SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airline, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Our mission statement is to educate, celebrate, and inspire present and future generations by preserving historical and diverse personal stories of Pan American World Airways. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here. And for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. George will talk about his celebrated father and share stories about his time working behind the Iron Curtain. But first, let's explore Pan Am's early history. Juan T. Tripp is widely known as the principal founder of Pan Am, and rightly so. However, the early history of Pan Am is very complex and at times quite confusing with multiple people and mergers involved. Recently, the Pan Am Museum opened a new exhibit called The Pioneer's Wall, dedicated to those passionate visionaries who were instrumental in building the strong foundations of the airline that would become Pan American World Airways. During the 1920s, shortly after the end of World War I, the commercial aviation industry was in its infancy and was mainly used for US mail distribution more than for passenger service. In the mid-1920s, the government of President Calvin Coolidge was growing concerned with the rapid expansion in South America of a German-Austrian airline called Scada. Operating in Colombia since 1919, Scada's goal was to secure landing rights in the Panama Canal Zone to then survey air routes for a connection to the United States, beginning with Miami, Florida. Scada viewed mail air routes as key to their strategy to continue expansion in Central America, with North America not far behind in their plans. President Coolidge and his advisors viewed this as a precursor to German political influence and expansion in Latin America that could grow into potential economic or national security threats. The airline already had its own post offices, set its own postage rates, converted all air stamp revenue into company profits, and secured monopoly concessions from key Latin American countries. When Scott was ready to bid on U.S. mail contracts, the United States Postmaster General would have to be legally obligated to award the contract to the German airline unless another airline, preferably an American airline, were to apply and compete. One thing was clear to the Coolidge administration. If the German airline went unchallenged, it wasn't if Scada would expand its route network into the United States, but when. During this time, Henry Harley Arnold, known by his nickname Hap, was a major in the Army Air Service assigned to the Information Office in Washington, D.C. Hap Arnold would later become a key military leader during World War II and would hold the ranks of General of the United States Army and after the war, General of the United States Air Force. In fact, Hap Arnold is the only Air Force general to hold a five-star rank and the only officer to hold a five-star rank in two different U.S. military services. He is widely known as the father of the United States Air Force, established in 1947. But back to the mid-1920s and the alarming rise of the German-Austrian airline, Scotta. Arnold reviewed disturbing diplomatic reports on SCADA's rapid expansion as an Army information officer and immediately made an appointment to meet with the United States Postal General to discuss how to stop the German airline. The solution? A new American airline needed to be formed to compete with Scada and ensure that the U.S. government mail contracts went to American companies with American interests, instead of a foreign airline, much less one with ties to Germany. For the next two years, Arnold would form business plans for a new airline, a truly pan airline that would connect North and Central America through Cuba and the Caribbean Sea. The original Pan American Airways in name only was a small shell company founded on March 14, 1927, by Arnold and two other U.S. Army Air Corps officers, Carl Spatz and John Joett, along with John Montgomery, a former naval officer. General Arnold would later say, quote, it is not generally realized that the great international airline, Pan American Airways, was not started by any rich and powerful business combine, but actually was founded by three young army officers and one ex-Navy officer without a dime between them. End quote. This quote is partially accurate. However, this is where Pan Am corporate history gets a little complicated. It is important to note that this new company had little money, zero aircraft, and zero commercial aviation experience. This Pan American Airways was an airline on paper only. Shortly after incorporation, Arnold abandoned his initial plans of resigning the Army to become president of the new company and decided to remain in the military. On June 2nd, 1927, Juan Tripp founded another airline with his close friends John Hambleton and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, known by his nickname CV, as co-founders. This new airline was called Aviation Corporation of America. Not only did this new airline have airplanes, but it had an impressive roster of investors, including William A. Rockefeller, Sherman M. Fairchild, and William H. Vanderbilt. Tripp, Hamilton, and Whitney each invested $25,000, and the total capital investment was over $300,000, which is about $4.8 billion with today's inflation rate. In addition to a sizable treasury, Tripp also had a secret agreement that would be his trump card. Meanwhile, Wall Street investor Richard F. Hoyt founded Atlantic Gulf and Caribbean Airlines. All three airlines, Pan American Airways, Aviation Corporation of America, and Atlantic Gulf and Caribbean Airlines would compete for the U.S. air-mailed contract from Key West Florida to Havana, Cuba. Assistant Postmaster General W. Irving Glover encouraged all three airlines to merge into one company. Pan American Airways resisted initial merger talks. Despite having little money and zero airplanes, the company was securing leases of airfields and had plans to rent aircraft when needed. Hoyt saw the value in combining capital and talent and was impressed with Tripp, Hambleton, and Whitney, along with the impressive list of investors. With Hoyt now on board, Tripp set his size on closing the merger deal with Pan American Airways and pulled out his trump card. Before starting the Aviation Corporation of America, Tripp worked for Colonial Air Transport and traveled to Havana, Cuba to meet with President Gerardo Machado. This angered the board, and Tripp was eventually forced out. However, Tripp did secure landing rights in Cuba directly from President Machado. Tripp's now former employer, Colonial, saw no value in the Cuban landing rights, and he kept them and then transferred to his new company. On July 19, 1927, Pan American Airways was awarded the foreign mail route contract from Key West to Havana. Tripp and Hoyt again met with Pan American Airways to discuss a merger. After again encountering resistance, Tripp decided to play his hand, and this time he asked if the airline had landing rights in Cuba. With no landing rights, no airplanes, little money, and the urging of the United States government, Pan