SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Panam Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast in our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airlock, 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. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. This podcast is sponsored by the generous personal support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO and chairman of AMC Theaters. He is also president of our sister organization, the Pan Am Historical Foundation. 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. In this episode, we'll be exploring the incredible life of Pan Am Captain Robert Ford, a trail-blazing flying boat aviator that found international fame with an unscheduled flight around the globe. And we welcome back to the program Pan Am 747 Captain John Marshall that knew Pan Am legend Captain Robert Ford and recorded an interview with him in 1994, shortly before he died. Excerpts of this rare interview will be played, and you will get to hear the actual voice of Captain Ford talking about his aviation career in the late 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In December of 1941, Captain Ford was ferrying mail and passengers from San Francisco to New Zealand aboard a Pan Am Boeing 314 flying boat named the Pacific Clipper. On December 7th, 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, and Captain Ford was ordered to evade the enemy and prevent the Japanese from capturing the aircraft for its technology. Skirting the trouble zone and watching for enemy aircraft, he headed the flying boat west over Australia, India, and Central Africa, then crossed to South America, eventually making a safe landing at the Marine Air Terminal at what is now LaGuardia Airport in New York on January 6, 1942. The entire trip covered 31,500 miles in 209.5 hours of flying time, some of it over war territory. The clipper had a range of 4,500 miles, and its longest single flight was 3,583 miles across the South Atlantic from Central Africa to Brazil. Captain Ford, who was then 35 at the time, called his round-the-world flight a purely routine operation. Let's listen to a three and a half-minute clip from a 1945 Pan Am corporate film depicting the beginning of Captain Ford's trek around the globe as a world war broke out. Please note that this was dramatized for effect.

SPEAKER_06 4:26

Some routine message, doubtless. The date was December 7th, 1941. The secret message read simply Plan A, but its meaning was electrifying. This one word and one-letter message meant that war had come to the Pacific. The captain summoned the chief stewards of the flight. Wake up the windows! Wake everybody up! American was ready. First, they must get this clipper and this passengers out of the way of the enemy. We've got to get away from here. Captain the navigator plotted the new course. It was away from the known clipper roots. It accorded with plan A. Quickly, the clipper was blacked out. Running lights were turned off. The navigator by now had determined his course and gave data to the first officer. He adjusted the automatic pilot, turned the clipper toward a secret destination. It had all happened in minutes. The passengers gathered sleepy and bewildered. Sorry, we have to get you up. But I have some very serious news. The jumps of just bombs from the harbour. We are at war. But every man in this crew knows his war job, knows what to do, so don't be alone. We will take every measure for your protection. The Clipper has changed its course. We are now heading for a safe port. War had exploded over the entire world. Every Pan American route was now a war route. The trooper ships and the men who flew them were instantly on our country's service. From our nation's capital, while the explosions of jump bombs were still echoing, Pan American Airways received its first orders from the Army. Companies already have been fighting the commercial battle for the Axis for two years. Now came all-out war. The Navy also had urgent work for Pan American to do. Its globe-covering routes and 25,000 men and women were now a vital part of our country's war machine. Over the wires went an order to all Pan American's divisions. It was the now famous All Facilities order, changing the Clippers of Peace to Clippers at War. The entire 90,000 mile system of Pan American Airways enlisted.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Let's listen to another short clip, this time from radio personality Orson Wells from his popular radio program in 1942. It should be noted that following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, tensions and public anxiety were high and national morale was low. The story of Captain Ford's flight was a much needed boost to the American psyche after it was suddenly plunged into a world war. Again, note that the radio chatter was dramatized for effect.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Pacific Clipper Inbound from Auckland, New Zealand, Captain Ford reporting. You arrived, Pan American Marine Terminal, seven minutes.

SPEAKER_07 8:26

Seven minutes later, 14 men stepped from the plane into the bitter dawn wearing summer clothes. Tropical shorts. Yes, sir. 31,500 miles in 34 days. All the way around the globe. To avoid the enemy. Never mind asking if those men dressed in Singapore shorts didn't feel a little silly if they start shivering in New York Cash. Never mind asking about the radio officer Points who told his wife to hold dinner for him in San Francisco on the night of December 2nd. A dinner that waited cold on the table for 31,500 miles. Never mind, because we're talking about voyages. Man's passage through faith and time.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Now on to our interview with Pan Am 747 Captain John Marshall with clips from his 1994 interview with Captain Robert Ford shortly before his death. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Captain Robert Ford earned his wings as a naval aviator before joining Pan American Airways in 1933. He flew Pan Am's routes in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean before transferring to the Atlantic Division in 1939, flying clippers between New York and Lisbon. He shifted to the Pacific route in July of 1941. Before his round-the-globe journey, he had completed some 50 flights across the two oceans. After retiring in 1952 from Pan Am, Captain Ford became a cattle rancher in Penn Valley, California, north of Sacramento. He died in October of 1994 at the age of 88. Captain Marshall, thank you very much for coming back onto the Pan Am podcast. Thanks very much. I'm very happy to be here. And we have a special treat for our listeners. Thirty years ago in 1994, just before Robert Ford passed away, you had the opportunity and good fortune to interview him and you recorded it.

