SPEAKER_01 0:00

October nineteenth, nineteen twenty seven, Key West, Florida, just after sunrise. A brand new airline, a company that doesn't even have its own airplane yet, has only a few hours left to save itself. If it fails, it loses an airmail contract, forfeits a bond worth roughly the price of 40 new cars, and disappears from history as a forgotten name in a filing cabinet in Washington, D.C. If it succeeds, it becomes Pan American World Airways, the airline that will put a clipper on every ocean on the planet. Brought to you by the Pan Am Museum Foundation at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island, with the generous financial support from Mr. Adam Aaron, Chairman and CEO of AMC Theaters and president of our sister organization, the Pan Am Historical Foundation. I'm your host, Ken Anderson, and with today's episode, we're kicking off the centennial celebration of Pan Am's Founding. In this episode, we are going all the way back to day one. Actually, we're going back to about six hours before day one, because as you're about to hear, Pan American Airways almost didn't have a day one at all. This is the story of how a stack of overlapping business rivalries, a nervous U.S. government, a borrowed seaplane, and one underpaid pilot combined to create what would become the most famous airline in history. So bring your seatbacks and tray tables up and fasten your seatbelts. Well, there were no seatbelts on this flight. We are about to take off on episode 69, 90 miles and minutes to spare. The founding of Pan American Airways and the first flight of FAM 4. Joining us today is Captain Bob Gant. Bob is an author, historian, former naval aviator, and retired airline captain who flew for Pan Am for a number of years. Bob, thanks for joining us. Just for some background for our listeners, what years covered your career with Pan Am?

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I joined Pan Am in San Francisco in September 1965. And I stayed until late 91 when Delta bought our North Atlantic division and me with it.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

So you went over to Delta after you after you left Pan Am? That's right. You've written a couple of books about Pan Am. Tell our listeners about them. There are a couple of, I think, are just outstanding books on the history of Pan America.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Well, thank you. When I was a brand new first officer on the 707, uh, I flew with senior captains who had begun their careers in flying boats. And some of them were just tyrants in the concrete. We call them sky gods. But when they weren't being tyrants, they'd tell stories about what they call the boat days. And I love those stories. And I told myself, someday I want to write about this. And I did. The first was China Clipper, published in 1991, and that led to the book Sky Gods, published by William Morrow, which is still in print, several languages. And of my 18 books, Sky Gods is still the bestseller.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

It's an outstanding story. It's one of the first ones, the one of the first histories that I read about um Pan American, and it was referred to me by a friend of mine who flew for Pan American. So I he he gave it very high praise, and and I do as well. If you'd like to get a copy of it, you can pick up a copy of it at the museum store at the Pan Am Museum.org. You touch on Pan Am's founding in your book, Sky Gods, The Fall of Pan Am. It's an underdog beats the deadline story, but how much of this is legend and how much is it actually true?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Well, it's a true story. Pan Am was an underdog, but uh not because it was in a race against a stronger opponent, it was in a race against time, and time was winning. And as we know, the story had a happy ending when Cy Caldwell appeared and saved Pan Am.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Caldwell's an interesting character as well. He was a he was a self-taught pilot that flew during World War I, correct? That's right. Yeah, and he was flying for West Indian Air Express, which was Basil Rowe's airline that he had started, which shortly after this whole story took place, I think it's within a year after this whole story took place, was absorbed into Pan American. It was, and and Basil Rowe became number one pilot. Yeah, he was it he went on to have quite the career himself, wrote a book about it as well. Is there anything else that you can tell us about Caldwell that our listeners might find interesting?

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Well, we've just recently, you and I have dug up some material on him. I haven't had a chance to read it all, but the most interesting part to me was an oral history he gave way back in 1960. Oh wow. He talked about himself in fairly humble terms. He was a typical soldier or flyer of fortune in those days. He uh seemed to follow whims more than anything else. He never made a lot of money. He skipped from one flying job to another, just like he's trying stuff out to see if he liked it. Same thing with Rose Airline. At the time, Rowe only had two airplanes, and one of them was the Fairchild. Caldwell's job mainly was ferrying the Fairchild and taking it to different places in the Caribbean.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

I don't know how much longer he stayed with him. And I think he quit flying altogether. I I had read somewhere around 1930 and began his career, his new career at that point as an author. Wrote a couple of books. One of them was a biography of Henry Ford, and he was also the editor of Aero Digest, I believe was the name of the magazine. That's right. Number of years.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