American Airways agreed to merge with Tripp and Hoyt. This was the birth of the company that would later be known around the world as Pan Am. Hoyt emerged as chairman of the board, and Tripp, only 28 years old at the time, became the president and general manager of the airline to be called Pan American Airways. Because the company Tripp founded, Aviation Corporation of America, absorbed the shell company called Pan American Airways and then adopted the name, this is why Juan Tripp is considered to be the principal founder of Pan Am, with John Hamilton and C. V. Whitney as co-founders. Juan Tripp would later explain why his new company decided to adopt the Pan American name. Quote, I remember the meeting when we decided that Pan American Airways was a better name than Aviation Corporation of the Americas. It was just a feeling. I think ACA was too fussy and impersonal. End quote. And the rest is history. Before our interview with his son George, let's learn about co-founder John Hamilton. John A. Hamilton was a distinguished World War I flying ace, reaching the rank of colonel. During the war, he shot down a number of enemy planes, became one of the youngest squadron commanders in American Air Service, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster. He was also a Baltimore banker and aviation pioneer who co-founded Pan American Airways and became its first vice president. His unique vision of Transocean civil aviation served as a model for Pan Am strategies to explore new air routes and conquer what once had been unattainable traveling distances. As a partner to Trip, he joined the pioneering spirit for what could be and helped to accomplish what had seemed impossible. Tragically, at age 30, John Hamilton died in a plane crash on an airfield in North Carolina. Ironically, he was a passenger, breaking his own rule not to let other people fly him. He wanted to get home as soon as possible to see his wife, so this time he made a fateful exception. Among the people watching from the ground was wife Margaret, who rushed to the crash site to embrace her husband's body. Margaret was pregnant with their son George, who unfortunately never had the opportunity to meet his father. The headline of the Washington Post on June 19th, 1929, read Pan American Airways Chief Dead in Crash, with a subheading of Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton and two guests die in North Carolina. Accident witnessed by wife of banker Friend of Lindbergh was warflyer and noted in air circles. Among the pallbearers were Wantrip and General Marion C. Cooper, both close friends of Hamilton. Hamilton's peers, including some of the first Pan American directors, often said that Hamilton was the most energetic visionary of the early directors. One of those early directors was Marion Cooper, who wrote, quote, John Hamilton played an important part in the founding of Pan American, just as important as Juan Tripp. Juan Tripp was the original president, and John Hamilton, the original first vice president. John Hamilton was a director from its very foundation until his death in an air crash on June 8, 1929. End quote. A quick side note about Marion Cooper. In 1933, Marion Cooper made Hollywood history with his original story he turned into a blockbuster and groundbreaking movie that he co-produced and co-directed. That movie, which in 1991 was deemed culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress, was called King Kong. And on a point of trivia, Cooper makes a cameo in the movie by flying the plane that kills Kong. Marion Cooper would receive an honorary Oscar in 1952 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. John Adams Hambleton was a celebrated World War I flying ace, successful businessman, banker, aviation pioneer, trusted lieutenant of Juan Tripp, and co-founder of Pan American Airways. Hamilton is widely credited with the visionary idea of polar flights that routes over the Earth's north and south poles to shorten distance and flight time. At the time, this was a revolutionary and radical idea that is commonplace in aviation today. Marion Cooper would later say that Hamilton's intercontinental polar flight idea was a quote, dream in those days, being more fantastic than today's prospect of passenger flights to the moon. His early contribution to commercial aviation is notable, and it is with great pleasure that he is recognized on our Pioneer's Wall exhibit at the Pan Am Museum. Now on to our interview with his son, George Hambleton. A little over seven months after his father was killed in a plane crash in front of his pregnant mother. He followed in his father's footsteps and attended St. Paul's School, and then went on to graduate from Princeton University in 1952, where he learned to speak Russian and studied Eastern European history. George then joined the U.S. Army and served as a helicopter pilot in the Korean War until the summer of 1955. He served with distinction and was awarded the Bronze Star. George joined Pan American World Airways, assigned to the Latin American Division that same year, having been hired personally by family friend Juan Tripp. After about 12 years with the Latin American Division, George was handpicked again by Mr. Tripp to be the new official representative of Pan Am to the Soviet Union. He and his family first moved to Helsinki, Finland to set up initial operations before moving to Moscow, with, of course, permission of the government and subsequent constant surveillance by the KGB. George became the very first American businessman accredited to live full-time in Moscow during the Cold War. In 1970, he and his wife decided that their children should grow up in the United States and moved to a farm in New Jersey. George became the Director of International Affairs for Pan Am based in Washington, D.C., and flew his own plane to commute to work. He was loaned by Pan Am in 1976 to New York Airways, ironically, the same company where his father served as president in 1929. In 1980, George left Pan Am to become executive director of Project Orbis, a nonprofit dedicated to saving sight around the globe, and operated the first Flying Eye hospital on a DC-8. During George's time at Orbis, the DC-8 visited 24 countries, helping countless people, and held many programs, emphasizing the hands-on surgical training for doctors and nurses. In 1983, George joined the Reagan administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Director of the U.S. Commercial Service, managing trade and exports along with overseas trade missions and trade fairs. After the Reagan administration, he joined Management International Incorporated in Westport, Connecticut, as a senior vice president until his retirement in 2001. He was a skilled private pilot and avid fly fisherman. He currently serves on the board of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and resides in Charleston, South Carolina. Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast. It's an honor to have you on the program, sir. Well, I'm very honored to be uh on the Pan Am Podcast. Thank you very much. Let's start with the Hambleton family. Tell us about your parents and your childhood.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

