Existing comment:
Pan Am Spans the Pacific
Creating a transpacific route presented great challenges. Pan Am had to survey the world's longest oceanic air route, build air bases and hotels on remote Pacific islands, and find an aircraft company to design and build flying boats big and powerful enough to carry heavy payloads across the longest landless air route in the world.
Transpacific Service from the Ground Up
Pan Am's plans for a northern Pacific air route that hugged the continental coasts fell through. So it chose a central Pacific route through Hawaii.
Captain Edwin Musick, Pan Am's famous chief pilot, led four survey flights across the Pacific in 1935 to plan the route. Meanwhile, a steamship delivered equipment, supplies, and crews to build bases and hotels on the islands along the way.
"Five years ago there were neither the ships, nor the bases, nor the trained pilots and navigators and ground men. And now here it was, Pan American Airways service to the Orient."
-- H.R. Ekins, Around the World in Eighteen Days and How to Do It, 1936 |