SPEAKER_08 0:14

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. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Am Museum.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. Then we will welcome back to the program Pan Am flight attendant and author Becky Sprecker, who will share her insights and family history of the Flying Clippers. Becky was our guest in episode 7 about Flying the Line, and episode 29 about the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. But first, a couple updates. In an effort to grow our audience, and from a generous donation from Adam Aaron, the president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation, the Pan Am Podcast is being promoted on WAMU NPR in Washington, D.C. Let's take a listen to one of those promos that is now on the radio.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Support for WAMU comes from our members and from the Pan Am Podcast, bringing the legacy and influential history of Pan American World Airways to life through engaging storytelling and interesting interviews.

SPEAKER_08 3:03

More at panam.info The board of the Pan Am Museum Foundation would like to thank all the event sponsors of the 2024 Pan Am Museum Gala, held in October. They are PKF O'Connor Davies, Prime Flight, CDS Metzel, the Macintosh Foundation, Tracing the Transatlantic, Guardian Professional Services, Pan Am Brands, David Jeffrey, AGI, Stignobills, and the Pan Am Historical Foundation. We would also like to warmly send our thanks and appreciation to our keynote speaker, veteran journalist Sam Donaldson, who worked for ABC News for over four decades. And here's an update about me, the host of this program. I am honored to be a guest on the Mid-Century Living Podcast in an upcoming episode. This podcast is a weekly program about technology and culture from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The hosts, Jackie and Gonzalo, cover the best of the mid-20th century from technology, art, and fashion to food, history, and culture. It's a great podcast, and you should give it a listen. There's a link in the episode description to listen to the Mid-Century Living podcast, and you can find it on whatever platform you're listening to this program on. Also, many thanks to the Port Washington Public Library for displaying the Pan Am Museum's traveling exhibit featuring Pan Am travel posters. They also hosted a history presentation with board chair Linda Freyr on the significance of Long Island in Pan Am history. Now let's learn a little bit more about the first transatlantic crossings of a commercial airplane. On March 3, 1939, at the Naval Air Station at Anacostia, outside of Washington, D.C., First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, christened the first Boeing 314 flying boat named the Yankee Clipper. The champagne bottle used for the christening was filled with ocean water collected from the seven seas before a crowd of thousands, and hundreds of thousands more listening to the live radio broadcast. Let's take a listen to a newsreel from British Patha on this event that was played in movie theaters.

SPEAKER_12 5:47

Hundreds of aviation and first lady enthusiasts gather on the seaplane ramp at Anagostia Naval Air Base near Washington. Odds are it doesn't break the first time. We lose, but the giant skyboat wins the new name, the Yankee Clifford. The blame will enter the transatlantic trade flying the flag of the United States. With a roar of 6,000 horsepower, some 40 tons of winged metal lifts off the water and heads into the skyway.

SPEAKER_08 6:32

Three weeks later, on March 29, 1939, at 2.34 p.m. in the afternoon local time, the Yankee Clipper made history and took off from Baltimore to Europe under the command of Captain Harold Gray. This was the first Atlantic crossing of a passenger plane. However, it is classified as a proving flight and did not have any paying passengers aboard. The Clipper would travel 10,000 miles on this inspection flight to the Azores, Lisbon, Marseille, Southampton, and Foines. Let's take a listen to another newsreel from British Pathay on this historic event.

SPEAKER_11 7:16

Another Leviathan. This time of the air. The 42-ton Pan-American flying boat Yankee Clipper makes aerial history. This mighty aircraft sets out on its first transatlantic flight with 21 people aboard. Luxurious cabins, lounges, and private compartments will accommodate 74. Yankee Clipper has already accomplished more than half of her projected flight from American to Lisbon, Marseille, and Southampton. Happy landings to the Yankee Clipper.

SPEAKER_08 7:43

Pan American made another milestone when it inaugurated the first air mail service across the Atlantic on May 20, 1939, with the Yankee Clipper departing from Port Washington on Long Island. Under the command of Captain A. E. Laporte, this flight transported almost a ton of mail along the mid-Atlantic route from New York to Marseille, France, via the Azores in Lisbon, Portugal. On June 17, 1939, Pan American Airways arranged for a special flight for 16 members of the press departing from Port Washington. This is the flight that Becky Sprecker will focus on during our interview. By all intents and purposes, this was the first flight with passengers. However, they did not pay for their fares, as this was a publicity flight, a brilliant marketing strategy for the airline. This press flight is historically and culturally significant because the radio reporters on board reported live at an altitude of 10,000 feet over the Atlantic to listeners all over the country tuned into their radio sets with great interest. This is the first time that a broadcast like this occurred. Let's take a listen to a clip from this historic radio broadcast from NBC.

SPEAKER_10 9:12

Ladies and gentlemen, we wish to thank the SO marketers for their courtesy in relinquishing their time over some of these stations in order that we might bring you a special broadcast. A preview of Transoceanic Passenger Service. Ladies and gentlemen, at 3 55 p.m. New York time this afternoon, the Pan American Airways Atlantic Clipper took off from Fort Washington, Long Island for Horta in the Azores, 2,397 miles away. The first stop in its inspection flight from New York to Marseille, France. Marking the last step necessary before regular air passenger service can be inaugurated, the giant plane is winging its way across the Atlantic with uh 30 persons aboard. A world record for a transatlantic flight in a heavier-than-air machine. These 30 persons consist of twelve newswriters, four radio men, two of whom are NBC's well-known announcer George Hicks and engineer Ed Whitmore, two Pan American Airways officials, and a crew of twelve under the command of Captain Wallace D. Culbertson, making his first transatlantic flight as captain. Upon this flight depends the success and culmination of an objective toward which the American aviation industry has been working for 20 years. And to cover this momentous occasion, a series of special broadcasts have been arranged so that you may follow its progress. In just a moment, we will join those aboard the Clipper for the first broadcast ever to come from a passenger plane over the Atlantic. Come in, Atlantic Clipper.

SPEAKER_15 10:42

The luxurious modern furnishings inside our silver shell. 18 of us passengers and 12 in the crew, 30 souls in all, as a seafaring man would say. And try as we may to feel even slightly heroic, you know. No one can pretend he's a pioneer while lounging in upholstered furniture of blue and brown and chromium trim, waiting for the steward to come through with a refreshment. It was 1:30 New York time when the great 40-ton flying ship appeared over Massachusetts Days, locked into Los Island South, texted through the water to the Port Washington space to begin the long business of taking on fuel. The drum crew clambered over the whole seaway. And the passengers, working members, and friends of the radio defended upon the airplace, lines with typewriters and with papers, off the European, with a maximum of 30 pounds of luggage of feet. What is the basic flight of the Atlantic? The first passenger flight to the old world. This is the flight before the first flight. All of us before designated special observers above the ocean. Schedule six PM. We climbed up over the plastic. And the navigation extra. As we jump from the windows. And now the water. And now we're 420 miles. New York is heat waves. Well here's the heat, which is part of the comfortable comfortable temperature. They should spend the night before climbing high over the gigantic Chili Ocean, over the Spanish peninsula, to the Mediterranean, and to our last stop, the French port of March Bay Sunday afternoon. Of course, there are a great many things of interest in this gigantic flying ship about which it's impossible to tell you on this, our first broadcast from the air over the Atlantic. From time to time, we shall continue to take the air from this ship above the Atlantic. And during these other broadcasts, we hope to bring you the voices of many, if not all, of the correspondents who are here.