That was, by the way, a pretty pretty influential magazine back then. So he had quite a platform there. Why he quit flying to do that, I don't know. But like I say, he was a sort of a whimsical character, and he never made a lot of money doing this.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

It's an interesting role that he's going to play in the in the founding of Pan American, as we're going to see as this story plays out. To understand why anybody cared about a 90-mile hop between Key West and Havana, you have to understand what 1927 felt like. Five months before our story even begins, a 25-year-old airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh climbed into a single-engine plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, and flew alone. No autopilot, no radio, just him, a compass, five sandwiches, and an enormous amount of nerve from New York to Paris. 33 and a half hours, solo, nonstop. When he landed at La Borge Field outside Paris, something like 150,000 people were there to meet him. He came home to a ticker-tape parade in New York bigger than anything the city had thrown before. America didn't just admire Lindbergh, America went crazy. In the words of newspapers of the day, airplane crazy. Suddenly aviation wasn't a stunt for daredevils and barnstormers, it was the future and everyone wanted a part of it. Which brings us to a very particular 90-mile stretch of water between the southern tip of Florida and the northern coast of Cuba. Here's the thing about that stretch of water in 1927. It wasn't really about Cuba, it was about everything south of Cuba. The U.S. Post Office Department had a plan. If American companies took the airmail contracts connecting the United States to Latin America, those companies would build the airfields, the fuel depots, the radio stations, the entire infrastructure for regular air travel throughout the hemisphere. Whoever controlled that infrastructure would effectively control commercial aviation from Florida to the tip of South America for a generation. The U.S. government very badly wanted that whoever to be American, because it was already looking like it might be German. Down in Colombia there was an airline called SCADTA, the Colombian German Air Transport Society. It was on paper a Colombian company. In practice, it was staffed, financed, and largely flown by Germans, a number of them former World War I pilots, and it was very, very good at what it did. SCADTA was already flying scheduled international routes years before most American airlines had figured out how to keep mail contracts solvent. To officials in Washington, particularly in the War Department, this was not just a business story, this was a national security issue. On March 14th, 1927, three Army Air Corps officers, Major Henry Hap Arnold, yes, that Hap Arnold, future five-star general and father of the U.S. Air Force, along with fellow majors Carl Spatz and John Jewett, incorporated a company called Pan American Airways. They went on to secure foreign airmail contract for FAM4 to carry airmail between Key West and Havana, Cuba.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

As you mentioned, Scata was already entrenched in Latin America, and in theory, it could have posed a threat to the Panama Canal. America badly wanted its own airline presence in the region, and the Key West to Havana mail route would be the first step in putting an American airline in competition with Scata. Thus enter Pan Am.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Now, um Scata would, because it was a foreign carrier, would not qualify for the U.S. air mail route, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 9:08

I don't I I've seen two different opinions on that. Okay. And I think there was some worry that they could not be uh denied an airmail.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

So it was it was really more about the regional stability because of Scatta, uh that the United States was pushing to get us more involved in that area.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yes, I think so. At the time, SCADA was the major airline in Latin America.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

It's interesting to note that SCADTA, along with a few other carriers, ended up as part of Pan Am. Did that quell the perceived threat? Or actually I had read where there were some major changes to SCADTA after Pan American took over.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Well, here's what I I found out that Scata was never officially uh a part of Pan Am. In other words, it wasn't acquired. And in the stages, Tripp uh bought large pieces of it just uh in in stock. And uh at the same time, early in the game, he secured landing rights in Colombia, and he and the the uh proprietor, an Austrian named uh Peter Paul von Bowers, negotiated a route system by which Scata would concentrate on its domestic roots in Colombia, while Pan Am would fly the international service. And uh by this time, Pan Am had quite a bit of leverage with them. They owned up to like 84% of the stock. That pretty much headed off any German threat. And Scata eventually merged with another airline, Colombian Airline, to form Alvianca, which is still Columbia's national airline.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Air flag carrier. Here's where it all gets a bit interesting. Arnold's group was not the only one in the hunt for the airmail contract. At the exact same time, Juan Tripp, a sharp, Yale educated, 28-year-old former Navy pilot, was running his own aviation venture, something called the Aviation Corporation of the Americas, backed in part by C. V. Whitney and John Hamilton, both of whom would later have major roles in Pan American. Tripp had already been involved with two airlines, Long Island Airways, a short hop service for wealthy passengers around Long Island, and Colonial Air Transport. When he left Colonial, he was able to retain the contract for the Fokker Trimotors he had purchased for Colonial. This would become a factor later on in the story. This time he saw the pieces he needed to make a new aviation venture successful. Trip had something the Pan American and its FAM 4 contract needed. He had already negotiated landing rights in Havana, something Arnold's group didn't have. There was a third group in the mix too, Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean Airways, backed by Richard Hoyt, an investment banker with Hayden Stone and Company. He had what the other two companies did not. Capital. Three groups, one contract, and the U.S. Post Office wasn't going to wait around for them to sort out their differences like gentlemen. So, in the finest tradition of American capitalism, they merged grudgingly, strategically, and just in the nick of time. On October 11, 1927, the reorganized company, soon to be doing business as Pan American Airways, named its new president and general manager. It was Juan Tripp. So, Bob, we really had three different groups bringing three different things to the table: the contract, the capital, and the landing rights. How did those interests finally come together and how did Juan Tripp emerge as the person who shaped it into Pan Am?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