Well, my father was very instrumental in the beginning of Pan Am. He was a great friend of Mr. Tripp's, and uh he and Mr. Tripp and Sonny Whitney were the three who got it going originally.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

I know your father died before you were born. He never had a chance to meet him, but can you tell us more about your father?

SPEAKER_04 20:47

Well, John Hambleton was uh had a fantastic record in World War One as a fighter pilot, and he uh was a great visionary about what the airplane could do and that it could cross the Atlantic and cross the Pacific, and uh when many people thought of it as just a fancy toy, but not a a commercial uh possibility. People uh everybody told me that John Hambleton was a very modest man. I try very hard to emulate that, but I don't often make it. So I'm uh told that he really was the uh driving force in uh getting Pan Am started. So I'm very obviously very proud of him. He and Charles Lindbergh flew the first international air mail to Panama uh back in the late twenties. In fact, he flew it By himself a couple of weeks before the Lindberg flight. Lindberg was his good friend. But uh they r really that was the first Pan Am International Airmail uh trip that there was flown.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Let's talk about that fateful day when your mother was at the airfield and your father's aircraft crashed in front of her while she was pregnant with you. Did she ever talk about what happened?

SPEAKER_04 22:30

She didn't talk about it very much. Uh obviously uh that it was a tremendous blow to her and to many people who didn't think John Hamilton could crash an airplane.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Thank you for sharing that. Um tell us about your childhood.

SPEAKER_04 22:51

Yes, I uh grew up my mother remarried my godfather, so he became my stepfather, George Carey, and he was a great guy who had uh uh been uh overseas, he'd been a white hunter in Africa, and then he joined the Air Force Intelligence and uh later uh the original CIG which preceded the CIA, and he was in that for the rest of his days.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Did your family continue to keep in touch with the Tripp family while you were growing up?

SPEAKER_04 23:38

Uh yes, I did indeed. Uh Charlie Tripp was a great friend. Unfortunately, he has left us, but he worked for Pan Am for a while, and I knew him very well. Uh, and I knew Eddie very well. So I did stay in touch with them. Mr. Tripp was a great friend of my father's, and he treated me very well. He sent me through the Harvard Business School, so uh I uh liked him very much.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Your mother had a special pass on Pan Am for Mr. Tripp. Did you and your family fly often? Uh yes, I did.

SPEAKER_04 24:19

Uh of course it was uh having uh a pass on Pan Am was a great uh asset, and we would uh travel frequently uh in both uh directions across the Atlantic and across the Pacific. Tell us about your life after college. My professional life was after Princeton. I went into the military and was in the Korean War. Uh I flew the commanding general of the 24th Division in Korea, and uh then came out and was offered a job uh with the helicopter company, New York Airways. Somebody said, Well, why don't you go to see Mr. Tripp and get his advice? He was a good friend of your father's. And uh so I did get an appointment to go see Mr. Tripp and had a nice interview, and the next thing I knew I was on his private airplane on my way to Miami to work for the Latin American Division of Pan Am. So uh I I think very highly of Mr.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Tripp. What was the Latin American Division of Pan Am like?