SPEAKER_08 15:16

On June 28th, 1939, the Dixie Clipper departed Port Washington carrying 22 passengers and a waiting list of over 500. This flight was called the Gala Flight. As the plane was taking off, on the shore was an 85-piece Port Washington high school band that entertained the thousands of onlookers gathered to watch the historic departure from all around Long Island and beyond. The cost for a one-way ticket to Europe was $375. That's about $8,500 in 2020 for money adjusted for inflation. And a round trip ticket was $675, which is over $15,000 today. This flight in late June 1939 is widely regarded in history as the first passenger commercial airplane to cross the Atlantic Ocean. There are no original Boeing 314 flying boats in existence today. However, the Foynes Flying Boat Museum in Foynes, Ireland, has an impressive full-scale replica of the Yankee Clipper you can tour with every detail accurately recreated. To learn more about this museum, visit Flying Boatmuseum.com. To learn more about Pan Am's Flying Boats, listen to episode three of this program titled Flying Boats, Irish Coffee, and a Hollywood Star. And episode eight titled A Lifetime of Romantic Adventure from Flying Boats to Jumbo Jets. Now on to our interview with former Pan Am Flight Attendant Becky Sprecker about her adventures in the Pan Am archives. On December 4th, 1991, Pan Am's last flight took place, and the company shut down. It was very sudden, and people were quickly cleaning out their offices and throwing files into boxes. Ed Tripp, the youngest son of Juan and Betty Tripp, along with other Pan Am officials, knew that there were valuable historic materials that needed to be preserved, and they would have to move quickly to ensure that they were not dispersed to private collectors. The following year, on October 6th, 1992, the corporate entity of Pan American World Airways Inc. filed a motion in the bankruptcy court of the Southern District of New York seeking authorization to abandon certain unnecessary and burdensome records. It's important to note that the records they were seeking to be released were documents relating to Pan Am's history, not employee or personnel and medical records, or any legal, financial, safety, or environmental documents required by federal regulatory agencies to be retained by the now bankrupt corporation. Comprising over 85,000 boxes, the records were then purchased at the bankruptcy auction by a partnership of the newly created Pan Am Historical Foundation and the Richter Library Special Collections Department at the University of Miami. About a hundred Pan Amployees volunteered to go through these boxes on their own time and determine what was appropriate for safekeeping. After eliminating irrelevant materials, 1,600 boxes of documents were distributed to the Richter Special Collections, with 400 going to the History Miami Museum and any important 3D objects such as Juan Tripp's Globe to the Smithsonian. The stories you will hear today reflect those efforts. Had these archives not been created, treasures such as handwritten letters from Charles Lindbergh to Wan Tripp, or the personal scrapbook of China clipper-skipper Ed Muzak might have been lost and unavailable to scholars and historians today. Our guest today is Rebecca Sprecker, a Pan Am flight attendant from 1972 to 1977. She was the co-author, along with the late Paula Helfrich, of Flying a Novel, a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to fly for the world's greatest airline as it became a target for international terrorism. She also writes feature articles for Jet Wings magazine, the publication for World Wings International, an alumni organization of Pan Am Flight Attendants. Becky is going to tell us about her visit to the archives in Miami and the unexpected discoveries she's made. Welcome back to the program, Becky.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Thank you so much, Tom, and congratulations on your 50th episode and the beginning of season four of the Pan Am Podcast.

SPEAKER_08 20:33

Thank you very much. Uh, you've been with us since the beginning in episode seven. Yeah, it's been a wild ride, and I really appreciate you coming back.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_08 20:42

And to our listeners, we have an exciting interview packed with audio clips for you. Why don't we start with giving you a little taste of that and setting the mood? Becky, tell us what song I'm going to play.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Well, we're going to be talking about the flying boats and the warriors. So why don't we hear a little bit of with a song in my heart? It was a very famous tune from those days, and it's performed by the singer Jane Froman, who is very, very popular with the tree.

SPEAKER_09 21:14

Just a ton at the stone. But it's tune is a hint to your grave. When the music's a ticket. It has got to stand.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Well, that takes me back.

SPEAKER_08 21:45

It does. I I wish we were dancing right now. Alright, so let's uh talk about our interview. How did you end up going to visit the Pay Am collection in Miami and tell our listeners more about it?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

In the spring of 1972, I was finishing up my senior year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And I had just returned from my interview with Pan Am in Washington, D.C. And I happened to have a maternal aunt and uncle who lived in Chapel Hill. And when I got my letter saying that I had been hired, I was absolutely euphoric. So I went out to their house to announce my good news. And my uncle, whose first name was Winston, said promptly, my mother's first cousin was Bill Winston. He was a Pan Am pilot and flew over a million miles during the war. And I went, great. You know, I was all of 21 years old. Oh, that's really interesting. You know, World War II was like the Stone Age. So I mean, I didn't, I promptly forgot about it. And I went on to Pan Am. I flew for six years. I had a great time. I went all over the world and moved on to other things in my life. Now, fast forward to 2015. My co-writer for Jet Wings magazine, Diane Groh, and I had been asked to write an article for the newsletter about uh what it was like to visit the Pan Am Archives. And that's located at the Richter Library at the University of Miami. And I had never been to a special collections section of a library before. And I have to say, they're a shout out to the staff. They couldn't have been nicer to us.

SPEAKER_08 23:37

They're awesome. They're really very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

They are wonderful. And you know, you have to tell them advance who you are, why you're coming, and which boxes of materials you'd like to see. And since we were going to be there for a few days, we requested a lot of stuff. We'd requested 40 boxes on the flying boats. The Pan Am collection is so large, it's 1,600 boxes, that it's housed off-site at the Richter's Secure Climate Control Warehouse. So the staff had to have the boxes trucked in and brought up to the special collections floor. So it was quite an effort for them, and we were very grateful. Now, when you get there, you know, you are required to check all of your personal items in a locker, and they give you these white cotton gloves so that you won't damage any of the documents or get fingerprints on the photographs. And they would wheel in this trolley with six boxes at a time, and we were only allowed, each one of us, to remove one box, take it over to the table, and uh go through it. So I thought on the way down there, I thought, what's going to be my angle for this article? You know, we're just writing about going to the archives. How are we going to make this interesting? And then I the light went on, and I thought all the way back to that conversation with my Uncle Winston. And I thought, hey, I wonder if I could find Bill Winston. I had no idea what equipment he was on, which ocean he was flying. All that I knew was that it was during the war.

SPEAKER_08 25:07

I love this story. So who was Bill Winston? And can you tell us something about him?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Well, his full name I did not know at the time. Uh it was William Augustus Winston, and he was from Eagle Rock, North Carolina, which was near his mother's hometown of Wendell, uh, just outside of Raleigh. And in fact, my first cousin's oldest son and his family still live in the Wendale house today. Now, we think he may have gotten interested in aviation as a child because the Wright brothers took their first flight off the North Carolina coast in 1903, and he would have been a young boy in those days. And from what we know, he was a multi-talented young man and loved reading and playing sports, and but he was an accomplished pianist of all things. And his teaching I know they were actually encouraging him to go on with it. After World War I, he was teaching flying to the Reserve Corps cadets at Brooks Field near San Antonio. They were flying the Curtis JN Fours, which are better known as the Jennies. I think they're familiar to everybody. And in 1924, Winston had a very unusual student, one who flew in on an old biplane that had lost most of the fabric from one wing.

SPEAKER_08 26:27

And I think I know who this is, but for our listeners, why don't you tell us?

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Well, it was Charles Lindbergh.

SPEAKER_08 26:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

And Winston subsequently gained a reputation for being the person who taught Lindbergh to fly.

SPEAKER_08 26:43

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Well, but he found this very embarrassing because it wasn't entirely correct. The truth was that Lindbergh had taught himself how to fly, and he had some 325 hours in the air before he even got to Brooksfield. What Winston did was to polish his technique by teaching him, you know, the formal cockpit procedures. And uh he was later talking to a newspaper reporter, and he said, and I'm quoting here from a clipping, he said, he he, Lindbergh, had a natural aptitude for flying, and you didn't need to tell him a thing more than once. As I remember, I gave him 55 minutes of duel before I sent him up alone. He learned rapidly. And Lindbergh appreciated his teacher. He cited Winston in his autobiography, which is called We. Quote, I had been particularly fortunate in my assignment of an instructor. Sergeant Winston held the record for flying time in the Army with 3,700 hours. He was an excellent pilot and knew how to instruct. So we know that Lindbergh went on to complete advanced training at nearby Kelly Field. And then in May of 1927, he did his famous solo flight across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Bill Winston became the manager of Curtis Field in New York. And the two would later, you know, renew their acquaintance. And I don't know if I can prove this, but this may have been how Winston heard that Pan Am was expanding and needed pilots because Lindbergh and his wife Ann were doing scouting routes for one trip. The hiring document, the crew, the crew list of pilots says that he was hired in 1933. So that would have hired that would have coincided with Pan Am's expansion into Latin America.

SPEAKER_08 28:38

Yeah, totally. So you're down in Miami. How did you finally locate the information on Winston and the archives? Because I'm sure there were lots of boxes you had to go through.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah, I mean, this it was like looking for a needle in a haystack and find and finding the needle. It was pure luck. I asked the staff to do a computer search on Bill Winston, and nothing came up. This is before they were actually scanning in documents, and scanning picks up everything for the searches. And this just had the title of the files and the box numbers and all that kind of stuff. So nothing came up. And I thought, well, maybe we had mostly boxes on the 314s. And so I don't really, I didn't know if he had been on the Sikorskis or what. So I figured he wasn't there. And I just um, you know, I they wheel in the first trolley and I pick up a box and I'm going through it, and there are various uh newspaper clippings and things like that. And I just happened to pick up a newspaper clipping from a Long Beach, California newspaper dated December 15th, 1942. So it's wartime, right?