It was a last-minute give and take between the three rival groups. In some kind of negotiation, they finally agreed that Juan Tripp, who had the most operational flying experience, would be the president. And Richard Hoyt, a wealthy investor in other aviation companies, who also had the most money, became the chairman of the board.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

And at this time, that it really wasn't Pan American Airways quite. Yeah, Pan American Airways was one of the three three entities that were merging at this point, but it was actually all done under the guise of the Aviation Corporation of the Americas. Of the three parties mentioned, uh, and you touched on Richard Hoyt in Atlantic Gulf and Caribbean. There, he's out of all of them, he's probably the least well-known of them in in airline history. How did what caused his exit? Do you know?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Well, first of all, he was chairman or the president of one of the three entities. I think it was called Atlantic Gulf and Caribbean Airways. That was his outfit. And he became then the overall chairman. They were consolidated as the Aviation Corporation of the Americas in June of 1928, and Hoyt became chairman of that, of the new holding corporation, while Tripp ran the airline. But as Pan Am's airline gained strength and importance, the name of the holding company became Pan American Airways Corporation. And after that, we see Hoyt just sort of fading away and he returned to his his many other aviation industry investments.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Tripp has long been regarded as a skilled negotiator in his style. His style is pretty evident in this story. Can you tell us a bit more about how that style, as it will play out, is an important role in the history of the airline?

SPEAKER_02 14:04

There's several places we we're going to talk about that, but uh at this point, even as a young 28-year-old, uh, Tripp was unusual. He was unintimidated by power, people and business or government. And he usually had something, landing rights or new c technology, or powerful connections. He was good at that, that he could use as leverage. And uh mind you, he didn't have much experience doing this at age 28. But over the next say 40 years, uh he really evolved into something powerful.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

I think I had read in one of your books he had a habit of not taking no for an answer.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

He'd just walk away and forget that he'd ever been asked a question, and then come back the next day and make the same proposal and eventually just wear people down.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

It's interesting to note, though, Juan Tripp did not come up with the name Pan American Airways. Remember, his company was Aviation Corporation of the Americas. What Tripp did have was that he was the only one who actually knew how to make airplanes take off, land, and crucially make money doing it. What he did was to mold this merger into what would be the greatest airline that ever existed. He was the one that put the pieces together that would become Pan American World Airways. But right now, on October 11th, 1927, he's got a much bigger problem. He has eight days to get an airplane and mail in the air and deliver it to Havana. The newly formed company had Foreign Air Mail Route No. 4, FAM4, a temporary contract to carry U.S. mail between Key West and Havana, and the landing rights to do it. It came with a hard deadline. Get the route operational by October 19th, or lose the contract and lose the performance bond posted with it, a bond worth roughly $20,000 to $25,000. That's something in the neighborhood of three to four hundred thousand dollars today. Simple enough, right? Except for one small detail. What Pan American Airways did not have was a single airplane. Not one. They had a leased field in Havana, they had a leased field in Key West, a spot that would later become Meacham Field. But the Key West Field wasn't finished. It couldn't handle land-based aircraft yet. The Foker trimotor they were counting on, a proper purpose-built airliner, wasn't going to be there in time either. October 19th was closing in fast, and on paper, Pan American Airways was a company with a president, a contract, a bond on the line, and nothing that could actually fly. Bob, let's put this situation into perspective. Pan American had the mail contract and the landing rights, but with only days to go, it had no airplane ready to fly, and its Key West Airfield wasn't finished yet. Uh this was an incredibly unusual situation. I don't know that it's ever happened before in uh the airline industry, and I doubt it. I certainly don't think it's ever going to happen again. What kind of options did Tripp's team have at this point to secure this contract?