SPEAKER_04 25:42

Well, it was very interesting. They sent me to Panama, and uh that was a very key place. We had the longest overland flight in our system from Los Angeles to Panama. We had the milk run through Central America from Houston, and we had the express Panagra flights from New York and Miami to Latin America, so Panama was certainly a key uh post for the Latin American Division. The express flights to El Pacifico and El Presidente, the Panagra flights from New York and Miami, left New York at a civilized hour, arrived Buenos Aires at a civilized hour, but came through Panama at two and three o'clock in the morning. So I worked the night shift for a couple of years in Panama.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Very interesting period. Any memorable stories that you'd like to share about your time in the Latin American division?

SPEAKER_04 26:53

Well, it was, and there were many interesting occurrences that happened while I was there. For example, one uh night or early morning, we had gotten El Pacifico through, and I was minding my own business in the Pan Am office. The telephone rang, it was a control tower. They said there was a DC three over Colombia that was having engine trouble, and he wanted to know if he could land in Panama and would Pan American fix his engine for him. And I said, Well, tell him to come on in and we'll see what it's all about. And this beat up DC three came in that was President Stroessner's airplane, and the taxied up to the terminal building on one engine, the door opened, and outstepped Juan Peron, who was fleeing Argentina in President Stroessner's airplane. Well, the Panamanians didn't know what to do with him. I took him into my office, they put a bayonet on one door and a machine gun on the other door, and uh I spent the rest of the night with Juan Perón, who was very interesting and very uh uh simpatico uh at the time. The Panamanians did allow him to s to stay, and then he went to Spain for a while, and but uh that was an interesting exercise. Well, what did you guys talk about? Oh my gosh, I I I cannot really remember what we talked about uh at length. I know Time Magazine did a story saying he was wallowing in the flesh pots of Panama, but uh uh it was interesting that they did let him uh stay for a while. Uh that was one of many anecdotes I could talk about if you were interested.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Looking back on your time in Panama and thinking about your father and Lindbergh's first flight scouting routes, were you pleased with being assigned there?

SPEAKER_04 29:18

Well, I did think it was quite significant. Uh I was delighted actually, uh, because uh Panama had been something, and uh uh my father had been very instrumental in developing the first air service to Panama. I was delighted when I was assigned to Panama, and that was a gateway to Latin America, the Latin American division. Panama and Trinidad were uh Pan Am went through Trinidad or ultimately nonstop down the east coast of to Rio and Buenos Aires, and Panagra, Pan American Grace Airways went through Panama and down the west coast of Latin America. So uh yes, I was pleased to be assigned to Panama.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

You knew Jupp since you were a boy in the 1930s. What was he like?

SPEAKER_04 30:19

Well, I liked him very much. Uh he was a uh very smart man. He was controversial at times, but uh one time I met him on his way to his uh place in uh the the Bahamas, and he surprised me by saying, How's your Russian? Well, my I said, Well, sir, it's a little rusty. He said, Well, brush it up, for we might need it. So uh he was aware that I had studied Russian at Princeton, and uh that was quite interesting that he would remember something like that. But uh uh no he was he was uh a great man. Did uh like him and uh and he remembered the Russian studies and so on, so that led to my assignment to Moscow.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

So this is the mid-1960s. You are the Pan Am Country Manager in Barbados, and one trip just asked you to brush up on your your Russian. Tell us about what happened next.

SPEAKER_04 31:31

Well, I went to the uh what Institute of Critical Languages in Putney, Vermont, I guess it was, and I took uh some Russian training and did brush it up a little bit, so I could I can understand and be understood, but my grammar is pretty miserable. So uh I did brush up my Russian a bit, and uh my poor wife, I had hired a Cuban nanny and made her study Spanish, and she had just gotten to where she could get by with Spanish, and then they said you're going to Russia. So uh her language skills were debatable.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

And then you and your family moved to the Soviet Union?

SPEAKER_04 32:20

Well, first first they assigned me to Finland, to Helsinki, uh, where I did go into Russia. And in fact, I did go into Russia not for Pan Am but for intercontinental hotels. Mr. Tripp wanted to have a hotel in Moscow. He said, Don't tell anyone that it's about the hotels that you're going into Moscow. Don't even tell your own boss who said, What why are you going into Moscow so much? But uh anyway, uh Mr. Tripp was a pretty visionary man and he wanted to get a hotel in Russia at that time.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

So at first you were stationed in Finland. Were you driving into Moscow or did you fly?

SPEAKER_04 33:12

At that time I was flying in. The driving in is a whole nother story.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

So you were on a special mission directly from one trip to secretly lay the groundwork to build a hotel in Moscow, and no one knew anything about it, but the two of you?