SPEAKER_08 29:49

No, that's my birthday. Well, not 1942, but December 15th.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

December 15th. And uh a Boeing 314 has just landed in a place called Fisherman's Lake in Liberia, or Fish Lake, as it's referred to in Pan Am's documents. This is a shallow, oblong lake right near the Liberian coast. And it's now called Lake Piso, if that's the correct pronunciation for those of your listeners who want to check it out on their navigation apps. So the Pacific Clipper, I'm quoting now, taxiing toward its mooring after a scheduled flight to the Africa base, was driven by sudden gusts of wind against an uncharted reef where she grounded hard. The passengers, baggage, and 352 pounds of cargo were taken off in a launch to resume their war journeys in another plane. Captain William A. Winston finally wormed the 84,000-pound plane off the reef and taxied her to the shelter of the shore.

SPEAKER_08 30:52

It's so exciting when you it's like being a detective and you just crack the case. So that had to be him, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

That had to be him. And I felt like such a complete idiot for not searching the full name of William Winston. What was I thinking? I wasn't. But I have to recount the rest of this story because it's quite remarkable what they did. They had to repair the clippers' flooded cargo compartments. The engineers were doing this. And it involved rigging up diving gear using a flower can, attaching a disc of glass for a window, and running in an oxygen hose borrowed from the maintenance station's welding equipment to provide air for the diver. They were in just seven or eight feet of water, but still they had to have, you know, something. Long story short, they managed to pump the damaged compartments dry and they screwed plates in the hole inside and out, and then they poured in 1500 pounds of concrete, stabilize it, braced the compartments with African timber two by fours for reinforcement, and they flew the thing back to New York.

SPEAKER_08 32:05

Incredible. It's the MacGyvers of the 1940s. Just incredible. Uh so then what happened?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Well, um, then I had the bright idea to ask the staffer to do the search for the full name. And sure enough, a file uh turned up. And not only did we have a file, but we kept running across him in the material that we had already requested, was which was so much fun.

SPEAKER_08 32:30

So what were you thinking? Like what are you feeling at this point?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Well, I'm thinking, hey, I know he was on the 314 now, and we know he was in the Atlantic division. So I kind of knew to sort out uh material about that in the files and pay particular attention to it. But I had no idea how often he was going to turn up and where.

SPEAKER_08 32:55

To our listeners, this is all connected. So let's talk about his adventures. Why don't we take them in chronological order so our listeners can understand the timeline and how it fits in what we already talked about earlier in this episode? And that's the the 1939 press flight, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Right, right. That was the that was the first adventure. Now, there are a lot of preliminary trips when you're introducing a new aircraft, and particularly for the 314 crossing the Atlantic, because the Atlantic's don't uh known for very dangerous and unpredictable weather. They did uh proving flights to make sure that everything worked and the procedures were sound and calculations were correct and all that stuff. And then there was a mail flight, I think it was on May 20th, right, Tom?

SPEAKER_07 33:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

They didn't have regular paying passengers on this, but they did have passengers, but they were company officials and inspectors from the newly formed Civil Aeronautics Board. And then on uh June 17th of 1939, there was an introductory press flight. And there was a great deal of buzz about this flight because its ultimate destination was Marseille in France. And we know how much Americans love to go to France.

SPEAKER_08 34:14

Uh, what kind of information did you find on this press flight?

SPEAKER_01 34:18

They gave everybody a booklet that had been prepared to brief all the reporters on all aspects of the trip. And it had the passenger list, the crew list, the departure times, and the menus, the aircraft specs, the history of Pan Am, all that stuff, all the details they needed to write their pieces. And the the airplane involved was the Atlantic Clipper.

SPEAKER_08 34:43

If I remember correctly, there was at least one corporation that wanted to promote their products, correct?

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Absolutely. Smith Corona got in on the act because they had just introduced a portable typewriter called the Zephyr. And at the time, it was the lightest on the market. So they brought a bunch of them in for the reporters and uh put them on board. Now, uh, when I was checking the crew list, I pick up the crew this document. There were two captains on the crew for this very important showcase flight. In the left seat was Wallace Culbertson, who was a master of ocean flying boats, which is the term for very the a very senior pilot or chief pilot.

SPEAKER_08 35:25

And there was also a second captain in the right seat flying a I'm going to guess this is Becky Sprecker's relative named Bill Winston.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Bingo. And it was such a thrill to see that. They were carrying 16 members of the press, and four were women. And I want to tell you who they were because they were so very much ahead of their time. We have Inez Robb of King Features. She was an American journalist and war correspondent and society editor of the New York Daily News. Now, this was a frequent slot for women journalists of the day. She had covered several high-profile events, such as the coronation of King George VI. There was Violet Sweethaven from the International News Service. She was an American expat who had been the society editor of the Japan Times and the Hong Kong Telegraph, and was a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt's. Alice Rogers Hager of the North American Newspaper Alliance was a graduate of Stanford, and she was an aviation writer. She had been an eyewitness to the crash of the Hindenburg and had covered Amelia Earhart's ill-fated flight just a few years earlier. So she had great insight to the commercial aviation industry as it was coming into being. Then Marjorie Schuler of the Christian Science Monitor, and she literally was a bride. I mean, she had just been married the week before and was assigned the trip the next day. She was a suffragist, and like Violet Sweethaven, she was a friend of Mrs. Roosevelt's. Now, there was also one other woman in the group, uh, she, but she was not a journalist. This was Anne Archibald, and she was an essential Pan Am employee whose inside knowledge of government and the military was so indispensable to Juan Trip that she was known as the doyen of Pan Am's Washington.

SPEAKER_08 37:28

I did not know that. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Right. And she's going to come up later in the broadcast when we start talking about the VIP list traveling during the war. Um, so all the reporters, um, they all get into limousines, provided.

SPEAKER_07 37:42

But of course, but of course.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

And they're driven out to Port Washington on Long Island. And I think I sent you a picture of them, and you can just tell by looking at them that they're going to be a very raucous group. Now, the men are in suits and ties, and the ladies are dressed up. I mean, they're hated and gloved, and one is uh carrying a flower bouquet, and they all have corsages of orchids. Uh, Violet Sweethaven wrote that quote, reporters en route to Port Washington rode in fancy black limousines, but stopped at ice cream vendors at red lights to buy almond-covered popsicles.

SPEAKER_08 38:26

I love that.

SPEAKER_05 38:27

This was June, so it was June, so it was hot.

SPEAKER_08 38:30

I could just imagine seeing all these limousines stopping and you know going to some roadside ice cream stand or something. That's that's really funny.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Oh, it's been now that your corsages and all, yeah. So clearly the party has already started with this crap.

SPEAKER_08 38:44

Now, was there alcohol involved at this point, or that's later?

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Um, uh, I it was not mentioned. I wouldn't put it past them, but remember they actually had to write some stories, you know, when they got there.

SPEAKER_07 38:54

So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Sobriety may have been in order for a little while longer. When they reached Port Washington, there was a brief ceremony which involved the sounding of a bell and the pilots marching two by two down the gangplank to board the plane and begin their pre-flight preparations. Then two bells sounded and the passengers went aboard. And they took off at about four o'clock, and the lounge immediately turns into a city room with the typewriters clattering. And one reporter would finish a story, then go up to the cockpit and give it to the radio operator who would transmit it to the newsroom as his duties permitted.

SPEAKER_08 39:35

I love how you're telling this story, and you're such a good storyteller, Becky, but you're painting this picture, and I can see our listeners imagining this happening.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Well, they're in this lounge that seats 14, I guess, and the tables are set up, and so they've got their typewriters going. And Leland Stowe of the Herald Tribune describes the voyage as follows We're doing a 20th century Christopher Columbus in reverse.

SPEAKER_08 40:02

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

And uh, after the euphoria of takeoff and describing what they saw and what the ocean looked like below and the colors and the land, I mean, they kind of ran out of things to say. So they settled in to wait for dinner. And this is um Wayne Thomas from the Chicago Tribune. And his wire, his radiogram, which I found in the files, it says, quote, if this is pioneering, I'll take more of it. As I write this at 6 p.m. Chicago time, we are drilling along at almost 400 miles out from Port Washington. The air is smooth, the clipper quiet, our quarters most comfortable, and steward Joseph Raviol is preparing dinner. It may be unlucky to say so, but there's no thrill to this kind of ocean flying. It seems safe, natural, and altogether proper. Definitely it has passed from the realm of the stunt flight. Around me here in the main cabin sit a dozen men and women. One reads a smart magazine. Another, having finished her stint at the typewriter, is knitting contentedly and chatting with Captain William A. Winston, who is the plane's first officer.

