from Miami to the Canal Zone.
44:23Pilot Charles Lindbergh hadn't forgotten his distaste for the plane.
44:29He relinquished the controls to one of the Pan-American pilots and moved back into the cabin of the aircraft
44:36where Igor Sikorsky was as one of their first passengers.
44:41Lindbergh sits down beside him and says he wants a plane with no struts,
44:45he wants all kinds of things to save weight, to save drag.
44:50The conversation continued over dinner at each stop along the way.
44:55During their layovers, the two of them, with this chemistry they had between them,
44:59would jot ideas for improving this airplane they already had.
45:03Lindbergh and I would take a menu, turn it upside down,
45:07and make sketches of the airplane we had imagined.
45:10At those dinners, we laid down the basic principles for the design of the trans-oceanic flying boat.
45:19Sikorsky ultimately developed this breakthrough airplane, the S-42,
45:24which was the first true ocean-going flying boat.
45:28To minimize air resistance, its all-metal skin was attached with flush rivets,
45:33and the plane sported a number of other innovative features that gave it a new, streamlined look.
45:38The four engines were embedded in the leading edges of the wings
45:43instead of suspended beneath the wings as they were on the S-40.
45:47It was a clean airplane. It was a slick airplane.
45:5160% faster than Sikorsky's earlier model, the S-42 also featured what's known as a flap.
45:59This is a movable feature on the rear trailing edge of the wing
46:03that would actually change the shape of the wing in the air.
46:06The flaps allowed the S-42 to take off and land at safe speeds,
46:11but then increased its speed once off the water.
46:14It becomes a different aircraft flying in the air.
46:17The S-42 was also one of the first commercial airliners to employ variable pitch propellers.
46:24It was like giving the plane a second gear.
46:26It gave the airplane a much more efficient bite for takeoff.
46:32And then changing that blade angle for cruise, they get more miles per gallon.
46:38Sikorsky took the plane out for its first test in March 1934.
46:42Our test pilot carefully taxied the big ship down the river into the Long Island Sound.
46:52He let the plane accelerate to about 50% power,
46:55but he didn't have a chance to make many of the tests we had planned
46:59because a moment later we were up in the air.
47:02The S-42 was so airworthy, it had made an unplanned takeoff on its own.
47:09When it first flew, it broke speed records, distance records, payload records.
47:16That airplane thrust America into the forefront of air transport.
47:20Nothing in Europe could touch it.
47:22But to make the Atlantic crossing safely,
47:26Tripp would need a navigational system to guide the S-42 to the stepping stones along the route.
47:32The best airplane in the world is of no use to you
47:37if you can't reliably get it to that destination.
47:41To meet that challenge, Pan Am communications director Hugo Luteritz
47:46knew he would need to improve on the loop he had created for the Caribbean.
47:50The loop antenna idea works pretty well,
47:53but one of the problems is it's not real precise.
47:56In turning the loop to determine the direction of an incoming radio signal,
48:01Luteritz might be off by a few degrees.
48:04That works okay for short ranges,
48:06but if you're starting to go thousands of miles,
48:10a few degree error is going to put you hundreds of miles off course.
48:15So they needed something that was more precise.
48:17Searching for an alternative,
48:21Luteritz learned of a British design called the adcock antenna,
48:25consisting of four poles oriented to the points of a compass.
48:29The adcock could determine the direction of a radio signal
48:32in much the way our ears can tell where a sound comes from.
48:36There's only a fraction of a second between the time
48:39the sound reaches your right ear and your left ear,
48:42but you can tell where the sound is coming from.
48:45In theory, the adcock worked the same way.
48:49If a plane sent a signal from the north,
48:52the northern post would pick up the signal quicker
48:54than the post either side or the post in the rear.
48:57That would then allow you to figure out very precisely
49:01to within a degree the direction that the signal was coming from.
49:05You could then send a signal to the pilot,
49:08hey, you're off course by so much, and he could correct.
49:11And that was really key for the long distances
49:13you would ultimately need for the ocean.
49:15When Luteritz asked for $10,000
49:18to develop a long-range adcock direction finder, or DF,
49:22Tripp immediately agreed.
49:25He's got to have radio navigation,
49:28because without radio navigation,
49:31Pan Am could go nowhere over open water.
49:34The world is a big place,
49:36and if you can't get accurate readings on where you are,
49:39you go down at sea.
49:41The original adcock design was limited to short ranges.
49:45To improve on it, Luteritz substituted higher radio frequencies
49:49that bounced off the underside of the ionosphere
49:52and returned to Earth many miles away.
49:55This sky wave was just what Pan Am needed.
50:00They could communicate with airplanes
50:01that were over the horizon, thousands of miles away.
50:05After months of testing,
50:07Luteritz had perfected a system
50:08that worked at night and in bad weather,
50:11and could accurately locate planes
50:13more than a thousand miles away.