SPEAKER_04 33:31

That's correct. He uh he said he wanted to build it jointly with Arrowflot. And uh so I approached Marshal Loginoff about this, and they he was very interested, but uh nothing ever came of it. We developed very good relations with Marshal Loginoff. He was interested, but he couldn't do it for some god knows what reason, uh, with the Kremlin. With the driving in, I did when when I was in Moscow, I drove I flew out to Helsinki to get a maintenance vehicle to drive it in for Pan Am. And I made uh after uh Leningrad, uh I made a wrong turn and went down to the border of Latvia. You said Latvia. Did you mean Estonia? That's correct. On an unapproved, I left my approved marsh route, which is a crime in Russia, and I it was very cold, blizzard, and the I went through two or three Russian checkpoints where they were in by the fire instead of out by the highway, and my white uh maintenance vehicle with the big blue ball on the side uh got through uh checkpoints, and I finally got stopped down near the border, and they pulled me in and uh uh uh sort of browbeat me for a long time, made me sign a confession that I had left my approved mars route. Well, I finally did, and the air ministry, when I finally got back to Moscow, said, Well, let's not make a big deal of this, let's let's let it go. And uh I said, Fine, you give me back that confession and we let it go. But otherwise, uh, wait till you see what happens to your representative in New York. Reciprocity is a big, big deal. And uh the Aeroflot manager in New York, I was told, was invited to go fishing with some Pan Am friends, and he was not supposed to go outside the three mile limit, but the fishing boat did go outside the three-mile limit, and the Coast Guard picked up that boat that day for a routine check, and they got a confession from the Aerofloat manager that he had gone outside of the three-mile limit. So we had his confession, they had my confession, and we were pretty even.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Now that's a great story. I have to ask, your stepfather is working for the CIA at the time. It's the mid-1960s. You are on special assignment for Pan Am. Were you involved with any intelligence operations and espionage? And I presume the KGB was tracking you, correct?

SPEAKER_04 36:56

Well, of course the KGB was tracking me. They were everywhere, and they were hyper suspicious. I was the only American businessman accredited to live in the Soviet Union at that time, they told me, or live in Moscow. Uh, but I was not on the CIA payroll. Uh uh yes, my stepfather was involved, and the Russians gave me a hard time about a cousin who was in intelligence, but I believe, and maybe I'm naive, but I believe they never connected me with my stepfather. Is is that uh a possibility? Who knows? Uh I I I think the the the they didn't get it together uh correctly. We had a uh maid who must have been a colonel in the KGB. She had been the ambassador's maid, and uh they don't waste their high ranking maids. But they were so damn suspicious of what the hell I was up to. And uh m my late wife, Janet, was an English girl, and she would go out to London every now and then from Moscow, and when she went to England she would buy a present for our maid. And when she got back to our apartment she would start to give the maid the present, and the maid would go, No shh be quiet. The apartment is bugged. So uh anyway, that was interesting. A very strong communist who would say sh we knew it was happening. We had two people uh who were high KGB people, I'm sure. They're our maid and uh a woman in the office who was very good. I wanted to bring her back to America, she was so good, but she must have been another colonel in a KGB. And uh these were part of the cracks in the crown in the wall uh to get reactions from those people on occasion.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

How did you communicate with Juan Tripp on your progress? Did he ever visit Moscow?

SPEAKER_04 39:22

Oh well, I did see him from time to time. Uh as I say, he was always very nice to me, and so I uh I did uh like him and I did get developed good relations with Marshal Loginoff. So when Mr. Tripp brought the board of directors, you know, this is a strange thing about Pan Am. They have a directors meeting somewhere in the world, and they put the entire board on the same airplane as a vote of confidence in Pan Am. Well, they brought the board to Moscow, and uh Mr. Tripp came with them, and that that's when I arranged the meeting with Marshal Loginoff that he told Marshal Logunov about the supersonic uh abandonment. Please tell us more about this meeting. It was just one trip, me and an interpreter in Moscow when Wandrip told Marshal Loginoff, the head of Russian civil aviation, that Pan Am had abandoned the supersonic airplane. That had not been announced to the press yet. Nobody knew about it, and Marshal Loginoff was visibly shaken because the Russians had put all their efforts into the Tupoloff one four four supersonic, and suddenly he realized if Pan Am had abandoned the supersonic, it must be a mistake. Pan Am had gone to the wide body, so suddenly all the Tupolov employees were out of work because Russia had to abandon its major supersonic program and instead go to a wide body. So that was a very significant meeting, I thought. The Marshal Luganoff was uh was stunned visibly because uh he had put all his effort into their copy of the Concord. We called it the Concordsky. And uh uh it uh I told them if the Concorde if their Russian version of the Concord was better than the English French version, maybe Pan Am would be interested in it. But uh it did fall through with Mr. Tripp's announcement that Pan Am had decided to abandon the supersonic project.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

We're gonna take a short break with a commercial from the late 1960s.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Panam paging with him, which is placed for at the Pan-American counter on the departure table at Mr. Bottom.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

When you fly out into the world with Panama, you're not going to an airline country best, and this is the rest. You're flying with the world. In over 40 years, we've got to know the world pretty well. Don't find local Panam people in 207 offices, like in 84 country, willing to do all the little things that leave you free to do yours. It's all in the price of your ticket. Every country has an airline. The world has Pan Airlines.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Welcome back to our interview with George Hambleton, son of Pan Am co-founder John Hambleton. Tell us more about your time in Moscow and the historic opening of Pan Am's route to the Soviet Union in 1968.