SPEAKER_08 41:19

There's another Becky Sprecker connection. Here he is again.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

There he is. And it's all so relaxed and routine, which was, of course, the whole point. I don't think they wanted any drama at all on these things. People from the broadcast networks, CBS and NBC, were setting up in the bridal suite or the deluxe suite, which was at the tail of the aircraft, because there was going to be a broadcast. And aren't we going to hear some of that in a minute?

SPEAKER_08 41:50

Yes, we have the NBC clip right here. Let me play it, and then we can get your reaction.

SPEAKER_15 42:11

This particular broadcast is coming to you now from what the sentimental like to call the bridal suite, and what the practical mind is called the tail suite. It's the modernistically furnished little suite which can be closed off for the rest of the ship, and it's back a string in the very tail of this prime book.

SPEAKER_08 42:27

All right, Becky Sprecker. 30 pounds of luggage per female passenger.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

It's out of the question. There is absolutely no way that I could have done that. I have to say, this was new. And this was a new form of transportation. And so naturally the ladies at All Ben Society editors, so they were wondering what to wear. And Violet Sweethaven, who was really a character, she decided to make a real cruise ship style occasion out of the dinner. And I'm quoting from a radiogram she wrote just before they took off that she sent after takeoff. She says, quote, take off American Clipper means only beginning of real fun for press radio observers. Tonight there will be a formal soup to nutch and champagne dinner, the first deluxe meal ever served over the Atlantic. On steamships crossing the Atlantic, it is customary not to dress for dinner on the first night. Since clipper service brings passengers within a single night of Europe, I am setting precedent for women who fly to Europe years hence by dressing for dinner tonight in formal dotted Swiss, white sandals, and orchids. No one has yet asked to squire me to said dinner, but when he knocks at my compartment, I hope he has on a tux. And then she signs at just haven't. And I'm telling you, these women were pistols. You didn't get that far in those days unless you were. Now, you know, we're talking about changing clothes here. So I thought maybe we should point out that passengers did change clothes on the 314. They would put on pajamas to sleep and they would be padding around the aircraft in their robes and bedroom slippers during the night. So they had to have restrooms that could accommodate that. There was a ladies' lounge in the aft of the aircraft, just before you got to the bridal suite area. And it contained a toilet room, a sink, and a dressing table with makeup lighting and two stools. So this is where Violet and the ladies would have put on their evening dresses. And the men's lounge was equally comfortable with a urinal and a toilet room. And it was located forward where it'd be closer to the cockpit crew, who were, of course, all men during those days.

SPEAKER_08 44:57

And one of the things that people joke about all the time, because I'm so focused on food, and I always ask about, well, what's the food like? So let's talk about the menu and the food on this flight.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Yeah. They were now they were watching the way, right? Because of all the broadcast equipment. But champagne had been provisioned and was listed as quote unquote emergency cargo. I think it's always emergency.

SPEAKER_08 45:24

It's always emergency cargo. You gotta have the champagne. However, you want to classify it, it's on the plane.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

That's a no-go item. So they started out with green olives, celery, and ripe olives with cocktails. And then they went to a cream of asparagus soup, a larded sirloin of beef au croissant, potatoes, parsilla, new peas. Then there was a French pastry, a demitas, and mints. Now, this was basically a simple menu, but when you attach the French preparation to the dishes, it automatically elevates them and makes them sound more glamorous. They they only had a steam table for heating in those days in this tiny, it's like three feet by four feet foot galley. It was very small. And so they served the most perishable meal first. And it was followed by breakfast in the morning and then a coal buffet luncheon before arrival. We have to remember, compared to what was available before on airplanes, this was really elegant. The lounge could be converted to a dining room that seated 14, and there were crisp linens and on the tables with flowers and sterling silver flatware by Gorham, not silver plate and not stainless, sterling silver flatware, special Pan Am China, and crystal.

SPEAKER_08 46:50

But of course.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

And like cruise ships, there was actually a captain's table, which is described in Wayne Thomas's radiogram to the Tribune. Quote, most of us are relaxing after the rigors of a champagne dinner. It was such an occasion. Four of the five women aboard blossomed out in party clothes with orchids and silver slippers. Captain Colbertson had as his guests at his table, Mrs. Alice Rogers Hager, Miss Violet Sweethaven, and then Mrs. Ann M. Archibald. And John Watkins of the Associated Press reported, quote, Mrs. Inez Robb appeared in the lounge wearing a fetching suit of lounging pajamas in three pieces. The pajamas, those worn by Ms. Robb when she accompanied the King and Queen of England on their recent tour, were of silk crepe in blue and white and attracted considerable attention from the male passengers.

SPEAKER_08 47:46

Of course it did. For our listeners, this is big news. This is one of the first transatlantic flights. The public was following this. Can you describe Becky the scene in the bridal suite as they prepared for the broadcast?

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Well, Violet Sweethaven is going to do that for us. She had a camera and was taking pictures of the newsmen as they were getting set up. And she described the experience in her book, which was written later, called Many Ports of Call. And there are several excerpts in the archives. Quote, that night at 11 o'clock, in a deluxe compartment at the stern of the clipper, filled with microphones, radio men, and amazed reporters, we had the radio hour. Far out over the Atlantic, we heard an excited voice saying, The Columbia Broadcasting System brings you an unusual program, a broadcast from the Atlantic Clipper. We take you now to the Atlantic Clipper. I didn't believe it. It must be a joke. Somewhere in the front of the Clipper, a hundred feet down the central passageway, someone must be tricking us. Just then, Bob Trout, sitting tensely listening to this message, ripped the transmitter and replied, Good evening, everybody. This is the Atlantic Clipper, and Bob Trout reporting the latest events, the latest happenings on this gigantic 40-ton ship as she wings her way toward Lisbon, Portugal, and toward Europe. But it was real then. We were having a two-way radio conversation from the Clipper in mid-Atlantic to America. It was being broadcast coast to coast and by short wave around the globe. We were firing a travel shot, which was heard around the world.

SPEAKER_08 49:40

As she said, this is a huge media event. The American public were captivated by it. Now, to putting it in perspective, this is just before World War II. So a lot of the American public was getting nervous about uh some things that were going on across the Atlantic. But this was an event that people were following very closely. And we have more of the broadcast, not CBS's broadcast, but NBC's broadcast. Uh so let's listen to a little bit more on either side.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

We can look out now the windows and see two of those four right now motors grinding out their six thousand parts. In the navigation tank built above it. Space ships inside in circuit control, Captain Winston, officers, behind them in same order, the navigators table in charge, the radio manifest control, and the engineering officers.

SPEAKER_08 50:42

Always calm, routine, and systematic. And Becky, Captain Winston shows up again.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

There, he's there. Back to the baggage allowance here. You know, they really were strict about that in the beginning because of all the equipment that had to be on the board. But still, later on, uh, when you were flying, you could only take 55 pounds when regular commercial traffic started. So everybody had to pack um, you know, very um intelligently, you know, uh to make sure they had everything that they would need immediately. No doubt they'd probably ship stuff if they were staying for a long time. Maybe they would ship a steamer trunk or something by sea in advance.

SPEAKER_08 51:25

Becky, let's listen to another clip from the NBC broadcast. And this is a clip with an interview on board the Boeing 314 flying boat over the Atlantic with the captain. Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Captain Calbert Sinn has just come down from the trick, and I'd like very much to have the master of the ship speaking to you in the United States.

SPEAKER_14 53:26

I mean I'll hope everything will go along well. Thank you very much, Captain.

SPEAKER_08 53:32

Becky, your reaction.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Well, now that right there is just standard cockpit speak. Um, they are trained from the get-go to be as I don't want to say it was nonchalant, but just very, very calm. It's like they're just going around the corner to get a coke. And yet all of these historic things are happening.

SPEAKER_08 53:54

It's just amazing that we have this recording. It's really an amazing piece of history that we get to share with our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

They did several of these broadcasts during the night, and then several on the ground when they got to the Azores. They were stopping first at Horta and the Azores, and then when they stopped in Lisbon. And when they finally got to Marseille, they wanted to communicate uh to audiences as much as possible. But when they landed, the reporters really, really wanted to file their stories. They were met by the aviation officials and the Marseille Chamber of Commerce. Um, but they really wanted to get those stories filed before they boarded an Air France D338 monoplane to fly to Paris. And Violet Sweethaven called her office in Paris and she said, Okay, Air France has a plane here. What do you want me to do with my copy? And she's talking to Kenneth Downs at the bureau there. And he says, Bring it by plane. It's quicker than filing it from down there. Okay, she says. And I want to interview the Duchess of Windsor. And there was a pause. I mean, the abdication had just happened two and a half years earlier. And the Duke and Duchess were now living in Paris. And he said, Well, you call the office when you get in. Because he didn't know how the Duke and Duchess would react to such a request because the press had been pretty hard on him.