SPEAKER_10 10:44

Yes, I was very, very fortunate to be able to make contact with Bob Ford. Shortly after I went to work for Pan Am in 1964, I became aware of this story. It's an incredible story. And it turned out to be an incredible flight, and the the longest commercial uh aircraft flight in the world up until that time, and for some time uh long after. And the more I looked into the history of this flight, the more intrigued I got. And I thought I would like to do an article about it. And when I began my research, I discovered that of all the members of the crew, there were 10 uh members of the flight crew. Of all those crew members, the only one that I could track on that was still with it uh was the captain, Bob Ford. Uh Bob was 88 years old, he was had terminal cancer, and he was totally deaf in both ears. And he lived with his delightful wife Betty at a ranch at the end of a long dirt road uh in Northern California. Well, I negotiated an interview with him on the phone with his wife, and we agreed that I would drive up one Saturday and have lunch, and uh I would have an opportunity to talk to Captain Ford. Well, I flew to Sacramento, rented a car, and drove up north. And uh the Fords lived at the end of about a 30-mile dirt road with a lovely ranch, beautiful ranch house, and they welcomed me very generously, gave me lunch, and I spent a good part of the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon and through lunch talking to Bob Ford. He talked about his early life uh in the Army Air Corps and then with it flying with the Navy and his early days at Pan Am, and then he talked about this incredible flight that occurred after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and Bob's command, which was the Pacific Clipper, a Boeing 314 flying boat, was caught in Auckland, New Zealand on the wrong side of the Pacific after the war had started. And after sitting in New Zealand for over a week, they were instructed by Pan Am in New York to return the airplane to the United States westbound, deliver it to Pan Am Marine Air Terminal Guardia, New York, via the most expeditious means bustle, which went flying westbound uh the long way around the world.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

From a military history standpoint, that was a real pivotal moment in the American psyche at the time, that this was kind of like the first victory of World War II because American morale was was depleted after Pearl Harbor, and a lot of Americans were really scared about what was coming next. This was just a great story. Orson Wells covered it on his radio program, and it was just a great story for the American public.

SPEAKER_10 14:04

Yeah. They it was a daunting proposition for them because uh none of the crew members had ever been in that part of the world before. Uh they had no maps, no charts, they had little or no money. They ended up uh going to uh the local schools in Auckland and copying maps out of schoolboy atlases, which is what they uh part of the time that's all they had to use for navigation. And it was a tribute to Rod Brown, who was the navigator, that he was able to navigate that airplane across uh trackless oceans and deserts and jungles all the way back to the United States. It was a tremendous, it was an incredible feat. So uh I spent, as I said, the uh a good part of the day with the Fords and got a wonderful interview with Captain Ford. And uh the piece that I wrote was published by Smithsonian Air Space magazine shortly before Captain Ford passed away. Uh he wrote me a couple of very nice letters uh uh after our interview, and uh he was able to see the the finished product in the magazine before he died, and he uh told me that he liked it. So and then I subsequently did a piece for Airways magazine uh later on, and I've given a couple of presentations since uh about it since it was such an incredible feat.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

A lot of people say, you know, you shouldn't meet your heroes because you'll be disappointed, but it sounds like you were able to meet your hero and it met and exceeded all of your expectations. Can you share a little bit of your personal journey here?

SPEAKER_10 15:44

Yeah, I um uh yeah, of course I knew that Ford was one of the uh early Pan Am pilots and that he had an earlier career uh on the military with the Army Air Corps and also with the Navy. In fact, uh when he went through pilot training in the uh the Army Air Corps at Randall Field in San Antonio, uh his flight instructor was Claire Chenault, who ended up being rather famous or infamous, depending on how you look at it, as the leader of the uh American volunteer group, better known as the Flying Tigers, in China shortly after the start of the war.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Interesting.

SPEAKER_10 16:22

So yeah, and so he had uh uh a real connection to history, to aviation history, not only with Pan Am, but with the military before that.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

And we have a couple clips to share. Uh let me go ahead and play the first one. Let's take a listen to a three and a half minute clip of Robert Ford talking about when he started his aviation career when he joined the Army Air Corps in Boston in the spring of 1928.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

I might as well give you the whole answer later. I read an ad in the Boston newspaper in the spring of twenty eight. Oh my god, so you were the fact that all the time, I think you're talking about the case. Okay, that fumble bumble.

SPEAKER_11 20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

So it's been thirty years since you heard that. What's going through your mind?

SPEAKER_10 20:21

I I I'm just um first first of all, it's mind-boggling that uh someone would memorize a Brad Whitney engine overhaul manual uh in the first place. Uh and the second thing that comes to mind that that it's something that could never happen today. I don't think we would ever find anyone with the with the ambition and the guts and the fortitude and the and the drive to do that. Uh it was an extraordinary thing. I was I was amazed when I heard what he had to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

It's still incredible for me uh to hear an 88-year-old from 1994 uh talking about things in such clarity that happened in 1928.