SPEAKER_02 17:05

I would like to think that Tripp's negotiating uh skills would have led to some kind of arrangement with the post office to extend because realistically he had all this these things that he couldn't control, mainly the weather and the wet runway. And all he needed was a nine-day extension, because that's how much longer it was before they did the real flight. And I'd like to think that Tripp could sweet talk his way into an extension there. If not, they would have, of course, gone out of business. I sort of think that there's somebody in position at the post office who wanted this route to happen would have given them a short extension.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

It didn't sound like the post office was going to budge, but that might have just been carried over from for dramatic effect in the history of the airline.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

I mean, bureaucrats are something, but Tripp is already busy endearing himself to the uh officials in the post office, particularly the deputy postmaster general. I would like to think that he would have talked his way out of that or into an extension.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

It's interesting to ponder what would have happened if that didn't happen. Down in Key West, Pan Am's local operations man, a fellow by the name of Jack Whitbeck, has a genuine crisis on his hands. Somewhere around 30,000 pieces of accumulated mail are arriving by rail, waiting for a plane that has not yet arrived. He and Pan Am's chief engineer, Andre Priester, who had met Tripp while working with Anthony Falker, where Tripp had ordered the trimotors for Colonial, got on the phones and started looking for an airplane. They found one in Miami. It belonged to a rival outfit, West Indian Aerial Express, founded by pilot Basil Rowe with financial backing of the sugar industry and government of the Dominican Republic. He went on to fly for Pan American after West Indian Aerial Express merged with Pan American in October of 1928. The plane was a Fairchild FC two named La Nina being repaired in Miami. Flying it was a Canadian named Cy Caldwell. Caldwell was a self-taught pilot who flew during World War I. He became a pilot for West Indian Aerial Express after leaving the Glen L. Martin Company, where he was a test pilot. Caldwell at first refused the offer, stating that it was not his place to change the flight plan. He was eventually convinced to make the flight and was offered between $175 and $200. The actual amount is unclear. What matters is Caldwell said yes. On the morning of October 19th, 1927, Cy Caldwell loaded roughly 300 pounds of U.S. mail onto a rival company's float plane and took off from Key West. 90 miles of open water separated him from Havana. At the Little Fairchild's cruising speed, that's right around an hour in the air. Some accounts say closer to 72 minutes. Either way, not exactly a long flight by today's standards, but long enough on a morning where an entire airline's future was writing on the outcome to feel like an eternity. Caldwell landed in Havana, the mail was delivered, the contract was saved, with, depending on how generously you want to measure it, somewhere between a few hours and a matter of minutes to spare before the post office's deadline would have kicked in. Here's where the story gets a little more interesting than the legend usually allows. October 19th saved the contract, but it wasn't really the airline's scheduled service. It was a Mercy Dash, a technicality flight, really, to satisfy the letter of a government deadline. Pan American Airways still didn't have its own working airfield or its own aircraft flying regular trips. That came nine days later. On October 28th, 1927, with Meacham Field and Key West finally ready for land-based operations, a Foker F-7A trimotor was ferried from Miami to Key West, soon to be christened in Havana with the name of Cuban President Gerardo Machado. It took off on Pan Am's first genuinely scheduled flight. I don't think the term first officer had yet been coined by Pan American, was Ed Music. From what I've read, they were two very different pilots. What can you tell us about them?