SPEAKER_08 55:27

Did the crew go to Paris?

SPEAKER_01 55:29

The crew, from everything I can tell, stays in Marseille. Nothing in the articles mentioned the fact that the crew went with them. The press got to Paris and the fireworks began.

SPEAKER_08 55:41

So what happened in Paris?

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Well, what didn't happen in Paris? The city rolled out the red carpet, and the reporters were feted at everything from a garden party hosted by Air France to a reception given by the air ministry and a luncheon hosted by the French newspapers. All of the famous flyers of the day were around too. They were escorting them to the various events. They even went to a nightclub one night. It was called Le Taverine, where Marian Daniels, the blonde supposedly favored by Hitler, was supposed to dance. And the entire press group watched the ballet extravaganza from a reserved platform.

SPEAKER_08 56:26

And the party just never stopped, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:28

I don't think so. And I don't think the champagne did either. But you know, Violet was like a dog with a bone when it came to her request for an interview with the Duchess of Windsor on their last day in Paris. She calls the office that morning to check on the status, and she says, Well, what's the verdict? And they say, Well, we have been in touch with the Duchess, and she has promised that she will receive the entire press party from the Atlantic Clipper.

SPEAKER_08 56:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 56:57

Fine, Violet exults. What time? The Duchess said 5:30 at their residence, 54 Boulevard Suchet. Well, this was the Pieste Resistance of the entire trip. And they arrive at the appointed hour. And according to the Associated Press's John Watkins, they were, quote, ushered into a second floor drawing room by a butler. We were received there by the Duchess, who was wearing a black taffeta afternoon dress of plain design with a basque waist and elbow sleeves. The only ornament she wore was a band of coral crystal beads. Now, you know what? I don't know of many men who would know what an afternoon dress was or a basque.

SPEAKER_08 57:45

I don't wait.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

And so I'm thinking that the presence of the female reporters was uh quite a valuable resource at this point. Well, they were shown into another room where the Duke joins them, and there were servants in scarlet livery presenting champagne and hors d'oeuvres. At one point, the Duke was very complimentary of one trip. He said, Quote, Mr. Tripp is a remarkable man. I admire him very much. Now, in a poignant note, before they left, Watkin spies an ashtray on a low table near the van, apparently a souvenir of the accession. And he wrote, imprinted on it was a profile of the Duke, circled by the words King Edward VIII. No reference to this interesting item, of course, was made by the guests.

SPEAKER_08 58:41

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

So this is just an example of why you want to have these press flights because they make it all they make it all come to life. And you can write about, oh, well, this was the flight that took off so and so's passengers on such and such a date, and it was X number of hours long and all of that. But we want to know what was it really like? And it takes the writers to do that. Um, I I think the person who expressed the true magic of this experience was Alice Rogers Hager. Uh, in her article, she explains that Captain Winston had invited her to come up and visit the Star Hatch and watch the sunrise. So you know what the Star Hatch is, Tom, right?

SPEAKER_08 59:29

I do, but for our listeners, if you can explain it a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

It was a conical glass turret where the pilots literally would go up and shoot the stars to determine their positions. And I would say it could, it there was enough room for two from your shoulders up to the top of your head. It was located upstairs through a door in the back of the cockpit at the midsection of the plane where the wings join the midsection. And so Alice writes quote, this morning at 10 minutes after two, the steward shook my curtains.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:05

What what does that mean? Sh shook her curtains.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

Don't you love that? Uh I suppose, you know, it's a term from the Pullman train days, I suppose.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:14

Oh, interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:16

Anyway, Alice says, Captain's compliments, madam. Venus is about to rise. Two of us did roll out of the warm comfort of our berths at that summons, threw on a few clothes, and went up with Captain Winston to the flight deck and back to stand on the little ladder up into the star hatch. Had it been anywhere but where it was, the scene would have been romantic but not out of the ordinary. In mid-ocean, isolated from the water below by that deep, impenetrable layer upon layer of cloud, it was fantastic. Wow. We stood together in the star hatch with a scene before us that could never have been forgotten. To the right and the left attached the tremendous wing surfaces of the plane, with the engine nasals lifting proud heads above their leading edges. Directly behind us, the great three-finned tail reared itself, sturdily reassuring, familiar human handiwork. Beyond was the infinite, the procession of the planets wheeling upon their courses and guiding hours. To the right stood Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, large and faintly golden. To the left, just above that billowing ardent cloud floor, Venus walked in rosy beauty. If one had never worshipped before, then was a time when divinity was too much present not to bow the heart in reverence. But poetry cannot tell the story of this thing man has done with wings. Even to those who have seen them grow from frail, fumbling things to this proud craft that takes the kingdom of the birds as its right. There is admiration and respect for the fine mind and scientific discipline that can run an airline over the world's toughest ocean.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:21

Wow. I'm speechless. It doesn't get any better than that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

No, it does not. The trip was, Alice continued, quote, something out of a world of air and water that knew no human boundaries, but verged on the eerie borders of a fairyland. Now, naturally, they all wrote these glowing articles, which hit the papers, and the trip received a massive amount of attention from coast to coast and indeed all over the world.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:58

And I mean, for Pan Am, this is the best they could ever hope for as far as advertising and publicity and introducing this spirit of romantic adventure. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that for any company trying to promote something. So this press flight was followed by an inaugural air mail flight using uh the northern route on June 24th, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

Right, right. That clipper departed from Port Washington and flew up to Shedtiac in Nova Scotia, then bought in Labrador, and then it went across the North Atlantic to Foynes in Ireland, where they landed in the Shannon estuary there, and then on into Southampton after that.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:43

And then on Friday, June 28th, we had the glittering Gala introductory flight on the Dixie Clipper, again using the southern route, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:56

Correct. On board that one uh were one and Betty Tripp and dignitaries like Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, various politicians, bankers, the mayor of Lisbon, and so forth. You know, I just wanted to point out, looking at the passenger list, Tom, I was struck by the name of another passenger, one William O. Donovan. Now, this was while Bill Donovan, who would go on to head the Office of Strategic Services, which oversaw covert activities during wartime. The peacetime version we know, of course, would become the CIA. But at any rate, right here is evidence of the relationships that Tripp had not only in business, but with people in the military and in Washington as well. And I have no doubt that Donovan's experience on this gala flight familiarized him with the aircraft's capabilities because it could easily be converted and carry 5,000 pounds of cargo. And this would be extremely useful in a few years to assist in any covert operations during the war.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:09

And for our listeners, the Dixie Clipper, this flight that we just talked about, this is considered the first passenger flight. So when you look in history books, sometimes they talk about the Yankee Clipper and the mail flight as being the first across the Atlantic. But oftentimes they refer to this flight as the first flight for Pan Am crossing the Atlantic because this was the first one with paying passengers, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36

I yeah, I assume I don't think the trips were paying, but I I don't know because they were invited to come, but it could have been, yeah, that they were.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:47

So And with this flight, a new chapter begins for transatlantic uh airline service.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

It's now begun. And uh it was here that I Ran across Bill Winston again because in this file there was a picture from the New York Times of the Atlantic Clipper again being ready for departure on July the 5th. And this was using the southern route. And the next document I picked up was the crew list, and he was listed as the skipper. Now, this would probably have been the second paying passenger flight after the Gala flight. As I said earlier, you know, we talked about the fact that tongues were wagging at all the important cocktail parties in New York. It was really the subject of conversation. Since a woman named Betsy Schaefer and her husband were scheduled to depart on the Atlantic Clipper, Vogue magazine asked her to do a write-up of the experience. And there was a copy of the draft of her piece in Winston's file. And she has a terrific sense of humor. Naturally, since she's writing for the premier fashion magazine in the country, her first crisis, if you want to call it, that was about what she should wear. And she says, quote, blue was my color, so slacks and that becoming shade, of course. Trousers are a necessity, my dear. Don't be silly. I knew how high one must step up sometimes into a plane. This is immediately followed by another crisis, quote. And then the reports came through from the newspaper people. And somebody from the Times wrote, at the request of the captain, we changed for dinner. Now, this of course would have been Anne Archibald, although she was probably just being quoted in the article as she was not a journalist. And Betsy continues, she said, I was stunned. Aboard the clipper, one could manage a long dress. Well, if they could, I could. And within a minute, I was visualizing that bonwit number with the stop red chiffon scarf. But somehow that wasn't dramatic enough. After all, there hadn't been that many women ahead of me to fly the Atlantic. And it seemed a pity not to do the unusual. Perhaps I could persuade Hawes to do something in airplane silk. Now, she's referring here to the American designer Elizabeth Hawes, who was actually a great believer in dressing women in trousers like Catherine Hepburn. So Betsy continues, quote, this sort of planning went on for days and nights. I found myself accepting the oddest of invitations, places I would never dream of going to, so that my hostess could introduce me. You know she is crossing on the clipper. Isn't it thrilling, my dears? I began explaining to taxi drivers to drive carefully. I was flying the Atlantic. I was so very cautious with myself, never to slip in the tub, not to bite down hard, babying myself, saving myself for God knows what. So she really went all out.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:03

