First & Last

At 5:30 one morning last week Pan American Airways' Samoan Clipper, out of Honolulu for Auckland, N. Z. on the first commercial flight between the U. S. and the Antipodes, bucked, splashed and rose off the harbor of Pago Pago on the last 1,798-mi. leg of her journey. She carried 900 Ib. of assorted freight--automobile and tractor parts, cinema projectors and films, wearing apparel. No U. S. mail was aboard because Post Office contracts for the route had not been awarded, nor had it been approved for passengers. Built-in were six new gas tanks, holding 1,020 gal. of fuel, to increase her normal 1,300-mi. cruising range to 2,800. Sea and sky burned in the blazing sunshine of a warm, windless day. . . .

At the Samoan Clipper's controls was taciturn Captain Edwin C. Musick, 43, senior commander of the line, a man whose 15,000 hours in the air during the last quarter-century made him the world's most experienced aviator. He had pioneered most of P. A. A.'s 50,000 miles of airways, flown most of P. A. A.'s 138 aircraft. His 43-year-old first officer, Cecil G. Sellers, wore a Distinguished Service Cross won with the A. E. F. and during 1936 was loaned by P. A. A. as Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's personal pilot. There were five other men in the crew.

At 6:08 a. m., the Pan American radio operator at Pago Pago got a message from Captain Musick that because of a leaking oil line he had stopped one of the motors, braked the propeller, dumped some gas and turned back to Pago Pago where he expected to land about 8:30 a. m. after cruising to reduce the weight of his fuel. At 7155 a. m. Captain Musick was reported over British Apia, 75 miles across the Pacific from Pago Pago. Half an hour later Pago Pago heard he was again dumping gasoline, expected to land in the harbor within a few minutes. All this time the Samoan Clipper'?, signals had been coming in clearly. At 8:27 a. m. they abruptly stopped.

Pan American's manager at once notified the Navy that he feared the Clipper was in trouble. The Avocet, a Navy seaplane tender based at Samoa, sent a plane aloft and at 6 p.m. took up the search itself. Also out of Pago Pago's harbor stood an old U. S. mine sweeper and hoary Count Felix von Luckner's cruising yacht, See-teufel ("Sea Devil").

In the 22 hours that followed, the world press collected a mare's-nest of wild reports from Apia. The Clipper was safe in Apia harbor. She was down safe on the sea near Tutuila. Only the high mountains were keeping her signals from coming through. More alarmingly, a native was said to have reported he had seen fire in the sky and smoke on the water off Samoa. And then the Avocet, following streaks of oil floating on the long ocean swells, came upon what was left of the $320,000 Samoan Clipper 14 miles northwest of Pago Pago--a drawer, pieces of a coat, pages of the engineering log, part of the navigating desk, a pair of trousers. The debris, blown to bits, riddled with holes and imbedded with duralumin powder indicated a terrific mid-air explosion with instant death to all on board and immediate sinking of the ship's shattered hull in water a mile deep and alive with sharks. One was caught nearby a few days later with a man's bones in his belly. Said Avocet's Chief Boatswain Bogan: "Bits of wood and paper covered the sea. . . . They seemed to be fragments from the interior of the plane. All the pieces were from one to six inches square. We found nothing larger than that."

Fire. Seven thousand miles away in Washington, shocked by the line's second and by far most costly fatal accident,* Pan American's president, Juan Terry Trippe, sorrowfully announced: "Everyone connected with Pan American Airways is grieved beyond expression. . . . The death of Captain Musick and his crew is an irreparable blow to our company and will be a distinct loss to American aviation. Captain Musick contributed much to American prestige in the air." In President Trippe's opinion, "The Samoan Clipper was destroyed by fire of unknown origin . . . incidental to the discharge of fuel." What caused the fire? A few theorists jumped to the "static spark" conclusion advanced as a cause of the Hindenburg's explosion last year at Lakehurst. But most experts accepted a simpler explanation--that flame or sparks, which sometimes trail out 40 ft. behind Clipper exhaust pipes, ignited gasoline vaporizing from the plane's dump valves a dozen feet below.

So meticulously efficient was Ed Musick that his concentration on safety in the minutest flight detail was a legend in U. S. aviation. He would not tie up to a buoy unless it was tested. To many an aviator his amazing good judgment made the Pago Pago accident something of an enigma. It is established that Captain Musick could have landed his heavily loaded ship in Pago Pago harbor. On the other hand, so precarious is fuel dumping as a method of lightening a plane, that it is forbidden by the Bureau of Air Commerce on all U. S. passenger-carrying aircraft. It is therefore possible that Ed Musick's last professional decision was his first unwise one. Nevertheless, President Trippe made it plain: "I feel that Captain Musick and his flight crew are entirely blameless. . . ."*

"Outstanding." Yearly in Paris the Ligue Internationale des Amateurs awards the Harmon Trophy to the "World's Outstanding Aviator." In 1935 it went to Captain Musick. Missouri-born, California-raised Edwin Charles Musick learned to fly in 1913, taught Wartime pilots until 1919, barnstormed, flew transports for six years, operated his own small air fleet out of Miami, joined P. A. A. when that great airline was scarcely more than an idea. For the last two years he had been developing the Hawaii-New Zealand route-- his last trip being his fifth along the route. Without children, he and his wife, Cleo, lived quietly in San Francisco.

P. A. A. valued Ed Musick for his flying feats, but even more as trainer of and inspiration to its elite corps of young pilots. The example he set his associates, and practiced until the hour of his death, was "perfection--and the courage to turn back when faced with trouble."

Though he has not an idle ship among the 15 remaining Clippers, which alone are capable of flying the route, President Trippe wired New Zealand: "Proceeding with plans to continue U. S.-New Zealand service as quickly as adjustments can be made." On the West Coast are six full captains of equal standing from whom P. A. A. will select Ed Musick's successor as division chief pilot.

*First was in April 1936 in Trinidad harbor. The several fatal crashes of Pan-American Grace airline, a subsidiary, are not counted by P. A. A. though P. A. A.-Grace mileage and aircraft are included in P. A. A.'s total.

*Most amazing reaction to the Clipper crash came from Grover Loening. A former director of P. A. A., he is now aeronautical adviser to the Maritime Commission. To a dozen-odd publications Adviser Loening sent a furious 458-word telegram denouncing P. A. A. as insatiably ambitious and monopolistic, blaming the seven deaths on P. A. A.'s "tragic blunder of over-expansion." Hastily Critic Loening retracted his telegram.

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