SPEAKER_04 44:31

There were a couple of things I should mention, I guess. One, I think somebody in the Kremlin wanted the air agreement to work. So when we ran into a hard time about something and when we made it clear that the Kremlin wanted it to work, that was very helpful. I might mention another thing. We had in our air agreement a paragraph that said Pan Am could distribute advertising material in Russia and Russia could distribute advertising material in America. Well, you say why? Why what the Russians can't travel? Why are we distributing advertisement? Well that was our greatest secret weapon. In those days, in the Cold War, there was very little color printing in Russia. There was faded black, faded red, faded blue, but very little uh beautiful color printing. The Pan Am Calendar had big feature pictures of destinations around the world. And uh this was advertising material. I had a paragraph in my air agreement that said I could distribute it. So when I would give Pan Am calendars out, it was uh very well received. People had color pictures, they could cut up the calendar, frame the pictures, have colored pictures in their apartments, and it was just an amazingly valuable tool to have uh with me. And I have a number of anecdotes related to the Pen Am calendar, but I did manage to get a Dacha, which was unheard of. The American Embassy had a Dacha, the British Embassy had a Dacha, the Canadians couldn't get one, and I went to a RFSR, the Russian diplomatic hunting base, about two hours north of Moscow, where the Shosha River meets the Volga River, and there was a diplomatic hunting base for diplomats. Well, I was not a diplomat, but I went up there and I talked to the base manager and I offered to rent one of his Dodges uh for the year for hard currency. Well, he getting a little hard currency was wonderful. He wanted to get some outboard motors, some American outboard motors. My hard currency made it possible for him to do to do that. And uh I was nobody in the right mind would go up to my dacha in the middle of winter in the snow, but I did. And uh I was driving back on this uh two-hour drive on the highway uh in the boondocks when there was a blizzard, uh heavy snow and very cold, which is rare to have very cold and heavy snow at the same time. And I had a car, my unmarked Pan Am station wagon, and uh I had uh two dogs and I had two children in the car, and uh all of a sudden I had a flat tire. And trying to change a tire in the blizzard was tough. And I was trying to change the tire and keep the kids and the dogs in the car, and uh suddenly through the thick, thick snow, two headlights appeared, and it was a militia truck, a police truck. And these two big policemen in their heavy overcoats and fur hats got out and walked through the snow, and they said, Medikanski Avia Kompania, American Aviation Company. And I said, Well yes, I am. I said, How did you know? And they said, Last year you gave me a Pan Am calendar for my checkpoint. So they helped me change the tire. That was an unusual uh uh story, I thought, uh, with the Russian policeman helping me change the tire. That I had the only snowmobile in Russia. The Russians had never had a snowmobile, and I got the outboard marine dealer in Helsinki to give me a sell me a snowmobile at his cost if I would photograph it in front of the Kremlin for his advertising. Well that uh that we did, and we brought it in and photographed it in front of the Kremlin, and I took it up to my Dacha and uh would tow uh janit on skis behind my snowmobile. The Volga would freeze up uh where the Shosha River met the Volga, and we could go on the on the river, and uh they could see where we had been, but they couldn't follow us and their motorcycles or whatnot. They could find out later. Now this was all very uh uh uh sort of suspicious because Dubna was across the river, across the Volga from where my dacha was. Dun Dubna was their atomic research center. And uh uh th that was just across the river, so uh they didn't like me running back and forth on the river.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Now who would have thought that full color pan calendars would be such a valuable diplomatic tool? Any other stories you'd like to share about them?

SPEAKER_04 50:55

Well, the head of the State Bank for Foreign Trade in Moscow was a big room with a many, many desks and people sitting at desks, and this big woman uh was sitting up on a stage at the end of the room, and she had a picture of Lenin behind her desk, and I gave her a Pan Am calendar, and she took down the picture of Lenin and put the American Aviation Company uh up behind her, and the officials of the bank were upset with this, and she said, Well, you give me something better and I'll put it up. But until you give me something better, the Pan Am calendar stays up there.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

So that was an interesting little side story. Great story. The Soviets had restrictions on pretty much everything and banned you from any kind of advertising. How did you get around that to promote Pan Am in Moscow?