I mean, she even I'm I'm just gonna let you know the audience determine what she uh what she meant there.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:11

Well, she even uh was foregoing her customary evening cocktails for two whole days.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:18

Oh my gosh. Well, that is willpower, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:21

I'll say, I'll say. So the big day arrives. And early in the morning of July 5th, all of the passengers gather at the Pan Am office on 42nd Street. And it's very festive with lots of well-wishers crowding around the travelers as they board the bus for Port Washington out on Long Island. And one of Betsy's friends remarks that as the bus is pulling away, she says, Well, it doesn't make any difference whether I see you again or not. You will never have more orchids on your chest, dead or alive. And Betsy says, Well, at least I'm dressed for the occasion. And finally the moment of truth has come, and they're on board and they're strapped in. Betsy says, The door was closed, locked, the safety belts tightened. It was too late now. We taxied across the bay, the ship was turned into the wind. That moment of hesitation before the throttles are opened wide. I looked about me, willing to give strength through my eyes to the faint-hearted, and discovered two men playing a game of running. And then she then she gives it to us, the essence of flying, quote. And thus began the most casual, calm, matter-of-a-fact trip I have ever experienced, bar none. From the moment we left the water, it became an easing off, a relaxing of the tension I had built up on land. And that night when she stretches out on her bunk to go to sleep, the last thing she overhears is there wasn't anybody else in the club to debate with Mrs. Roosevelt. So finally I said I would. My last conscious thought before I fell asleep, 10,000 feet over the Atlantic, was is there no place one can forget Mrs. Roosevelt?

SPEAKER_08 1:11:21

I love that. And and really, Becky, thank you so much for sharing these uh accounts uh in these quotes directly from the people that experienced this romantic adventure of flying across the Atlantic in a Boeing 314 flying boat. It it's it really adds a lot to this program. And and I want to thank you. Uh, but I do have a question. How did you find these original Vogue articles?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:48

Well, I I this was a copy of Betsy's draft that was in the archives. Remember, if we didn't have these documents in the archives, you wouldn't be hearing any of this today. Uh I I think that uh maybe some of your listeners out there, if they have access to the Vogue archives online, maybe they could find it. Um I think it was indeed published. There were some notes on the front of the draft that said it was. It's probably in the September or October 1939 issue. I doubt that it would have made the early that made the July issue because this happened in early July. So August, September, or October maybe. But at any rate, we can see through these documents that all kinds of important people were now flying. Another document I found in the archives lists some of the VIPs who flew on the Yankee Clipper alone. I mean, it was people like Lady Louis Mountbatten and her daughter Pamela, the French automaker Louis Renault, the Couturier Elsa Scaparelli, the children of the Empress of Austria, the ambassador to Great Britain, John Wynat, Baron Edward de Rothschild, and his family. People like that. I mean, everybody who was anybody, and this was just one airplane. It really was a golden time in air travel.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:20

Unfortunately, just around the corner is the war. Um, so that golden time really didn't last very long. But these flights were ingrained in the public psyche, and you hear the term clipper, they were talking about Pan Am's flying boats. Let's talk a little bit about what is around that corner.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:45

Well, on September 1st, just months after the transatlantic service began, Hitler invaded Poland. Now, there was a crew on the ground in Lisbon when England and France declared war on Germany a few days later, on September 3rd.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:03

And where was Bill Winston?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:06

He was staying at the Ester Real Palace Hotel with the crew. And the reason I know that is because I found an article from a Pan Am publication called New Horizons. And it was in the April 1941 issue. Winston would say of the flight back to New York on that the night of September 3rd, quote, that ride from Lisbon, the night war was declared when I had a passenger list, which included English, French, German, Dutch, Scots, and several Czechs. You could have cut the tension with a knife when news of the Athenia sinking was radioed to the clipper. And of course, he had to announce that to the passengers. Now, this was the British ship SS Athenia with 117 civilians on board that was sunk by a U-boat. 28 of those killed were U.S. citizens. Subsequently, after this, a man named Elmer Rice wrote a Broadway play called Flight to the West about all this, and it starred Carl Malden as the captain. The night of its 80th performance, Bill Winston, along with his family, were in the audience. Winston was in full uniform, and he was called up to the stage for recognition.

SPEAKER_08 1:15:27

Hmm. Getting back to the term clipper, it shows up a lot during this time period in movies, for instance. And I wanted to share a clip from Casablanca, the iconic 1942 movie directed by Michael Curtis, and you will hear from Humphrey Bogard and Claude Rains. Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_13 1:15:49

Hello, Rick. Hello? How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Someday they may be scarce. I think now I shall pay a call on Ivan. Maybe get on the rebound. When it comes to women, you're a true Democrat. And what would you glance it to the tiny? It's you. Did you abscond for the church funds? Did you run off for the senator's wife? I like to think that you killed a man. It's the romantic in me. It's a combination of all three. And what in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca? My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters. The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:50

I was misinformed. I just love that movie. One of my favorite movies.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:57

Round up the usual suspects.

SPEAKER_08 1:17:01

Becky, let's talk about that clip and its significance.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

Well, the 314s played a crucial role during the war. And the particular plot driver in Casablanca was obviously you wanted to get to Lisbon to get on the clipper. There were, and get to America, there were 40,000 refugees in Lisbon trying to get out. I'm not a World War II historian, but it sounds like Pan Am was there with the right airplane at a time when it was really needed. And you know, after Pearl Harbor in 1941, something called the militarization of the U.S. Airlines occurred. The commercial domestic carriers, along with Pan Am's Martins and Sikorskys, were organized under the Secretary of War, and they were put under contract by the military to fly strategic cargo wherever it was needed, even to foreign destinations. This operation was run by the American Airlines honcho, C.R. Smith, who held the rank of general. Now, Pan Am's 8314s, on the other hand, were purchased outright by the War Department. And four of them were used for VIP passenger operations, and four for what was called special operations. Now, there were only two people in Pan Am that had the authority to decide who could ride and who could not on the VIP passenger flights. And one was Juan Tripp himself, and the other was Anne Archibald, who was on the press flight.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:40

Interesting. Very interesting. Anne Archibald pops up again. Who was on some of these flights during World War II?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:49

Well, again, the archives have preserved this for us. I came across a fascinating document that had a list of the VIPs just for the year of 1942. And basically, they were transporting the entire Allied command structure back and forth across the Atlantic, along with other important key individuals. Looking at the document in the archives was, it was just thrilling. You feel so close to history. You could see the history of the war in this particular timeframe being played out. Not only were there important diplomatic and military people, but other others as well. And the document lists who they were, their titles, their destinations, and the assumed reasons for travel, because sometimes it was secret.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:35

Can you uh give our listeners some examples on who were passengers on Pan Am Boeing 314 flying boats across the Atlantic during World War II?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:45

Well, we had the honorable David Bose Lyon, brother of the Queen of England, was coming over in the interest of his country. Major Elliot Roosevelt was delivering some valuable films to Washington. Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg came to visit President Roosevelt in the interests of her country. There were three generals returning to the States, probably after preparations for the Africa invasion, which we know would be Operation Torch. Edward Statinius. Now, this would be Ed's uncle, Ed Tripp's uncle, and for whom he was named. He was surveying Lynn Lee's activities in England in his capacity as Under Secretary of State.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:25

And he's the brother-in-law of Juan Tripp, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

Right, right. We had the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, and he flew over to discuss Allied finance issues. Crown Prince Olav of Norway was in the States in the interest of his country. General Ira Aker flew over to organize the Eighth Air Force, the mighty Eighth. General Joseph Stilwell flew out to the Far East via the Trans-Africa route to take over his assignment. General George Marshall, Chief of Staff, went to London for a special meeting. Harry Hopkins, special assistant to the president, went to the same meeting. Daryl Zannock, a major in the Signal Corps, was in charge of Army photographic projects in England and North Africa. Of course, we know he was a major Hollywood film producer. Then there was Prince Bernard of the Netherlands. That's just a few, and it was just for one year.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:19