50:15With adcock antennas on either end of the flight,
50:19and at stations along the route,
50:21this would allow Pan Am to cross the Atlantic.
50:25Tripp now had a plane that could cross the Atlantic,
50:29and a navigational system that could guide it safely across.
50:33But when the time came to launch Pan Am's trans-oceanic service,
50:38a series of events conspired to block his path.
50:41Lindbergh's survey of the northern route had revealed it was impassable in winter.
50:49When France's Aeropostale collapsed in scandal,
50:53the southern route was closed,
50:55because the company controlled landing rights in the Azores.
51:00That left only one option,
51:02the Great Circle route, controlled by Britain.
51:05The British, however, were adamant that a route across the Atlantic
51:09would have to be two ways,
51:10and they demanded landing rights in North America at the same time.
51:14But the British didn't have an airplane like the S-42.
51:18And until the British had an aircraft equally capable of flying the same route,
51:22they would deny the use of their ports to Pan American.
51:25Six years of expensive surveys and painstaking negotiations
51:29had come to nothing.
51:31Juan Tripp had six ocean-crossing flying boats,
51:35costing $2 million, about to be delivered,
51:38and no ocean to cross.
51:41Damn Brits have put us in a box.
51:44What are we going to do with all these big boats
51:45if we have no ocean to cross?
51:46On a summer morning in 1934,
51:49Tripp discussed this predicament with Hugo Luteritz,
51:52Chief Engineer Andre Priester,
51:54and other Pan Am executives.
51:56One option they considered was to renege on the contracts
51:59for the big flying boats.
52:01Why don't we just cancel the Sikorsky and Martin orders?
52:04But that's not his style.
52:05He's not going to cancel those orders.
52:06He's not going to make it look like Pan Am is on the wane in any way.
52:10Suddenly, Tripp piped up.
52:14Here's what we'll do.
52:16We'll fly from California to China.
52:19Across the Pacific.
52:21Right across the middle.
52:22The other executives stared at Juan in disbelief.
52:28Juan, the Pacific, that's where pilots go to die.
52:32Look what happened in the Dole race.
52:36The Pacific had been a graveyard for aviators.
52:40More than a dozen pilots had lost their lives there,
52:44ten of them in 1927 alone,
52:46when pineapple magnate James Dole offered a $25,000 prize
52:51for the first flight from San Francisco to Hawaii.
52:55And that was just to Hawaii.
52:57How did we get from there to China?
52:58To the level-headed Pan Am executives around the table,
53:02the idea of flying to Hawaii,
53:04and then another 6,000 miles beyond it,
53:08seemed crazy.
53:09We'll establish island stations all the way across.
53:12On what islands?
53:13Midway, Wake, Guam, and the Philippines.
53:15It's absolutely mind-boggling
53:17how anybody could have said, you know,
53:20we're going to do this,
53:21and somebody believe him.
53:23Wake?
53:24How big is it?
53:25About two square miles.
53:27So from one day to the next,
53:28without even telling anybody,
53:30he switches his sights.
53:32He drops Europe for the time being
53:34and fixes on the Pacific.
53:36But Juan, the navigational challenges.
53:38If you miss it, there's nothing else for 1,000 miles.
53:40Well, that's why you developed the Adcock system.
53:42Mind you, doing this without particularly consulting
53:44his board of directors or even consulting experts
53:47who would tell him whether or not that was feasible.
53:49But the S-42 doesn't have the legs
53:51for the 2,400 miles to Hawaii.
53:54He had no airplane yet available to do that.
53:56He had no ocean stations where they could land,
54:00nor did he have permission even to do that.
54:02But we have no idea what the weather aloft would be.
54:05Then we'll establish weather stations,
54:07just like we did in South America.
54:09Nonetheless, he made this announcement.
54:10That was classic Tripp.
54:12We can make this work.
54:17Next time on Across the Pacific.
54:20When Tripp announced his plan to cross the Pacific,
54:22there were plenty of critics stepping forward
54:24to explain why it was too dangerous.
54:27There's 2,400 miles that you've got to go,
54:30and there is nothing but water.
54:33Many people believed that it couldn't be done.
54:35Not one trip.
54:37He was a gambler,
54:38and he was betting everything he had.
54:41The lagoon was studded with coral heads.
54:43Each of which could rip open the hull of the flying boat.
54:46You can't land on this lagoon.
54:48There's no other choice.
54:50There's no alternate field within 1,000 miles.
54:54Still no sign of them.
54:56The headwinds were ferocious.
54:57It was like a hand holding the plane up
54:59in the middle of the ocean.
55:01And they were an hour late,
55:02and they were two hours late.
55:04How long can they stay in the air?
55:07It's a great adventure
55:08that could possibly end disastrously.
55:11Nobody knew again.
55:34To learn more about the people, stories,
55:36and technologies behind Across the Pacific,
55:39please visit our website at www.acrossthepacific.net.
55:44www.acrossthepacific.net.