SPEAKER_10 21:14

Oh, I know. The guy was so sharp. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And I'd like to thank you for sharing this uh with uh all of our listeners because that this is an incredible gift that we get to share for future generations to uh explore this time period. Right. Should we listen to another clip? All right, so here's another three and a half minute clip of Bob Ford talking about his air corps training in the summer of nineteen twenty eight in San Antonio, Texas.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Well, I got there in July of twenty eight.

SPEAKER_06 21:55

Were you buying jennies?

SPEAKER_02 21:57

No, I wasn't consolidated. PC3's PT1 that had a few T PT1 with histo edges. Yeah. And the others had the right wheel on. Every day the mechanist would roll out a plane for me, and I'd go out and fly around that part of Texas. The other guy had an instructor along, and he was giving him instruction on that. And I thought that didn't look very well, and I was right. Because one day along comes a messenger. The message said to report immediately to the final check. So I reported, his name was First Lieutenant Claire Chamot. He'd flown in World War I. Isn't that right? He looked as though he'd been dragged around the track face down on a cinder track. What was he scarred up by acting? I'll be nice. Man, he was a nice guy, nice acne. He was a Cajun. So uh we get in the airplane and I get up a couple of thousand feet, spotted a rancher putting S1 shingles on a brand new great big A shit. We gave him the business. Shingles were flying. We pulled up again. He came down again. This time the farmer threw a hammer and damn near hit it. Oh, really? It was pretty good.

SPEAKER_09 23:27

And this was supposed to be your check, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Yeah. Yeah. So we climbed up again high this time, and he did stuff I'd never heard of before, like split S's. He never did an inverted loop. I guess he figured that wing structure wasn't good enough. So we did everything else in the boat. Yeah. And he made me do it. Well I got in the spur of the thing and had a lot of fun. I'd never even heard of some of these things. He got tired of that, we came down and landed, and he got out and put his arm around my shoulder. Now, this is exact. He said, Ford, there's nothing the matter with your flying. He said, but once these sons of bitches start after you, they'll drive you out of your mind. The best advice I can give you is go back and get some extra schooling at the university. I had four years at Harvard College and two more years at the Howard Engineering School to get stuff that I didn't have time for when I was in the college.

SPEAKER_11 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

And uh so I took it another year. He said, you you apply to the uh Navy or the Marine Corps, you won't have any trouble. I remember primary land plans. My striker was a Marine Corps Warren Gunner. He was a good stocky squat thing, an avid baseball fan, and ran the baseball team for the for the whole establishment. He gave me confidence. You know, it kind of shook me up that thing fired right out. Yeah. I knew I was up against something. So anyhow, I got through.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

What do you think of that clip?

SPEAKER_10 25:20

Well, it uh four years at Harvard College. I mean, he just took kind of tossed that out like it was a like a throwaway line. Uh the guy had not only incredible uh intellect to start with, and great instincts for flying an airplane uh was very well schooled and very knowledgeable about everything, about the world around him. And he obviously didn't suffer full as badly. Uh he was just uh quite a quite a guy. It was uh uh it was so much fun just sitting there listening to him uh recount this that happened like uh 1928 95 years ago. Yeah, it's incredible. It was incredible.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

What else did he talk about that uh is not part of your recording?

SPEAKER_10 26:16

Uh he was interested in in uh what I was doing w uh w about my career at at Pan M. Of course uh at the time I did this interview, Pan M had been out of business for several years and uh I was on the verge of retirement myself. But he was very interested in uh in my career and uh the fact that I had uh uh flown in management as a uh as a checkerman and as a chief pilot. And uh I asked him about the rest of his career after we you know after the war. Of course, all the the um the boat pilots were immediate enlistment in the U.S. Navy along with the uh airplanes, and they were given uh naval rank in all exits military pilots. Uh subject to the need of the military for the rest of the war. And then after the war mentioned that he uh Pan M uh management uh in New York and uh he left the airline I think in the early 50s.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Well, let's listen to another clip. Uh this one is Bob Ford talking about serving in the Atlantic fleet in the summer of 1929 as an aviator in the United States Navy. This clip is about two minutes long.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

In the summer of 29, I spent uh ten months with an Atlantic Fleet catapult off the 12-inch scent third. And uh they wouldn't let me do it solo and figured I couldn't do it because I hadn't been to the Naval Academy. But they weren't they weren't bad guys at all. Were you in the Navy or the Marine Corps? Navy. Navy. I was over eating dinner over near Langley Field one night across the bay from Norfolk when my squadron finished the tour down in the through the canal in the Pacific and and in the Caribbean, and uh a tall guy in a white uniform came up into this intimate interior, which consists of being practically unable to see the read the menu because of lag of light. That was Claire Chennault. He says, Hello, Ford, I see you made it. I thought you would. So a couple of times I in a weekend I borrowed a squadron plane from another squadron and flew over to Langley Field and looked up Claire Chenal. He sat there in his skinny, his feet at the table, and a gallon jug of sugar whiskey with a couple of charcoal sticks stuck in it to pick up the fusel oil.