And there were also flying the war's storytellers and correspondents over as well. So Americans back in the States could know what was going on, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:29

Yes, yes. And here are a few of them. Claire Booth Luce went over to interview Mrs. Shankai Shek for Time magazine. Everard R. Murrow went over to start his broadcast nightly from England over the CBS Network. Ernie Pyle, most likely, was going over to begin his assignment as a war correspondent. Lord William Camrose Foines, publisher of the London Telegraph, Mrs. Agnes Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post, Henry Luce, publisher of Time Life Fortune, Margaret Burke White, photographer. She did an extensive job on the war injured for Time Life. H.R. Knickerbacher, war correspondent for the Chicago Sun, Arthur Salzberger, publisher of the New York Times, and Bill Paley, president of CBS. And there were officials from important humanitarian agencies, Tom, like the Red Cross. Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt flew over in her capacity as the director of the American Red Cross clubs in England. We know that four of the planes were handling the VIPs, but their other four were doing what we call special missions. And these were trips that resemble charter flights, but they could also be dispatched on short notice and they could transport both personnel and war effort cargo to destinations on all continents. They traversed normal air routes, but also areas not necessarily licensed by the CAB. So because of this, they could spot survivors of U-boat sinkings and they would circle them and waggle their wings and then radio the position of the life rafts to the nearby ships so that they could proceed with the rescue.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:10

Interesting. And did Bill Winston fly any of these missions? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:16

Yes, there's at least one that we know about. There's a special missions document that details all of these things, or at least the highlights of them, like flying the uranium from Congo to the United States for use in the Manhattan Project. Of course, nobody knew that until 30 years after the fact, and it was declassified. But this particular incident did occur, I think, earlier than that. And I don't have the crew list from the archives, but there is an account of it in the special missions document. And this is a piece was written by one of the crew members, and I found it on the internet and later got in touch with the family about it. It was a man named O.B. Bivens, and there was an accompanying photograph of the crew, and I recognized Bill Winston in the picture. They were dispatched on short notice to fly all the way to Africa without layovers, stopping only for refueling. Although there was only one skipper, they had a double crew in the rest of the positions. Since there were no passengers, Bivens states that they had a running poker game going in the lounge for this 7,000-mile flight, rotating on and off from their duties in the cockpit. Captain Winston, he says, was very good at cards. Once they reached Lagos, Nigeria, they stayed at the Ikoi staffhouse, and hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, which was maintained by British Overseas Airways. Bibbins writes, quote, the food was the best in West Africa, if you liked curry, and the bar served refreshing gin and tonics, absolutely essential to ward off malaria in this part of the world. Now they stayed in individual bungalows in a gardened compound. They played more poker, and Winston regaled them with stories and card tricks. He spent hours playing an old piano in the mess hall. Quote, he was a born entertainer, Bivens says. Now one night they're all having dinner after, you know, days of this. They don't know what their assignment is, they're just there. And Winston's call to the telephone. And when he returns, he said, Okay, gang, we're shoving off at seven tomorrow morning, destination, Baltimore, with as few stops as possible. Can't tell you anything more because that's all they told me. So they check in and operations the next morning, but there wasn't anybody much around, no VIPs. And after they clear immigration, all of the crew except Winston boarded the aircraft and began doing their checklists. But pretty soon he appeared on the flight deck and he says, Okay, everybody, let me have your attention for a minute. We have the King of Greece, George II, and six members of his cabinet on board. They are going to Washington. So we will take them to Baltimore, which is the nearest place we can dock this airplane. We plan to go straight through and we'll refuel at Fish Lake and Port of Spain. No one is to know who our passengers are, so don't say anything on the radio or to the ground personnel when we stop. And another thing, protocol requires that we don't bother the king. If you come in contact with him, be courteous, but don't try to get his autograph. Now I know all this sounds redundant, but the State Department insisted that I point it out. Clear? Okay, let's get the show on the road. Now, it was the activities of the 314 and the other flying boats during the war that would at least, in my view, constitute the main reason why Pan Am would come to be known as the chosen instrument.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:01

And these missions were very dangerous, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:04

It was dangerous from the standpoint that the pilots were doing a lot of it. So they had to have been exhausted. You know, as I said earlier, uh that each of them flew over a million miles during the war. But they only lost one boat, the Yankee Clipper, in February of 1943. Under the command of Captain Rod Sullivan, they caught a wingtip in the Tegas River when they were landing at Lisbon. It was a routine landing. Now, on board was the famous wartime singer Jane Froman, and she was going over to entertain the troops. She was severely injured, but she was held afloat by the fourth officer, John Byrne. It was amazing because Byrne was badly injured himself. The two had very long and difficult recoveries, but they reconnected later and got married. So a Hollywood movie. Was made about their story, starring Susan Hayward, and it was called With a Song in My Heart. Although I just must tell you that Pan Am is never mentioned, the logo is never shown. I mean, for obvious reasons. It was the story of this wartime romance and the adversity that they experienced. That was the real story.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:23

And to our listeners, Becky found a clip from the Lux Radio Theater broadcast from 1953 that we are going to play for you. It's about a minute and a half, kind of gives you a taste of what the story is like and what the movie is about. Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:43

My name is John Byrne, Occupation Commercial Airlines pilot. Together with an old friend, I'd flop my way into the rocks into seeing and hear a girl who had long been my favorite scene. The very next day, as fate would have it, when Jane was on a plane bound for London, I showed up once again. They rushed to a hospital.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:01

All right, Becky. What is your reaction?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:06

Well, that the it was incredibly sad, obviously. We hated to lose that clipper. There was a substantial loss of life, but there were survivors. And fortunately, Jane Froman and John Byrne would survive, and Jane would go on to entertain the troops standing in her evening gown on crutches. And uh it's just uh a wonderful story with wonderful music in it, and I encourage your listeners to uh watch the movie.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:36

Let's get back to Captain Winston again. Did you find anything else in the archives about him?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:44

Well, I did. I did. Um we knew Winston was interested in photography because a letter to his mother from the Pan American Hotel on Midway Island says so. And this is dated December 30th, 1938. Dearest of mothers, well, I'm halfway across the Pacific. I've taken quite a few pictures here on Midway. This is a tiny little place, a beautiful hotel and millions of Goonie birds. They are the silliest and most amusing of creatures I've ever seen. They are entirely fearless because they've never been molested. When I return, I'll give you pictures of them. And I am waiting until I get to Hong Kong before I write again. When I return, I'll have more pictures. Now, you know, Pan Am did build two hotels, one on Midway and one on Wake. I think your other episodes have probably covered that. And this is the one on Wake where he is staying. And uh it was quite remarkable. They were shipped out from uh the West Coast on a freighter in a kit with everything from mattresses to iced teaspoons to you know everything that would be needed to run a hotel. So Winston is there, obviously, on a layover, and he winds up going to Hong Kong. Now, I found the September 1941 issue of New Horizons, and in it was a photograph of a woman named Sampan Annie. And Bill Winston is credited as the photographer. So it might have been on this same trip that he took the picture. And it shows a slim barefoot woman standing on her sandpan, dressed in a loose black top and pants, wearing a conical straw hat, and she's smiling brightly. Now, Shorty Greenoff was the chief maintenance mechanic uh at uh Hong Kong station, and he's telling this story about Annie. Her real name was Chin Yung Gi, hope my pronunciation's correct, and Greenoff hired her because she was an expert boatman. I'm gonna quote him here. The skill with which Annie gets around a clipper, passing a line to the officer in the bow, getting breastlines and tail lines into place and warping the clipper up to the dock is nothing short of amazing. Now, Annie would arrive with her children and her grandchildren, and after performing her duty, she would collect whatever food was remaining in the galleys and stage a picnic for her family. And one Saturday morning, after all this, she requested permission to leave early and take the rest of the day off. And she went home and delivered her latest offspring. Back at work just a few days later. She and her husband lived on an 80-foot junk with their five sons and three daughters. And when each son got married, they bought him a fishing boat, and the kids all helped with the fishing and the other work. And but she directed everything. And at dinner, everything was cooked on board the junk, but all the kids would come in and they would all have dinner together as a family. So one night, Shorty Greenoff comes over to visit, and the water was really rough, and he slips and falls overboard. And he said Annie was there in a heartbeat, and she rescues him by clutching his hair, which by his own admission was none too plentiful. And then the other family members come immediately and help haul him back up onto dry land. And Annie's comment was Master Shorty, maybe he had better have more hair. No can hold. So uh this was a wonderful insight into Pan Am's operations during the boat days because Annie and so many others like her was part of our Pan Am family. And thanks to Bill Winston's photograph and Shorty's story, we have a way to honor her contributions and to remember her.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:42

That's great. And this is a fine example of the humanities aspect of this program and telling these people's stories that were involved with Pan Am history. Uh, anything else you'd like to add?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:57

Well, yes, one final thing. Much later after the Miami trip, I purchased uh Jim Troutman's very fine book on uh the Pan Am flying boats. I was building sort of a library, you know, for of resources for fun. And I came across a certificate inducting a passenger into something called, quote, the Imperian realm of Jupiter Rex.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:22

Ah, yes. Tell us more about this. These certificates you can find in a lot of different places, and we get a lot of questions about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:31

Well, this was Pan Am's riff on the cruise ship tradition of inducting passengers into the Neptune society when they uh cross the equator. As the story goes, the god Neptune appears to the passengers and admonishes them for not asking permission to traverse his realm and requiring some form of initiation to gain passage. And I think I think that initiation basically involves quite a lot of drinking. Am I right, Tom?