SPEAKER_04 52:03

We had uh stuff on the on the inside of the glass. My my office was on the corner of the second story of the Metropole Hotel, diagonally across from the Bolshoi Ballet in the center of Moscow. And uh Moscow city rules, the city officials didn't know much about the airlines, but the city rules at that time did not allow any advertising on the outside of a building. It is on the outside now, but in those days in the Cold War that didn't have it. So I had a sign made up in England, an electric sign with big Pan Am blue ball, and the exact dimension of my bay windows, and I put it up inside the bay windows on that corner of the Metropole Hotel, so everybody going to the ballet could see Pan Am signs on the inside of the bay windows. And uh we had quite a discussion about that, and we finally said, Well, if you allow us to keep our Pan Am signs up on the inside of the building, we will allow our float to have an advertising sign in New York. Well, the city officials in Moscow didn't know much about that, but uh they could understand reciprocity.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Ha! That's hilarious. Tell us about the food. How was the Russian food?

SPEAKER_04 53:39

Well, the best rest restaurants were all pretty much the same. The only good food was the Chinese restaurant, but uh most of them pretty set menu, and uh uh it was okay, it was adequate, but it wasn't uh all that uh gourmet.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

So you had two children and your wife living with you in Moscow during your assignment, correct?

SPEAKER_04 54:10

That's correct. Uh uh but my wife, like most of the foreigners, went out to London to produce my uh youngest son. The uh medical facilities in Moscow were pretty primitive except for the Kremlin. The Kremlin had an advanced hospital, but most of the hospitals were pretty desolate. So if you were smart you would go out to London to produce an Englishman who could be drafted into the English Army but not into the Russian army. I had an avoyska. I was not allowed to use the embassy commissary because I was not a diplomat, but I did uh find ways to occasionally use the embassy commissary, and uh that was very helpful. They had plenty plenty of good food. Uh but otherwise it was I had an avoyska. Avoyska is a little plastic bag. Avoyska means perhaps perhaps you will find something to buy to put in your avoyska. So you could go to the Russian markets and uh t take a chance.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Did you have good relations with the U.S. ambassador in the embassy staff?

SPEAKER_04 55:38

We had very good relations with the U.S. Ambassador. It was uh extremely good, and the British ambassador, my wife, was an English girl, and the British ambassador called us. We had a dacha at Zavidovo, so he called us Lord and Lady Zavidovo.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

You and your wife decided to move the family back to the States in 1970. Where did you go?

SPEAKER_04 56:09

I went back to New York. Uh, they offered me uh an assignment in Turkey, which is one of our key stops on a round-the-world service. Uh, but I decided it was time for my kids to see their own country. They had been out of it forever. So I came back to New York and uh uh was in New York uh after Moscow.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

And what was your new job with Panam in New York?

unknown 56:42

New York.

SPEAKER_04 56:43

Well, I was loaned for a while to Intercontinental Hotels. I worked on a project to increase the number of intercontinental membership hotels, and I worked with Charlie Tripp on that one uh for a while, and also uh was uh I was a dire director of commercial sales uh responsible for companies and corporations travel. That was uh very interesting assignment.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

You left Pan Am in the late 1970s. Where did you go after that?

SPEAKER_04 57:23

Uh I guess I I left Pan Am specifically to run Project Orbis. I don't know if you have heard of Project Orbis, but it was a state-of-the-art ophthalmological teaching hospital on a DC-8 jet. Now, a classmate of mine at Princeton, David Payton, was a great ophthalmologist. His father had been a great ophthalmologist, and he was, and he started this teaching hospital on a DC-8 uh jet, which went all over the world teaching and exchanging techniques in eye surgery. It was very worthwhile. The multiplier effect was astounding that we were helping doctors, and doctors were helping thousands of people.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

It sounds like you had a fascinating career. Tell us about some of the people you've met.

SPEAKER_04 58:25

That during my time with Pan Am and later my time with Orbis and whatnot, I've met twenty different heads of state. Well, I don't think many American businessmen can say they have met twenty heads of state. And uh uh well the president of Finland uh did meet, of course, uh because we were very instrumental there. Uh I was running Finland and uh we we had some interesting exercises there, and I did meet government officials, and uh I guess in Latin America I did meet most of the Latin American heads of state because they all came to Panama for a meeting, a conference, and Pan American was designated the airline to handle all their flights, so I had to meet them when they arrived in Panama and uh take care of their airplanes. And uh, you know, even back then Venezuela was all screwed up with the dictator, and the dictator wouldn't get on his airplane to fly back to Caracas uh until he had had his captain take off and fly for several hours around in circles to see if anything went off in the airplane. So uh that was an interesting little sideline, I thought.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