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Well, the fact is, Music was hired before Wells, but the airline didn't yet have a seniority system. Wells was a very experienced pilot who had been hired by one trip back for colonial. But Wells was totally different in character from music. He was more of a barnstorming flyer of fortune, whereas music was more serious, more more meticulous. The reason he was uh the the co-pilot, the first officer on that trip was because he hadn't yet gotten his his rating, as they call it, on the uh on the Fokker.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Oh, that's interesting. And I I I thought I had read in I thought I had read in Sky Gods, correct me if I'm wrong, but his uh he had a nickname of uh meticulous music because he was so particular. I remember reading a story one time where he said he would never loan matches to people because there was only one match in a matchbook for each of the cigarettes in a pack, and he Whenever he would sit down on the plane, he would always make sure the creases in his pants were straight. And uh he was he meticulous was a was a perfect word to describe him, I think. Right. Now, if you if people are following the Pan Am story, uh they'll realize that Hugh Wells just he just faded into history, but Music did took the opposite course on that. He became one of the most he became one of the most famous aviators uh of that era. Tell us a little bit more about his accomplishments.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Well, early on, Music became Pan Am's chief pilot. You have to say that he and Tripp sort of complemented each other. Tripp being a visionary and a risk taker, and Musik being, like you said, the meticulous realist. In 1935, well, in fact, Music commanded all of the early long-range survey flights. In 1935, he commanded the China Clipper on its historic first flight from San Francisco to Manila. And that made him a national celebrity, earning the Harman Trophy, putting him on the cover of Time magazine, uh and getting that name, the uh meticulous music. Music and his crew, sadly, were killed in 1938 when their S-42 flying boat exploded on a survey flight from Pango Pango. Now, as for Hugh Wells, he left Pan Am right after that and uh meandered around and became chief test pilot for Falker, then went to South America flying for Nerva, that's New York, Rio, Buenos Aires, on to Peru, where he's president of his own airline. Oh, that's interesting. I did not know that. He wasn't a slacker, he was an interesting guy, just totally different in personality. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Yeah, I had read one time that after the flight of China Clipper, Music's fame was right up there with Lindbergh's fame after he flew across the after he flew across the Atlantic. That's correct. Yeah, it was just an incredible pilot. Upon the Foker's arrival in Havana, Tripp wired his fiance, Betty Statinius, who was in Paris at the time. First flight successful. She later went on to document the airline's history and many of its pioneering global accomplishments in her personal diary, which later turned into the book The First Lady of Pan Am. So, Bob, which flight is really the first flight of Pan American Airways? October 19th with its borrowed plane and its and borrowed pilot, or October 28th with the company's own aircraft and its airfield and a young Ed Music along for the ride.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Well, as a historian, I would have to say that Pan Am's first official flight was October 28th. That's uh when a real Pan Am airplane and a real Pan Am crew flew their first trip. And I think one trip agreed. He sent the wire to Betty after that first flight successful. What happened nine days earlier with Caldwell and La Nina was an opening act that I think they just set the stage for the appearance of the real Pan Am.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

It's worth noting how small all of this actually was. A single engine float plane, seven sacks of mail, ninety miles of water, $175 changing hands on a dock in Key West. From that beginning, within about a decade, Pan American would be flying Sikorsky and Martin flying boats across the Pacific. Within two decades, it would circle the entire globe with paying passengers. Within three, it would usher in the jet age with the 707 and DC eight. Within four, it would put the Boeing 747 into the sky for the first time and begin selling tickets for the first passenger service to the moon. The word clipper would become, for a huge part of the 20th century, synonymous with international air travel itself. Bob, there's a version of the story where SCATA gets there first or the merger falls apart. Caldwell just keeps flying southwest without stopping to talk to Jack Whitbeck on that dock. In that version, there's no Pan Am, there's no China Clipper, no round-the-world flights, no jumbo jet revolution led by an airline with a blue globe on its tail. What do you think would have become of the airline industry today had that not happened?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

That assumes, that version assumes that Juan trip disappears. And if so, the airline business would have evolved in a different direction. It'd be driven by some other aggressive entrepreneurs, guys like Howard Hughes and C.R. Smith and Eddie Rickenbacker. And they'd have built something successful, but very different. Because without Pan Am and his vision and his great flying boats, America would have been way behind in international air travel.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

You'd think eventually it would have evolved, but at a probably at a much slower pace without Tripp's vision of what was going on?