SPEAKER_08 1:36:59

Probably. I mean, Pan Am, that's one of the things that that is.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:03

Well, on the show constant thing, yeah. Even the Navy does it. Yes. So I think it's a big excuse for a party. So um I'm this this certificate is hilarious. It's got this, it has a bearded mustache man with flowing white hair, and he's sporting this lopsided crown with wings that's cocked to one side, and these planets reel drunkenly in the background. And the flowery language is just hilariously over the top. And it says, from the illiminable, I can't even say it, vastness of the hyperterrestrial firmament, the Empyrean realm of Jupiter Rex, King of the Heavens, Lord of the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, and nebulae, ruler of the winds and weather, master of lightning and thunder, supreme potentate of all things above the surface of the earth. Know all ye by these presents that, and here's written the passenger's name, in this case a man named Sidney Martin Blair, on this eighth day of April in the 40th year, was born on the wings of an airliner of the Pan-American Airway system across the equator en route from fill-in-the-blank, in this case Africa to South America. And therefore, for all this good and sufficient reason, let it be known that S. M. Blair has been accepted into the Empyrean realm of his exalted Majesty Jupiter Rex, and shall now and forever be known as Condor Blair, and shall receive of all men below the profound privileges and immunities of our aerial realm. Given under my hand and seal, WA Winston, Captain, and plenty potentiary extraordinary.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:00

There he shows up again.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:02

Wherever all that is. And then it lists the time of day and their altitude and so forth.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:07

I can I can see somebody that got this certificate and came home and framed it like the movie The Christmas Story with the major award, the leg lamp, and you know, prominently displays it in their home, and everybody needs to call them Condor.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:25

Tell me they I hope they don't take it seriously. But I bet it was a lot of fun if you'd had a couple of drinks and this was handed to you. Um now I just want to say the passenger whose name is on that certificate, Sidney Martin Blair, was a resident of Canada who was working at England's air ministry during the war, where he was responsible for the supply of aviation fuel. And uh after the war in 1950, he would go on to publish something called the Blair Report on Alberta's bituminous sands. And this led to the discovery of the fourth largest proven oil reserve in the world. So if you were traveling on Pan Am during those days, I mean you were somebody.

SPEAKER_08 1:40:07

And there was always a Pan Am connection, everything. Um and with your Pan Am connection, you're a Pan Am flight attendant.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:14

And by marriage, it was by marriage, I have to say. My aunt married into this family.

SPEAKER_08 1:40:19

So you yourself was a Pan Am flight attendant. And what's your takeaway from this experience on discovering this family connection?

SPEAKER_01 1:40:29

Well, just being in the archives made me realize how important it is to preserve the history of companies, uh, particularly one like Pan American. I mean, you know, most people think that the history of businesses are really boring, but they're not. It's amazing to see how creative people were in developing strategies and providing a product or a service at a at a profit. And uh in this case, they were conquering the oceans. So the records of these activities provide not only the history of what went on for the company, but they support the history of the times.

SPEAKER_08 1:41:04

Absolutely. And it helps tell the story of those times from different perspectives. Can you give us some more examples on what you you have found?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:14

Well, in terms of illustrating the history of the times, we know that Bill Weston was on layover in Lisbon on September 3rd when England declared war, right? Against Germany. And he brought the clipper back to New York that night. Now, this war declaration be it marked the beginning of a period before major hostilities began. It was called the Phony War. Now you fast forward to April 8th, 1940, and we can see from the Jupiter wreck certificate that Winston was flying from West Africa to somewhere in South America. It's probably Natal or Belem, one of those cities. Now, simultaneously, while he was in the air, the Germans were attacking Norway, which was in effect ending the phony war.

SPEAKER_08 1:42:03

And then on May 10th, the Germans would invade the Low Countries in France.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:07

Right. Right. So this is it's just one instance that we can see how Pan Am people lived in history as it was happening, literally flying around the edges of it and sometimes straight into it. Things like this would go on throughout Pan Am's entire history. And my second takeaway is that it's wonderful for the families. Because remember, at my time, my first time when I visited the archives, I didn't know a thing about Captain Winston other than what my uncle had told me. And after I returned from Miami, I thought, well, maybe the family does have information. So I drove up to see my first cousin in Wilmington, North Carolina, and he had the boxes of information with news clippings and other publications on Winston's early life as well as the letters he wrote to his mother during the war. And I've shared some of that information with you all today. But the family didn't have any materials relating to Captain Winston's actual experience with Pan Am. And so I found it very gratifying to be able to supply them with the missing pieces. And by the way, I can say that Special Collections is now digitizing the Pan American materials. So you can download PDFs of the documents you're looking for. Just go to the Richter Library's website and hit special collections and then look for the Pan Am link and go from there.

SPEAKER_08 1:43:38

And there is a link to the University of Miami Richter Library in the episode description of this episode. So tell us what happened to Captain Winston.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:50

Well, after the 314, he would go on to fly the constellation, which was a land plane that was introduced in 1946. But unfortunately, uh he wouldn't be flying it for long because he died of in 1948 at the age of 52 of cancer. In true airline fashion, uh he married a stewardess in the hospital at a bedside ceremony shortly before he drew his last breath. As you may know, Pan Am began hiring female flight attendants during the war because so many of the men were fighting in combat. Captain Winston is buried in Arlington as they were considered uh veterans.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:32

Fascinating story. Fascinating. Any other thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 1:44:37

There's one thing I want to say before I mention this last thought, and that's a special thank you to Ed Tripp and the Pan Am Historical Foundation and the Richter Library for moving swiftly after the bankruptcy of Pan Am to preserve these documents because otherwise we wouldn't have these stories to tell you today. But I think overall, ocean flying brought about a new way of thinking about time because people can now move about the world quickly. I think there's a quote that Violet Sweethaven had in her book, Many Ports of Call, that explains what I'm talking about. She's reflecting on the press flight after her return, and she writes, Time, I suddenly knew, is life itself. It is man's universal medium of exchange, and I vowed never forget to value time. In the short span of a week, more adventure had been mine than most people ever know. To millions, that week had been just a dull grind, the same old thing. During those minutes and hours, I had reaped a fortune in joy, excitement, fun, and relaxation, a treasure on which to draw in sickness and in health, in loneliness and in crowds. Life for me will never be a grind. Now that I know how full the minutes can be, I shall never waste the hours. Each day will have a useful part in preparing me for the next adventure.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:14

And perhaps that is what uh Juan Tripp intended all along.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:18

You betcha. Wheels up, everybody.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:21

Well, Becky, I always look forward to working with you. And thank you so much for bringing these stories to life on this episode. And I'm very proud of this episode because we get to play some some clips of the actual broadcast from NBC and really put together the context of what was going on at this time period.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:44

Just always great to see you, Tom, and thanks for doing all these episodes.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:48

Always great to see you. I can't wait to have you back on the program.

SPEAKER_10 1:46:56

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have brought to you the first broadcast ever to come from a passenger plane flying across the Atlantic. This broadcast is the first in a series covering the flight of the Pan American Airways Atlantic Clipper from New York to Marseille, France. Aboard the Clipper are 30 persons, the largest number ever carried in a heavier-than-air plane in transatlantic flight. Twelve newswriters, four radio men, two of whom are NBC's well-known announcer George Hicks and engineer Ed Whitmore. Two Pan American Airways officials and a crew of twelve under the command of Captain Wallace D. Culbertson, making his first transatlantic flight as captain. This inspection flight is a preview of the forthcoming regular transoceanic passenger service, which is scheduled to begin on June 28th. This is the National Broadcasting Company.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:53

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.thepan Amuseum.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 Pan Ammuseum.org. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Amanda.