As we're coming to the end of our interview, any humorous stories you'd like to share about your time at Pan Am?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:10

Well, uh we shipped a lot of household goods for embassy people, and one shipment just disappeared. We couldn't find it anywhere. We didn't know what happened to it. The diplomat was moving back to Washington. He was gonna live in Alexandria, Virginia, but his shipment disappeared. And months later we found it sitting at the airport in Alexandria, Egypt.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

Oops. Just a tiny clerical error, right? Haha. That's a great story. Did you have a lot of contact with Juan Tripp in his later years after he retired? Not enough.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:55

You know, uh he did invite me to lunch, which I never uh never accepted his invitation. I wish I had. And uh uh no, I didn't see as much of him as I should have done uh when I came back.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

Looking back, your father was one of the co-founders of the Great Airline. How did that make you feel?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:22

Well, very proud. The old flying boat captains say your father did all the work to get this thing started, and uh that makes me feel very proud. Now I as I say, I like Mr. Tripp, and he was very good to me. But uh it's too bad that John Hambleton was sort of forgotten by his PR people. On the wall of my apartment here in Charleston, I have a propeller from his airplane. I think somebody told me it was from one of the original Falker F sevens, but I d I think it was from another airplane that John Hambledon kept in a field near his home in Baltimore.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Did your Pan Am colleagues generally know that your father was close friends with Mr. Tripp and co-founded the airline?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:21

Well, it was very interesting. I I of course didn't mention my legacy uh to p to people in Pan Am. I was I tried to emulate, as I said earlier, my father who was very modest. Uh but I suppose the most most dramatic occurrence was when I was loaned to the helicopter company, New York Airways, and when the helicopter uh collapsed on the roof of the Pan Am building when I had just gotten off the helicopter. Uh so uh uh a couple of people were were were killed, and a lady in the street was killed when a piece of a blade went flying uh blocks away. Uh that was very dramatic.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

How would you like your father, John Hambleton, to be remembered by history?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

Well, I think his his war record was fantastic, uh and his modesty I admire, and as I keep saying, I try to emulate, but don't really make it all the time. Well, I would recommend this book John Hill and Voss did called Pan Am at War. I would recommend somebody read that. They have a chapter in there uh about John Hambleton, I guess it's quite good. And uh it's a good book, Pan Am at War, John Hill.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:59

That is a fantastic book, Pan Am at War. I've read that your father set an early standard of professionalism by requiring pilots to be well groomed and always have a tie-on. Would you like to comment on that?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:13

Absolutely. It was not just a rich man's toy, it was a potential transatlantic business and transatanic uh Pacific business. So he would dress as a businessman, not as a uh leather jacket pilot. Even on exploratory flights like the first air mail to Panama, John Hambleton insisted that he and Lindbergh wear a coat and tie, and not just a leather leather jacket and job purse or something the way most pilots were in those days.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:54

Here we are, more than 30 years since Pan Am went out of business, and the public's attention is still captivated by this airline. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:04

Well, it makes me feel wonderful. Pan Am is very respected around the world, everywhere. And uh, well now my current wife, Diana, I call her Lady Di, is uh trying to get me to stop driving. Now that I'm ninety-two, she thinks I should give up driving. And she gets these young girls to drive me places. One of them is a graduate student, very well educated, very knowledgeable, and she was driving me somewhere the other day and she asked me what I did for a living, and I said, Well for twenty five years I worked for Pan Am and she said What's Pan Am So there is a generation gap here, I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:02

And that's why we're doing what we're doing with this program in our museum. Tell her to start listening to the Pan Am podcast and send her to visit the Panam Museum in New York. Absolutely, man. What a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:16

I'll do that. I wanna see it. Uh it would be very, very interesting. I did send truckloads of documents down to Miami when we went through warehouses in New Jersey and saved material for the museum there before your museum really had gotten going, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

We really can't thank you enough for your time and continued support, sir.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:45

Well, thank you very much. I hope some of it was interesting. I will think of a thousand anecdotes I wish I had remembered. But uh anyway, maybe some of those were interesting enough for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:01

Most definitely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your comment. Pan Am was a pioneer in air travel and still stands as one of the most iconic and innovative airlines in aviation history. That legacy lives on at the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York, where you can explore the rich history of the aircraft and individuals at the heart of the company known as the world's most experienced airline. For more information about the Pan Am Museum, check out our website at www.thepanmuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As was once a tagline in one of our commercials, we would greatly appreciate your support to help the Pan Am Museum continue making the going great. You can also support the museum by shopping on our online store for all things Pan Am accessories, apparel, jewelry, books, models, and posters. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for us or want to share your story, our email address is podcast at the Pan Am Museum.org. And with that, we're gonna close out this episode with a Pan Am song by Steve Allen. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Ambassador.