SPEAKER_09 29:14

He was army, was he not? Yeah, he was army.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Now he's a major. I knew something was cooking. Uh see it was then he picked up all these graduates of the army, Brooks and Kelly Fields, and uh because they didn't have money for all of them that got through. And from the Navy from Pensacola.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

After 30 years, the John Marshall uh laugh and charisma is still very strong, I must say.

SPEAKER_10 29:50

Well, it didn't say that uh Claire Shadola uh had a continuing tread through Buff of life in his career. Of course, uh went on to became very controversial as the worst there. A lot of others in the upper uh levels of the military hierarchy in the China as uh when he formed the ABG, the American Volunteer Group, which flew uh at the beginning of the war. He survived the war and went on to Ford was just uh something that just couldn't happen today. He uh you know, he started out in the uh in the Army Air Corps and then went to the Navy, and then the uh and then went to work for Pan M Yeah. Uh he had a pretty illustrious career before he ever uh flew for Pan M.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

And what struck me about your interview is uh he kept talking about these aircraft, these flying boats from the late 1920s, early 1930s in uh vivid details, and it was just astounding. His memory was in the yeah, 88-year-old guy uh talking about uh these aircraft like uh there were it was yesterday. Let's listen to another clip. This clip is about six minutes long, and it's you and uh Bob Ford uh talking about what he did after his military service uh when he joined Pan American in 1933 by calling up Andre Priester to ask for a job after never hearing back from the company the year before. Ford also talked about Pan Am's Western Division operation in Brownsville, Texas, flying the Sikorsky S-38 and S-43 flying boats and trips down to Central and South America in the early 1930s.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

And in May of 33, I lived with my parents in Boston because the depression was on the full force. Oh yeah, couldn't get a job pumping gas. Yeah. So I was down visiting the in-laws, and my fiance is why don't you call Andre Pruster, who's vice president chief engineer, and seems to be running that program of expanding the flying force. So uh I called Pruster on the phone and it was almost noontime. I didn't expect to get him. It was he who answered the phone.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 32:31

You could tell. He told me himself that his father was a Dutch provincial governor and jabber, and his mother was a Javanese lady. Then he'd get experience in the aviation business because he worked for KLM. Well, I said on the phone, I thought you wanted the pilots who had the licenses and the mechanics licenses and the radio license. He said, I do. I said, Well, a year ago I applied. Other people have gotten jobs, I didn't get a job. He says, Where are you? I said, I'm over in New Jersey. He said, How long did it take you to get here? I said, about 40 minutes. You come right now, he said. So I did, and for two hours he talked my head off about all his plans for expanding things and so on.

SPEAKER_04 33:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Pan Am at that time had two divisions. The Western out of Brownsville, Chief Pilot George Krager. One time they've been flying the North Coast one for some years. They had some trouble over Brownsville. I don't know whether it was personnel or maintenance of what it was. They said, Well, Hugh Gordon and I were flying together. When we got in and took a shower, we went up to shooting gallery. He loved the shooting. We shooting play business when the Sisters Airport manager came up to us and said, You better get back and get some sleep. You're going out early in the morning in a 10-to-1 ratio engine, S-38. He said, it hasn't been flown in a year. But he said, they're looking it over right now. Because when we came in, they uh you had to pump the gear down, and then S-43 had to pump the gear down by hand, and the flap and all the rest of it. They didn't have the parts to repair, but they had a way till they came from from Miami. Well, anyhow, we went through the entrance port in Venezuela and the entrance port to Colombia and Medie and the drug capital of the world. Didn't have drugs at that time, I guess. At least not for sale. And I'd been there once before. It was in the crater of a volcano a long time ago, very wide, and it was filled in with erosion. So it was a kind of an almost level valley inside there. But you had to get to 10,000 feet to get in there. Oh, wait a minute. Had to get 8,000. Then you get used to it, it was a bit frightening. That's how you're putting your head in a noose. Well, we came up to it and it was a solid wall. There was a storm center right over this volcano. All these peaks all around it. Oh, we fooled around there for about a half an hour and they had no radio aids, nothing. Nothing. They told me that some of the Western Division pilots used to get in there by taking a loop bearing on some broadcast station, but there wasn't anything that we knew about. We had nothing in the paperwork they gave us.

SPEAKER_09 36:16

Required a little local knowledge, huh?

