They Call them Clippers

Each of the two Clipper eras was the result
of a need, a dream, imagination, and ambition.
First appeared in Flight Ops, published by Pan American Airways.
All rights reserved. © 2006 John Ellsworth



During the mid-19th century, when premium prices were being paid for the first shipments of tea sped to England from China, and when thousands of people were migrating to California to seek their fortune, America needed a faster, more able sailing ship. Such a ship became a dream. The dream triggered the imagination, ambition, and innovation of American shipbuilders, who turned their arts and sciences into practical work. The dream was actualized in a new idea, the Clipper Ship. The clipper—swift, lean, and beautiful—became a true expression of the young American spirit.

A century later, America needed a fast, long-range airplane, one that could safely carry passengers and mail across the oceans. Juan Trippe dreamed of fulfilling this need. As a step in that direction, Pan Am started operating the first of a long line of Pan Am clippers, the American Clipper. This flying boat, which plied the Caribbean Sea, was the Sikorsky S-40.

Although the American Clipper was the first American example of the great airliner of tomorrow, and considered as THE SHIP of the period, Trippe still had his ideas cast upon crossing the oceans. He needed and dreamed of a more capable plane. Thus, as a result of a team that aspired, reached and excelled, the S-42 evolved. With this airplane, Juan Trippe had a workhorse that was to survey the Pacific and make way for the famous China Clipper.

After Pacific routes had been established, the China Clipper, the first of three Martin Ocean Transports commissioned and bought by Pan Am, made its inaugural flight as a mail carrier on November 22, 1935, from San Francisco Bay to Honolulu to Auckland. The dream was fulfilled.

On that day, 25,000 people had gathered to view the China Clipper takeoff, and millions more around the world listened to radios as Pan Am ushered in a second clipper ship era—a magnificient era of transoceanic travel by wing. And appropriately, since those early days, each Pan Am airplane has been referred to as a "Clipper," and almost every one of them has been named after such a ship.

It's interesting to note that the main characteristics of the two clipper ship eras are almost parallel. Both sea clipper and the sky clipper represented an overt expression of the American Spirit. Each was gracefully beautiful and was a dream realized by ambition, innovation, ingenuity, and the courage to pioneer. Both craft captured the imagination of all by representing the spell of distant and exotic lands and conjuring up the romance of adventure. And each craft, the fastest in its day, measured its speed in knots, and when setting out to conquer an ocean, each had a captain in command and a first officer as second in charge.

It may not appear as a wonder then, that Juan Trippe, who is of seafaring ancestry, decided to call each of his airplanes a "Clipper" —an airliner that would speed trade and American goodwill throughout the world.