SPEAKER_02 26:38

That's what I think. Yeah. Because mind you, one trip was the only one pushing for these long-range airplanes, like pushing uh Martin and pushing Sikorsky and then Boeing.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

And I think it was actually during the development of the 314, Boeing wasn't even going to get involved with it until uh until Wellwood Beale realized that they already had the wing. And they just needed to build the flying boat to hang underneath of it.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

But it was Tripp who made all that happen. Yeah. He uh he he first of all was uh ordered Sikorsky boats, then he pitted Sikorsky against Glenn Martin for the next airbo the next boat he wanted, and Martin won that with the M130 China Clipper. And then he put Martin against Boeing for the next stage of long-range boats, and Boeing won that.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

That's the founding of Pan American Airways. Not a clean, inevitable success story, but three rival ventures pushed into an unlikely merger and saved by the bell by a plane they didn't own and a pilot who wasn't even on their payroll. Before we wrap up, let's talk about what's actually left of all this, because in a story this old, that's often the most interesting question. La Nina herself, the little Fairchild FC two that saved the whole enterprise, doesn't survive today. Float planes from the 1920s led hard lives. Sold, re-registered, cannibalized for parts, eventually lost to time the way most working aircraft of that era were. There's no hangar anywhere you can walk into and stand next to the actual plane. Bob, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's not a lot of information about what happened to La Nina. I thought I had read that she and a couple other planes of West Indian Air Express were lost in a hurricane not long after this first flight. And it sounds like she met the same the same fate as nearly, if not all, of Pan Am's other flying boats and just vanished from existence.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Well, La Nina belonged to Basil Rose West India Express Airline. And after the Havana flight, it went on to fly between Cuba and Haiti and Puerto Rico, all through the Caribbean. And it would have belonged to Pan American when Tripp bought Rose Airline on October 28. But just a month before that, it was destroyed in a hurricane, as you said, in Puerto Rico, which is a great shame because that one should be preserved in a museum. Most of the flying boats, that wasn't a flying boat, but but most of Pan Am's big flying boats met some kind of fate. Not all of them, but most of them. All three M130s, including the China Clipper, were lost in various accidents. Most of them weren't related to weather, like uh the hurricane that destroyed La Niña.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, you know, I I've seen pictures in Mark Glass's book about the uh 314, and he's got one in there at the it towards the end of the book of two of the 314s sitting on the tarmac at the south end of Lindbergh Field here in San Diego. I can see the county administration building in the background. I know exactly where those planes were parked, and uh unfortunately that was way before my time. I asked my dad about it because he was he was a teenager at that time, and he said he did he didn't remember seeing them sitting there, but they they must have been quite the sight to see. The 314's roughly the size of a C-130.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

It's not a small aircraft by any means. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it was uh not all of them were destroyed. They they they they they weren't used at all after the end of World War II, after 1945. And uh some of them were sold to third world countries, and some just uh I think I think they were just uh scuttled.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

There is one thing that did survive this era, paper. Paper, it turns out, survives a lot better than aluminum and fabric. Uh collectors today prize something called first flight covers, envelopes that were actually flown on that October 19th trip, postmarked and often signed by Cy Caldwell himself. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum holds many of these in its collection, so does the Pan Am Historical Foundation. If you're the kind of person who gets genuinely excited about a 97-year-old piece of mail, and if you're still listening to this episode, I'm guessing you might be. Those covers are about as close as you can get to touching the actual event. There's also something wonderfully appropriate about that. Pan American Airways was built quite literally on the business of carrying mail. It makes sense that the mail itself would end up being the artifact that outlived the airplane. Another thing worth reflecting on Meacham Field. The little airstrip in Key West that wasn't ready in time for October 19th. It's still there. It's known today as Key West International Airport. Every time a modern jet touches down on that runway, it's landing on the same ground Pan Americans scrambled to finish prepping in the fall of 1927. The airline is gone, has been for 35 years, but the runway is still doing exactly what it was built to do. You can also visit Pan American's first office in Key West today. It sits at the corner of Whitehead and Caroline Street and is home to First Flight Island Restaurant and Brewery. There is a sign on Caroline Street noting its history. Now, folks, we are approaching our destination. If you enjoyed today's flight into the history of Pan Am's founding, please hit like and subscribe, leave a review, and tell a fellow aviation enthusiast about us. I'm Ken Anderson and you have been listening to the Pan Am Podcast, Episode 69, 90 Miles and Minutes to Spare, The Founding of Pan American Airways, and the first flight of FAM 4. Our first in a series of centennial celebration episodes brought to you by the Pan Am Museum Foundation at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island, with generous financial support from Mr. Adam Aaron, Chairman and CEO of AMC Theaters and president of our sister organization, the Pan Am Historical Foundation. We would also like to thank Captain Bob Gamp for his insight into this story. For more information on Bob and his work, check out his website, www.gamp.com. Until next time, thanks for flying with us.