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Well, you think when I'd flown it before they would have given you something. Yeah. That's the way they used to operate. Yeah. So he told them we're coming back, so we went through the clearance venezale and back at the canal zone. Well, then all hell broke loose. Get a letter from Ed Critchley, who was the flight operations manager of Miami, who had us on it because we were based in Forest Bank. And he uh he said, the Russia Division has flown this thing for years without any incidents. How come you can't do it? It's real confidence in your pilots. Yeah. Well, I could write a nasty letter too, but it was oh so nice. They had a house they could have. They wouldn't let me talk to him. I smelled a rat. I kept insisting. Finally they put him on. He was dead drunk.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

So a couple things that I want to point out on that clip. He's talking about the Great Depression and how he couldn't even get a job at a gas station to put it in perspective of what was going on in history at the time. And he's talking about flying these flying boats that are are, I don't want to say primitive because that that is putting it in a negative light, but that's the dawn of aviation. What what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_10 37:59

Well, you know, uh yeah, but by today's standards, primitive is probably a an operative word. When you think of the state of the art of navigation age and the radio equipment that was available at the time and the airplanes that they were flying, uh it's hard to put it into into the context of you know flying today because of the sophistication of what we have today. It's a history lesson to listen to uh guys like Ford talk about these things. Yeah. Bill Nash was another one that you know that flew down there in Central America and they they flew with all these primitive NAVAIDs and and uh into horrible weather, made up their own approach procedures. Uh they were pioneers really. And uh the the job had to get done, and they just they did it, they found a way to do it. It's really fun to listen to a guy like Ford uh talk about it like that.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Yeah, and uh also like uh think about what he saw in his life. Uh you know, he went through the Great Depression, he was uh he knew people that served in World War I. Obviously everything that happened during World War II. Land planes, jets, the Concord, the space shuttle. Just amazing.

SPEAKER_10 39:26

He was right at the leading edge of it.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

And I wonder if uh how this world would be if uh we didn't have these uh visionary pioneers like Juan Tripp and Bob Ford and uh Lindbergh and many others, even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and all of these uh uh pioneers and entrepreneurs in business and industry, uh the space program, uh like uh how uh history would be so different today.

SPEAKER_10 39:55

It would. It it wouldn't be the way it is. No, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

I can't thank you enough for uh allowing us to use the uh clips from this interview from 1994 of uh 88-year-old Robert Ford because it's uh uh Well, it's history.

SPEAKER_10 40:13

It it really is.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Uh so before we get into the long way home and the story of the Pacific Clipper, uh I have one last clip before we get into that story. And this clip is Bob Ford talking about flying the Sikorsky S-40 flying boats out of Dinerkey, Miami. And this clip is about four minutes. Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

But uh after I spent about four years out in the Florida Spain, I was transferred to Miami. Apparently they were going to commence flying the Atlantic. Uh I think Priester asked for me because he remembered me. But when I got up near New York, uh, for some reason or uh years later, people in the offices there said, Why don't you why don't you go in and visit Ed Crisley, used to be flight operations manager of the Eastern Division? He's the head of the historical department, which was as notorious as being a kiss you goodbye physician. So I went in to see Ed Crichley. You wouldn't believe it. He stood up and shook hands and he said, of all the pilots that went through Miami, I picked you as the one most likely to succeed.

SPEAKER_09 41:43

Is that right? You wouldn't believe it. What were you flying in Miami?

SPEAKER_02 41:50

Oh uh S-40s, which was a lumbering Sikorsky tail dog. And uh it took off at 70, it flew at about 75, you approached the 75, you landed at 70, but it was a good old struggler. Well, you just use it to NASA on the mana. But I had a trip as co-pilot to Bob Patt, the chief pilot. He'd been a sergeant in the army. We landed in uh we didn't pull up to a boy and then get winched in. Just one or two engines that kept blimping the switches. Went into a pretty narrow parking thing for a steam vessel, but pretty big. But fat was notorious for not being a good flying boat operator. And I was out on the bow of the pole boat, the bow post up, and already it was pretty narrow. The ones were sticking over the dog, the two-sided dog. And he was just making too much headway. He didn't leave the switch off long enough. There was no headwind or anything in there to enclosed anger. See, I think I picked up the bow line and put it on the bow post, but he was gone so fast that this bow line was unraveling from slack down on the bottom of the slip. We were dangerous hitting the wingchip on the wall of the hangar. The airport manager was Johnny Donahue. Johnny Donahue was the real character. He was notorious for his Spanish. Although he was in a Spanish speaking person, he practically had no Spanish at all. He was notorious for the statement, telephoning some woman who did his laundry saying. That was a floor. You've got to learn how to handle a flyboard.

SPEAKER_06 44:43

The two pilot he was called with two.

SPEAKER_05 44:48

Well, anyhow.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

So what do you think, Captain Marshall?

SPEAKER_10 44:54

Well, it's interesting that uh, you know, he he talks about these characters that that he flew with, and I've read uh some other uh memoirs of uh pilots who are flying about the same time Ford was, and Captain Bat's name uh came up, uh uh I remember it a couple of times in in a similar context. And he couldn't fly with a damn.

SPEAKER_05 45:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 45:20

Uh but it's so much fun to listen to a guy like Ford rub this about uh things like that. But uh and the way they docked those uh those those flying boats is just uh it's incredible that they got away with the stuff that they did.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Uh so let's talk about uh uh Pearl Harbor and the clipper. Uh now for our clipper uh uh it's important to remember that in 1941 the Boeing 314 flying boat and were very sought after by the Japanese and the German high technology and uh had orders from the U.S. government to uh uh prevent uh that kind of technology to end up in uh it's not possible and crafting aircraft deliberately. Uh give us a little bit more context to the lead up to Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Clipper.

SPEAKER_10 46:23

Uh uh yeah, I'll give you a little uh a little background. It was the art, it was the most advanced uh battery transport uh uh of its kind uh uh anywhere. If you wanted to fly uh uh uh across the ocean, you float a Boeing 314. It was the ultimate electric and the right cycle uh cyclone 14 cylinder that were uh the remote at that time they were mounted on no other uh uh aircraft or military. So it was a very valuable resource. Um we're talking about uh because uh uh uh speckles uh uh speckles. Uh direction from headquarters. Uh well Ford and his crew left uh San Francisco on December 1st, uh, 1941. Uh they went to Los Angeles. Uh where they had a brick lay over and then uh flew to Honolulu. And from there they went to uh Canton Island and then New Mea and then to Auckland. And they made they left over Eddie. And then the next day they got back on the airplane and they were halfway between the Maya and Auckland on the last leg of their flight. It was December 8th. Where they were they crossed the international day line. It was the morning of December 7th. They were several hours from Auckland when the radio operator received accepted an uh urgent message saying that uh had been bombed by the Japanese. So in blink of an eye for all purposes uh the Pacific Ocean had become a war zone. Uh radio silence from where they were. They could go down to Auckland. Landed to Auckland, and it was confirmed that uh the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and uh uh war was expected to be declared momentarily, which it was. So Ford and the crew were there in Auckland. Uh with no way to get back to the West Coast of the United States, but which we got because uh award zone they waited for a week in Auckland to get the conflict there, uh wait for a word from New York and they were fired. They finally received uh a message uh that they were to uh attempt to uh uh return the flying boat the Boeing 314, Pacific Clipper to a dark airport by the most expeditious means possible. Well, of course that meant flying was found a long way around a long way home. Uh they had no charge uh uh they copied maps out of schoolboy atlas's uh uh plan, which Ford had opened and instructed them to uh identifying markings like the airplane uh whatever the airplane everything is. So when they got the message a week later, they were prepared to uh uh uh made sure the airplane was in good running quick. They took off for Nevada where they uh picked up uh all the section personnel there. Uh they were given one hour to pack, they were allowed one to get uh and then they headed for Australia where were uh deposited them uh for eventual uh passage back to the United States probably on some freighter across the South Pacific. But that began uh the saga of the uh the Pacific Clipper. And uh Bob Ford uh tells it pretty well in his own words.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Uh well let's take a look to you and Bob Ford talking about him flying the Boeing 314 flying boat uh named Clipper from Trevor Island of Francisco to Honolulu for Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. And what happened afterward? That clip is about 17 minutes long, and uh Bob Flight also made an appearance uh uh it was a pleasure listening to the whole thing on the excerpt. But my one of my favorite parts is Bob Ford, 88 years old, dying of terminal cancer at the time when you interviewed him in 1994. Insisting that you have more ice cream. That was my favorite part. Yeah, so let's take a listen and then we can talk a little bit more about it.

SPEAKER_09 52:15

Well, when you left San Francisco, it was before Pearl Harbor. Right? Yeah. Did you have any or had you gotten any briefings or anything about uh for months?

SPEAKER_02 52:28

I don't remember how long. Might have been as long as for six months. We had to check out a sealed envelope from security Treasure Island to open when the Japanese attempted. Not ever. Oh, is that right?

SPEAKER_09 52:43

That's remarkable.

SPEAKER_02 52:44

No, I heard some inside stuff from the Navy after the war.

SPEAKER_09 52:50

Well now what was in this secret envelope that you uh endeavored to tell you the route to follow.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

So they had, as I found out en route, had obviously been dealing with the Royal Air Force because they treated us with kick gloves, provided us with fuel, because we came up from New Zealand direct to New California to live, and uh gave our people all over 40, two hours to get ready. Two suitcases to take with us. We had to leave behind all the linen, rugs. There were about 20 of them, weren't there, or so? I forgot. I was letting other people worry about that. We flew to Northampton. Is that the name? I can't remember now. I'll think of it a little more. In uh Australia? Gladstone? Yeah. We just flew across the desert from Gladstone and to Fort Darwin. To Darwin. Oh, I guess we were 100. Somewhere around 100-200 miles inland from the coast, but actually pretty went over Alice Springs.

SPEAKER_11 53:54

Did you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

We didn't have any trouble getting fuel detailing I had overlooked. I had a cracker camp call. My navigator Rod Brown, who later became chief fellow for Oregon Overseas. He was very, very capable. A first engineer and a second engineer. Very, very capable. Way right a person was a genius that's reciprocating him.

SPEAKER_09 54:20

You didn't really have any charts to navigate with, though, did you?

SPEAKER_02 54:25

After we left Port Darwin, we had nothing.

SPEAKER_09 54:29

Yeah. Just maps torn out of school books and so on?

SPEAKER_02 54:32

Don't ever laugh about it. Took us around the world. Wow. After we left, we made a daylight flight from Port Darwin to Surabaya Jama. I mean away after the first couple of hours to a whole bunch of islands and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_11 54:49

We apparently went from Southeast direct for Surabaya. The ladies that uh serious. They almost shot you down there, didn't they? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

In fact, the Dutch naval commandant was the first one to greet me when we get in. We didn't know where to land or where to go or anything. We we weren't allowed to operate radio at all. I had to see a cruiser, Navy cruiser in the in the harbor, but there wasn't room in there, so I landed outside the entrance. The harbor and it was slow. We turned around and head back. The re-arming boat instead of coming up to us and giving us a line and throwing up there and what stayed off about a mile and waving us on. Finally, when we get up very close to sure, they came up closer. Well, the first person to greet me on the steps of the little command's building was a command in a Dutchman, talking to New York English. He said, It's a lucky thing for you that our air-togram radio was working today. He said it usually doesn't. Because our players phoned in, said we're should shoot him down.

SPEAKER_09 56:15

Well, didn't one of them spot part of the U.S. flag underneath the paint on the airplane?

SPEAKER_02 56:20

They had a U.S. flag on the airplane, and the Fed has an offering proceeded to erase about a third or two-thirds of it or something.

SPEAKER_09 56:29

They painted the whole airplane, didn't they?

SPEAKER_02 56:31

No. They'd paint unpainted.

SPEAKER_09 56:36

Was that your idea or was that part of the master plan?

SPEAKER_02 56:39

I didn't know anything about it. I didn't even know it had been done.

SPEAKER_09 56:42

Oh really?

SPEAKER_02 56:43

You think they would have asked me something about it?

SPEAKER_09 56:46

So you were essentially flying an airplane with no markings on it. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 56:50

It is mail marking. Yeah. The second version is reading right behind the air on a bit. Oh really? Yeah. He'd been instructing the pilots of the Dutch Airport.

SPEAKER_11 57:12

Oh my god. He had us over the ship.

SPEAKER_09 57:23

Well, there were some places uh where you could not get aviation gas, isn't that right?

SPEAKER_02 57:28

I was showing a buyout. Right there. Supposed to be a cash under an octane point. Instead of some automobile gas.

SPEAKER_11 57:38

I think it was around 70 octances instead of a hundred. Well Swedro didn't pretty a lot of the seawings and flew them in the seven tanks in the wind. So the only load we were carrying was a an engine, uh case. And a drum of oil. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 58:10

Well, where was the minefield?

SPEAKER_02 58:14

At the entrance to the harbor.

SPEAKER_03 58:15

We can actually grade through it. Yeah, well, they hadn't been to to help him in. Because of the minefield.

SPEAKER_09 58:22

Oh my god. Was that the only place where uh you were not able to get uh aviation fuel that took the turbine?

SPEAKER_02 58:30

Well, the British Rail Air Force was using a hundred miles in here. Because when we took off from Surabi and 100 okay, we level up at a couple of thousand feet. Oh no way back, pulled off the engine. When we turned on the automobile gas, the engines almost jumped out of their mouth.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

Where did they fill the gas tank with five gallon gas and something every place to go?

SPEAKER_09 59:17

They had to refill it with cherry cans?

SPEAKER_02 59:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 59:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:21

Well, it's quite dad when they had to kill out my.

SPEAKER_09 59:24

That must have taken a while.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

That was pretty tired. It wasn't bad. That was still refilled.

SPEAKER_11 59:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:38

I was waiting for what I thought was a bombing raid. Oh no.

SPEAKER_09 59:49

They draw some big ones out there, don't they?

SPEAKER_11 59:52

Well, pretty official degrees. Oh, God, what apparently a shipping and storing point of the weight of the United States Navy Point Director. Sleeping on the boat on the on the chairs. We wanted a shower, so we asked where we could get a shot.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

And she had going over there next to the water tower, and you go over there. Okay, the woman had it. It was very gracious. Of course, the relevant of the bike was trying to sniper and laughing. I said, What's so funny? I said, You you know where we get our shot?

SPEAKER_11 1:00:43

I said, Yeah. Well maybe you don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

That's funny.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:05

You wrote in your letter uh to me about the bank manager in Gladstone that opened the bank on a point.

SPEAKER_11 1:01:12

I was waiting up to all true. He came up to me and said that you fixed the money.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:31

I said, Well, we had money to take us to the jail and the back to have a pistol. Oh, we'll just for Saturday.

SPEAKER_11 1:01:51

Oh boy, I'll get out of the bank and open a side block.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:57

And I'll get you five hundred dollars US.

SPEAKER_11 1:02:00

Wow. Charge of the money?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:06

Here's the only one who had a lockbox and a cake. You had a sign and kick for it. Locked them in this navigation box.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:16

Did you finance the entire trip with that $500?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:20

Yeah, but of course we already have billing in the US.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:23

And uh But you were buying food as you went along? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:30

Yeah. Tell me about the Japanese submarine that you between Surabaya and we were on the southwest side.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:42

I forgot the name of the island, right? Just beyond Sumatra? Sumatra. Ten days before, something like that. The monsoon was supposed to have started. Sure. And it was late. We had no charge. And Surabaya, who went aboard the cruiser Houston and sunk a few weeks later. The crew was exhausted. They were sitting on the deck with their backs against the target. Physically and nervously exhausted. The navigator Brown and I went and talked to the navigator who was in commander. He said, I'm sorry, I haven't got any charts. Except except these ones, and I have to keep these. He gave us a route to flight charts. Oh just take an attitude about it. How about it? Well we were counting our blessings on the weather. We got down under the upper clouds and Was it in daylight? Yeah, it had to be daylight.

SPEAKER_11 1:03:59

We were due sometime within an hour proportionally.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

It was some low scud. We get down below the scud because we didn't know just what kind of wind we've been having all night. We didn't want to miss the out.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:18

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:19

It was like this if we were coming like this.

unknown 1:04:22

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

India's up there.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:24

Yeah. You miss it on the wrong side and there's an awful lot of water.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:28

What kind of situation for a flying boat would we be in India? All of a sudden there was a Jap Submarine. Jeff crew was running for the net gun, which was way up floating. Uh we were busy getting into the sky again.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:43

I dare say. Yeah. Did you have only your crew on board or did you have to do that?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:57

No, uh well, we had picked up a route original crew. We had picked up a company meteorologist. Did they come with you from Auckland or No, we picked I think we picked one of them up with New Year.

SPEAKER_11 1:05:14

And from time to time we I think we picked up a mechanic in Rockhampton. We must have been moved to some other place because they were going to establish a a route.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

Well at one time we had 18 on the crew.

SPEAKER_09 1:05:34

Yeah, sure. Were you able to get the aviation gas in in Africa? In uh Khartoum and then uh Leopoldville?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:05:46

That must have been quite a leg from uh Leopoldville across the South Atlantic to not very short.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:53

Brazil twenty three. If you don't want to reject the farm, you've got a lot of technology. Because we're back. Oh, what the gap?

SPEAKER_11 1:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:56

I guess not.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:57

I had gotten out of there, so I was glad I didn't have to go back in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

So, first of all, Captain Marshall, you are a great interviewer. After 30 years, what what do you think of that? The thing that struck me is all they had was $500.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:15

Yeah, uh, but remember $500 in $1940 is probably a little bit more than that now. And uh as uh Bob said, the RAF bill, the the US government for the fuel and probably other things as well. And uh given the part of the world that they were flying in, they you probably eat per for pretty little. I had forgotten that uh they had picked up some extra people in uh Numea. I know Gene Dunning uh got on in Numea and there was a mechanic I didn't realize that they had other people uh besides that. Yeah, I remember he said they had at one point they had 18 people on the crew. So but they were just you know, it was uh it was it was fly by night. They they they were making things up as they went along. They had no idea what they were going to encounter at the next stop, whether it'd be aviation gas available. What uh they had the engine failure going out of uh trincomalee on the way to Karachi, where they about an hour and a half after takeoff, and uh they blew a cylinder on the number three engine, and they had to go back. That was Christmas Day, I think, in 1941. They had to go back um to Trincomalee and uh repair it themselves. And uh fortunately, the entire British uh fleet was anchored in Trincomalee Harbour, including uh some big heavy ships that had their own uh their own machine shops, so they were able to avail themselves with some Royal Navy help, you know, in that respect. So yeah, it was I I it's something that would never happen today. It it would for you know a great many reasons, but it's such a piece of history, and I was just delighted that I was able to meet with Ford before he died and find him so uh alert and interesting and provided such a tremendous narrative, which is what I ended up writing about.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

Any closing thoughts for our listeners on why Robert Ford's life and why this historical event of long way home after Pearl Harbor is important?

SPEAKER_10 1:11:39

Well, it's part of it's a part of history. You know, if you can't remember history, you're condemned to repeat it. And that's it. Uh it's just part of aviation art. It's uh and I'm just proud and and humbled that uh that I was uh in a position to be uh be a small part of it and being able to talk to uh to Kevin Ford.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:10

And to my knowledge, uh, and I've been uh researching PANAM history for some time, I have never come across a recording of Robert Ford. So if there are recordings out there, there are few. So it is just such a delight to have it on this program.

SPEAKER_10 1:12:30

Yeah, I would venture to say that probably without contradiction, that it's probably the only one.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:37

And it's just again, it it's such a delight to be able to hear someone from history uh living through these historical events. Um, it's like a time capsule, and uh and that's what this program is about. And you and I serve on the the Panam Museum board together, and that's what our organization's about, uh preserving this kind of history. And it's just been such a delight. Thanks very much for inviting me on and uh letting me share this story. All right. Well, thank you, and again, thank you for sharing your 30-year-old interview with Captain Ford from 1994 when he was 88 years old, just shortly before he passed away. Thank you, thank you. Take care. 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, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. 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 panammuseum.org. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Am.